Rural Affairs

Ben Goldsborough Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)]

I would like to address four issues in the short time that I have. The first is water security. We have heard a lot about flooding today, but as my hon. Friend the Minister will know, in Norfolk we have the opposite issue—water shortages are more of an issue for us. I will also speak about controlled environment agriculture—a new development phase that we can turbocharge in this country—as well as the horticultural sector, which is vital for us, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

In Norfolk, as in the Minister’s constituency in Cambridgeshire, we need to look at water security in a lot more detail. When speaking with farmers last Thursday, one of the issues that came up was the building of reservoirs on agricultural land. Unfortunately, the Environment Agency and other planning authorities are proving to be more of a barrier than a supporter of this construction, which means that our farmers have to tap into more drinking water, which is more expensive and drives up prices for them. The floods Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who is not in her place, has been working closely with me, and I look forward to working with her to push forward new policies that ensure that reservoirs can be built on agricultural land to develop water security.

It is important to talk about new innovations in agriculture. All too often, we think of the more traditional methods—the herbicide era and the pesticide era—but we are going into a new era of vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture. I believe that these are vital not only because we can get higher yields from less land, but because they are better for the environment and help us meet our climate change targets. However, there is an issue in the current legislation on biodiversity net gain, and I would appreciate it if the ministerial team would consider it. Because these are closed structures, in their essence they are not net gain providers of biodiversity.

At the same time, these structures decrease land use because they can increase production on a smaller site. They also use fewer damaging pollutants that leach into the area because they are, by their nature, closed systems. They reduce carbon emissions because they are able to precisely grow and engineer the plants that we need. To follow a bit of a theme, they have a smaller water footprint—going back to my first issue of what is important for Norfolk, we need proper use management of our water system. It would be great if my hon. Friend the Minister would look into BNG requirements on controlled environment agriculture to make sure that we can grow this industry, tackle our climate emission targets and be at the forefront of this sector around the world.

Next up, horticulture is important for my constituency of South Norfolk. I have Viking Nurseries, which I will visit in couple of weeks’ time. Hon. Members’ teams may have noticed that I sponsored the Horticultural Trades Association in Parliament, which gave out 153 house plants. I hope that we brightened up the Houses of Parliament and all offices across the estate. It was a fantastic event, and it was important to raise awareness that horticulture should not be overshadowed by agriculture. Both are aspects of our economy.

The House of Lords report on horticulture recently showed that the sector supports 674,000 jobs and contributes about £28 billion to UK GDP and about £6 billion in taxation. It is not something to be sniffed at. We also need to bear in mind that our country was the forerunner in horticulture, and we have lost that crown over the years to the Dutch. There is no reason why we should not regain that crown, and we should be pushing for that as a new Government.

The other issue that I would like to concentrate on is biosecurity and the APHA. As was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, bluetongue was sadly first found in Haddiscoe in my constituency. The outbreak spread across the eastern coast, and we are living with the consequences. There are extremely sad situations when people take animals to market and lower prices are being charged for no reason, even though they are being moved within the market control area. That is an issue that we see with our biosecurity. This week we have also seen the first measured case of the new variant of avian influenza coming to our shores, which should worry us greatly.

From speaking to the APHA, it concerns me that it is fighting on so many fronts. Sugar beet has a longer growing season, so there are aphids for longer because they are not killed off by the frost, and we therefore have more yellow leaf. We have bluetongue and avian influenza and over the seas we have African swine fever as well. These are great risks to UK biosecurity. I greatly welcome what was announced in the Budget—more than £200 million for investment into biosecurity—but we must work closely with the Home Office to make sure that our border security officers are fully trained in this area to recognise the issues coming to our shores and protect our farmers, agriculture and horticulture, which provide so much to South Norfolk and to the United Kingdom.