Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard)
Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I refer to my interests in the register. In particular, I sit on the Rural Affairs Group of the Church of England Synod. I welcome the Bill and congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing it forward, particularly on giving a legal basis to allow farm payments to continue and to make the appropriate budget allocations.

I remind my noble friend of my particular interest in the plight of tenant farmers, which relates both to the Bill allowing direct farm payments to farmers to continue and to the wider provisions of the farm reforms that we will come to in the Agriculture Bill. Could my noble friend clarify whether in his introductory remarks he committed to ensure that the funding will be given for the whole of this Parliament? Is that provided for in the Bill? If not, are we to continue on a year-by-year basis? I know that tenant farmers will be particularly pleased if this is the case; in their view, this would have been the ideal place to put into effect our manifesto commitment to ensure that funding to the agricultural industry is retained until the end of this Parliament.

Livestock is central to hill farms and upland farming. The Government must be aware of the potential for damage to livestock farming if they are minded to introduce a ban on live trade in animals. I repeat my plea here that we must not proceed to ban livestock. It is a limited, highly regulated trade but extremely important in maintaining price. In particular, when spring lambs go to France to be fattened and finished, they are not immediately sent to slaughter. I hope my noble friend will take this opportunity to give a commitment that no ban will be imposed on live trade. It would be particularly difficult to do so at that time, being mindful of the fact that tariffs may well be introduced on the Irish border or between this country and Northern Ireland, leading to a disparity between deadweight and live animals.

Does my noble friend also agree that trees have their place, none more so than in flood protection? I am proud of the Pickering pilot scheme, which has been very successful to date, but after planting trees it takes some 30, 40 or 50 years for those trees to mature. In all probability, any support for planting trees will go to landowners. My concern is that tenants will no longer benefit, as they currently do, from stewardship schemes. I hope my noble friend will continue to have sight of that.

Why are the pilot projects under the ELM schemes so secret? A number of your Lordships referred to this. Why can we not have the results of those pilot schemes at this stage, long before we go on to consider the elements of the Agriculture Bill, in which it will be vital that we understand them? The debate on the Agriculture Bill will be substantial; linked to it, of course, is the rather voluminous environmental Bill, and my noble friend moved the First Reading of the Fisheries Bill today. I put down my real concern that we basically wasted two years of the previous Parliament, when those Bills could have been taken, along with the immigration Bill and the two trade Bills—one the rollover Trade Bill and the other the new trade agreement Bill. I hope that the Opposition Front Bench will take the point seriously when I urge the Government that we need proper time to conduct proper scrutiny. In passing this Bill expeditiously today on a very narrow, technical, budgetary issue, we should not lose sight of the wider debate where we will look at changing farm policy for the first time—and the greatest extent—in 50 years. That will take proper consideration and both Houses of Parliament must be given due time for it.

Will my noble friend put my mind at rest that central to the Bill and the wider issue are our food security, food standards and self-sufficiency? I ask this because I recently asked a Question, HL459, on food security and self-sufficiency. In the reply that I received from my noble friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, I was told that the Government are minded

“to regularly report on food security to Parliament”.

That is all well and good but some concrete measures would be interesting as well. I was very disappointed that that parliamentary reply was completely silent on self-sufficiency. This worries me greatly because I understand that, while it is difficult to get a proper figure, for the first time in a long time it has fallen below 60%.

Like other noble Lords, I echo the concern that we need to end the uncertainty. In particular, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, asked for: either the statutory instruments that will form part of the next round of farm reform should be published, so that they can be properly considered, or the criteria that farmers will be asked to meet under the ELM scheme should be published sooner rather than later. Clearly, this debate will take some time to come to fruition, but it is important that we do not lose sight of those points.

Are the Government still minded to commit to remapping every three years? Is it really necessary in the context both of the Bill and particularly of future payments? Will the Minister confirm that a balance will be sought between the environmental and productivity aspects of how our farmers are to produce food; that we will focus in the Bill and future Bills on affordable food, allowing farmers to earn a living or—as my noble friend Lady Byford stated—to make a profit; and that we must not take imports from elsewhere in the world which are farmed to much lower standards, whether in food production or in welfare? I obviously welcome the Bill, but I hope my noble friend will do justice to the concerns raised today.