Agriculture Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

227: After Clause 34, insert the following new Clause—
“Land use strategy for England
(1) The Secretary of State must, no later than 31 March 2022, lay an agricultural land use strategy for England before Parliament.(2) The strategy must set out—(a) the Secretary of State’s objectives in relation to sustainable agricultural land use within an integrated land use framework;(b) proposals and policies for meeting those objectives;(c) the timescales over which those proposals and policies are expected to take effect.(3) The objectives, proposals and policies referred to in subsection (2) must contribute to—(a) achievement of the purposes for financial assistance under section 1(1) and 1(2);(b) achievement of objectives in relation to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, including achieving carbon budgets under Part 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008;(c) sustainable development including the use of previously agricultural land for development and infrastructure;(d) the achievement of objectives of the 25 Year Environment Plan for halting the decline of biodiversity.(4) Before laying the strategy before Parliament, the Secretary of State must publish a draft strategy and consult with—(a) such bodies as he or she considers appropriate, and(b) the general public.(5) The Secretary of State must, no later than—(a) 5 years after laying a strategy before Parliament under subsection (1), and(b) the end of every subsequent period of 5 years,lay a revised strategy before Parliament under the terms set out in subsections (2) to (4).(6) The Secretary of State must, no later than 3 years after the laying of a strategy before Parliament under this section, lay before Parliament a report on the implementation of the strategy and progress in achieving the objectives, proposals and policies under subsection (2).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would provide a land use context to enable the Secretary of State to make optimal decisions about the balance of financial assistance to the various purposes in Clause 1.

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

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust.

This amendment would require the Government to put in place a land use framework for England to provide a structure for resolving competing land uses, including agricultural land use. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support for my amendment. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who had hoped to voice his support today before events intervened.

There are multiple pressures on our finite amount of land, and they are all growing. We need more land for increased food security, for storing carbon, for biodiversity, for managing floods, for trees and increased timber self-sufficiency, for recreation and health, and for built development, housing and infrastructure. There are probably more pressures that I have not added to the list. The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership recently conducted a demand/supply analysis and found that,

“to meet a growing UK population’s food, space and energy needs while increasing the area needed to protect and enhance the nation’s natural capital”,

the UK would have to have a third more land than it currently has—so the future competition for land will be huge. As we tackle these multiple pressures for land, we are hampered by the lack of a common framework within which to reconcile these competing needs.

It is interesting that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have a land use framework and are using it to greater or lesser effect to guide policy on these competing areas of land need. As we build the new future post Covid, it is overdue that England should develop and use such a framework. This has been called for by many people, including the Select Committee on the Rural Economy of your Lordships’ House a couple of years ago and the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. That commission will be commencing some real-life, county-level pilots on land use frameworks in the next few months. So I urge the Government to agree that a land use framework for England should be put in place. Otherwise, the competition for land will be a free-for-all and will fail to optimise the choices made to ensure that the most important land uses are given priority in the places that are best suited to them.

I assure noble Lords, landowners and land managers that I am not talking about lines on maps and precise delineations of what goes where. I am talking about a high-level framework within which negotiations, probably at county level, can take place. Let me give an example from Wales, which has the most promising land use framework in the UK. There was considerable concern among Welsh sheep farmers that some of these competing land uses would simply mean that there were no sheep left in the uplands. Discussions on the best places to put additional trees and woodland and convert land to agroecological farming have shown that only about 0.2% of the current agricultural land in Wales would have to change its use. It will be a huge reassurance for sheep farmers in Wales that woodland and agroecology schemes are not the Antichrist, banishing sheep from the uplands for ever, but can be integrated with comparative ease. That land use framework was extremely valuable in that respect.

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Amendment 228A (to Amendment 227) not moved.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his amendment requiring close links between the planning system and any land use strategy. My view is that we need an overarching land use strategy which would guide all sorts of decision-making processes—the planning system, the ELM schemes and some of the initiatives the Minister referred to, such as local nature recovery strategies and some of the work of the National Infrastructure Commission.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who rightly pointed out that we are at a time of great flux in land use and that a strategy is very much needed now. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who was quite right about it needing to be wide and not just about agriculture; this is really a strategy about what land is for and how we get the right balance between competing uses.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, has huge experience in these areas and rightly stressed that there should be perhaps one framework at a national level and others more regionally, but also that we have to guard against the nimbyism of too local a structure. If I cannot get the Minister to agree to this amendment, I would be delighted if there were to be a relevant Select Committee of this House.

I listened very carefully to the Minister’s response. Much as I love the National Planning Policy Framework, and I have worked hard on it over the years, it is partial. The reality is that the planning system does not really do anything to weigh up from a range of competing needs what should happen in a given area. It is much more focused on development needs, particularly built development needs. I still think that, irrespective of the National Planning Policy Framework, there is a need for an overarching land use strategy.

The same goes for local nature recovery strategies, which are very much about biodiversity. We are currently looking at a piecemeal arrangement which needs integrating into this strategy. I do not think it needs to be statist at all; it can be generated in ways that make it very much about conversations at a county level and at a national level about the right way to maximise the benefit for all these uses of our limited land.

To touch on the point made by the Minister about the National Infrastructure Commission, I had a hugely interesting discussion with its acting chief executive just before lockdown. It is now getting the hang of its climate change responsibilities, but it has never been tasked with responsibilities for other things such as biodiversity. It is time that the Government tasked the infrastructure commission with taking account of biodiversity needs, as well as the other half of the twin challenges, climate change.

I thank the noble Lord for his offer of further discussion. Although I would much prefer him to accept the amendment, clearly that is not going to happen. I should say that even if we cannot get this amendment accepted in the Agriculture Bill, there are myriad opportunities on which I shall not be backward in coming forward, including the Environment Bill—if it ever comes to our House—and the rumoured changes to planning legislation. When we talk about flooding or carbon or water, I shall be there to talk about an integrated land use strategy. I shall become the Countess of Mar of integrated land use strategies.

As has been said, land is a finite resource—we are not making any more. We need a framework now, and the pressures are growing. I hope that the Minister will recognise the need for some such way forward, but at this moment I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 227 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

229: After Clause 34, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to consult on a new environmental regulatory regime for agriculture in England
(1) The Secretary of State must, within the period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, publish proposals for a new environmental regulatory regime for agriculture in England in accordance with this section.(2) Following publication, the Secretary of State must consult all interested stakeholders on the proposals mentioned in subsection (3).(3) The proposals for a new regulatory regime mentioned in subsection (1) must include—(a) consideration of the role of agriculture in achieving environmental objectives;(b) clear objectives for the regulatory regime with specific reference to the agricultural sector;(c) a new model for securing compliance with regulation formulated with a view to ensuring significant change in the behaviour of producers;(d) targets for compliance with environmental regulation;(e) amendments to existing regulations and new regulations required to maintain agricultural environmental standards following the removal of cross-compliance, and to support the new environmental objectives and priorities proposed in accordance with this section;(f) assessment of the resources needed to implement the new model mentioned in paragraph (c) and achieve the compliance targets mentioned in subsection paragraph (d);(g) any other issues that the Secretary of State considers relevant.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would update the regulatory framework for agriculture to fill gaps and bring it in line with environmental objectives, and to create effective compliance mechanisms.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I hope that at this time of the night noble Lords are not getting fed up with my voice. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, and the noble Earl, Lord Cormack, for their support for it. The amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish proposals for an updated regulatory framework for agriculture to fill regulatory gaps that result from our leaving the common agricultural policy, and which would bring the regulatory framework into line with the environmental objectives stated in the Bill and the 25-year environment plan. It would also help to create effective monitoring and compliance mechanisms.

Everyone is pretty clear that the regulatory framework around farming is not fit for purpose. Some farming and land management practices continue to have adverse environmental impacts—ammonia emissions, pollution of rivers, greenhouse gas emissions and soil erosion, to mention just a few. It is staggering that agriculture is the primary cause of 30% of our sites of special scientific interest—those jewels in our wildlife crown—being in an unfavourable condition. Yet the current average inspection rate for the environment on farms is once every 200 years. I am not counting inspections by the rural payments inspectors, which are about EU requirements to audit funding and which, hopefully, Brexit will see the end of. However, once in 200 years is not much of an environmental inspection regime.

Changes to the farm support system, as outlined in the Bill, will further jeopardise effective farm regulation. Under the current basic payment scheme, all farmers and land managers in receipt of payments must, under the cross-compliance conditions, deliver something that is catchily called good agricultural and environmental condition—GAEC. It is the regulatory baseline of environmental performance. That requirement to achieve GAEC if one is in receipt of payments disappears with the common agricultural policy. There remains no less need to have a strong set of baseline environmental standards universally required of all land managers so that the specific public good provided above this baseline by the ELM scheme can be rewarded with payment. It would be heinous if ELM scheme public money were to be paid, for example, to improve water quality to a farmer, who, meanwhile, was failing to comply with the basic agricultural conditions that currently exist for other water quality protection arrangements.

Defra’s Farming for the Future update committed to introducing an alternative inspection and enforcement approach. I would welcome that, provided it does not mean a new stand-alone agricultural regulator which would duplicate the expert regulators we already have in Natural England and the Environment Agency—I declare an interest having been chairman of one and chief executive of the other—which not only know their onions but draw on knowledge gleaned from regulating a range of sectors, not just farming. That cross-learning from other sectors is very important. What these existing regulators need is not another regulator on the pitch but a proper framework for agricultural regulation, within which they can work with land managers. They also need proper resources to do an effective job in inspection and enforcement. All of this would be enabled by my Amendment 229, which I am moving.

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[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly pointed out the possible environmental downside of those farmers who choose not to enter ELMS, which will of course be voluntary. The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, rightly pointed out that if we have to pay for minimum environmental standards that are currently delivered under the cross-compliance regime it would have a huge impact on the public purse.

The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, were anxious about a new regulatory regime being too burdensome for farmers at this time of flux, but I think that this is just the time. It is really important to give farmers a clear regulatory framework in which they can operate and make other changes to their farming businesses driven by the requirements of this Bill and our exit from the CAP. It would be really useful for farmers to know what is expected of them and to get the help and advice they need from the regulator on how to comply with the regulatory framework. I press the Government to move as quickly as possible on this.

I was not quite clear on, and I will want to read again in Hansard, what the Minister said about the continuation of some sort of cross-compliance. It would be useful to get from the Minister, if possible, a note to clarify the assurances that he gave about many of these issues being covered by other regulatory regimes, just so that we can be sure that all the things put in these amendments as needing to be preserved when the cross-compliance regime disappears are fully covered by existing regulatory requirements, particularly domestic regulation. We are not airbrushing that out; I simply continue to point to the fact that, even though we may have domestic regulation on soils, muddy floods continue to occur. It is only where we have seen local engagement by the Environment Agency with groups of maize farmers, for example, working with them collectively, that some of the intrinsically difficult practices in maize production have been reduced. The domestic regulation does not seem to be working; only in-depth collaboration in an advisory capacity with the regulator produces the results.

I thank the Minister for his offer of a meeting; I shall take him up on that. I look forward to the consultation and the extensive work on a new regulatory model that will kick off in the autumn. I hope that does not mean that anything dreadful is going to be done to the Environment Agency or Natural England. They need to get on with it, rather than be reorganised. We do not need a single environmental regulator just for agriculture. It is vital that we have skilful regulators who know what they are talking about because they are specialists and who draw their expertise also from case law and experience in regulating the same issues across a range of sectors. I welcome the fact that the Government will think long and deep and talk earnestly with the rest of us about that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 229 withdrawn.