Agriculture Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

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

[The Duke of Wellington (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to comment briefly on and support three amendments. I should declare my agricultural interests as detailed in the register. The first is Amendment 37, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, relating to pasture-fed livestock. There is much evidence that extensively grazing livestock on pasture, both lowland and upland, is the most efficient way to convert grassland into a food product for human consumption. Feeding concentrates to livestock is certainly a great deal less efficient in terms of use of resources. On arable land, cereals and similar plants should ideally be grown for human consumption. We have plentiful grasslands in the United Kingdom. They absorb carbon, if correctly managed, and produce food, if grazed by the right breeds of livestock, so I strongly support Amendment 37.

I also support Amendment 78, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Greaves. Hill farms are of great concern, particularly the smaller ones, to me and many others. They are all marginal, almost by definition. More than their total profit comes from current forms of financial support. I have an amendment in a later group which seeks to protect the basic payment for the next three years for smaller farms in less favoured areas. All these farms, almost without exception, lose money, and they survive only through financial support, so, using the words in the amendment, I certainly support that Ministers should,

“have regard to maintaining support for”

these small farms. When the Minister replies, it would be very helpful if he could give us some reassurance on this matter. I also hope that the noble Lords, Lord Beith, Lord Greaves and Lord Wigley, may support my Amendment 149 which comes in a later group.

The third amendment which I shall support is Amendment 91, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. He specifically refers to wetlands. I think he has in mind lowland wetlands, but in many upland areas there are very important wetlands. They are an important absorber of carbon. Many of these upland wetland areas have sphagnum moss and other plants that absorb a great deal of carbon. If the noble Earl believes that it is advantageous to include wetlands in the definitions, I am happy to support him.

These three amendments would improve the Bill and, if they are brought back on Report, I will be happy to support them.

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

My Lords, I would like to make a general point about this group. We have a considerable number of amendments to Clause 1. They add further purposes for which the Secretary of State can give financial assistance. In my view, the Bill runs the risk of becoming a bit of a Christmas tree—everybody wants to hang a bauble on it. Many of these baubles are lovely. They highlight important activities which the new environmental land management scheme should support, such as integrated pest management and nature-friendly farming. I have signed to support some amendments, such as those on agroforestry and agroecology, so I am as guilty as many noble Lords in wanting to hang baubles on this Christmas tree as it passes. We all want our bauble to shine to impress on the Minister how vital they are so that he will consider whether these additions could be added to the Bill.

However, I think we need to examine our conscience and look at whether some of these proposals can be delivered under the current purposes in Clause 1, since they clearly come under the heading of improving the environment, mitigating climate change or improving soil et cetera. Many of them are about management practices rather than the purposes that those management practices are intended to deliver. So, although I will polish my baubles nicely when the amendments I have signed come up in order to impress on the Minister that they are important issues, I think we all have to ponder whether we really want the Christmas tree to crash to the ground overwhelmed by the weight of amendments in its first clause and to create an overly complicated framework for the future of agriculture and land management.

I shall also comment on those amendments in this group that could be interpreted as a return to payments directly for food production. We all know from the past that that distorted markets, encouraged environmental harm and ended up being a rather poor use of taxpayers’ money. The Bill needs to be much more visionary than that. It is a ground-breaking opportunity to set a new UK-based framework for agriculture. It needs to be focused with rapier precision, not a loose, baggy monster.

Finally, I support Amendment 1, which requires that the Secretary of State “must” fund the public goods that are listed in the Bill, rather than a discretionary “may”. We need a duty on the Secretary of State, not simply a power.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 37 and 78. A great many noble Lords from all sides of the House have done so with great eloquence, so I will cut my speech short. The Bill needs to be beefed up in relation to pasture-fed grazing systems and support for hill farms and other marginal land.

In speaking as I do, I declare an interest in addition to those set out in the register as a patron of the Exmoor Pony Society and as someone with a particular interest in the conservation of rare breeds. I follow on from the remarks that have already been made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. Version 1 of the Agriculture Bill contained no provisions such as those which are now set out in Clause 1(1)(g), which provides the possibility of financial assistance for,

“conserving native livestock, native equines or genetic resources relating to any such animal.”

In tandem with the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, who I think is going to speak later, if this version 2 Bill had emerged with the same deficiency, we had intended to try to introduce just such a provision, so I am grateful that this second version made good that deficit as a result of a number of approaches from the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and many others, assisted, I do not doubt, by the Secretary of State for the Environment’s personal knowledge and appreciation of the value of the British Lop pig, a breed on the endangered species list.

It was therefore with some dismay that I saw Amendment 27, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which proposes to widen the clause from native livestock to all livestock at a time when we all know that funds are going to be very limited. Were he to succeed, he would so water down the provision that the very purpose of this paragraph would be rendered pointless. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill say that it is,

“to provide financial assistance for measures to support the conservation and maintenance of UK native Genetic Resources relating to livestock or equines.”

A dilution of such funds as are likely to be available would necessarily weaken our ability to meet our obligations under Aichi target 13 of the biodiversity convention and United Nations sustainable development goal 2.5, both of which require us to conserve the diversity of our livestock breeds.

The amendment would remove something which I believe could be a means of encouraging and incentivising farmers to invest in rare and native breeds, many of which have gone already. We are only just at the very beginning of an appreciation of the genetic bank that we possess in relation to our native breeds. We are only just beginning to carry out widespread genetic testing, which is revealing just how precious and potentially valuable some of those genetic qualities are. A genetic ability to cope with extreme weather conditions, such as that possessed by the Dartmoor hill ponies of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the ability to thrive on inferior pasture, like the Exmoor pony, and docility, good mothering abilities and not running to excess fat, like George Eustice’s British Lop pigs, have not just an actual value but a potential one, which is as yet often unknown.

Some people still keep these breeds because they like them, out of tradition or sentiment, or due to local culture, which is not unimportant. However, without an incentive to farmers to conserve them, which is often the case at present, many have been lost and many more are under threat. Clause 1(1)(g) is their lifeline, and I hope that it will not be cut.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I am afraid that I want to take a different position from several noble Lords who have already spoken about the amendments in this group. I speak specifically to reject Amendments 64 and 106 and other amendments in the group that would restrict payments to agricultural, horticultural and forestry land only. This Bill is about delivering public good through land management, and the environmental land management scheme will be one of the major ways in which the Government’s 25-year environment plan will be delivered. Therefore, although many of these public goods will be delivered by farmers and farm businesses, not all of them will: for example, restoration of non-agricultural habitats, such as blanket bogs, and the creation of non-commercial woodlands, such as community woodlands, both of which are important for combating climate change. I therefore do not support these amendments, which would limit the scope to agricultural, horticultural and forestry management rather than wider land management. These would reduce the Bill’s effectiveness in delivering its key purposes.

A number of noble Lords have said that this is an Agriculture Bill and so it should be about farmers and food production. I do not agree: I believe that this Bill is not about modest changes in the way we support and incentivise farmers but about how in the future we support anyone who manages land to deliver the things that the nation needs from the land. This will include food production, but it will also include a wide range of other things. This Bill is not simply about filling the gap left by leaving the common agricultural policy; it is about setting a vision for the future of the way the scarce resource of land is managed. Farmers will form a vital part of this transition and need to be helped and supported to make this transition, but it cannot be about farmers alone. Can the Minister assure me that the restrictions in these amendments will not be accepted?

I turn to Amendments 118 and 121 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I share her view that the checking, enforcement and monitoring of the new financial support schemes cannot be optional: they have to be required on the face of the Bill.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has scratched, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Empey.