Agriculture Bill

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

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

[The Duke of Montrose (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who of course has more knowledge about the UK’s food situation than most of us can ever hope to have.

I come from a background of rearing livestock, which is at one end of the food chain. We have heard this evening from people who have concerns about food all down the chain as far as the question of waste food. It is good that we have had so many contributions from those who sat on the recent committee that produced the Hungry for Change report, and particularly good that we have heard from its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who speaks with great authority on these matters.

I add my support for Amendment 161, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. Many of us would like to see the question of a review of food security addressed as soon as possible but, given the scale of the changes that have been wished on agricultural production, anything that is laid down at this point can only be very sketchy. I think that a duty to report every three years is a realistic target; rather as my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts said, it tends to have a bit more impact than a simple annual review.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Curry, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister and the Government on including a chapter on this subject in the Bill. For the past 40 years, our agricultural policy has been able to ignore this question, as from the start it has been the kernel of the common agricultural policy and that is what we have followed. Now we have to set our own parameters.

Many who have spoken have mentioned the many reports on this topic. I would like to mention where our food security stands at the moment, as calculated in an annual report, the Global Food Security Index, produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit. In 2019, it awarded the UK a ranking of 32nd in a study of 113 countries. Even so, that puts us at the tail end of most other European countries. Those leading the index are the Republic of Ireland and the United States. Perhaps we should heed that our rating was already dropping from the previous year.

The concern now for the industry is whether this new support mechanism will see us land up by trailing even further than that present estimate. If any review of food security is to have meaning at a practical level, it will also have to be broken down into categories of the main commodities. I ask my noble friend the Minister: will the Government give us some idea of where they intend to turn at the start of this process?

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating and wide-ranging debate. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, that this is probably the most important set of amendments to the Bill.

Certainly from the public’s point of view, whether it is national food security or household security, there is nothing more important to people than keeping food on the table. We have always left the provision of food to the private sector to manage and it has ensured a supply of food very well, even during the early days of the pandemic when things were challenging, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said. However, we are also all aware that its efficiency has come at a price —a price to the environment and to the viability of farms.

Household food insecurity is clearly a growing problem. For many of us it really is a stain on any claim to be a civilised country when a growing number of people are simply unable to eat. Many noble Lords have raised that point.

When the Minister summed up at Second Reading, he said:

“However, in our view food is a private good; it is bought and sold”.—[Official Report, 10/6/20; col. 1830.]


I am sure he has got the message clearly from the last couple of hours that many in your Lordships’ House would challenge that view, and clearly believe that the Government should have an overall food plan in the same way that they have strategies and plans for energy and transport, for example. As drafted, the clause nods in that direction but for many of us it does not go far enough. These amendments begin to move the Government in that direction.

I fear that what is proposed in the Bill is essentially an historic, backward-looking document. A five-yearly report has some uses but there is a real missed opportunity to do much more. More regular reporting would help to spot trends and potential problems sooner, as the noble Lord, Lord Curry, pointed out, so whether the parliamentary scrutiny is on a three-year or an annual basis, as set out, there are merits in thinking about doing this more often.

The value of the good co-operation between central and devolved Administrations was a theme picked out by many noble Lords, and is of course very sensible. I was particularly struck by the strategic context put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, about the potential dislocations between the devolved Administrations and England.

The key amendments are Amendment 163 and Amendments 171 to 173. They would begin to turn this document into a genuine strategic plan, which can ensure for us a secure supply of affordable food that does not trash the planet. These points were made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs.

Amendment 169 raises the important question of food waste, which is a significant environmental issue as well as a social wrong and a financial burden. Food waste on farms is largely driven by supermarket contracts and, as I proposed in earlier amendments, it should be dealt with under the groceries code. My noble friend Lady Parminter was quite right to emphasise the importance of good data. The 2014 EU sub-committee inquiry into food waste, which I chaired, found unequivocally that organisations which start to measure food waste start to do something about it. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made that point about hunger: if you measure it, you act on it.

Several amendments in this group all seek to turn this historic document into something of real value to the public, to farmers and growers, to the food production sector and to retailers. This would require thinking right across government, whether about the health of the nation, trade policy, migration levels or levels of benefits and the national living wage. I have a lot of sympathy with this idea of the need for an independent body on the lines of the Committee on Climate Change, and I hope we can consider that further on Report.

I would urge the Government to consider very carefully what has been said by noble Lords today. I am sure that the Minister has understood the strength of feeling on this issue expressed in the Committee, and I look forward to his reply.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for what in many respects has been a heartfelt debate. References to words like “important” set the tone in which your Lordships have spoken. I am very mindful of your Lordships’ recent report Hungry for Change. In that context, I understand all the sentiments that have been expressed.

In thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for her amendment and for speaking to Amendments 161 and 162, I should say that it is this Government who have brought forward the food security provision. I am grateful to my noble friend the Duke of Montrose and others for at least saying that the Government have brought this forward. Having heard some of the commentary of noble Lords, I could wonder if that had ever been the case.

As I have previously stated, the food security report will be a significant body of work that will use a set of core measurements and indicators for each of the key topic areas. It will go beyond what food security data we currently publish. This will allow consideration of the trends, many of which are slow-moving and do not change significantly year on year over a longer period. Taking a holistic approach, we will consider food security in its complete form, from the global availability of food to UK availability and access. We will use data drawn from a blend of national and international data sources, including UK national statistics as well as data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The requirement to report within at least a five-year period allows time to observe key trends from a variety of sources. This would not be possible over a significantly shorter period. While we are committing to reporting within at least a five-year frequency, we consider this a maximum period. When we are able to publish the first report will depend upon a range of factors, including the availability of statistical data. Of course, we certainly will not wait for the end of the five-year period to publish the first report, which will include analysis of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the datasets that will be considered in the food security report are published and made publicly available annually; certain noble Lords know very well that all this data is reported annually. Defra officials routinely track these reports to spot any unexpected or significant changes. For example, the excellent Agriculture in the United Kingdom statistics that Defra publishes alongside departments in the devolved Administrations come out annually, as do the world food production and calorie statistics produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Government intend that the report will consider these and less frequently produced data to provide deeper analysis to help us identify longer-term trends to support the development of policy for the future—a point remarked upon by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, with her unparalleled experience of the food industry, and indeed by my noble friend Lady Chisholm in her important contribution.