Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Debate between Ben Everitt and Richard Drax

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and neighbour. The point of the CAP, with all its faults, was to provide cheap food and to provide it consistently. One could argue that the system was flawed—in many ways it was—but that was the honourable aim of it.

I want to touch on one or two points connected to the Bill. We hear time and again about the need to reduce flooding. I hear the word “rewilding” being used more and more. Before long, I am sure there will be wolves back in Scotland. There is now talk of putting beavers back in Dorset. A beaver creates a dam. A beaver has younger beavers and they go off and create more dams. The rivers in Dorset are tiny, and if they are dammed and protected—as surely they would be by the environmental lobby—there will be flooding on an epic scale. Can we please look at evidence-based beaver rewilding, rather than just banging beavers back into Dorset or anywhere else without any thought for the consequences? While welcoming wildlife, which we all do, can we please have some common sense in its reintroduction?

Points have been made about the multi-annual budget. Farmers desperately need consistency and certainty of income because, as we have heard, they are reliant on the weather. The weather is not always particularly kind to farmers, but it is vital that they have incomes to survive.

We have all had experiences of the RPA. I sat on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee with my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). The RPA attended on many occasions, and each time it had fallen short. It has to make sure that the money gets to the farmers.

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Certainty is absolutely paramount. When the single farm payment was introduced, I asked my dad, who was the manager of a farm, “Have you got your single farm payment?” He replied, “Some of it.” We really need to sort out the RPA payment issues.

On a wider point, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) has said, if we value something, we should pay for it. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has mentioned wheat prices and the true price of wheat. There is a cost to husbanding the countryside and we should recognise farmers’ traditional role as custodians of our countryside, nature and biodiversity. If we value that, we should find a way of paying for it and of communicating that to society, so that the role played by farmers in their communities and society can be recognised.

[Richard Drax]

I absolutely agree with every word my hon. Friend has just said. I have huge respect for the Minister, who is himself a farmer. On valuing farmers, they have to have access to grants to meet all the environmental rules. It takes more than a few hundred pounds to dig a slurry pit, for example; we are talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds to make sure it meets all the various criteria. Small farmers just do not have access to such vast sums of money. They either go bust or ask a bank if they can borrow money, and in most cases the answer will be no. Farmers, particularly small farmers, need access to grants to help them to farm efficiently and to address all the environmental concerns.

I have two final points to make. I absolutely concur with the shadow Minister on food security. Food in this country will be affected by scares all around the world and, in the worst-case scenario, war. We have been there before with world war two. I am not saying that we are going to go to war again, but all sorts of dramas and strategies around the world could lead to some sort of food shortage. Therefore, food security—looking after food production in our country—is absolutely crucial.

Finally, I agree with the NFU that there is no point in meeting all the extraordinary standards set in this country, with which I entirely concur, only to be undermined by imports from other countries, particularly third-world countries, where the standards are nowhere near as high as ours and they can reduce the price of their food. Of course, people purchasing food, particularly the large supermarkets, will be tempted to go down the cheaper route, so may I urge the Government to keep an eye on that?