Agriculture Bill: Food Production

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, Clause 17 provides a duty to report to Parliament on food security. This country clearly has a high degree of food security and we rely on a supply of healthy and homegrown produce. The whole point of the Agriculture Bill is to ensure that we have efficient farming, good-quality produce and an improved environment—those things go hand in hand.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, this matters because “public goods” in the Agriculture Bill refers to the activities that will receive government funding or financial assistance. Despite the noble Lord’s warm words, where does the production of healthy, local food fit into the Government’s financial assistance priorities? The detail of that is in a completely different part of the Bill from the one that lists what will get financial assistance. This is obviously an important distinction.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, without being pedantic, Clause 1 is about the Secretary of State’s powers to give financial assistance. It sets out 10 items of public good for which there is public money because there is not a market. However, as I said, Clause 1(4) refers to food production. Other elements of the Bill involve innovation, agritech and R&D, all of which will increase productivity and help farmers to produce food. The first section is about rewarding farmers for things they are already doing, and which we want them to do even more, but for which there is no market as such.