Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone 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 Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my multiple environmental, food and farming interests as listed in the register. I do not know whether noble Lords have noticed, but agriculture Bills are a bit like buses, or indeed men—there is not one around for ages and then two or three come along all at once. We have had approximately one Bill a decade since the 1940s but we have had three in the past two years.

As the Minister said so eloquently, this Bill is about continuing the current system of support for farmers for one more year, and, as it says on the tin, it is simply about legislative continuity. It will continue the current system where direct payments, which make up around 80% of all payments made under the common agricultural policy in the UK, are based on the amount of land that is owned or managed by a farmer and not by any other criterion such as the food they produce, the environmental benefits they manage or any other public benefits they provide.

This of course presents a real opportunity arising from Brexit. I confess that I never thought I would see the day when the words would cross my lips—but it is an opportunity, one of the few coming out of Brexit, because the current support system is not a good way to support farmers, to deliver public benefits or to protect the environment, so we all look forward to the future changes that will not arrive with this Bill but will arrive with the next one. It will deliver on the Government’s commitment to paying public money for public goods; making payments based on environmental and other benefits that we need farmers to provide but which will not readily be delivered by the market.

The Bill before us is very routine, but we did have another agriculture Bill—one of the other three—that was introduced in 2018. That has now been withdrawn and a new version came out on 16 January. It will eventually come to your Lordships’ House and we will then have an opportunity to talk in more detail about how we can reshape support for farmers to ensure that the system is effective in fighting the twin emergencies of climate change and biodiversity decline. As I say, that is one of the few silver linings offered by Brexit.

When it comes, that Bill will need to deliver five things. I should like to take the opportunity of this Bill to remind the Minister about those five things. Just in case he has so far not slid those requirements into the legislation, perhaps he could do so between its Commons stages and it coming to us.

The first thing is the core principle of public money for public goods. How are we going to use the support system to help farmers deliver the things that the market would not necessarily deliver? Land management plays a key role in environmental benefits and animal welfare. The Government have shown a consistent commitment to these, but it would be good to get the Minister’s assurance yet again that public money for public goods will be a core principle of the Bill.

The second issue is that we should not widen the definition of public goods too far because that would dilute it. We will have other opportunities to tackle other issues delivered by agriculture. Work is well under way on the food strategy, and I think that food production should be dealt with in that strategy rather than being part of the public goods debate so that we do not see the public paying twice for a benefit: that is, at the supermarket checkout or at the farm shop for the produce they are buying, as well as paying through their taxes.

The Government have said that they are committed to delivering payments that will enhance agricultural and land management productivity. I will sound a note of caution on that. They should not be in opposition to or separate from measures that deliver environmental benefits or public goods. It would be a real shame if one part of the subsidy system was at odds with another, which was so often the case under the common agricultural policy.

Another issue that we need the future agriculture Bill to deliver is some security in the face of future trade deals. We must not see future trade deals undermine the ability of UK farmers to deliver not only thriving businesses but public goods if the Government cut trade deals that allow access to the UK market for imported food that is produced to lower environmental, welfare and safety standards.

The third thing we need the Bill to do is maintain the level of funding. It is good to get from the Minister a recommitment of the £3 billion or so figure. This is not because a farmer of my acquaintance recently muttered to me that farmers need every penny, but because, if you look at the calculations done by some of the member organisations of Greener UK, it estimated that £2.9 billion was required to deliver the environmental benefits alone, without any of the other public goods. We must not see an erosion of that £3 billion; in fact, it may need to grow. I hope we can get some assurance from the Minister that, once the public benefits have been established in what will become the Agriculture Act, the requisite funding will be there to support whatever is established by that Act.

My fourth requirement of the future agriculture Bill is that we introduce powers for better legislation to regulate for a basic minimum of environmental and other standards that must be adhered to by all farmers and land managers. That is not currently in the Government’s plans, and I would like the Minister to comment on how we can be reassured that there will be a baseline of good performance for all land managers.

The fifth point I will raise is the provision of an independent voice for farmers. We are likely to see a massive change in the way land is managed by farmers in this country. They will need all the help they can get if they are to deliver effectively and use public money effectively in the delivery of these public goods. It is not likely to be delivered entirely by their response to the marketplace or subsidy. There will have to be an upskilling and a degree of help with management of change.

That is really important, because 70% of our land surface is managed by farmers, so I also ask that the Government—independently of these pieces of legislation—think of starting work on a land-use framework. We are not making any more land. The pressures on it are increasing. We need regenerative and agroecological farming methods of the sort outlined in the recent report by the Royal Society of Arts’ Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which I declare that I sat on. We need land to help us combat climate change; we need more trees—I declare my interest as chair of the Woodland Trust; we need to protect our water resources; we need land to help with natural flood-risk management; and we need heat reduction. We need our countryside to help with health and mental health. We need to stabilise our soils. But we also need land for development, housing and infrastructure—even the dreaded HS2. We need food security; do we want to produce more food in future than the amount we currently produce domestically? Do we want to continue to be a massive net importer of timber, or do we want to become more self-sufficient in our timber production?

All these things need land. They cannot all happen to the maximum without some thought being given, on a strategic basis, to what we want our land to be for and the appropriate balances. So I simply put the Minister and the Government on notice that, for however long it takes, I will bang on about the need for a land-use framework for England. We have them for Scotland, for Northern Ireland and for Wales; we need one for England.

My last request is my only request about the current Bill; I have really been a bit of a cheat in the way I have structured this, but never mind. The Minister quite rightly referred to the provision about statutory instruments and secondary legislation flowing from Bills such as this. There will be quite a raft of secondary legislation coming from consequent legislation following Brexit. The environment Bill, the Agriculture Bill and the fisheries Bill—a huge number of Bills—will have a raft of secondary legislation. It would be greatly welcomed if two things could happen. First, the Government could commit to consulting as widely as possible, providing it did not take an age, on secondary legislation before it is laid, so that there is still an opportunity to make it better before it is set in concrete and can only be prayed against. Secondly, could draft statutory instruments be readily accessible, not only to Members of our House but to the public at large and civil society, so that people know that they are being worked on and can head for the bloke holding the pen? Oh dear; I apologise for that sexist remark. It would help the SI process dramatically.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to all my questions, which he would be entitled to ignore since they are absolutely nothing to do with this Bill. I also very much look forward to the proper Agriculture Bill reaching this House in due course.