Agriculture Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

I urge the Minister to recognise the strength of feeling across the Chamber and to recognise that the adjudicator has proved to be very effective and is absolutely the right body, and more important than ever, to be given the role of defending suppliers in this very fraught forthcoming situation. I am very pleased to support the amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is very keen that we should allow fungi to be recognised as a separate group within the kingdom of living things on earth. We have obviously moved on from “animal, vegetable or mineral?”, a game which I think many noble Lords will have played as children on long car journeys. I am not sure that we cannot still include fungi within a definition of plants, because it would keep the drafting simpler, and I am not sure that there is any clause of the Bill where fungi will need separate and different references from plants.

My noble friend Lord Caithness is right in his Amendments 177, 179, 180 and 182, which would restrict the powers with regard to data collection to the purposes contained in Clause 23. I also sympathise with his Amendments 186 and 187, which would restrict the definition of “a closely connected person” and the extent of the data which may be collected, and I ask the Minister to give a clear response on these points.

My noble friend Lord Lucas, in Amendments 178 and 181, seeks to provide that the data collection’s purposes should be widened to include the duty to report to Parliament under Clause 17. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether he thinks there could be confidentiality issues here to protect members of supply chains, which are important. Amendment 183 seeks to include “plants”, but surely they are included in

“or other thing taken from the wild.”

I support Amendment 191 from my noble friend Lord Caithness, which seeks to release participants in supply chains both from the provision of unduly burdensome information and from a perceived requirement to disclose confidential information, which is very necessary. Amendment 192 seeks to include intellectual property rights, but surely they are already included.

I am not sure how many of the amendments in this group from the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, are necessary. With regard to Amendment 195D, I thought there was always an implied contract if there is a deal, but I would appreciate my noble friend the Minister’s confirmation of that. If I am right, the word “contractual” is otiose in Clause 27(2), which would make Amendment 195E unnecessary.

I cannot support Amendments 196 and 201 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, because product quality is not necessarily affected by animal welfare standards. Also, producer organisations are of course required to observe the high animal welfare standards that the law rightly requires.

I am interested in the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in Amendments 197 to 200, which seek to widen the responsibilities of the Groceries Code Adjudicator to ensure fair dealing. My noble friend Lady McIntosh makes the same suggestion in her Amendment 207. I would have thought that the skills required are comparable and that it should not be too difficult to recruit some agricultural specialists to the adjudicator’s office. Indeed, would that not be better than setting up yet another quango to deal with this matter?

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[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 129 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. It would require the Secretary of State to take into account the current environmental improvement plan in agreeing priorities for incentives. It is about a big concern of mine at the moment, which is that we start to join up some of these silos that are growing—environment, forestry, other land management purposes and agriculture. There are myriad schemes that are going to be coming towards farmers that will affect land, agriculture, forestry and the environment. There is the ELM scheme itself, as enshrined in this Bill, the 25-year environment plan, the provisions of the Environment Bill, the climate guarantee scheme, the Nature4Climate fund, the biodiversity net gain provisions and nature recovery networks. It feels more overheated than I have experienced for a long time in this area, which is great, because it means that everyone is putting effort, energy and funding into those sorts of issues—but it would be quite nice if we could join them up a bit.

Way back, I had a pious hope that we could have one Bill—a joint agriculture and environment Bill. I thought it would be a good idea. But in view of the pace at which this Bill is going through the House—and despite the aspirations of previous speakers that the Minister stay in his post for ever—I think that if we had had a joint agriculture and environment Bill, the Minister would probably have done a runner at that stage.

We need to find a way to bring all these initiatives together. Amendment 129 would at least be a modest start in joining up the environmental and agricultural agenda, as it should be.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness of Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has withdrawn. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. She is right about pace. I am sorry that we have lost the noble Earl, Lord Caithness; I think he sacrificed himself to help this important Bill make progress. I congratulate him on the earlier debate on Amendment 73 and his closing emphasis on the importance of sequestration in meeting any climate change targets.

I agree with the spirit of the lead amendment in this group, Amendment 105, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I agree with him that the transition to a new funding system should not result in a reduction in the overall financial assistance provided for agriculture and associated purposes. However, this may go a bit far, given the disastrous impact of Covid-19; everyone, including the agriculture community, may have to make a contribution to recovery.

However, farmers will need continued support from next year, as we leave the CAP on 31 December, albeit for different functions. Farms are mainly small businesses. I understand the issues well, as my father was a farmer who went bust in the 1960s when his credit with the bank ran out—that was before the CAP changed everything. Farmers’ work is vital to the rural community, our landscape and our food webs, and a free market is not an option, particularly given the level of support for agriculture almost everywhere else in the world.

I refer also to Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and to the similar amendment, Amendment 128, in the name of my noble friend Lady Rock. These would allow unspent funds allocated in one year to be carried over into future years. The Treasury, where I had the honour to be a Minister, will rightly never allow this. The wider ramifications for control of public expenditure are unacceptable and it could be a recipe for wasteful spending.

My main interest—perhaps “concern” would be a better word—in this group is Amendment 135 in the names of the noble Lords, Lords Lucas and Lord Addington. This seeks financial assistance for the provision of advice, with less emphasis than proposed on regulatory enforcement and penalties. Others assisting with the scrutiny of this Bill have talked about a revival of something like ADAS for this purpose. I do not support either proposal. What we need—I hope my noble friend the Minister will agree—is a professional implementation plan for all the new schemes, especially ELMS, with proper training and lead times, as you would find in a commercial context. It needs to be very clear and consulted on, with a view to successful, easy compliance and not just to satisfy interest groups. As much effort needs to be put into implementation as to policy formation. Much of that is, unfortunately, still to do, as the Lord, Lord Adonis, pointed out earlier.

We can learn from the initial failures in the health and safety context when the EU six-pack was introduced; that included things like manual handling, risk assessment and, indeed, PPE. It was burdensome and chaotic, providing opportunities for consultants, who flourished on the complications. There was uproar, especially in small businesses, but under a very able official, Jenny Bacon, the system was radically simplified with good guidance written by the HSE. The political heat went out of the issue despite the inevitable burden of these EU laws. The use of digital for documents and seminars for farmers and land managers makes all of this easier today.

I would be very happy to offer the Minister and his officials thoughts from my long experience at Tesco—I register an interest, as I am still a shareholder. Simplicity, clarity and training were essential to successful projects, whatever the scale. We do not want or need to set up a costly new advisory service, or to reimburse the cost of advice.

Finally, I do not agree with Amendment 232 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Of course data should and will be collected, but this should be done as part of Defra’s normal research programme and in the context of a five-yearly review of food security .

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With those reassurances, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, to withdraw his amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I have received requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I remind noble Lords that these should be brief interventions.

[The Earl of Devon [V]]

My Lords, I am sorry for keeping us late. I note that I can hear the combine rolling outside my window—today is the first day of combining. The farmers are still working late, so I am sure that noble Lords will not mind working a little late too. I thank the Minister for confirming that the multiannual financial assistance plan will be published in early autumn this year. Does that mean that the Government agree to Amendment 133?