Agriculture Bill

Baroness Henig Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

Relevant document: 13th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

My Lords, a limited number of Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House. Other Members will participate remotely, but all Members will be treated equally wherever they are. For Members participating remotely, microphones will unmute shortly before they are to speak—please accept any on-screen prompt to unmute. Microphones will be muted after each speech. I ask noble Lords to be patient if there are any short delays as we switch between physical and remote participants. I should remind the House that our normal courtesies in debate still very much apply in this new hybrid way of working.

A participants’ list for today’s proceedings has been published and is in my brief, which Members should have received. I also have lists of Members who have put their names to the amendments, or expressed an interest in speaking, on each group. I will call Members to speak in the order listed. Members’ microphones will be muted by the broadcasters except when I call a Member to speak. Interventions during speeches or before the noble Lord sits down are not permitted and uncalled speakers will not be heard.

During the debate on each group, I will invite Members, including Members in the Chamber, to email the clerk if they wish to speak after the Minister. I will call Members to speak in order of request and will call the Minister to reply each time. The groupings are binding, and it will not be possible to degroup an amendment for separate debate. A Member intending to press an amendment already debated to a Division should have given notice in the debate. Leave should be given to withdraw amendments. When putting the Question, I will collect voices in the Chamber only. If a Member taking part remotely intends to trigger a Division, they should make this clear when speaking on the group.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I draw to the attention of noble Lords that there is a very large number of participants wishing to speak in this debate, particularly on the first group. If noble Lords could be concise and non-repetitive in their contributions, it would greatly aid the smooth and swift passage of the Bill.

Clause 1: Secretary of State’s powers to give financial assistance

Amendment 1

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[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 1 is connected to Amendment 74, also in my name. Both amendments address the Secretary of State’s new financial assistance powers outlined in the first clause of the Bill. Clause 1(1) indicates ambiguity of delivery:

“The Secretary of State may give financial assistance”.


Picking up this aspect of uncertainty, Amendment 1 therefore implies that giving financial assistance, as envisaged, might not necessarily work out as intended, not least taking into account how current forms of international competition threaten to curb the viability of United Kingdom food production. Yet, if, within the Bill, incentives should fail to produce intended results, to some extent Amendment 74’s proposal can provide a remedy.

In itself, Clause 1 is evidence of an impressive vision. The Government are committed to preserving the national environment; thus, competent environmental land management can become a clear aim for farmers, who are properly rewarded if they achieve this. Nevertheless, so far, in other respects the Bill is less clear. What are the Government’s plans for sustainable food production? Post Brexit, will they develop new and even higher standards than those of the European Union? Or will they set land aside for afforestation, public access and wildlife conservation while leaving agriculture to market forces, as do the United States and Brazil? Among those options, although unstated, no doubt the Government would prefer that which combines high standards for environmental land management along with those for sustainable food production. Yet, if so, how can these two objectives best be realised and British farmers perform and compete against cheap imports from the United States and those from EU states paid a high level of agricultural subsidies?

Perhaps some of the answer, beginning at home, would be that, in order to further these twin objectives, the Government might better prioritise and adjust existing incentives within the Bill. For if that adjustment is made now, in the first place, then there will be a greater chance that, through time and against external market forces, much of those current joint aims for the United Kingdom of good environmental land management and sustainable food production can be attained.

Clause 1 details 10 purposes eligible for financial assistance. It is certainly right that funding should be provided for each of them carried out by a farm. Yet, where multiple purposes are addressed, the Bill could now be amended so that a financial bonus would apply. For example, if a farm accomplished [Connection lost.]

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I shall have to move the amendment on the noble Earl’s behalf. I beg to move Amendment 1.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 1 and shall speak also to a number of other amendments in the group. I thank the noble Earl for tabling Amendment 1: it was something I was thinking about. Indeed, I spoke to the Table Office, because much of the discussion around the Bill has focused on the fact that it provides powers but not duties. I suggested to the Table Office that we could go through the whole Bill and change every “may” to “must”, and those in the Table Office persuaded me that that might not be the best way forward. I thank them for their patience and all their expert assistance. I think the noble Earl has managed to focus on the key part of the Bill, where “may” should be changed to “must”. I know he tabled it as a probing amendment, but we should think about this as a serious way forward: a duty to look after the key principles of carbon storage, ecosystems, the state of our natural world and healthy food. These should be a duty of the Minister.

Amendments 8, 22, 25, 31 and 50, in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, are all about air pollution, which is a huge gaping hole in the Bill. It looks at water, at soil and at our ecosystems on the ground, but does not talk about the air; yet it is all part of an interrelated system and we know that air pollution and farming issues are closely interrelated.

I have also attached my name to Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which says:

“Financial assistance may only be given for Environmental Land Management Schemes Tier 2 and Tier 3 if those individual schemes are in line with the local Nature Recovery Strategy”.


This addresses a crucial point: we need joined-up, systematic thinking about the nature of our countryside. At the moment, we have a number of silos. We have the Environment Bill, the Agriculture Bill and the now delayed food strategy, and we need to make sure that these are all joined up and working together, not at cross-purposes to each other. We need a whole-landscape approach, something the Wildlife Trust has been doing a lot of excellent work on, although we have to notice that what we see in the Environment Bill will lay new duties on councils, which, as we discussed in Oral Questions, already have enormous burdens on them.

Finally, Amendment 234 in my name, would add a clause headed “Agricultural extension”. It has notable similarities with an amendment in another group—Amendment 122, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. Both of us are getting at the point that farmers need reliable, independent, secure, certain expert advice. In preparing for today I looked at the debates in your Lordships’ House back in 1996 and 1997 when the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service was privatised. There were some very telling words from the late Lord Mackie of Benshie, who talked about how, since the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service had started charging for its services, less use was being made of them. Some people —perhaps those who needed them most—could not afford them.

The state of our countryside and our agricultural land is a matter of national interest. It is something that we cannot leave to market forces. We have seen, in terms of agricultural extension and advice, a huge reduction, huge privatisation and a move towards many farmers being forced to take advice from the suppliers of agricultural chemicals and agricultural seeds, and even from their buyers, the supermarkets. Farmers need independent, expert advice. We need people to be able to develop careers in providing that advice. If we have an expert on growing potatoes in the south-west who spends decades focusing just on that, that is very hard to do in the private sector. If potatoes have a few bad years, no one can afford to pay that person and they do not have the chance to develop their skills in the way that they would in an advisory service.

We have to look at the whole system here. Part of a proper agricultural system has to be a government-run advice service. That is something that has existed historically for a very long time. It can a be traced back three millennia: in ancient China we know that there was a government Minister advising farmers on how to improve agricultural systems. This is a matter of national interest; it needs national involvement and a proper advice service.