Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Addington

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I also declare my interest as a member of the EU Environment Sub-Committee. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on bringing forth this amendment. As its co-signatories and others who have supported the thrust of the amendment have said, it very clearly demonstrates the link between this Agriculture Bill, establishing public benefit and financial assistance for public goods, with the provisions of the Environment Bill.

I understand the difficulty the Minister is in, having listened very carefully to the words of our noble friend and colleague, the Minister who replied to an early debate, saying that he would love to give a date when the Environment Bill might be coming but was unable to do so. I hope my noble friend will look favourably on this amendment on equating the two Bills.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those occasions when we have to try to reference across from another piece of legislation to make a coherent whole. Environmental considerations are key if we are to achieve half of the accepted objective. That is where we are: it is accepted as something that has to happen. We have to combine the two. The entire political class agrees that, since there must be environmental improvement, they are going to have to work with sectors such as agriculture, and just about every other sector, in order to achieve that. Unless something like this is written down, we know that departments and groups of officials and Ministers will tend to go their own way. They are not good at paying attention to people you “should” talk to; they pay attention to people you “have to” talk to. I suggest that something like this would actually be a very good thing to have in the Bill.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Addington

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I pay tribute to the restraint and brevity of my noble friend Lady Henig, with whom I had the pleasure to serve on the ad hoc Select Committee on the Licensing Act 2003.

I believe that Amendment 221 is well-meaning, but it is very prescriptive. On Amendment 226, I would like to associate myself with the call for research in this area, and I urge the Minister to outline in her reply to this debate what commitment the Government are making to conduct that research. I imagine that much of the research would have been done on a cross-European basis, and I would like to know how the Government are going to make up the funding, as they are committed to do—they have said that on a number of occasions.

I also pay tribute to the work that Rothamsted and other institutes are doing, but we need to have alternatives that are technically feasible and commercially viable. I hope my noble friend the Minister will put my mind at rest as to how this will be funded going forward.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, both these amendments are very difficult to argue against. They are telling us to be careful about how we use chemicals designed to kill things. My noble friend beat me to the word “poison”, but that is what they are for: to kill the organic life that we do not want in certain places at certain times.

Having controls about where you can use such substances is fairly basic. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, describing a farmer effectively getting into a biohazard suit before using them gives a hint that they are potentially dangerous. If can think of examples just from this Chamber. I look across to where the noble Countess, Lady Mar, sat for many years: organophosphates ruined her life and she led a campaign to get rid of them.

Many people have told us that we do not know what we are talking about and to just use these substances sensibly—but we can then discover that they are lethal. Another example is DDT, and I could carry on. The fact that these chemicals cause problems when they get into ground-water is very well established. We should be more cautious and targeted about their use—there is a lot of technology which enables us to be more targeted, and we should embrace this.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on her amendment. I think that something like the study she suggests should be in the Bill. My gut reaction is to say yes to Amendment 221, but unlike the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I would like it to be more specific, so we know what we are dealing with. Such guidelines probably would depend on work that would be done under the later amendment.

There is potential risk here. We have tolerated a degree of damage to ourselves and to members of our society because we did not know what we were doing in the past. We would not tolerate that now and our standards are probably going to get tighter. Therefore, tightening up the process of observation should be encouraged.

I have one last anecdote: how many people have still got a bottle of blue slug pellets at the back of their garden cabinet which they are not quite sure what to do with? We have discovered that these destroy far more than just the slugs. I have used them in the past, and probably should not have done.

We are tightening our standards and becoming more targeted and smarter all the time with chemicals. It is about time we took this on in a more coherent fashion, and these amendments are a good step forward. I salute the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on her amendment.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Addington

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I must apologise for missing the first couple of moments of my noble friend’s speech. That is what comes when you have your back to the Chamber due to social distancing while you have supper, but I apologise.

I add that the land which has the commons is not exclusively in the north or the uplands. I have a little, vaguely second-hand interest, as I usually catch a train from Hungerford in the mornings and get off one there in the evenings. Hungerford has a very picturesque common; it has lots of dog walkers and cattle on it. It goes back a long way and is one of the surviving things from the Inclosure Acts. The Thames Valley has other areas of common land as well. Small agricultural units or smallholdings are usually allowed on them because there is some land you can get to. Sometimes you have tenancies going on them as well, but they change. It is a complicated system down there, from what I have been able to establish with a little research.

These commons are an historic part of our landscape. They allow for different types of activity. We had a long debate about smallholdings and entrants there but the commons allow certain types of entrants into the agriculture system at a lower level, which would not otherwise be allowed. It would be interesting to hear whether the Government have taken on board how these small but interesting and historic parts of our agricultural system are to be accommodated under this new system.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for bringing this amendment forward. I am sorry that I did not have an opportunity to sign it; I hope that he will forgive me for that. They say that when two Scots meet, they form a committee, so I do not know what happens when a Lancastrian and a Yorkshireman meet.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Addington

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

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the origins of this amendment are fairly straightforward. As we go through this Bill, we talk about great changes to agriculture. We start off with a list of changes and where things are going to change in relation to government support for agriculture. We do not actually define those whom we are going to support, and I feel that they should be on the face of the Bill. If they are not on the face of the Bill, we should know exactly where that list is.

All the positive changes that might affect the environment and people’s access to it, which I will discuss at considerable length in the next group, are going to be dependent upon farmers taking much of the action and getting through financially in what they need to do. Unless the Government pay them, it is not going to happen. Unless we are getting some sort of new force that is going to go marching into the countryside equipped with whatever it is and on whatever legal authority it is—which I have seen no hint of anywhere —we are dependent on those involved in farming and related industries actually to fulfil this for us. The only way we can reasonably expect them to do it is if they are properly paid, so there is a symbiotic relationship there: they get money for changing their behaviour.

The change of behaviour for farmers is going to be difficult: culturally, financially and in every other way, it is going to be a change in a way of life in many cases. To what extent and where depends on who they are and in what situation, but that is what I am trying to get on the face of the Bill. I do not pretend that this amendment is perfect because I literally went through and thought, “Good, this is in the Bill or that’s in the Bill” and at the end of it, I said, “What about land managers? Let us try to get some idea about this.” They are the delivery system for the other changes set out in the Bill, so let us make sure that they get some support. It does not really go much further than that, other than to say that we have to make sure that they are there and identified. If the identification comes somewhere else, that is great, but if it means running down a list saying, “By the way, if you look across and go legally through and jump across sideways, that’s where the definition is,” that is the classic way to make mistakes. The lay person will not be able to find out what is going on. We have all, in this Chamber, been involved in situations where somebody said, “Legally, it was there,” but we could not find it. It might be slightly more straightforward here than in some of the cases we are talking about, but that is what I am trying to get at.

There is another amendment in my name, Amendment 115, on the accountability system for taking on any action. That probably would have read better in the next group, but if the Government have any undertakings on this, let us find out what is going on. That is really what my initial thinking was about, and I look forward to hearing from those who are going to speak on the rest of the group, but that is my primary motive for moving this amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

My Lords, I will speak to three amendments in my name in this group and thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and my noble friend Lord Caithness for supporting Amendment 65. The purpose of this amendment is again to probe the Government. As was said in conclusion by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, we have a limited pot of money being spread very thinly. I hope that we can focus where the money goes on farming, obviously within the remit of agriculture, horticulture and forestry.

In keeping the focus on farming, I will turn to Amendment 103. Just before I do, I will take the opportunity to ask my noble friend the Minister about the types of activities that he feels may be covered. For example, there have been sectors in the past that have received no support but have spent huge amounts of money—I am thinking in particular about antibiotic use, which we have reduced at some considerable expense, although I think this has put Britain in the driving seat with regard to the reduction of antibiotics.

There may be possibilities of supporting, for example, pigs through outbuildings and storage facilities, which will help to tackle climate change and bring a number of benefits while improving the way that we manage—or rather pig producers manage; I do not, obviously—manure and slurry reduction. While it has not been beneficial in the past, I hope that it will help to tackle climate change and increase production. Is that something that my noble friend thinks might be supported?

I want to flag up something that I am sure we will return to in later groups: the potential funding gap between when basic farm payments phase out and when ELMS—which I know we are going to explore in more detail in further amendments—will come in. How is that going to be addressed? I am also looking at the socioeconomic aspects of this, where natural capital seems to have been the focus of great emphasis, although it benefits only those who own the land, for the most part, and it cannot necessarily be shared with tenant farmers, who actually do much of the farming on that land in many circumstances.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for supporting Amendment 103. I am sure that my noble friend will recognise this text because it has come, in great part, from the Government’s own paper Health and Harmony. The public good is very ephemeral and opaque, and I give him the opportunity to put more meat on the bones and reward activities that are related directly to the production of food or farming in its broader aspects and, furthermore, activities from which tenants may benefit. We might focus too much on trees and the planting of crops like special grasses that soak up the water and have many qualities, and I want to make sure that landowners and tenants will benefit.