Agriculture and Horticulture

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I add the thanks of those on these Benches to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for initiating this debate today. Post the referendum result, it is critical that the role of UK agriculture is championed. This debate has allowed Members on all sides today to do just that. As we have heard, our farmers provide over 60% of the food that we eat and it is vital that we have farmers keeping our food prices affordable, and a sustainable farming industry providing well-husbanded landscapes, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Clark, and the noble Earl, Lord Arran, memorably articulated, are the bedrock of tourism in many rural economies. They also deliver protection to wildlife and biodiversity and can help climate mitigation.

Now there are serious questions about how our farmers will trade in the EU and further afield, the levels of agricultural support they will receive, how they will access labour, what standards they will follow and the levels of investment in research and development. While the majority of farmers voted to leave the EU—and, like other noble Lords, I am equally surprised at the large number who did—few of them would deny that there are many challenges ahead. The most vulnerable are the livestock farmers, particularly in upland areas, and those on low incomes. They must be uppermost in our mind at this time.

Farmers now face a lengthy period of uncertainty about what the future trade arrangements will be. At the Norfolk show, the Secretary of State said that there was no plan B, so I am keen to hear what Defra has—as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, notably said—“cobbled together” in its plans to work with the team in the Cabinet Office that is being drawn together to co-ordinate negotiations. I ask the Minister specifically what economic advice Defra is getting to inform its position and from whom. The NFU is urging the Government to ensure access to the single market when negotiating withdrawal agreement. It is right to do so given that the rest of the EU countries presently take 60% of our farm exports.

As significant are worries about the level of support that British farming will attract outside the CAP. With UK agriculture receiving £3 billion per annum under the CAP, upcoming discussions about the future of direct support to British farmers will have far-reaching consequences. There is no doubt that there will be those in government arguing that farming is a marginal economic force, with core agriculture contributing less than 1% to GDP. Some prominent leave campaigners will still be arguing for the abolition of direct payments and that farmers should be left to float free on the volatility of the world food markets.

While we can and have today pointed to the contribution that UK farming makes to the economy by underpinning our food industry, there is no denying that when discussions about future support go ahead, Defra will need all its tenacity to fend off calls for more money for education or the NHS. My party believes that farmers deserve public support and subsidy for delivering a public good: both feeding us healthy food at a time of growing food insecurity and delivering environmental benefits. We will argue hard for continued support on those joint grounds.

There are real worries, too, about how we will access the non-UK labour vital to harvesting our crops, given the increasingly difficult ways that we will have to recruit a domestic workforce—something that the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans remarked on. I would echo their comments and ask the Minister how the department believes that farming in places such as Lincolnshire—or closer to my home in Surrey, where we have a number of soft-fruit farms—will survive without the free movement of people that we have benefited from in the EU.

There is all this uncertainty and a risk of a bonfire of the directives, as the hard-won gains in animal welfare and environmental protection built up over 40 years, which Britain has often been at the heart of championing, are threatened by those in the industry who see leaving the EU as a chance to cut back on all that burdensome red tape and to ditch all that gold-plating, when in reality that red tape has created a level playing field for our farmers to trade fairly while raising standards of animal welfare and tackling the threat of catastrophic climate change and environmental degradation.

We on these Benches will speak out loudly on the continuing need for legislation to control nitrates and pesticides, to improve our water quality, to ban the use of nicotinoids—unlike the comments of the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset—and all the hundreds of other pieces of legislation and regulation built up to ensure that farming delivers wider public goods.

The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, highlighted the role of agriscience in the future development of the sector, and I will turn to that in a moment. Before I do, I will make one point about the need for a clear strategy from the department at this time. We on these Benches have resisted calls made by the Government, who decided that they would divide the strategy into two: one for food and farming and one for the 25-year plan for the restoration of biodiversity. We would argue that after the referendum, when there is an absolute need to remind the general public of the benefits that farming produces so that we can ensure that they will support calls for public subsidy for farmers, it is no longer appropriate for the two strategies to be kept in isolation. Now that a pause has been put on the 25-year plan for biodiversity, will the Government reconsider and bring the two strategies together so that we have one strategy for farming which recognises its vital role in both producing the food we need and protecting the environment we rely upon?

I turn now to agriscience. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, was right to flag up this issue, but the referendum poses major challenges to agricultural research and development. Key figures in the industry say that it is of enormous concern both in terms of the level of funding and the loss of links and networks that have been built up over the past 40 years. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans highlighted the work of Rothamsted Research. I have been speaking to emeritus Professor Peter Gregory at the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at Reading University. He reflected on how, back in the 1980s when the first framework grant was introduced, everyone thought that it was just a lot of bureaucratic nonsense. Some 30 years on it is fundamentally different, with everyone who is active in agricultural research linked deeply into EU networks. Under the current EU research programme, framework programme 7, the UK ranks second behind Germany both in the number of participants and budget share. How will we access those funds, consortiums and networks outside the EU? How will we continue to make progress in, innovate and develop our agribusinesses?

It is not just about replacing funds, which leave campaigners cavalierly suggested was possible when clearly that is even less likely now, given that the risks of exit warned of in the run-up to the referendum have begun to crystallise, as the Governor of the Bank of England said this week? It is about how we can replace the important collaborations that British science needs if it is to remain at the forefront of research. There are desperately pressing global challenges such as food security—an issue outlined by the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset. With our European partners, the UK has been pivotal in addressing those issues. We need to find ways to advance agricultural science with our partners in Europe and further afield in the years ahead.

Let us be clear what we mean by agriscience. It is not just about GM, although there are outstanding concerns which were eloquently outlined by the noble Countess, Lady Mar. GM is not a silver bullet and it is only one of a number of options in the toolbox. We have seen big advances in precision farming over the past four years. Highly specialised sensor companies have begun applying their technology to horticulture with image analysis and biological interpretation of what is coming out of the sensors. In due course this technology will roll out into mainstream agriculture if the funds for research can continue. A new suite of applications is coming along to take us beyond some of the pesticide controls that we have had to date.

We must not think about agriscience as just about doing things to nature, it is about working with natural resources, including the soil, the importance of which was eloquently alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. In recent years, universities and research institutes have begun to focus more on soil, including increasing research efforts and working with farmers to trial different solutions and provide evidence of what can work on our farms. These are vital programmes, one of which is the soil security programme led by the Natural Environment Research Council in partnership with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Defra and the Scottish Government. Future agriscience must support agro-ecological research, as we can achieve truly sustainable agriculture only if we respect and value the constraints of the natural environment. So, like others, I ask the Minister what assurances he can give about maintaining the funding for agriscience R&D and the vital collaboration to maintain our leading status once we are outside the EU.

There is no denying that there are challenging times ahead for farming. For those of us who argued that British farming’s future was best secured within the EU, our job now is to champion British farming and the huge benefits it can contribute to our country, our communities and our precious environment if it is properly directed and supported.