Food and Farming: Devon and Cornwall

Debate between Clive Betts and Luke Pollard

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Betts.

I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) for his speech. The Cabinet and the courtroom’s gain has been our loss in years of farming debates, because what he said here is the argument that Labour Members have been prosecuting against the Government for many years. If only we could have afforded his counsel and his wise words along the way! We might then have been more successful in persuading the Government to back British farmers with actions, not just words.

I declare an interest: my little sisters are farmers in north Cornwall. They have had a tough time in the past few days, as have farmers right across the country, coping with Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin. I thank them and all farmers for looking after our rural communities, and especially the farm animals that have been rather blown around in the past few days.

I back British farming. We need to buy local more. Devon and Cornwall produce some of the finest food in the world. We should be enormously proud of the production and the methods, as well as the stewardship of the production of the brilliant food that comes from our region. If we are to make it real, we need buying British to be a headline Government policy that is actually implemented and reported on each and every year.

I support the measures that my neighbour, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter), proposed on growing British more. I have advocated for such a policy from the Front Bench, and I am sure that the shadow Farming Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), will do so in a moment. We could aim for a target of 75% by 2040, to match the NFU’s net zero target, but we need to look seriously at how we do this. This is not “dig for Britain” nostalgia, but a hard-headed investment in our rural communities. It is a job creation exercise. At times of international instability, food security is a national security issue, and we should be unafraid to call it that.

Far too often in the past few decades, food policy has been exported and privatised through the supermarkets. We need to take back control of food policy, and talk about high standards, proper wages, proper decency and the environmental gains. We have not been doing that, but I hope the Minister will listen to the cross-party concerns raised here. Whatever colour rosette we wear at elections, the argument is the same: the Government have not been seizing the opportunities presented by Brexit to make a fairer, decent, greener and healthier farming system for our rural communities. They need to do so.

I worry that the opposite is true. I have spoken about this before, and I do not apologise for saying it again: I think there is a Government strategy to reduce the number of farmers in our country—to have smaller farms aggregated into larger farms, with more use of technology, gene editing and more industrialised methods. That may work in the east of England, but it does not work in the south-west. One practical reason is that our small country lanes will not be able to cope with larger farm machinery going through there, but actually, the preponderance and concentration of small family farms, not with huge acreage, but with a passion and a stewardship of the countryside that we should be celebrating, needs to be preserved.

It is not possible to have growth in British production at the same time as the Government are signing trade deals that undercut our farmers. Those deals send the message to farmers, whether Ministers think it is accurate or not, that their industry and the value they create is not worth it—the Government will sell them out in hopes of a trade deal. The Australia trade deal is the model that all future trade deals will follow, and it is a betrayal, baked into a trade deal that the next Government will not be able to wriggle out of. This is a generational betrayal of British farming, and we should be unafraid to call it out.

The south-west is a brilliant place for farming. We have some brilliant farmers in our region, which produces more food than Scotland and twice as much as Wales. In our region, agriculture contributes twice as much to the economy and generates twice as many jobs as it does in the average English region. The agricultural sector in the south-west directly contributes £1.6 billion to the national economy and employs 60,000 people. In Devon, agriculture and food production accounts for 13% of the county’s economy—almost double the national average. The renaissance in farming that we require needs to be shared right across the country.

I share the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about environmental land management schemes. They are not working in the way they need to. There is not the clarity or the confidence that farmers need if they are to undertake them. Nor is the sustainable farming incentive working. The Government need to look at the system again, because confidence in it has not been created.

Like Plymouth Argyle against Chelsea, DEFRA was off to a winning start at first. Rewarding farmers for public goods was a good principle that enjoyed cross-party support: the problem is that the practice does not match the ambition that we first came out with. I want DEFRA to be stronger on this, because there is a real case, which has been advocated on a cross-party basis, for looking again at phasing down direct payments and the speed with which they are being phased down. We need to make sure that our farmers are not being forced out of business, because there is a genuine risk that if they are forced out of business, our countryside—that immense rural fabric, that green and pleasant land that we so value—will be eroded. The second home penetration into our rural communities is a real issue. We need a concentration on first homes, not second homes, but those communities are being hollowed out. It is unaffordable for many people to live in rural communities; it is unaffordable for many people to work on a farm in a rural community, because they cannot afford to live there. That issue also needs to be addressed through a proper long-term plan.

The final thing I want to say is about tenant farmers, because the implications of the Government’s changing agriculture policy are felt the most by those farmers, who do not have security of tenure of their lands or ownership opportunities. We know that absent landlords are putting up rents for tenant farmers. We know that tenant farmers, in particular, face the toughest time when it comes to making their businesses work, and I would like the Minister to make a specific effort to build up support for tenant farmers and make sure that the measures she is introducing do not inadvertently affect them. We have an amazing farming sector in the south-west, and I want that to continue, but to do that, we need the Government to do different things from what they are doing at the moment. Having the soundbites, but not the action, will not achieve that, so I hope the Minister listens to the cross-party agreement on what is going wrong and what should be happening in its place.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call Simon Jupp. I will start the wind-ups at 10.39, so I ask the hon. Member to make sure he keeps his eye on the clock.