Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)
Daniel Zeichner ExcerptsThursday 13th February 2020
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 13 February 2020 - (13 Feb 2020)
George Eustice
Q
George Burgess: No, I do not think so. The Agriculture (Retained EU Law and Data) (Scotland) Bill, which implements the stability and simplicity approach for the period between now and 2024, is currently before the Scottish Parliament. I have mentioned the future policy group, which aims to bring forward proposals by the summer of this year. That is the point when we will begin looking at the transition—things that may be piloted between now and 2024—so we are definitely not looking at a sharp cliff-edge transition in 2024.
Hopefully within that time period, we will gain a clearer understanding of our trading regime with Europe and the rest of the world. At the moment, it is frankly quite hard to work out what we should be doing with sectors such as sheepmeat, given that we do not know what the situation with our largest export markets will be.
Jonnie Hall: A number of interests in Scotland have suggested that there should be a sunset clause in the piece of legislation that Mr Burgess has referred to, so that it comes to a definitive end in 2024. However, we would not agree with that, because it would potentially create a cliff edge where we would go off the stability elements that we have talked about and into the unknown. We want to avoid that; we need to be able to adjust to and reflect on the circumstances of the time, and it is right that the Scottish Government have the ability to do so under the legislation that is going through the Scottish Parliament.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
Alan Clarke: It would be a disaster for the Scottish red meat industry. The Scots were pioneers of quality assurance. Scotland was the first country in the world to set up whole of life, whole of supply chain quality assurance, and that gives a unique selling point to our world-class products of Scotch beef PGI, Scotch lamb PGI and specially selected pork. For any diluted product to come to market and be able to compete directly—as far as I am concerned, that has no place on the supermarket shelves.
George Burgess: I suspect you will find a very large measure of agreement at this table. The Scottish Government are very concerned at the prospect that future trade agreements could allow for a dilution of standards.
Jonnie Hall: It is also worth adding that the produce of Scotland—commodities is the wrong word—is not about, “Stack it high, sell it low.” We are not going to compete on world markets. We are not a volume producer. We are based on the authenticity and the provenance of our product, and the welfare standards and environmental standards behind that. If we expose Scottish agriculture to cheaper imports of substandard production methods and so on, we will blow large sections of Scottish agriculture out of the water. That will have significant impacts on the agricultural industry itself, but also, more importantly, on the wider issues around rural communities and the environment and habitats that Scottish agriculture underpins with its extensive grazing systems and so on.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Jonnie Hall: It is quite clear, in many ways, in the sense that the development and delivery of agricultural schemes and policy, in terms of what outcomes we want to achieve from managing our land in an agricultural sense, should absolutely be devolved, and is today. However, when you are looking at the operation of the internal UK market, we need to be able to operate to the same rules in a very transparent and open way across the United Kingdom.
Our worry and concern is that a lot of the discussions from outside of the Government appear to be about common frameworks, but we are unsighted on that. We are not seeing what common frameworks might look like. More important to me is the governance of those common frameworks going forward. Like or loathe the European Commission, at least it acted as some sort of referee when it came to compliance with regulation, standards and so on across member states and within the UK. If we are going to preserve the internal UK market, as Alan Clarke has pointed out is so important to Scottish agriculture, we need to ensure that we are all playing to the same rulebook on a whole range of issues. We are unsighted on an awful lot of that. We are still trying to flush out of Governments—plural—the actions and discussions that are going on.
Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
Q
James Morris
Q
George Monbiot: I think it really important to tighten the definition and to stick with, basically, the classical definition of non-rivalrous and non-excludable. There is potential for slippage within the wording of the Bill, for example into food production that does not fit the definition. We should basically also be funding public goods that are additional and which are not going to be delivered anyway.
We should be very careful not to use subsidies as a substitute for regulation. There is a real danger in saying, “We will put all this on a voluntary basis and we will pay people to do the right thing,” rather than saying, “You may not do the wrong thing.” I feel that there have already been a lot of failures in monitoring and enforcement of cross-compliance under the current subsidy regime. If we are not careful, we could see those failures become a lot worse.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
George Monbiot: One of my aims would be to reduce the area of land used for agriculture. All agriculture is a radical simplification of ecosystems, until you get to the point at which it is so extensive that it is not really agriculture. The Knepp Castle Estate, for example, is a wonderful example of rewilding, but I worked out that if we were to universalise that across much of the UK, we would need to cut our meat consumption by about 99.5%—that is not a great example of agriculture. Until you get to that level of extensification, you are really removing huge numbers of species and a huge amount of potential carbon storage that would otherwise be there.
In this country, we suffer grievously from what I call “agricultural sprawl”—large areas of land used to produce small amounts of food. It gets to the point at which, for instance, sheep farming in the uplands, according to my estimates, occupies roughly 4 million hectares—almost as much land as all our arable and horticultural production put together—yet produces roughly 1% of our food by calories and roughly 2% by protein. That is a remarkably wasteful use of land, which could be much better used for carbon storage through regeneration and rewilding, and for the great resuscitation of ecosystems and the recovery of our very put-upon wild species.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
George Monbiot: That is a very good question. The Bill discusses both natural heritage and cultural heritage. Both are very important values and neither should be dismissed, but there is an assumption in a great deal of rural thinking in Britain that they are one and the same. We have to acknowledge that they are often in direct conflict. Maintaining sheep on the land is highly damaging to ecosystems, but getting rid of sheep farmers can be highly damaging to local cultures and languages. We have to see that a balance should be struck.
We have so often fudged the issue, the classic example being the world heritage bid in the Lake district, where they were assumed to be one and the same. It is always resolved in favour of farming, because farming is assumed to be good for ecosystems, but in the great majority of cases it is not—the best thing to do for an ecosystem is to withdraw farming from it. But because we do not acknowledge that there is a conflict, we do not produce a balance that ever favours wildlife.
Mr Goodwill
Q
“farming is no longer essential to human survival”.
In contradiction to what the Soil Association told us this morning—that we should have more mixed farming and more livestock, allowing soils to be improved by the use of natural manures—you suggest that we should abandon livestock production, particularly on the uplands, and plant trees and rewild large areas of our country. Is that a correct appraisal?
George Monbiot: That is broadly correct. One thing to say is that in the uplands there is almost no mixed farming. In fact, it would be very hard for mixed farming to be established in the uplands, which are very unsuitable on the whole for arable. In the lowlands, if we were to reintroduce mixed farming, at the microlevel that could be a very good thing by comparison to the arable deserts of East Anglia, but we would see a major decline in total yield. There is very little research on what that decline would be, but everyone can more or less accept that we will see that decline.
The global conundrum we are in is that roughly half the global population is dependent on NPK, to put it crudely, and certainly on nitrogen and other artificial fertilisers. If we were to take those out of the system, we would have mass starvation—huge numbers of people would die. However, we are aware that applications of N, P and K and others are causing global disaster: they contribute significantly to climate breakdown, soil loss, downstream pollution, air pollution and a whole load of other issues. We cannot live with it and cannot live without it. We are in an astonishing and very difficult conundrum. If we were to switch—as the Soil Association recommends and as my instincts would tell us to do—to mixed rotation or organic farming, we would not be able to produce enough food. It is as simple as that.
How do we get out of that conundrum? I see some hope in factory-produced food—microbial protein and cultured meat. That could be the only way of reconciling environmental needs of future generations and the rest of life on Earth with the need to feed people alive today and in future. We need to find ways of feeding the planet without devouring it. That could be the way.
James Morris
Q
Professor Keevil: To my mind, food security is the supply of wholesome, nutritious, safe food. Within that the key issue is safety. There has been a lot of discussion this afternoon about whether the UK can provide its own food. If it does not, we have to rely on imports. What is the veracity of checking the safety of those imports?
We made a short written submission to the national food survey—it may have been circulated to you—in which we talked about the microbiological safety of food, particularly from the processing point of view. It deals in particular with the chlorination of food, which has become a very contentious issue in how the UK sees its future trading relationship with countries that use that practice. Currently, the UK follows EU law, with the standing position being that they dislike chlorinating food. Their perspective is not that chlorination poses a toxic chemical risk if you ingest the food; they are more concerned about animal husbandry. As a microbiologist, I would go further and ask the question that most people have ignored until now: does chlorine actually work? Our published research shows that, in fact, it does not.
For more than 100 years, we have relied on the gold standard of examining a sample from patients, the environment or food by culturing it and growing samples in a Petri dish on a nutritious agar medium. If anything grows, something is still alive; if nothing grows, by that definition, everything must be dead. Our research and that of other groups around the world shows that that is not true; it tells us that the current methods of analysis, which help us set the standards, are not rigorous enough. We have to use modern molecular and biochemical methods, which are available, but which, by and large, have not been adopted so far.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Professor Keevil: As you rightly say, when we look at the data, depending on the source, it can be difficult to interpret because of the way it is recovered. For example, in the USA, they report on infections, some of which are assumed from the evidence they have available. If you look at the reporting of the numbers of pathogens in American produce, such as poultry, they report it in terms of the answer to the question, “Does the food contain more than”—for example—“400 counts of a pathogen per gram of food?” In the UK, the Food Standards Agency reports in terms of “low”, “medium” or “high”. National surveys such as sampling from supermarkets, for example, show that 50% of poultry have very low numbers of pathogens such as a salmonella; only about 5% or 6% have food samples with over 1,000 counts of a pathogen. By those criteria, UK foods appear to be safer—but, I must stress, according to those criteria.
As I say in the written evidence, we now have this vexed question of viable but non-culturable—VBNC—bacteria. When looking at some of the published data, it is very difficult to take that into account, but the work that we and other labs have done is now telling us that we cannot ignore it. We have published our work on chlorine treatment, but we have also looked at what happens when you stress a pathogen such as listeria by depriving it of nutrients. For example, in a factory where you are washing down with tap water, the listeria can still survive, and in those conditions it can become this VBNC form. If all you are doing is regular swabbing and then reporting, you could say, “Our factory is clear of listeria.” In fact, if we used the more modern methods, that might be found to be not true.
We are really talking not just about standards now, but the standards we should adopt in the future, both in the UK and in what we would expect other countries to adopt if we are going to import food from them.
Mr Goodwill
Q
Professor Keevil: As you rightly to point out, it is very complex. We have to talk about the food chain, but let us look at the route which is the primary source of pathogen ingress into the food chain. To take the case of poultry, one of the issues is that some countries, including America, they have intensive rearing of poultry; they also have cattle feed lots, where animals are raised and fed in a dense community. In the UK and Europe, our husbandry standards appear to be better, poultry are reared in less intensive conditions and we do not have cattle in feed lots like the Americans do, so the animals have more space, they appear to be healthier and, from what we have seen so far, they have reduced numbers of pathogens at that stage.
Of course, you are quite correct that every step in the food chain is a potential source of contamination. If we use lorries, provided that those lorries are properly cleaned and decontaminated, that should not be an issue. When food is produced for restaurants, if the staff adopt good hygiene, they should not transmit pathogens to the customers—that has been well documented. The supermarkets are very responsible; they have a reputation to maintain—they do not want to be seen as the supermarket that poisons their customers—so they maintain very high standards.
James Morris
Q
Diana Holland: The measures we were thinking about have previously been raised in a number of submissions: first, looking at the impact of the Bill on workers in agriculture, and secondly, looking specifically at the reinstatement of the protections of the Agricultural Wages Board, which currently exists, in some form, in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but not in England.
Why do we think that is important? We do not think that agricultural workers are like every other worker; we think that they are different and their experiences are different. As a union with an incredibly long history of representing them, we speak from experience. They have a special place in the union, and we think that they should have a special place in the Agriculture Bill, too.
Right this moment, the director of labour market enforcement has a session going on to look specifically at the problems of wage theft and employment law non-compliance in agriculture. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority has had a licensing system in agriculture for 15 years, but it is still recognised as an area with a high level of exploitation and threat of exploitation. That is the background to this.
When the Agricultural Wages Board covered everywhere, there was a level of protection and information that is no longer available to us. Increasingly, you will find that statistics relating to agriculture have little stars by them and a note at the bottom saying, “The sample figures are too small.” That does not mean that there are no other workers to record; it means that they are not hitting any of the official ways of recording people. Increasingly, we find that people are employed in different ways, meaning that they are not recognised in the official statistics in the way they used to be. The Agricultural Wages Board provided a way of ensuring that all that information came to the forefront.
Finally, we have always argued that safe, healthy food and high-quality jobs go hand in hand. There is lots of evidence that where workers are badly treated, there is also an undercutting of food quality standards across the board. We see this as part of ensuring and protecting food standards, food security, supply chains and all the other issues in the Bill. They all have workers associated with them, and we think they should be included and recognised.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Diana Holland: There are a couple of ways. One would obviously be an additional clause that covered the impact on workers of those developments in agriculture and how the protections that exist in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland could also be applied to agricultural workers in England. On top of that, in the rules for agri-food imports, where we will be looking at future developments, we are extremely concerned, first, that there is a lessening of all standards and, secondly, that where food is concerned, while there may be some recognition of protections for food standards, and even of animal welfare, workers may be left out. It should all go together—food, environment, labour protections for everybody.
As I said, when we wrote to our rural and agricultural representatives to ask for examples of issues—I am aware it is anecdotal, but it is important—we found that there are still pressures to hide problems that agricultural workers face, because in small isolated communities personal relationships often extend over other areas and the employer may have other roles in the community that people feel could have an impact on their lives. There is pressure all the time not to speak out about problems that arise. Your accommodation is often tied to your job in some shape or form, whether that is on the horticultural or agricultural side of things. It is those kinds of pressures and those sorts of experiences that we think need to be included; otherwise there is a real danger that, as well as being wrong for the people concerned, they will undermine some of the other things that the Bill is trying to achieve.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Diana Holland: First, there is a bit of a dearth of information. We have been constantly asking for that to be specifically looked at. We have done some research ourselves, however. Not long after the board was abolished, within the first year or two years, we surveyed all our members who had been covered by it. We were really shocked, although perhaps not surprised, to find that a huge proportion had had no pay rise since the Agricultural Wages Board had been abolished. Those who had had a pay rise, the vast majority, had had no say or discussion over that pay rise—it had just been introduced.
The employers we have talked to in the sector have said that they would find it helpful to have a process that could be relied on and about which everybody has said, “We’ve come to a conclusion,” rather than the pressure of having to negotiate individually or to find that the pressure is on and to think about what is fair in the circumstances. There is also exploitation in the sector—I will not run away from that—but I am not saying that every single person is deliberately trying to exploit. Sometimes there are other pressures.
There was also some survey work done in 2017 that compared Wales with England. There was a suggestion that protections in Wales meant that there was a 6% higher rate of pay overall. As I say, again, these are often small samples and figures, and we need to look more. We have had a chance, however, to talk to the employers in Wales. Some of the evidence from the employer representatives has made us concerned that there are employers in the sector—who previously followed a system that has been abolished—who are not aware of their responsibilities and who saw the national minimum wage as a voluntary mechanism rather than an absolute requirement. That might seem impossible, but it is a reality that came out in the discussions and the evidence. We feel that where the Bill talks about public money for public goods, that should also include ensuring that the workers are treated decently.
The minimum wage does not cover all the additional things. Career progression was provided, relating it to the jobs and roles that people have, allowances for having a dog, overtime and sick pay rates. All those details were included, but they are not in the national minimum wage, which does not take into account the particular considerations that the Agricultural Wages Board does. But that does exist elsewhere. That has been a massive loss to those people, without any demonstrable gain to anybody.
Theo Clarke
Q
Jyoti Fernandes: We believe in smaller units, where you do not need to bring in loads of seasonal workers. With smaller-scale market gardens and horticultural units that pay well, you can attract British workers and will not need to bring in so many people from other countries in order to pick those crops. We see a flourishing, home-grown fruit industry, where you can bring in more people to do that kind of work.
That needs investment, access to land, grants for people to get into that kind of small-scale market gardening and horticultural units and to plant fruit trees into mixed farms, and training. It needs routes to market, which means processing facilities, so that you can make apple juices and that type of thing, and so that you can store those things, add value to them and get better value back on them. It needs distribution facilities within local market economies. That might be market facilities in town, online distribution services or co-operatives that try to process those fruits and get them to market, so that you get a good price for them. It needs all those sorts of investment in our national infrastructure in fruit, fruit processing and distribution.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Diana Holland: You are definitely right to be concerned about it. The important thing is that, where decent standards are protected and reinstated, they should apply to everybody. The original seasonal agricultural workers scheme was part of an educational opportunity for students. We worked very hard and gave evidence over many years to make sure that that was what it was. It should not be about workers coming in from other countries—because the sector cannot get people in this country to work for the terms and conditions and pay that it is offering—and then treating them extremely badly when they are here. As you say, it will not provide the security, the quality needed or the stability in the sector. It is very important. We want opportunities that are properly worked out. How fantastic it would be if we could make this sector one that people want to work in and one that they look for, rather than thinking it is somewhere they will be exploited.
Daniel Zeichner
There is a danger that, if we do not address those labour supply issues, the industry will struggle, and we will then inevitably be back to importing food from outside again.
Diana Holland: Exactly.
Jyoti Fernandes: I was going to bring up something really important to this whole scenario, which is the impact of trade. Basically, we are never going to get the conditions here where small and family farms can survive as independent businesses, or keep decent work opportunities on larger units, if you are undercut by cheaper produce from elsewhere. It just is not a possibility. The global marketplace can source cheap labour—slave labour—from all over the planet, and really exploit places with really low conditions. It is not just the trade standards: it is also the competition from very large multinational corporations in other countries—the huge farms in California or South America, which have loads of exploited labour, much higher levels of pesticide usage and multinational advertising campaigns that will blow any of our homegrown industries out of the water, unless we can get some control over that and have something in the Bill that allows for tariffs that stop that imported stuff, and standards and rules that do not allow our homegrown industries to be undercut.
This is a very exciting Agriculture Bill. Everything about it that is moving towards environmentally friendly farming, agroecological farming and all of that is tremendously exciting. We could have one of the best homegrown food supplies in Europe, and we could really pioneer something very special and really support small and family farms, independent businesses and workers being treated decently, but not if we are undercut by cheap imports. That must be looked at very carefully, otherwise all the good work and the good will of this Bill will be undone.
James Morris
Q
Dr Palmer: The Bill is a good basis, but it is a missed opportunity in the sense that it provides the basis for a variety of things that the Secretary of State may do, but it does not specify what the Secretary of State will do. In the current situation in particular, after Brexit, the farmers and everyone dealing with the industry need more certainty. This would really be an opportunity to pin down what we are prepared to do and what we are not prepared to do in terms of trade, support for the farming industry and a long-term strategy to ensure that we have a viable farming industry stretching into the future.
James West: I would add that it is important that the Bill is joined-up in its thinking, in as far as protection from potentially being undercut—as I am sure you have heard lots of times—as a result of trade agreements. That is fairly critical. That is not in the Bill. Added to that would be that you are then providing farmers with subsidies and grants to help them move to higher standards of production. We should also be looking at things such as method of production labelling—as Nick said, that it is a “may” in the Bill, rather than a “must”—so that consumers know what they are purchasing. We should also look at Government procurement policy, so that in addition to protecting farmers from what is coming into the country, you are also rewarding farmers for delivering higher standards and for protecting our animal welfare standards. Just on Government procurement, McDonald’s has better animal welfare procurement policies than the UK Government, which should not be the case, and the Bill could address that.
Vicki Hird: We were very pleased to see some of the changes in the Agriculture Bill. Overall, we are very positive about the public money for public goods approach and the financial support being listed. We were very pleased to see soil being included in that. We would like to see a stronger reference to agroecological whole-farm systems, because we think that is the way to ensure that you get the in-field changes, as well as the edge of field, wildlife and other nature outcomes that you see. We need the whole of the UK farming system to go towards an agroecological approach in whatever way they can. Those steps should be available through financial support.
We would also like to see, as Nick said, a lot of these things as duties, rather than powers. It seems incredible how much effort—I know, because I have been involved—DEFRA has put into the environmental land management scheme, when it could stop it all in a couple of years and pay a smaller amount of money and not follow through. As MPs, you should have that accountability for you on delivering ELMS.
Finally, I agree with Diana on the protection for workers. We are also pleased with clause 27, which concerns fair dealing. It has been enhanced to really protect farmers. We are grateful to DEFRA for making those changes and to George Eustice, who we welcome as our new Secretary of State. We would like to see that as a duty, because it is so important. It is absolutely vital that we get the protection for farmers in the supply chain. They do have that from retailers, but most farmers do not sell direct to retailers. They need good codes of conduct developed with the industry for every sector, probably starting with dairy.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Vicki Hird: Thank you for reminding me about the public health purpose. We think it would be very easy to insert it into the Bill. There are so many ways it is already designed to help, for instance with air pollution and with reducing exposure to plant protection products, which can be harmful. We think that saying that there is a public health purpose for agriculture would recognise what an important thing farmers do in providing us with healthy, safe food. It could help by showing that having animal health and welfare measures that help farmers to manage their stock and change their stocking patterns can reduce the reliance on antibiotics, which we know is an absolute global public good, in order to protect our medicinal antibiotics.
The other area is the huge need to boost our supply of fruit and veg, so that people can have access to closer-to-home, more affordable, fresh, sustainably produced fruit and vegetables. That is absolutely central to a healthier diet for the nation. To be able to say that we were doing that would be a benefit. As James was saying about procurement, we could be saying something about procurement and investing in healthier diets for our children in schools.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Vicki Hird: I think that would be very helpful. We designed a clause for the previous version of this Bill that mentioned that, along with exposure to pesticides for consumers, workers and the community, and other aspects of public health. There therefore is a clause available, if anybody wants to table it.
Antibiotic reduction is important. I know that the industry has already gone some way. It is doing a good job, but it needs to be supported in that, through animal health and welfare financial support, and through training, advice and demonstration. The Budget should definitely be strong enough and big enough to provide farmers with that kind of support, to take things in the direction of lower antibiotic use.
James West: The question was about subsidies, and bars on subsidies. We support the use of subsidies for delivering the public goods that are in the Bill. Again, we would like that to be a requirement rather than a “may”. Essentially, public money should deliver genuinely higher standards of welfare; it should not be for meeting the regulatory baseline or going marginally beyond it. If you are looking at the top line, you might consider such things as allowing animals to express their natural behaviour, access to pasture for dairy cows, and the provision of enrichment materials for pigs. Obviously, depending on which species you look at, there will be different requirements, but broadly speaking, they will be lower stocking densities, slower-growing breeds, if we are talking about meat chickens, and access to pasture outdoors.
You might also look at things that would disqualify someone from receiving an animal welfare payment. One of the things that Compassion works on is ending the live export of animals. From our point of view, if you are involved in the live export trade, you should probably not receive the public subsidy for good animal welfare. In the area of mutilations, going back to pigs, you have enrichment. In Germany, they provide a premium for pigs at slaughter when the pig gets to the slaughterhouse with an intact tail, because that means that you have almost certainly run a very good system. The amount of space, enrichment and so on that you will have given the pigs during the rearing process will have been such that you will not have needed to tail-dock the pig, as you might in more intensive systems. We have fairly detailed documents with what may or may not qualify you for a subsidy, but broadly speaking it is natural behaviours and space.
Dr Palmer: The absence of a clear percentage commitment regarding the amount of support that will be given for animal welfare purposes means that a degree of uncertainty remains, which is bad for the whole agricultural industry. A farmer needs to know that what amount of money is potentially available, so that they can try to work for it. With respect to the new Chancellor, we are unlikely to get an infinite amount of subsidy in the Budget, so it makes sense that the available money is used to help farmers to become among the best in the world, rather than to move marginally from a fairly low base to a slightly higher one.
In the long term, the future of British farming has to be at the top of the scale. If we try to race to the bottom, we will fail. The British farming industry will not succeed on that basis, so we should consider the areas where we can help farmers to move towards higher welfare—for instance, ending the use of farrowing crates. There is a one-off cost, which it is reasonable to help them with. Once they have moved away from that, there should not be an additional cost. They will then, in association with the better labelling scheme, be able to tell consumers that British farming has produced higher welfare, higher quality meat.
Mr Goodwill
Q
However, I noticed that the Compassion in World Farming website talks about ending “the horror” of factory farming. I just wondered if you felt that there were any farms in this country that that definition would apply to. You talked about housed livestock—for example, dairy cattle that are housed in winter. Do you think that is acceptable? Where do you set the bar in describing what British farmers are doing, perfectly legally, as “horror”?
Dr Palmer: When we are talking about horrific factory farming, we are talking about the caging of egg-laying hens, which is still one third of the total in Britain; we are talking about the use of farrowing crates, which keep the sow unable even to turn round for up to five weeks.
George Eustice
Q
Sue Davies: It is certainly really positive that that is in there, but if there are specific measures where the main goal is focused on human health, rather than animal health, that should be included in the Bill. Ultimately, the Bill will determine the types of food choices we have as consumers and the sorts of standards to which our food is produced. Obviously, a lot of other policies will have an impact on that, but we think this is a real opportunity to shape our food system in a positive way that works for consumers as well as farmers. We should not miss these really good opportunities to include that in the Bill at this point.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Ms Davies, I am bound to ask you the question that I have asked virtually every other witness: from a consumer’s point of view, what would be the impact of allowing imports produced to lower standards? I think I can probably guess the answer, because it has been very consistent across all our witnesses. At the end of the whole chain, particularly with ready meals and so on, do you feel that consumers know enough in the current system? Could we not do more through the Bill to lift standards, particularly on antibiotics and so on?
Sue Davies: I think your food standards question is really important and shows why we need to make sure that we have a joined-up policy. This will have a big impact on the sorts of choices that consumers can make, but if we do not address other policies, particularly trade policy, it could completely undermine all the positive things that we are trying to achieve with the Bill.
As I mentioned, we know from our consumer research that people have really high expectations on food standards. Some 93% of people said they expect that food standards will be maintained, and ideally people think they should be enhanced now that we have left the EU. People do not expect cheaper imports to come in and undercut our producers. People want to support UK producers, particularly of products such as meat and dairy, so the tariff schedule that has come out is interesting. All of that has to be joined up to make sure that we are not trading away our standards and potentially bringing in safety issues, or allowing production methods that we know consumers do not find acceptable.
We saw with the horsemeat scare that food has many different aspects. Some are about safety, and others are cultural—people just do not want to eat food that is produced in certain ways. We have been doing a lot of survey work and we know that around eight in 10 people have concerns about eating hormone-treated beef. A similar number have concerns about food produced using antibiotic growth promoters. Those practices are used in some of the countries with which we will seek to reach trade deals—hormones in the case of the US, Australia and New Zealand. We absolutely have to ensure that trade policy builds on our current standards. If anything, we are looking to improve our standards rather than allow them to deteriorate or accept lower quality imports that will make it very difficult for UK producers to produce to the standards that consumers expect.
We have also asked about labelling issues, because sometimes it is suggested that people can decide if you just label everything. People feel strongly about it and do not think that labelling is the solution. That applies to people across all socioeconomic groups; it is not just better-off customers who can make this sort of choice. We think it is really important that there is something in the Bill that makes it clear that we should maintain and build on our food standards.
We have asked people what they think about labelling, and they generally tell us that they think the labelling information is about right, but when you ask people about where improvements might be made, they talk about things such as helping people to make more sustainable choices and improved animal welfare labelling. There is scope to look at how we can improve that by building on the labelling information that we have already. One area that we know people feel strongly about is the traffic light nutritional labelling system, which we would like to be made mandatory when we have the opportunity to legislate to do so.
Fay Jones
Q
Sue Davies: We can put it in this Bill and in the trade Bill. This is about agriculture and how we incentivise food production, and a vision for agriculture in the UK. The approach that we take to trade will have a huge impact on how we are able to deliver that, and it will have huge implications for the support that needs to be provided to farmers and how we incentivise standards. There is a strong link between the two.
We think there should definitely be something in the Bill recognising, at a principled level, that this is what UK food production is about. It should also recognise that, on the one hand, we need to ensure that we maintain high standards that meet consumers’ expectations at a national level and, on the other hand, that we will take a strong stance to ensure we are not trading away those food standards to get the many other benefits we might get through trade deals. It should not be about losing food standards to get those benefits.
Agriculture Bill (First sitting)
Daniel Zeichner ExcerptsTuesday 11th February 2020
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 February 2020 - (11 Feb 2020)
George Eustice
Q
ffinlo Costain: One of the key challenges with the common agricultural policy is that it has largely rewarded farmers for owning land, and it has presided over an enormous disconnect between farmers, other people in the countryside, and customers, and often the supply chain as well. The huge advantage of the new legislation is that, in changing the funding system to public funds for public goods, we will be able to deliver the changes that we need—the farm animal welfare improvements, the sustainability improvements, the climate mitigation, and the biodiversity restoration, which has been so degraded under the common agricultural policy.
Make no bones about it: we are facing a climate and nature emergency that is upon us now, not tomorrow. It is critical that we get this right. For me, getting land use right is the golden ticket. Having the opportunity at this time to reform land use—so that we can continue producing good food and good nutrition, delivering national security in that way, which is critically important, as well as delivering climate mitigation, land adaption to help with climate change, and biodiversity restoration—is absolutely critical. The Bill comes at the perfect time, and it is well set up. There are some challenges within it, and some issues that I think we will address, but in general terms it is very positive.
Martin Lines: As a farm owner and a tenant, under the current system, with the single farm payment, I am encouraged to farm to the very edge of fields. Biodiversity and other bits of the landscape are not rewarded. As a tenant, my landlord takes away most if not all of my single farm payment on top of the rent. If we move to a public goods model, I actually get rewarded for the delivery of services as a land manager—as a farmer—so we would move into a system that better supports actual farmers, rather than the ownership and management of the landscape.
Caroline Drummond: One of the real challenges of the past system was the capability to drive ambition for farmers. It was a “Tell me what I’m doing” type of approach, so going forward, we have a real opportunity to demonstrate leadership, vision and ambition for our farming sector. Ensuring that we get the right governance is going to be really important. There needs to be partnership and development of trust between Governments, from voluntary approaches that are externally, independently verified such as farm assurance schemes, right through to building on some of the success stories of capability and innovation that we have seen among some of the farmers who are already thriving and doing very well in this country.
Jack Ward: The fresh produce industry has not benefited that greatly from the CAP. We are about 170,000 hectares; we have an output of about £2 billion from that area, and the contribution from the basic payment scheme is about £40 million. However, the contribution from the producer organisation scheme, which is broadly equivalent, has been incredibly important. I think we would like to see that continue in some shape or form.
In terms of opportunities, there is a terrific opportunity to increase the amount of fruit and veg that we currently produce. In some sectors, such as tomatoes, we are very dependent on imports. We import eight out of 10 tomatoes that we consume in the UK; we must be able to do better than that.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
ffinlo Costain: It is really important for Government to set a framework, but if there is a criticism of the way that Europe and the common agricultural policy have worked in the past, it is that it has been way too prescriptive. That has meant that, to a large extent, farmers have learned to do what they are told, rather than to properly understand and integrate what they are doing on their land.
My own view is that Government should become more goal-centred. They need to set the right metrics and to understand what outcomes they are trying to achieve, but then they need to take a step back and allow farmers to farm. Farmers understand their land, and if they have a funding model that supports environmental excellence and other public goods—restoration of soil health and so on—they can work out ways to do that. I would hate to see a situation where there is a continuing prescriptive approach, but it is focused on the environment rather than on how to produce cattle, and we end up with farmers still not really understanding what they are doing and simply farming the subsidy.
We need ownership of change, and farmers can do that. Farmers understand their land; they know their land, and if we give them the freedom to work within that public goods model, they will deliver the outcomes. They will step up. They are a standing army out there, ready to do this, and they will step up and do it.
Martin Lines: I have concerns about what the ELM for England would look like, the transition period, and how the funding is going to work. We need more detail about what the future will be, so that the farmers can start changing and adapting now to the model of what is coming. There is some concern, particularly about the transition period. As we go into the new system and payments under the current system tail off, what is going to bridge the lull in the middle, and how do we get farmers to step across to the new system at speed?
Caroline Drummond: I agree. There needs to be the policy documentation, so we can identify what this is going to look like and how the knitting all joins up—there are lots of balls of wool, but what are we trying to knit at the end of the day? Not much has been left out of the Bill, which is really key, but we need to know how it will be interpreted and how the ELMS projects will be carried out. There are a lot of them going on, and we need to know how they will be brought together to demonstrate the delivery against metrics, outcomes and, ultimately, impact. Ultimately, the Government have to deliver against the global and national targets around the sustainable development goals, the Paris agreement, and so on, but the farming sector has the opportunity to support us in demonstrating that we are helping on issues around climate change, biodiversity, soil improvement and those matters.
The Chair
Before bringing in Danny Kruger, I should have told new Members that, when they start questioning—they do not have to do it every time—they should declare any financial interest they have in these areas.
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
Q
Martin Lines: It would be a mixture of both. Many of the tenancies that are currently written are too short, with many of three to five years, because of the uncertainty ahead. They would be rewritten and reframed. The person doing the job— the work, the delivery of those public goods—should receive the income.
If it is about land, natural capital and something infrastructure-wise of trees, the landowner may get some of that. If it is about the delivery of habitat and flood mitigation, so that you are losing crop yield or change of land use, the tenant can manage some of that. It will be a redefining, but I think the industry will cope with it. We just need the timeframe for how we deliver it.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Caroline Drummond: I think potentially farmers will walk away from supporting them ultimately, if the marketplace is not delivering against the requirements expected of the imported produce and farmers are increasingly required to deliver against goods that are costing them from a business perspective. That is one of the big dangers. A bigger issue is offshoring, and the fact that we have nine years to deliver against the sustainable development goals. We have the Paris agreements. We have a fantastic opportunity with the conference of the parties talks on climate change being held in this country later this year to herald our ambitions for delivering and demonstrating leadership in environmental delivery and in climate change mitigation delivery.
We might think we can compete on a global level in terms of a huge productivity market, but actually we are just small producers on a global scale. Our real opportunity lies in being the best at what we do. We already have such a good background: despite all the criticism that farmers get for delivering or not delivering against the environment, they have been hugely committed since 2001, after foot and mouth, through entry level stewardship and higher level stewardship agreements, to deliver vast changes and improvements, with strong ownership in how farmers are farming in this country. It would be a real shame to lose that. The Bill is an opportunity to build on that backbone and to place our farmers in a position whereby we continue to be world leading, but with more focused ambition and strong clarity on what we deliver from an environmental perspective.
Jack Ward: In terms of delivering environmental outcomes, we are looking at a balance between a farmer or grower’s own investment and public money. If you start to cut away at the farmer’s ability to invest as an individual, you lose an important part of the funding that will deliver the overall environmental improvements that you are looking for.
ffinlo Costain: I think the future for UK farmers has to be in quality. Volume production will increasingly become a mug’s game. I would not advise farmers to go into it. It should be about environmental excellence, animal welfare excellence and sustainability excellence. The danger is that if it comes into the country, some customers—perhaps quite a lot of customers—will buy it. That is where the undermining happens: it undermines our ability to develop that comprehensive basis for environmental excellence, and it will challenge emerging supply chains in particular. Part of our big challenge over the next 10 years is to shorten supply chains and to make sure that farmers are better able to claim decent farm-gate prices by selling direct or through many fewer cogs before they reach the customer. I worry about those smaller and emerging supply chains being undermined.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
How do you assess that the security of food supply will be improved by the Bill? What do you see as the UK’s greatest threat to food security?
Martin Lines: Food security can only come from healthy soil and a healthy environment. If we over-produce from our soils, we degrade them and there will be no food security for future generations. We need a balance of how we manage our landscape and how much we can produce from that balanced landscape. We can then consider what products we need to import, and whether we need to do other things or change diets or change tjhe system. There needs to be an assessment of how our landscape looks, with a joined-up approach to landscape productivity.
ffinlo Costain: Traditionally, food security has been about volume and about being able to feed everybody. That has led us to the challenges we now face, which Martin just referred to. Food security comes from being able to produce good, nutritious, diverse and seasonally available food. That means we need to restore soil, have good water management, and good community dynamics, with complexity returned to our swards and landscapes where nature works with farmers to produce that food.
Looking forward 40 years to how society could break down as a result of climate change and biodiversity loss, food is the critical factor. If you look around the world at conflicts, including Syria, food is the critical factor that creates conflict. The way that we deliver national security is not by producing volume, but by ensuring that every hectare of our land can produce really good food, and by maintaining the rural economies and the ability of farmers to farm that land. That is why it is critical that we do not go down the route of sequestration here, wilding there, and food here. We need to be able to build broad diversity so that we have national food security in the future.
Caroline Drummond: There is often a lot of confusion around food security. There is the issue of our capability to grow, and having the infrastructure to support farmers with seed, fertiliser, tractor tyres, and investment in that area. There is the issue of what we actually mean by self-sufficiency, how we build our targets, and whether we are ambitious enough. There is food safety. We have some concerns about imported produce in terms of food safety challenges. That has been well heralded. There is also the issue of food defence—our capability to trade confidently, and to have the opportunity to receive food where we do not have self-sufficiency or sufficient produce.
It is a highly complex area. I think it is one area in the Bill where we would report every five years. Perhaps that could be amended to reporting every year, because it is so important.
Jack Ward: In the fresh produce industry, we are very dependent on imports to meet our needs. Arguably, it is the one area of food production where we want to increase consumption. Ultimately, the ability to increase our food security is down to grower confidence, and a willingness by growers to keep investing, and the returns that they can generate from that activity. The last six months have not done great things for grower confidence.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Martin Lines: If I am producing wheat, I can increase my yield by putting more products on, but that has a higher environmental risk, because a lot of those nitrates and products will leave the soil, because the crop has not used them in some years. If we hit the sweet spot with the productivity of our landscape, we can produce what the landscape can cope with, and push it some years, when needed, as well as ease off. It is about finding the balance point. We know from many livestock farmers that reducing livestock numbers actually makes them healthier, better animals, and they produce quicker because there are fewer there and the grass is better.
We have focused for so long just on yield and output, not profitability. Reducing my overall output gives me more profit at the end of the day. It is a funny way to look at how it works, but you end up spending more than you get in return. You chase the extra yield by spending more money. We need to find the place where we deliver as much as we can. Sometimes we can push that if we need to—if there are weather challenges, or other issues—but we should not be out there just to push it, doing environmental damage as a consequence of my farming operations.
ffinlo Costain: The most intensive food systems are environmentally damaging. They are damaging in terms of farm animal welfare, and often just in terms of the jobs that are provided for people, which are not pleasant. The death knell needs to be rung for those sorts of farms.
There is an assumption that with environmental excellence, because of our association with going from mainstream to organic, comes a reduction in yield. There does not need to be a reduction. There are so many examples, here and around the world—Martin being one—of regenerative agriculture, which is giving environmental excellence and social excellence. Farm animal welfare is not an issue on his farm, but elsewhere there are regenerative beef and cattle systems where yield is being maintained in terms of mainstream amounts, and even increased.
There is an assumption that high environmental standards mean a reduction in yield; that is not necessarily the case. It is not just about looking at volume; it is about looking at a whole range of different changes. We need a dietary shift in Britain. That does not mean no meat and dairy, but it probably does mean a bit less meat and dairy as we go forward, and a bit more fruit and vegetables. We can deliver that, with agroforestry approaches and regenerative approaches. We can more than sufficiently provide food for the people of this country—I have no doubt about that—but it will mean changes in diet, and a little bit of change in the way that we farm, at the same time as focusing on multiple outcomes, rather than simply the outcome of producing lots of food. It is food, climate and biodiversity.
Caroline Drummond: We have a tremendous amount of evidence and case studies to demonstrate the importance of integrated farm management practices and how farmers have increasingly adopted them, in terms of economic viability, good performance and optimising the capability of the land. That is a really strong driver. One of the big keys will be how we link the Agriculture Bill with the Environment Bill and the national food strategy—this is such an opportunity for really trying to work out what it is that we want to develop and to balance and to build in what we grow, how we grow it and how we improve the health of our nation as well.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
Q
ffinlo Costain: My hope is that we would see growth in all of those areas. In order to have farming excellence we need to have working farms. In the future, there may be fewer farmers spending their days on tractors, but there will be more farmers doing more high-value jobs and more marketing within the countryside. If we look at cattle and shortening supply chains, we ought to be supporting—we can through the Bill—new infrastructure, such as local abattoirs and co-operatively owned abattoirs. That creates new jobs and infrastructure within the countryside, which can then be sold with the marketing and branding jobs that go along with that. I want to see good-quality jobs, not just jobs, and there is the opportunity here, if we get it right, to create good-quality jobs, and more of them.
Caroline Drummond: Maybe I missed it, but I do not know whether the Bill itself would be the driver for more people to say, “Yay, I want to go into agriculture.” There is an opportunity to go into agriculture, with exciting innovations and technology, and the fact that we touch each of the five senses, which no other industry does. We do a lot of education programmes at LEAF. We run Open Farm Sunday. From that point of view, it is about getting more people more connected with their food. Some of the supporting information around things like the national food strategy and the 25-year environment plan have to help to support and drive enthusiasm—have to help to inspire a younger generation to recognise that the food sector, the farming sector and its associated industries are really fantastic. We have fewer young people coming through and we just have to compete a little bit harder than every other industry.
Jack Ward: There will be more competition for labour, and trying to attract people into the industry will be more difficult. Certainly, within our sector there will be a big drive towards automation to take labour out of the equation, because it will be harder to come by. As earlier speakers have alluded to, as a consequence we will see higher-value jobs. We will see more technologists and more people designing and managing systems, rather than doing some of the manual work that we have seen them do over the past 25 years.
George Eustice
Q
David Bowles: There are huge opportunities. We have only ever had one scheme in the UK, but we have had something like 52 schemes over the 28 EU member states. The RSPCA Assured scheme is very successful in certain areas, such as laying hens, where we probably have 55% of production, but it is very unsuccessful in other areas, such as sheep, beef, dairy and even chickens, which are all sectors where we have under 5% and in some areas under 1%. The market is therefore not delivering the higher welfare assurance schemes that we want in that particular market.
That is the exciting thing about the Bill, because it will provide the opportunity to give farmers a leg up through, for example, one-off capital grants, and then provide them with payments to ensure that, where the market does not deliver, they can deliver those higher welfare schemes. The RSPCA is very happy that the Bill provides for that two-step process. We think there are very exciting times here for farmers, particularly in those areas where we have not traditionally gone into higher welfare schemes. For instance, at the moment, 0% of ducks in the UK have access to full-body water. The expression “taking a duck to water” does not exist for UK duck farming. That is a tragedy, not just for ducks, but for UK farming.
Simon Hall: There are undoubtedly opportunities in the marketplace if we can evidence welfare standards, provenance, and so on. The Livestock Information programme will put in place a new multi-species traceability service that brings together data based on animals, keepership—the people who have been responsible for the animal throughout its life—and location, the farm where it is based. The whole proposition of the programme that we are delivering is about using that data not only to better inform Government responses to animal disease control and ensuring food safety, but to enable the industry to take advantage of that data to evidence its standards and demonstrate to its consumers, domestically or internationally, the standards to that livestock is produced, the provenance of the animals and so on in real data. Working in partnership with Government and industry, there is an opportunity to set out our stall in a world-leading manner.
Christopher Price: To build on what has been said, an important aspect of the Livestock Information service—if it goes as far as I hope it does—is that it will give greater recognition to individual breeds. It will make it clear that what you are buying is a saddleback or whatever. At the moment, it is very difficult for the consumer to know that what he or she is buying is what the butcher or supermarket purports it to be, or to know when they use nebulous language to imply that it has a particular provenance. If we can get to a system whereby people are promoting particular breeds associated with a particular area, we will do well to create a much stronger sense of place and local identity, which will help with creating new markets.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
David Bowles: For the RSPCA, this is probably the biggest omission in the Bill. The Government have resisted putting anything in the Bill that says that we will not import produce or food to lower standards than those of the UK. I cannot see why they have resisted that. The Secretary of State said, “Trust me, because it’s in the manifesto.” Frankly, I do not think that is good enough. Last year the Government tabled their own amendment to the Trade Bill that said exactly that. I hope they do the same here, because if they do not, they will leave British farmers who are producing to those higher welfare standards open to US imports.
For instance, 55% of the pork meat and bacon that we eat is imported. Virtually all that comes from the EU. If you start importing that from the USA, where they still have sow stalls, where they still give their pigs ractopamine, which is an illegal drug in UK pig farming, you are opening up to cheaper imports coming in, particularly if you do not have consumer information and labelling. I am pleased that labelling is in the Agriculture Bill, but this needs to be part of a matrix. You need to have the same standards for food coming in. The RSPCA is not afraid of higher welfare food coming in. What we are afraid of is food coming in that is illegal to produce in the UK.
Christopher Price: I agree with everything that has been said, but I think we need to be careful about putting too much trust in labelling. I cannot see that people are going to make many purchasing decisions on the basis of labelling. Something like less than 5% of decisions nowadays are based on labelling, which includes all the various organic and assurance schemes. This has to be dealt with by legislation and regulation. You cannot leave it to consumer good will in the supermarket.
Thomas Lancaster: I agree with all that. We worked very closely with the NFU to co-ordinate that letter. We view assurance around import standards as a foundational element of the whole future farming policy and as really important to farmers’ ability to invest in public goods schemes with confidence.
The letter not only touched on a defensive ask, but pushed a more aspirational agenda around a role for the UK to set out a world-leading trade policy that takes account of societal demands such as climate change, biodiversity and all those sorts of issues, which are not reflected in modern international trade policy, and certainly not at the World Trade Organisation.
This is often reported as: “We want protection.” Actually, as David said, we want to be able to compete on common standards. No UK farmers are calling for protectionism for its own sake, but there is an opportunity to call for a more sustainable trade policy that has a bit more imagination regarding how we can fight the climate and environment emergency, while embarking upon a new international trade policy, as we now will.
John Cross: It has been very well addressed already, but briefly, if society is sincere about animal welfare and is aspirational—which it should be—then it should not look for one set of standards domestically and, to a certain extent, export its conscience and accept lower standards from elsewhere. You should be consistent in your attitude to animals.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
Q
David Bowles: Yes; the RSPCA, as I said earlier, is delighted that for the first time we have the opportunity to provide financial assistance to farmers. One of the things that is missing from the Bill—it says it in the explanatory notes, but it is not explicit—is that financial assistance should be given only to those above baseline standards. We had a system where farmers could have been paid even if they were doing things that were illegal. I do not want to replicate that in the new farm support system.
There are a lot of things that we would like the Government to introduce to give farmers a leg up—for instance, providing brushes for cattle, hoof-trimming for cattle to reduce lameness, rubber matting for cattle to give farmers a leg up to farm at higher welfare standards, and then giving them the opportunity to get money that is not provided by the marketplace, which is the difference between farming at higher welfare and what the marketplace delivers.
There is a whole range and suite of issues that could be gathered. The RSPCA is delighted that the Government are looking at them seriously, and we hope that some can be trialled in the next year.
Christopher Price: There are two aspects to your question. The first is whether we have got the regulations right in the first place. Although we might have the right standards, I think that most people on our side of the table would hope that Dame Glenys Stacey’s report is implemented, if not in full, then to a large extent. It might be useful to expand a bit on that in a moment.
In terms of paying for meeting regulatory standards per se, I think this is something that applies throughout. Farming will go through the most immense structural change over the next four or five years, as we move to an unsubsidised, more market-facing world. There will be an incredible variety of costs for people as a result. I do not think that there is anything untoward about the Government helping people to make that transition over the short term. I am talking about significant short-term capital expenditure on the Government’s part, to get the industry match-fit—not only in terms of welfare, but in terms of having the right business processes and practices in place. After that, you can say, “Now you’re on your own. We’ve helped you to get up to the standard that we expected of you. Now it’s for the market to support you going forward.”
Alicia Kearns
I thought you might, but you never know.
Christopher Price: We should do it, first, for economic reasons. These breeds were bred to be in a British landscape. They can survive in parts of the country that other breeds cannot, or cannot without significant inputs. In many parts of the country, people are farming the wrong animals and are doing so expensively, because they are using certain inputs to support them. We need some help in getting farmers to transition away from the old way of doing things into going back to native breeds.
Native breeds can also provide a wider range of products than many other breeds. I mentioned wools, skins, horns and so on, which all have markets, if people think about it, or are incentivised to start thinking about it rather more. There is a role for Government in that.
Then there is the environmental side of things. The grassland habitats that we so cherish are there because they were grazed by certain animals over generations. If we are going to restore those habitats, the easiest, most straightforward way to do it is by using the animals that created them in the first place.
Lastly, there is the social side. Many of these breeds are part of our history. White Park cows came over Dogger island from mainland Europe before Stonehenge was built. They were part of the Cistercian monks’ currency. Some of the earliest Welsh laws are about how you regulate and use those animals. Herdwick sheep were bred to live on top of hills in the Lake district. Swaledales were bred to be a bit further down the fells. They are an immense part of our culture.
Those are all reasons for supporting them. In terms of how you support them, I would be reluctant for us to go down a simple headage route; I think that would just create the wrong sort of incentives. If a farmer chooses to use native breeds to graze for particular conservation purposes that do not bring him or her a direct financial benefit, that is about the public benefit, which should be rewarded, but it is more about making sure that we have the right infrastructure in place.
There is a lot to do with promoting local produce. We have talked a bit about creating local markets. Some of the more savvy farmers I was talking about are doing an excellent job of that, and part of their brand is selling local breeds and local products from those breeds within a fairly narrow radius—30-odd miles. That is where the premium comes from. It is not for everyone, but people are starting to do it, which is interesting.
Perhaps the single most important thing—we touched on this a bit in the earlier session—is abattoirs. For many of the people that I work for and represent, abattoirs are at least as important an issue as support going forward. We have huge numbers of people who are producing the right animals to the right standards in a very environmentally friendly way. You hear people talking about how their motivation in life is to ensure that their animals have a life worth living and then only one bad day—the day they go to the abattoir—and you have people who want to buy the products, but the whole thing is being stymied in significant parts of the country because there is no abattoir that can cope. If there is an abattoir, it generally will not be able to take the small numbers of non-standard animals and give you back the by-products—the horns, the skins and so on. In many cases, there is no abattoir at all.
If we are talking about short-term Government capital investments, it seems to me that there is a desperate need to invest in pop-up abattoirs or mobile abattoirs. There are practical problems with all of that, but if I could get anything across to the Committee, it would be the need to make sure that we have an abattoir network that is fit for purpose over the next few years, and for the Government to invest in creating that. It does not need to be a long-term investment; once it is there, the market can function and support it, but it is getting us there that matters.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Thomas Lancaster: We have supported in the past, and would still support, a sector-specific target for net zero by 2040, to reflect the ambition of the NFU and others. We would support an amendment to that effect in Committee and beyond. As a statement of intent and clarity on the role that the sector could play in that climate emergency, it is still a really useful thing to look at. We would also stress that, although this is the Agriculture Bill, in the climate change world there is a lot of talk about nature-based solutions such as peatland restoration, coastal habitats and woodland creation, and the Agriculture Bill, particularly through the land management schemes that flow from it, will be the central mechanism for delivering those nature-based solutions and the aims of the Environment Bill.
Thinking about how public money for public goods can support more sustainable food production that is also carbon and climate friendly, it has an important role to play in building soil carbon, potentially supporting minimum tillage systems, cover crops and other land management interventions that build resilience to climate change in the future. We see climate change running through public money for public goods, from farmed and non-farmed landscapes, and the Agriculture Bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have had in the past decade or probably will have for decades to come in helping to meet the climate emergency that we all face.
Christopher Price: I would support—
The Chair
I am going to interrupt, because there are two colleagues who have been asking to put questions very quickly, Robert Goodwill and then Virginia Crosbie. Please put your questions to everyone.
Agriculture Bill (Second sitting)
Daniel Zeichner ExcerptsTuesday 11th February 2020
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Agriculture Act 2020 View all Agriculture Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 February 2020 - (11 Feb 2020)
George Eustice
Q
Ivor Ferguson: If there were vast changes in the market for whatever reason, we would certainly need more support. This resilience payment would be much less than the payment today—perhaps 30%, 40% or at the most 50%. We have not put a figure on that yet; it is something we would have to discuss with our farmers fairly quickly now.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
Norman Fulton: This is certainly an issue of concern to us. We have to be mindful of the fact that we now have the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol under the withdrawal agreement, which means we will need to align with the European systems, whereas those in the rest of the UK could diverge. Therefore, we would be concerned that, within what will be the single UK market, there could be different approaches to marketing standards, for example. Obviously, that is something that we will all need to be mindful of. I suppose it will be managed through common frameworks across the UK. A lot of work needs to go into thinking through how we will operate across the UK, to ensure that the UK market is not distorted in any way and there is a level playing field for all players in that market.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Norman Fulton: Well, we are very clearly in one system, so we do not have the scope to change under the protocol. In the schedule, you will see that on marketing standards, for example, we have taken the ability to set standards, but that was drafted in advance of the withdrawal agreement, so it would not be enabled. At some point in the future, if we ever left the protocol, it could be brought into play. For now, our future is pretty much mapped out when it comes to marketing standards, but that is not the case elsewhere in the UK. Although we know what our standards will be, they may change elsewhere. That will create the issue of how we ensure that there is a level playing field within the UK/GB, which remains our biggest market.
Ivor Ferguson: As Norman just said, it is our most important market. At least 50% of what we farmers in Northern Ireland produce goes to the mainland GB market, and in some sectors it is 70% or 80%. If we were to diverge and the standards were to lower in the GB market, lower standards means lower cost of production, and we would be tied to the cost of production within the EU system in Northern Ireland, so it would be very difficult for us to compete in that market. From that point of view, it would be a disaster for us if the standards changed or diverged a great deal away from where we are today.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Ivor Ferguson: Take the beef sector in Northern Ireland. All the products that we produce, or 95% of them, are produced to Red Tractor quality-assured standards. A lot of them go to the major retailers in the UK, which support us well with the Red Tractor standards. For beef production in Northern Ireland, the returns to farmers are down in the last 12 months by £36 million, so there is no profit in the job at the present time. We could not accept a lower price for product, so a lot of our farmers at the moment are finding it very difficult to stay in business. If there were a lowering of the price in the marketplace, that would be a disaster for us.
Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
Q
Norman Fulton: Again, this is something that all Administrations need to be very mindful of in the choices they make. Agriculture is a devolved matter, so each of the Administrations can set their own policy direction and agenda. Under the protocol, which we will now be operating under, certain restrictions will apply in the case of Northern Ireland. We will have an overall envelope for state aid cover, but within that a percentage will have to be green box. That will put certain restrictions on the choices we make in future policy. That does not necessarily apply elsewhere in the UK. Scotland, Wales and England will all be able to set their own policy choices.
Again, we need to be careful that we do not start to open up distortions in competition, which could arise from all this. Although these matters are devolved, GB/UK is our domestic market, and we need to make sure we do not end up trying to undercut each other by using our support mechanisms to facilitate that. There is a great deal of responsibility on all the Administrations on this matter.
Ivor Ferguson: I fully agree with Norman. If we take Northern Ireland at the moment, we would like to think that we will have the same level of support. We will certainly need the same level of support. The fact that it is paid in a different way should not distort our market all that much, if there is the same level of money that comes in. We have to be mindful that our farming colleagues in southern Ireland will have a basic payment too, so we need a level playing field. We have to be very mindful of that going forward.
George Eustice
Q
Nick von Westenholz: I am not aware that we have looked at that sort of detail on where land rents might sit. It is an interesting question and one we probably ought to look at.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Nick von Westenholz: The obvious omission from the Bill, in our view, is anything around import standards. It is absolutely right that that should be in the Bill, because if the Government are trying to promote, which we would support, more sustainable production and food systems domestically in the future, which is the core aim of the Bill—to provide a support framework for farming in a high welfare, environmentally sustainable way—they will be fundamentally undermined in that objective if there is not a concurrent trade policy that prevents farm businesses from being undercut by substandard imports. A two-pronged approach in policy terms—trade policy and domestic policy—is needed to prevent undermining that sort of farming, in which UK farmers excel.
The detail of how the Bill is amended or of the terms of the legislation that can achieve that may be quite complicated and something that the Committee needs to consider as it goes through the Bill line by line, but at the core there must be a requirement that if the UK is going to import food, that imported food meets the same standards of environmental protection, animal welfare and food safety as UK producers are required to meet. Of course, the Government have been very reassuring on that point in recent weeks and have given some guarantees in that regard, but we feel that that needs to be underpinned by legislation, because there are real technical challenges in doing this that any Government, whether this Government or a future Government, are going to come up against as they negotiate trade deals and as they pursue a new role for us as an independent member of the WTO.
Fay Jones
Q
David Goodwin: There has been a lot of talk within our membership about support for schemes whereby we are looking at contract and share farming arrangements, particularly in the livestock sector, to enable young farmers to come on to land alongside an existing farmer who is perhaps getting a bit older and does not want to do it himself. Quite how the framework for those sorts of things fits and how you make them work has always been a challenge. I have just come back from New Zealand, and it is interesting to talk to farmers out there. There is a lot more progression on units and farmers do not seem to be so static. I think that is perhaps the other issue in UK agriculture: it is very parochial—which is traditional. It is difficult to really say how we could break that mould, but certainly from our members’ point of view, any new, innovative ways we can find to get young people on to the land—not necessarily as managers or owners, but also as good skilled workers—would be good.
George Eustice
Q
David Goodwin: I have a very quick point on that, specifically pertaining to the lamb industry. We have had quite a lot of feedback from our members about lack of transparency: under the sheep legislation as it is at the moment, we are forced to electronically tag and identify all the sheep, but currently the abattoirs and processors are not required to pass that information back down the chain or identify those carcases as pertaining to those animals. There is a perceived transparency issue with some processes. It is not that potentially we are not being paid the right amounts, but I think people would like to know what our killing out percentages are, so that we can improve performance and make better informed decisions.
Nick von Westenholz: We are working through our commodity boards, which is the way we cover the different steps in the NFU to address exactly how the powers will be used. We are pleased that those powers are in the Bill, but lots of them rely on secondary legislation to operate, so it seems that potentially there is still quite a job to do once the Bill is enacted to ensure that the powers can be used properly to do what they are supposed to do. We look forward to working with officials to work out exactly how those powers can be deployed once the Bill is enacted—that is a feature of the enabling aspect of the Bill. We certainly think the focus on improving the supply chain is a critical bit of the Bill.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Nick von Westenholz: Yes, absolutely. We would like more detail. We understand there was an intention to consult on them at some point under the last Bill, so presumably that will still happen. You are absolutely right that there are potential unintended consequences, not least because those aspects of the Bill relate to England, and there could be a very different way forward in other parts of the UK. That would potentially lead to a very different looking system between England and other parts of the UK. We need to understand the details. Some people might be attracted to the implications of delinking, superficially. Once you delink—particularly with the potential to move to lump sum payments, which is one of the reasons for doing so—you are moving away from some of the things I spoke about earlier, such as being able to manage the transition for the next few years, particularly in the volatile circumstances that might arise for farming. So yes, the long-winded answer is that we would like more detail.
David Goodwin: We tend to agree on the whole. There is a feeling of quiet optimism that it might offer opportunities for young people to come into agriculture. Without some detail to see exactly how that might work and whether it is feasible, people are keeping it at arm’s length.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Nick von Westenholz: The main parts of the Bill that are relevant are around the transition. Currently, the Bill still has the timetable of beginning to phase out of BPS next year and going over a seven-year period. We have called, as have others, for a delay in that process. That is still absolutely right because we are unlikely to know the trading environment in which farming will operate until potentially very late this year, possibly even into next year, yet the schedule has us beginning to phase out of BPS next year. As David mentioned, agriculture works on very long timeframes.
While we do not know what the future looks like, delaying that is important, not least because this Bill, the previous Bill and the health and harmony consultation that it was predicated on, all took place in a very different political environment where the future relationship with the EU and some other aspects were envisaged very differently. Things have changed, and the Bill and the transition period should also change. We could face some very volatile times ahead and we need to be able to manage that.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for this session. I thank the two witnesses on behalf of the Committee. We will move on to the next evidence session.
Examination of Witness
Richard Self gave evidence.
George Eustice
Q
Richard Self: It is an interesting area. I am not an expert on the dairy sector, but in milk co-operatives the first-stage processor is owned by the farmers. If that processor takes a high price, farmers will get that back at some stage; in another situation where they do not own the processor, they will not. Therefore, it inhibits them from reacting to the market, because ultimately in a situation where the farmer owns the processor, the benefits will eventually come back to the farmer because they own the business.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Richard Self: Producer organisations have done a good job, but I think some people would say they could do a better job if they were better organised. I think we could have made better use of them in the past—other countries have made very good use of their POs. One concern we have around POs is that they might be too narrow. We want to ensure that all types of co-operative have the chance to be a PO, and that extra hoops and barriers are not put in the way of existing co-operatives, making it more difficult for them to get to that PO status.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Richard Self: Other countries have taken those funds that they get through being a PO, and the help with their technology, productivity and so on, but they have also changed their business models. What is important is to get the right business model in place, where you can add value, capture it and bring it back to the primary producer. I think what we have done is just take the money for the grants, if you like, as opposed to changing the business model and the way that the supply chain works.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Richard Self: I think it can do. As I said, I think the detail will be in the secondary stage to this, and how that is built up, but the foundations are there. We can make that PO scheme work, as long as we are inclusive of all the different co-operative structures that we have got within that, and do not create extra barriers and hoops for people to jump through to get into the PO scheme.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Richard Self: There is nothing specific that I would like to see. At this stage, it is about trying to keep it as wide as possible, so that we keep our options open and look at every stage of making the environment right for co-operatives to thrive and succeed.
The UK is well behind most other developed agricultural systems in its use of farmer co-operatives. France, Germany and the USA are all developing a number of co-operatives, while the number of our co-operatives is reducing. We need to change that balance around. Our market share of co-operatives, based on my most recent figures from a few years ago, is about 6%, compared with Germany’s 17%. I think France has something like 55% and Denmark somewhere over 60%. Their market share is much greater. The value added that those co-operatives bring is returned to the primary producer.
The other advantage with co-operatives is that they make the markets less volatile. That is one of the things we are worried about in the future—volatile markets. A co-operative can help balance out that market to make it work well, so that there is less volatility in the price of goods—the primary produce. It also makes sure that the supply chains are fairer for the farmer because they are working together.
Mr Goodwill
Q
Do you think that, under the old system as part of the European Union, we have in many ways been trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole, and fit what is going on here into the way that we can access funds? How do you think in future we can actually produce a system to encourage co-operatives, of the sort that would maybe work in the UK, rather than trying to emulate those across the water?
Richard Self: Generally, we have some very good co-operatives out there. The governance angle of co-operatives is the key thing. If we get that right, and get them well managed at the leadership level, that will help to address the sort of thing that we have had in the past.
We have large farmers in our country, compared with some of the others, but in fact it is the small farmers who do not tend to collaborate so much. I think the larger farmers tend to be very professional in what they are doing, and they are looking at this as a business arrangement, as opposed to the smaller farmers, who want to do things themselves. The evidence I have seen basically says that we need to target smaller farmers probably more than we do the larger farmers.
George Eustice
Q
Richard Self: I would hope so, yes. But I am not an expert in the dairy industry, so I would need to investigate that further; we are happy to look into that. I have good contacts with our dairy co-operatives and can help feed that into the system.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Richard Self: Increasingly, farmers will have better data on their anticipated crop yields, milk yields or whatever. They can collect that raw data, and farmers can trust their co-operative to handle it in the right way for them. That data is useful and is worth money to others in the supply chain. It is a question of how they can work together to maximise the use of that data for the benefit of the supply chains they are working in.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Richard Self: Obviously, the more data you have across an area—information on yields, or even perhaps on the supply side, on agrochemical use and the anticipated use of crop-protection products—the more it helps you to manage supply and demand going forward, which helps improve efficiency and productivity. Co-operatives are in a really strong place because they are working on behalf of their farmer members, and they can use that data in the right way to help the whole supply chain.
Fay Jones
Q
Richard Self: On risk management, the problem is that you put your crops in the ground or start to produce your animals well ahead, and you do not know what you will get for them. Mechanisms to control those risks against unforeseen events and so on are really important. If they could be built in, that would be very useful. Again, co-operatives have a role in that: you can pool your crops or your fertiliser payments to average out prices within a co-operative. That is the sort of thing that helps to manage risk. If you have a known price for a thing, or you get an average price over a period, you do not get hit hard if the price suddenly goes up or down.
George Eustice
Yes, in the new scheme.
Jake Fiennes: We have the regulatory payment. I hear of calls for up to 30% of existing payments that farmers receive, which is about £200 per hectare. I am certainly not in favour of that, because it will not encourage stakeholders to go into the middle tier and I think you will see a great uptake in the middle tier. On the final tier, which is landscape restoration, whether it is on a catchment basis, if we are going to have sustainable, functional land use, it has to be at scale and deliver all the climate change issues and soil regeneration. All these processes will go into the final tier and, having listened to some of the comments earlier about the smaller farmers not working well together but the bigger ones working better, we are seeing a great uptake of facilitation funds and cluster groups. This whole movement is happening. I would not encourage the lower payment to be a major factor, because we would basically go back to a reverse BPS system.
Jim Egan: My way of answering that would be to look at the fact that in the majority of lowland England, if you split it that way, you will find farmers taking up more than you think, if it is properly rewarded, if it is linked in by the rest of the industry and it is linked together. You quite commonly talk to farmers now who take out anything between 5% and 15% of their land to manage it “for the environment” and also recognise the real benefits of changing what they do: introducing grass lanes to help with grass weed control and to build soil fertility, which helps with cleaner water and so on.
I agree wholeheartedly with Jake that there is a sea change coming. A lot of people stood back, because of the political uncertainty, but they are ready for that. The higher extremes you referenced, such as peat restoration, will be a focus in an area where it can happen, getting those landowners together and talking about it. It will take time. I do not think they are completely divorced and different.
On woodland, it will fit when people start to see natural capital, particularly the natural capital potential of their land, and they have choices of what to do. Then woodland will start to happen, especially where you can get people working together and you can make the links. I would be positive about that.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Graeme Willis: In terms of maintaining standards, we are very concerned—I know that statements have been made about supporting high standards—that undercutting those standards through imports would undermine farmers’ incomes, as well as their ability to perform environmental management. I know that an amendment previously tabled to the Bill sought to introduce a broad requirement that any international trade agreement that was to be ratified must be compliant with UK standards. We think that is a major omission and one of the major things that needs to be addressed in the legislation. We have a common cause with the whole of the farming sector on that. The whole of the NGO environmental sector takes that view. It is a very important element and condition.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Jim Egan: Regarding possible current uptake this year, I have always been positive, and I have been proved wrong, year on year, as I am often told by DEFRA’s agri-environment group. This year, in particular, people have heard for a long time that BPS will start going down. They have seen their neighbours’ farms going into the simplified scheme, although not in huge numbers. I work with a company that provides agronomy advice, and the agronomists are starting to understand it.
The weather this year in the east midlands, my patch of the country, has meant that there are farms with no combinable crops in the ground at all—not 5% or 10%, but none. That has made people think. It has made people think about sustainable income streams, support, unproductive areas and what they could do differently. There is a whole raft of different things. There is also a question of who sells it. If you sell it directly and positively, people will do it. If you are negative and you harp on about late payments and so on, the meeting will leave you. I tend to be positive about it. Perhaps that is why I have a long list of people wanting to work with it.
Jake Fiennes: When you put economically sustainable agriculture to a farmer, he may have had 47 years of being paid just to produce food, irrespective of the quality, quantity and yield he produces on his land. They must realign their business. If we see this transition period take place as of next year, some famers will lose anything from 5% to 20% of their support income.
Agri-environment helps them through the transition period financially, but it also gets them to understand. At the moment, farmers lack good agricultural environmental advice. That is what we don’t see enough of: advice on the ground. Farmers are a particularly fickle community. They are wary of individuals they do not know, so the advice has to come from individuals with whom they have had previous relationships, whether through their agronomy, because we are seeing agronomy become more open to environmental delivery, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Groups throughout the country, or Natural England, which changed the game of agri-environment 20 years ago. The advice on the ground is key.
If farmers are sold an economic reason and then have an ability to deliver the environmental goods, whatever they may be, through sound advice, we will see greater uptake. The reason we had the stop-start scenario with agri-environment was, as Jim referred to, late payments—“Am I going to get paid for it?”—or commodity prices. We have seen the volatility in commodity prices. If I am getting £200 a tonne for my milling wheat, why do I need to go to an agri-environment scheme when I have already invested in the men, the machinery and the infrastructure to deliver that crop? It is an evolving, moving process, but they are definitely coming more on board with it.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Jim Egan: I think there is underlying capacity out there. There are enough people to do it. There will be a change of mindset in some sectors, but bear in mind that business is seeing some of the opportunities here as well. Jake is right: it needs to be somebody the farmer trusts—there is a wide range of advisers trusted by farmers—and the advisers need to believe in the scheme. Many advisers have not sold environmental work for the past five years, because they do not believe in the scheme; they do not want to put their name on the line when the payments are late, and when the agreement does not turn up for a year after you have entered into it.
You should not underestimate the impact that that has, because if your adviser walks up the drive and says, “I can’t put my name to that, because I can’t advise you about that future income and part of your business,” it puts people off. We are starting to get a lot of certainty now about stewardship. I know it will change and evolve, but we need that certainty of scheme and of process. The advice is there; people just need to believe in it.
Mr Goodwill
Q
Graeme Willis: Referring to uplands, we have signed a letter to say that we want peatland burning to end rapidly, and the Committee on Climate Change has taken the same view. I want those landscapes to be managed in a re-wetted form, which might help different forms of game. It might not be the same kinds of game management.
Miss Dines
Q
Jim Egan: I think it can be achieved. The current example of facilitation funds in cluster groups is an absolute classic for that type of farming. I think that there is a facilitation fund in your constituency; there is certainly one not far away. Those farmers could come together. I am not a believer in “one farm, one advice”. If there are six people who farm together with smaller farming units who want to go into a scheme, and will achieve better environmental outputs if they all work together, we can give one set of advice to all of them.
We need to think really differently about where we are going now. It is not just about one-to-one advice; it is about one-to-six advice. It is about, when you put the scheme together, providing the training to those six to implement the measures. I think that it is completely affordable, and it works. We just need to think differently about how we put these things together.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Graeme Willis: On where those targets are expressed, we know that the Environment Bill has been laid before Parliament. The relationship between the Agriculture Bill, the Environment Bill and all the other policy instruments is very interesting, and remains to be resolved. If you had gone in the right order, it might have been that you had the Environment Bill, then the 25-year environment plan, and then the Agriculture Bill, because the main funding mechanism seems to be environmental land management, which would deliver on the kind of targets that you set through the 25-year plan. That can be established through the legislation in the Environment Bill.
I am not sure whether it is right to put a target in this Bill at the moment—it may be a commitment by the Minister—but I think there is a possibility of introducing further regulation that might address that. Obviously, there is the Environment Bill. One of the complicated issues is whether the Agriculture Bill could reference the Environment Bill, because it has not received Royal Assent. There is a question about how we address targets, and whether that is set out through the Office for Environmental Protection, for example. It is a complicated relationship.
I think that the situation has changed, and therefore what the Agriculture Bill is able to do, and the amount of funding that comes forward to deliver on those targets, is critical. Clarity about the long-term funding arrangements is therefore very important, as well as how those would seek to address the climate change issue.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Graeme Willis: A target for the sector would be very interesting. I know that the NFU has come up with its own leadership statement of a 2040 target. It would be interesting for the sector. I would flag up that when emissions from agriculture are referenced they are land use, land-use change and forestry emissions, which relate to agriculture. Peatland use, particularly, is not mentioned, which is very high indeed—particularly on lowland peat. Those need to be factored in. It is of great concern that those do not get mentioned adequately. I think there are powers within the Bill to address those.
I suspect that if you had sector targets for agriculture you would argue for targets for other sectors. I am not sure whether those are in place. In the agriculture sector, I think that there will be ambition, given the right funding, to do a lot more on climate change, certainly in terms of locking carbon up in soils, where it belongs, rather than losing it to the air. There is great potential for that.
Mr Goodwill
Q
Jake Fiennes: There could be a technical mechanism relating to tenant’s dilapidations from the landlord’s perspective. The landlord could seek to recoup that if he was going to devalue the land by taking those future payments away. There is a technical mechanism that allows that to happen. That strengthens the landlord’s ability to retain that land to rent to others or to new entrants. It is important that there is some kind of mechanism within the Bill for that. Potentially there would be land abandonment because it has no value, or we would see deep intensification of land areas that have no support mechanism. Then we are trying to deliver environmental land management on a landscape scale, and we have these blackspots in between with no support mechanism. That would be my concern.
George Eustice
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: We would totally agree, as the CLA, that this move is the right move. We have been a proponent of moving towards payment for public good for a while now. The Bill is welcome. We also welcome the inclusion of soil quality, for example, and the consideration of sustainable food production and food security in the Bill. The fact that there is now going to be a multi-annual framework for financial assistance is also important, as is assistance for productivity improvement.
Regarding what we would want to see, there are two main aspects, as well as a number of other improvements, which I might talk about later. One is making sure that the transition is right. At the moment, we are missing information, not just about what is going to happen next year, but about residual payments for individual businesses over the rest of the transition years. We are missing the kinds of details about ELMS that will make it possible for those businesses to make decisions about where they want to take their business, and in particular, of course, about payment rates. In the absence of those details, and given the uncertainty in trading conditions, we would like the start of the transition period to be pushed back by one year without moving the start of ELMS.
The other issue that we have is about trade standards, which the NFU and others have spoken about. We certainly share their concerns.
George Dunn: I would take you back a little bit, Minister, and just say that we need to be really careful. Despite the fact that there is a great deal of criticism of the CAP, and the way in which the basic payment scheme operates and its impact on rents, we need to be clear that those payments are being received by individual farms right up and down the country that are doing the right things on the environment, animal welfare, consumer safety and all those issues. If we simply remove the BPS payment without properly thinking through the changes that we need to make, we risk the good work that we are doing. That is why we have been saying that we are making changes for a generation, and they need to be done well rather than quickly, so we support the CLA’s stance on delaying the transition. We think that we have concertinaed the work on ELMS, for example, too much to try to bring that forward into a sensible place.
Also, while we support the general move towards public payments for public goods, we see that move alongside the productivity elements, which we believe are really important as well. The Bill has a couple of lines on productivity, but we want to see much more about how that can work alongside creating resilience within farm businesses. There are also the trading elements and ensuring that we are not undercut by cheap imports from abroad, produced to standards that are illegal here; the fair dealing practices; and the issue of access to the tenanted sector. Schedule 3 goes some way towards addressing that sector, but it needs a little bit of work.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: The main one, as I said—I will not labour the point—is the delay in the start of the transition. It also seems to us that a couple of other things would be improved if they were done differently. For example, the multi-annual framework for financial assistance is five years. I can see why it has been done like that, but that means that it is at risk of being entangled with the political and election cycles. As far as I know, farmers in the EU—which is going to be our closest competitor—will still have seven years to plan. That is closer to the business cycle in agriculture, so we would favour lengthening the period covered by the multi-annual financial assistance framework.
The other thing that could be added to the Bill is a provision on rural development and, in particular, socioeconomic funding schemes. In the new world, that is going to be done via the UK shared prosperity fund, but that is not due to arrive until 2022 at the earliest. What would happen if that got delayed, or got into other difficulties? We would like to see some provision to make sure that it is possible for Government to continue socioeconomic schemes.
Those are two important improvements. We would also want to make sure that any moneys that are recouped from direct payment, particularly in the early part of the transitions, are used for productivity and ELMS pilots and do not go back to the Treasury.
George Dunn: We agree on the issue of trade standards. We think we need to nail that wholly into the Bill to ensure that we are not undercutting our high standards here and offshoring our issues abroad.
While there have been some helpful statements from the Government, we are concerned about some of the rhetoric that appears to be emerging, particularly from the Prime Minister’s Greenwich speech, where there was an indication that we would not necessarily insist on our laws being protected in trade deals, which is rather worrying. Of course we were also promised free and frictionless trade with the EU on leaving the European Union, but we hear the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster saying today that we need to prepare for issues at the border when we end our implementation period.
On the fair dealing section of the Bill, we should nail down the fact that that should be regulated by the Groceries Code Adjudicator. The Bill leaves it hanging as to who should be the regulator. There is a suggestion that the Rural Payments Agency has a role to play; I would disagree. As the CLA has said, we need a delay in the transition period by one year, which will give us sufficient time to think about these things more deeply.
The access for tenants to schemes needs to be addressed, because schedule 3 to the Bill provides a provision only on a “may” basis. We want it to be a “must” basis that the authorities come forward with regulations. Currently, that applies only to the 1986 Act tenants, not the 1995 Act tenants. As that is half the tenanted sector in agriculture in England, we think that should be changed.
On the food security section, we want the report to be annual, not five yearly. Finally, in the financial assistance plans, the missing thing is the word “financial”. There is no commitment to say what the finances are going to be in any one year over the five-year period. That needs to be nailed into those plans as well.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
George Dunn: There is nothing in the Bill that will affect the lengths of tenancies per se. Obviously there is the welcome inclusion of soil health within the public payments for public goods element of the Bill, which might encourage people to go for longer tenancies, depending on how the ELMS fits into that, but there is nothing specific that will do anything about the lengths of tenancies.
The Tenancy Reform Industry Group made a suggestion, because one of the things that landlords are concerned about is how they get land back if the tenant goes into breach. We are not interested in protecting tenants who are in breach. If we had easier-to-use provisions that allowed landlords to take land back if they had let for a long period of time, that might make them freer to do that.
There is also a need to look at the taxation framework, which goes beyond the Bill, but we hope that the Chancellor might say something about that on 11 March.
Judicaelle Hammond: Interestingly enough, we would support the introduction of provisions that enabled landlords, as you might expect, to get possession of the land in the case of breach. The question for us is whether there should be a threshold on that. Our answer would be that two years or more would be better than any arbitrary longer threshold. That is certainly an additional provision that we could support if there were not an arbitrary threshold.
George Dunn: Our view would be that there would be no public policy use for such a short-term clause. If we are looking at longer tenancies, we need to find a way of encouraging them, so it needs to apply to tenancies that are of 10 years or more.
Danny Kruger
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: It is really important to understand that, in most cases, we would expect agreement to be found. I think the reason why we do not like one of the particular provisions in schedule 3, which has to do with arbitration in case of disputes, is that at the moment it very much looks at the interests of the tenants, who might be gaining financially quite a lot, without necessarily having a balance of the interest of the landlord.
I will give you a few examples of why landlords might withhold consent. It might be about landscape protection. For example, the National Trust will have properties where they want to make sure that the landscape continues to be enjoyed as it is. Or it might be that something does not fit with the business planned for the whole of the holding—in particular, if you are looking at other areas of the holding that are currently in hand or are farmed by somebody else, which might be better suited to planting trees, because trees cannot grow very well in all places. Or it might be about putting buildings on land in order to create new activities.
As drafted, the schedule would mean that, in the case of a dispute, it would go to an arbitrator, and then the decision is binding on the landlord. That means that there could be really long-term and possibly irreversible decisions being imposed on the landlord. We see that as a really fundamental infringement of property rights, and that worries us. It is the absence of balance that worries us.
Agriculture Bill
Daniel Zeichner ExcerptsMonday 3rd February 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
There we have it—an Agriculture Bill that is not really about food or public good; without public voice; an open door for our food producers to be sold out in a trade deal with Trump; and English farmers put at disadvantage compared with other nations in the UK, while doing too little to tackle the climate emergency. No wonder farmers will be here in droves on 25 March. I hope that Government Back Benchers heed that last call and wake up to the problem, because the Opposition are not prepared to sell out English farmers, workers and our countryside.
Yes, of course we want public money to be used to buy environmental benefits, and we have argued for reform for decades, but the Bill needs massive improvement. It needs deeds, not worthy aspiration, and a much tougher Environment Bill alongside it to make sure that it works.
We have heard seven maiden speeches tonight, and a number of Members had the delicate task of paying tribute to somewhat troublesome predecessors. It is quite a list they had to deal with—Ken Clarke, John Bercow, Heidi Allen and Oliver Letwin—but they all managed that delicate task with great tact and grace. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) paid full tribute to her predecessor, Albert Owen, which is much appreciated by the Opposition. She invited the Secretary of State to the Anglesey show. The right hon. Lady is unable to attend, but I am sure that shadow Ministers are willing to oblige. The hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) had the best line of the night, about fake shoes. The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) had a list of sporting heroes that any constituency would be proud to borrow, especially Cambridge United, which could do with Jimmy Johnstone or John Robertson. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) delivered a speech that was probably every Cambridge leftie’s nightmare, but we could agree on one point: we do not want the Oxford-Cambridge expressway. The hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) took us on a tour of the most beautiful parts of the west country, and tactfully reminded the Government of the NFU’s ambition to achieve net zero by 2040. My near neighbour, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), highlighted the hugely important role of life sciences, and many of the wonderful institutions that abut the city of Cambridge. We have a slightly different take on the European Union, but I am sure that we can work together on the future of life sciences. Finally, the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) gave a delicate account of the status of the Cerne Abbas giant, and it was deftly delivered.
While we can all agree in the House on the need to shift financial assistance in the way proposed in the Bill towards the principle of public money for public good, particularly to help those who work our land to restore and improve the natural environment, it is worth briefly reflecting on why the CAP was needed in the first place. Historians will be well aware of the cycles of dearth and plenty that afflicted previous generations, with miserable and long agricultural depressions still living in the memory when I moved to eastern England over 40 years ago.
The CAP was intended to deliver stability of food supplies and security for farmers, and it did what it said on the tin, but it was of its time, had unintended consequences and has come at huge environmental cost. It is right that we now reshape our own agricultural systems to meet the new challenge. But there is a glaring omission, as has been pointed out. While supporting greater environmental, animal welfare and production standards at home, the Bill does absolutely nothing to prevent food products with lower standards than our domestic products from being imported in future trade deals. Without any legal commitment protecting us against that, the door is wide open to products such as American hormone-injected beef, chlorinated chicken and so on flooding our markets. Statements and manifesto commitments from the Government saying that they will not allow such lower standards are nothing but warm words. Just look at what US Secretary of State Pompeo made clear last week—the US Administration want this as part of any future trade deal.
We heard from the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that it concluded in its scrutiny report of the previous Bill that the Government should put their money where their mouth is and accept an amendment to the Agriculture Bill stipulating that food products imported as part of any future trade deal should meet or exceed British standards. There is an unprecedented coalition of agreement on this, as 62 farming and environmental organisations wrote to the Prime Minister just last week, urging him to amend the Agriculture Bill with this guarantee, and farmers are planning to rally outside Westminster to press the point. Labour simply cannot support the Bill without that cast-iron guarantee, which is why we have tabled our reasoned amendment.
There have been some improvements. Thanks to the work of farming and environmental organisations, there have been some positive changes. The inclusion of soil quality as a public good is particularly important given that our soil fertility is in decline. The reforms to agricultural tenancies and the new requirement in relation to multi-annual plans are also welcome. But in what is essentially a Bill about food production, we find ourselves asking, “Where is the focus on food?” As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) made clear, the Bill contains no clear vision for the future of the nation’s food supply and no commitment to protecting the people of this country from food poverty. There is no recognition of the production of food as a public good, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) explained so powerfully.
For all its faults, the CAP was at least focused on ensuring stability of food supplies and prices. All this Bill does is require the Government to have regard to encouraging the production of food in an environmentally sustainable way. We have to ask whether the Bill actually matches up to the scale of the environmental and climate crisis that we are facing. At the moment, I think the answer is no. There is no duty for Ministers to do anything, and crucially there are no targets for the agriculture sector to reach net zero emissions—points powerfully made by my hon. Friends the Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) and for Nottingham East. There are no provisions to secure the high baseline standards of farming and land management that we are going to need, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) powerfully stated in a particularly thoughtful speech. That is particularly important if we are going to tackle the ecological crisis that we are facing, including standards for those agricultural actors who choose not to engage with the environmental land management schemes.
By granting the Secretary of State mainly powers rather than duties, the Bill leaves farmers in the dark as to how and when the Government will implement the supply chain provisions included in the Bill that are designed to secure a fairer price for farmers for the food they produce. Where is the advice and support for farmers to help them in the transition? The Bill is silent on protections for workers, lacks overall vision for the future of rural communities and misses key opportunities to support agroecology. And then there is the question of whether the key provisions in the Bill will actually work, how quickly and successfully a new system of ELMS will be brought into operation, and the key matter of handling the devolved issues, which was raised very effectively by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). We should remember that there will be different approaches in the different nations; while England will go down one path, Scotland and Wales will take a different one.
So there we have it—the Bill is 14 months late, and there is ultimately no plan for food and no plan for public goods, and there are standards that will be unachievable if they are open to being undercut. It is a policy devised by some very clever people in Notting Hill; I think the House probably knows who they are, and, quite frankly, one has to wonder whether any of them has ever been on a farm. But the good news is that the Government can start making progress, by committing tonight to our amendment to guard against imports with lower standards. They do not even have to agree with the Opposition. They just need to agree with themselves, because the Secretary of State has made the promise and it is in the Conservative manifesto. Our challenge to the Government is: put it into law. If the Government do not want to listen to me, they can listen to the president of the NFU, the chief executives of the British Poultry Council, the National Sheep Association and the RSPCA, and the Chair of the EFRA Committee, who are all saying the same: put it into law.
I extend a welcoming hand to Government Members, and ask them to join us in standing up for the English countryside. They may not know this, but it is not just the Women’s Institute who sing “Jerusalem”; it has always been a Labour anthem. We will defend our green and pleasant land, and Government Members can help us to do it: put the amendment into law. Today is the first big post-Brexit test for the Government. I fear they are about to flunk it.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill
Daniel Zeichner ExcerptsTuesday 28th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 28th January 2020 - (28 Jan 2020)
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I am sure the whole House is grateful to the Minister for his extended and detailed account of clause 1. It was a gentle rural ramble that suddenly finished with a sprint, so a cynic might imagine that the Government have finished drafting their statement on Huawei, but that would be a very cynical view.
The Opposition have of course enjoyed the great interest shown by Government Members this afternoon. After listening to some of the comments, I hope that there have been no misunderstandings, because I think I heard at one point a suggestion that the CAP was going to be used to pay farmers for not producing anything, when of course that is the whole thrust of this Government’s policies. I hope that Government Members will look closely at what the Government are suggesting.
The Opposition, of course, support this Bill and the direction of travel, because there is a clear funding gap between the ending of direct payments to farmers under the CAP and the Government’s considerably delayed Agriculture Bill, which will set out the new system of payments from 2021. We fully appreciate the need for financial security for farmers in the interim, but we have several continuing concerns about this Bill, because it has been rushed to make up for the fact that the Government have lost the last 14 months to delays and wrangling and have reintroduced the Agriculture Bill just days before we leave the European Union. Unsurprisingly, farmers are anxious, and of course the urgent environmental action that we need at a time of climate crisis is also being delayed.
In this last-minute rush to fill the legislative gap, there have been several missed opportunities and a number of proposals that cut corners on the parliamentary scrutiny of which they are worthy. Our surviving amendments challenge the need for Ministers to take the direct powers included in the Bill by too often using the negative or made affirmative procedure. It was a delight to hear the Minister at one point extolling the virtues of full scrutiny, and I very much hope that he will be able to transfer that thought into support for our amendments.
In clause 3(1)(a), the Government stipulate that the regulations to remedy any deficiencies in EU law being retained in the Bill will be subject to the made affirmative procedure, and so will be decided and implemented without parliamentary debate, which we think is wrong. Clause 6(1) contains a broad Henry VIII power that would effectively allow the Secretary of State to make any regulations they deemed appropriate as a consequence of the Bill—a wide approach that has been made subject to the negative resolution procedure, which allows for no parliamentary scrutiny of the decisions being made. That comes despite the Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee having said that any Henry VII power included when changing primary legislation should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure to allow proper debate.
We appreciate that swift action might be needed in both cases, and we continue to be supportive, but we are simply making the argument, which the Minister made himself, that there should be the opportunity to scrutinise such further regulations properly, which of course is a legitimate role of this House.
With reference to schedule 2, amendment 8 deals with clause 3(1)(a) and amendment 10 relates to clause 6(1), to subject both clauses to the affirmative resolution procedure to allow for proper debate. Amendment 9 is linked to amendments 8 and 10. I stress again that we offer those amendments in a constructive spirit. We want the new Agriculture Bill to work to incentivise a whole range of public goods in return for public money, but the urgency of the need for this change in our farm payments system cannot come at the expense of unnecessary ministerial power grabs.
Clause 3(8) is a sunset clause, and we think there was a missed opportunity here to allow greater certainty for farmers. The key question that we ask people to consider is the Bill’s relationship with the Agriculture Bill and whether we are giving farmers sufficient certainty while we await the passage of the latter. Without prefiguring the discussions around the Agriculture Bill, we know that it will be highly controversial, because we do not see any guarantees from the Government that, in post-Brexit trade deals, they will guard against imports of food produced to lower standards than our own. That is a very big debate—many organisations stressed the point strongly in a letter to the Government at the weekend, and whether there will be a great future for British agriculture depends on the defending of standards. The matter is not likely to be resolved quickly and will likely be a protracted issue in any negotiations with the USA. One would have to be a great optimist to assume that the situation will necessarily be resolved in detail by the end of the year.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Gentleman gets to the nub of the argument about equivalence, animal welfare and general agricultural standards. Notwithstanding the fact that the negotiation will be detailed and probably tricky at times, does he take any comfort at all from the words of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Minister of State and, indeed, other Government spokesmen about the starting point from which they begin, namely that there will be equivalence and that our markets will not be swamped? I represent a very rural constituency, and this matter is a worry for me—he will remember that from previous agriculture Bill proceedings—but I am certainly taking great comfort from what those on the Treasury Bench are saying.
Daniel Zeichner
I am sure that we will return to this issue over the coming weeks and months. We hear what the Government say, but the simple way of resolving the matter would be to put something into the Bill, which is what many people would like to see. The point in this context is that we would all agree that this is not easy. It may well take time, and it will be difficult.
Alongside the potential delays, the National Audit Office has pointed to teething problems with the Government’s planned environmental land management schemes, which are terribly important to how our rural areas will be supported in future. Added to the 14-month delay to the Agriculture Bill, the Opposition are simply not convinced that everything will be in place for the new farming payment system by the end of the year.
We want to see an urgent shift to a payment system that rewards public goods, environmental protection and welfare standards, but there is a danger of continuing uncertainty for farmers who will have to make decisions in just a few months’ time about their plans for the following year. If the introduction of the new payment system is delayed, it is imperative that a continuation mechanism is in place in this Bill.
The new Agriculture Bill proposes powers to extend direct payments in future, so we will doubtless discuss those powers at that point, but the fact remains that, as we stand here today, that Bill has not even had its Second Reading. We are starting with this Bill, and we believe it would have been wiser for the Government to have re-examined the sunset clause to allow the possibility of extending the provision of direct payments to farmers beyond 2020 in the event of any delay. That would have given confidence and, frankly, would have reflected what many of us think is likely to happen anyway.
Tim Farron
The hon. Gentleman is making some important points. As things stand, we are certain that the BPS will begin to be phased out in 12 months’ time, and there is a possibility that we will have the environmental land management scheme by 2028. In principle, he and I probably agree that scheme is a good thing but, in practice, it does not yet exist. Does he agree there is a danger that, in the seven-year transition, we will lose many of the farmers we need to deliver those public goods?
Daniel Zeichner
I suspect that discussion will continue, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As I said on Second Reading, we have replaced the certainty in the system. The only certainty we have now is of future uncertainty, which makes it extremely difficult for people who are planning ahead.
The Government have expressed total confidence that a further period of direct payments will not be needed. I wonder whether we will be having this discussion again in a year’s time. They are absolutely confident that there will be no further delays and, frankly, we hope they are right, but if they are not, I suspect we and others will be quick to remind them of the problems they caused by failing to prioritise safeguards in such an extension.
Another missed opportunity is the exclusion of measures to provide potential compensation to those farmers who have faced, and likely will face, delays to their payments. I cannot help noticing that the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) made this point, and I am sure she will happily support us when we return to this topic in future.
Although the Government have rightly lauded the efforts of the Rural Payments Agency to pay farmers on time this year, I am afraid we are all well aware of the previous difficulties, poor performance and delayed payments in its management of direct payments to farmers.
Of course, it is not only about the Rural Payments Agency’s past performance. Look at what it is facing now: there is a real risk that it will be diverted by planning ahead for changes next year while we enter this period of uncertainty about our post-Brexit trade negotiations and the complex provisions of the Agriculture Bill. The danger is that we will find late payments building up again at precisely the time when farmers will most need financial certainty. A sensible response to that threat would have been to make provisions to enable farmers to be compensated if they suffered hardship or financial loss because of a delay in payments under this Bill. I hope the Government will duly consider a compensation mechanism for any such delays.
Several hon. Members rose—
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill
Daniel Zeichner ExcerptsTuesday 21st January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to wind up for the Opposition on the very wide-ranging debate that we have had. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) about some of our predecessors in the shadow Front-Bench team: the former shadow Secretary of State, Sue Hayman; my good friend and near neighbour, Sandy Martin; and the inestimable David Drew. As Members may note, we have suffered a few casualties along the way, which is why I find myself at the Dispatch Box today.
Some may have thought that this Bill seemed like a warm-up lap for the Agriculture Bill, which we will be coming back to. However, we have had some excellent contributions, including three hon. Members making their first speeches in this House. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) gave a very exciting and vivid account of a beautiful constituency, speaking about the importance of tourism and farming to its economy, the huge cultural contribution it has made, and the very important contribution made by the military. We heard another moving account from the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan)—witty, but also with quite a political sting in the tail that I am sure will be noted by many.
We also heard from the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), mark 2. I echo much of what the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said in his thoughtful speech, but particularly his words about the hon. Gentleman. He was a Minister early in my time here, but he was, I think, a highly regarded Minister. Although it is not customary for Labour Members to welcome some people back, I think he knows what I am getting at. It was an excellent speech very much painting the picture of a lovely constituency.
Alongside those speeches, we had a number of very powerful contributions, including perhaps some warnings from the Conservative Benches that there are certain views about these issues, particularly the importance of producing food in our agricultural system, the difficulties around currency fluctuations, and some of the difficulties around the Rural Payments Agency. I was particularly struck by the contribution from the former Chair, and aspiring Chair, of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who spoke in his customary wide-ranging style across the whole range of issues. He made some telling points, particularly about the complexities of the stewardship schemes that the future models may well be based on, and—most importantly of all, as we heard from others as well—the issue of standards, which I suspect will dominate the debates ahead.
Looking back to the election campaign, I cannot help but reflect on the fact that, throughout, the Prime Minister described his plans as being “oven-ready”. I am not sure about his culinary prowess, but looking at this Bill, it seems that the plans have been far from oven-ready. In fact, I would say that the bird was in very, very deep freeze, if not a long way from its conception, because far from being ready to go, the very first thing this Government are doing is introducing legislation to make sure that nothing changes. All that excitement about 31 January, and nothing changes—you really couldn’t make it up.
But on this point we actually do agree with the Government; I think we can all agree on it: financial certainty for our farmers as the Government take us out of the European Union is extremely important. That is why this Bill matters and why we will be supporting it today. There is a clear funding gap between the ending of direct payments to farmers under the CAP and the Government’s only-just-reintroduced Agriculture Bill, which will introduce a new system. That Bill, as we have heard, has been languishing on the sidelines for over 14 months. The question has to be asked: why the delay? Why the 14 months of inactivity, indecision and uncertainty, with payments not set to begin until 2021? So while it may not be desirable, it is right that farmers should not have to be made to pay for this Government’s shortcomings and that this Bill be brought forward to continue CAP direct payments for this year. Of course, not much has been said to farmers about what the future is going to look like. Last summer’s five-page glossy document, “Farming is changing” was a fairly brief account, frankly, and for people who are planning on a longer-term cycle, how difficult that must be.
Before raising a few points of detail about the Bill, let me say that people across the world know that we are facing a climate emergency and environmental crisis. It may be an unfortunate add-on for some Members, but we also know that modern destructive agricultural practices are, in some cases, contributing to this. In the past year, oceans have recorded the hottest temperatures on record, and insects and farmland birds have continued to decline. The result of the Government dropping the ball on this is that we are still years away from moving to a system in the UK where farmers are paid and supported to protect our environment, and we are now legislating for another stop-gap year of the CAP, which, as has been acknowledged, was simply not designed to address these important environmental issues.
The Government could have been bolder and used this Bill to fast-forward some of the environmental land management pilots that are set to replace the CAP. But as the National Audit Office’s report, “Early review of the new farming programme”, has shown, these are far from ready to go. The Government’s plan, as outlined in the Agriculture Bill, is for a three-year pilot of the ELMs to start in 2021, but it seems that DEFRA’s ambition for the level of take-up expected has already been scaled back. It was initially planned for 5,000 farmers to sign up by the end of the first year of the pilot in 2022, but that is now reduced to just 1,250. As we have heard, there are very many questions around the environmental land management schemes to which answers will need to be found to ensure that they succeed, not least whether the reduced pilot that is being talked about will provide sufficiently robust evidence across the full range of farm types and locations to properly inform the development of the new payment system. These are all points that we will develop at the Second Reading and Committee stages of the Agriculture Bill.
We welcome the key recommendations of the Bew review, which are being applied in the Bill to address some historical inequalities that we have seen in the distribution of EU funding. That clearly disadvantaged some areas, particularly Scotland and Wales. Again, however, it is disappointing that the extra funds that the Government have found for this are not being used more quickly for environmental purposes. I draw attention to a couple of points in the Bew review. Its second wider observation was:
“Ministers should try to avoid giving farmers in any one part of the UK an unfair competitive advantage when deciding future allocations.”
That point was raised by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). In their response, the Government acknowledge that post-2022 funding should avoid unfair competitive advantage, but quite frankly, it is very unclear what measures they intend to take to address this conundrum. Perhaps the Minister could clarify.
It is also unclear what the Government’s answer is to the review’s third wider observation, which advocates financially recognising both
“the social value of upland farming in particular and the challenges facing those practising it”.
In their response, the Government skirt around this issue. They do recognise the
“vital role upland farmers play as stewards of the countryside and the range of social benefits that they contribute.”
Some clarity on that would also be welcome. Do the Government agree with Bew on the social value of upland farming? What do they see as those “social benefits”? Again, could the Minister clarify?
Unsurprisingly, many farmers continue to be concerned about their future funding. The CAP undeniably had many flaws, and there is no doubt that environmental degradation in the past few decades has been severe. Indeed, I dug out a dog-eared copy of Labour’s rural White Paper from November 2000—I suspect the Minister is far too young to remember it. Even then, Labour was warning that:
“Subsidies which simply reward production have damaged the countryside and stifled innovation.”
What the CAP did do over many years, however, was give some financial certainty. As the Government push forward with the Agriculture Bill and a post-Brexit trade stance still swathed in unanswered questions, that is in danger of being replaced with the certainty of constant uncertainty. For this year at least, farmers and the rural economy are being spared that because, effectively, the CAP continues.
How ironic that the very first act of the Big Ben bongers is to keep things the same. Our fear is that far from bells of liberation ringing through parishes across our countryside, the real danger is that not a lot will happen nearly quickly enough. If things prove as complicated as seems likely, and the Government do not move swiftly on the Agriculture Bill, we may well find ourselves revisiting a sunset clause in this Bill and looking at a continuation of the current CAP direct payments yet again.
In conclusion, we support these proposals, although there will be much more to say when it comes to the detail of the Agriculture Bill. However, we do see this Bill as an early warning that the Government have already wasted years, and have moved too slowly and with insufficient urgency to tackle the key climate and environmental issues that we all now face.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rebecca Pow
Chalk streams are some of our most precious environments, so this is a serious issue. The Environment Agency is advising HS2 Ltd and its contractors on mitigating the potential impact of its work on water levels and the quality of chalk streams, including when it comes to water usage for tunnelling in the Chilterns. The Environment Agency will be reviewing any application for increased abstraction in line with the relevant abstraction management strategy to ensure that there is no detrimental effect on chalk streams. I take this matter very seriously and would be happy to meet my right hon. Friend to discuss this further because chalk streams are so important and it is important that we get this right.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, thank you for turning the pronunciation of challenging surnames into an art form in itself—although I have to say that my campaign to be called in reverse alphabetical order continues.
The River Cam is fed by chalk streams. In July this year, it fell to a third of its normal level, which has caused huge concern not just in Cambridge, but in the surrounding county. This has happened largely due to over-abstraction. What can the Minister to do to assure us that that is going to be tackled with urgency?
Rebecca Pow
The issue with chalk streams, of course, is that they are fed by groundwater from aquifers; they are very special areas of water extraction. There is going to be a section in the Environment Bill on abstraction licences. I hope that when that gets going and we have proper discussions about that Bill, it will include some ameliorations for chalk streams.
Restoring Nature and Climate Change
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 254607 relating to restoring nature and climate change.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and an honour to introduce the petition on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is timely because of the climate crisis we face, but also because it is a hot topic in Ambridge at the moment, for those who listen to “The Archers”. That is always a useful barometer for a certain part of public opinion.
The petition, which calls for natural climate solutions, such as rewilding, to be enacted to tackle the climate emergency, has been signed by around 110,000 people, including over 650 from my Cambridge constituency. It makes a series of important points and reads:
“Restore nature on a massive scale to help stop climate breakdown.
To avoid a climate emergency we need to act fast.
Rewilding and other natural climate solutions can draw millions of tonnes of CO2 out of the air through restoring and protecting our living systems. We call on the UK Government to make a bold financial and political commitment to nature’s recovery.
We need to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate breakdown. To do this we need both to reduce carbon emissions and to remove carbon from the atmosphere. By drawing down carbon, nature’s recovery can help us reach net carbon zero.
We have a chance for the UK to become a world leader in natural climate solutions. Those who manage our land and sea play a pivotal role and should be supported to come together to deliver carbon reductions.”
I doubt many—or even any—of us here would disagree with much in that statement. It is a topic that chimes with the public mood over the last year. From the school climate strikes, the Extinction Rebellion protests and many more related campaigns, it is clear that stopping climate breakdown is at the top of the agenda for many people.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this wonderful debate with his magic power. More people in Huddersfield than in Ambridge signed the petition. Does he agree that we need more action from this Government and from the Opposition parties? Climate change is now. We must not put noughts on. We need the northern forest, millions of trees planted and so much more. Does he agree that this is an emergency and we have got to act now?
Daniel Zeichner
Strangely enough, I agree, as my hon. Friend will find as I go through my speech.
We should start with some definitions. I make an introductory caveat; I am not someone who believes that humankind is the cause of all problems, although we cause many. I have always been slightly puzzled by the term “unspoiled” that some people apply to areas untouched by human intervention. There are certainly many—far too many—places that have been spoiled, polluted and harmed, but there are also examples of glorious and wonderful buildings and interventions, where people have achieved works of great beauty.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
In that recognition of where humans can enhance our environment, will the hon. Gentleman join me in paying tribute to the Sussex Wildlife Trust and the wildlife trusts around the country that do so much to support our environment with innovative and practical solutions?
Daniel Zeichner
I suspect that many Members around the Chamber will have worked with their local wildlife trusts and seen the excellent work they do. Just a few weeks ago I was with the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire releasing Nora the hedgehog into the wild, although Nora’s building was not one of the works of art I was about to reference in my great city of Cambridge.
Cambridge is full of fine examples of magnificent buildings and we are proud of them. They are often the work of previous generations, sometimes created in political and economic circumstances that we would not now accept. We can all point to examples across cultures and countries of magnificent interventions. My point is that we are not for or against nature, but with better scientific understanding of our impact on the wider environment, we now have the responsibility to act in a way that does no more harm and, where harm has been caused, take the opportunity to work with natural processes to secure improvement. That is my starting point.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Kent Wildlife Trust, along with others, has a strategy of greening urban areas. Will the hon. Gentleman welcome its initiatives and others, such as that at Luton Junior School, in my constituency, which plans to build a green, living wall to help absorb pollution and improve the future health of the children at the school?
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Lady is correct; I suspect we will be hearing more examples of good work done by other wildlife trusts.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
I will say a word about the role of water and wetlands. The hon. Gentleman will know the example of Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire and about the work that is being done to improve the wetlands towards Anglesey Abbey. We could do with more work like that around the country. In Hertfordshire, our chalk streams are suffering from over-abstraction. Do we not need a policy for water?
Daniel Zeichner
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right. I am about to embark on a tour of wetlands; Wicken Fen will be one of them. This summer we have seen some particular problems with a number of streams drying up, so we need a plan for water.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that show that nature and climate crisis are inextricably linked? The IPBES report says that 1 million species globally are at risk of extinction. Does he agree that nature-based solutions are a fundamental way of stopping climate change and preventing the extinction of species?
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. It is great that we are all paying tribute to our local wildlife trusts; I will put in a word for the wonderful Sussex Wildlife Trust. Does he agree that we need urgent action? Ministers could make a decision right now to ban the burning of blanket bog, ending the release of huge amounts of emissions that could otherwise be captured by peat. When we consider that globally peatlands can store more carbon than rain forests, we need to be doing much more and not burning them.
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Lady is right, as is the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who spoke from a sedentary position. Later in my speech, I will make that point.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is exceedingly generous in taking interventions in this important debate. I pay tribute to the Walthamstow Wetlands—I hope they will be on his tour—and to my local authority, which has planted 5,000 trees in the last year alone in Waltham Forest.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is right when she says that we need to look at what Government can do. Many of us are interested in ideas about carbon pricing and how we can further incentivise rewilding as part of tackling climate change. Frankly, it is not enough to leave it to local communities and local authorities, which do individually brilliant things; in this time of climate emergency, we should ask national Government to incentivise rewilding. Does my hon. Friend have a view on that?
Daniel Zeichner
I had a wonderful day out in Walthamstow with my partner earlier this year, when we came to see some of the wonderful things that have been done there. On the point of urgency, my hon. Friend is right. The conclusion to my speech will lay down the challenge to the Minister about the degree of urgency we face, which I am sure he will respond to.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that any rewilding scheme is far more likely to be successful if it is pursued and taken along with the consent of the local community and local landowners?
Daniel Zeichner
The right hon. Gentleman is right; again, I will make that point in my speech. When we work together with local communities we can achieve much more.
The petition specifically talks about rewilding and natural climate solutions, and I want to draw on a number of examples and points that experts on those subjects have raised with me. The organisation Rewilding Britain describes the issue as being about people reconnecting with nature, wildlife returning and habitats expanding, while communities flourish with new opportunities. That starts from the principle that natural processes drive outcomes, and that rewilding is to go where nature takes it, with long-term benefits for future generations. I will give some examples, beginning close to home.
There are some wonderful long-term projects such as the National Trust’s visionary project to restore wetlands around Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, which has been mentioned. That project has been ably promoted over many years by Tony Juniper, who now chairs Natural England. He is a highly regarded environmentalist. I will mention in passing that he was my Green party opponent in the 2010 general election in Cambridge. We spent a long evening at the count together after he had run a brilliant, vigorous and exciting campaign, which, sadly for him, secured only a few thousand votes, marginally behind me. I came in a disappointing third. I remind colleagues gently that election outcomes are not always exactly as anticipated. Tony has recently written extensively about the social and economic benefits of a nature-centric green new deal, which would unlock benefits such as public health improvements, both physical and mental. It is a programme that I strongly approve of.
However, it is not just land policy that attracts the attention of rewilders. We need to look to the oceans as well.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman has touched on something that is important in our approach to the debate. When we talk about rewilding and climate change, we often talk about the challenges. Would not it sometimes be better to talk about the opportunities, for jobs, the economy and the social fabric?
Daniel Zeichner
I am slightly alarmed at the unanimity that is breaking out in the Chamber today. The hon. Gentleman is right and many of us have noticed that in the last period the green economy has survived times of recession much more effectively than the rest of the economy.
To return to the subject of the oceans, the securing of no-fish zones in oceans can allow marine habitats to recover from the effects of bottom trawling and scallop dredging. An example is the no-take zone in Lamlash bay in Scotland. That is beautifully outlined by Rewilding Britain on its website. The issues are not always straightforward. In my area, the Cambridge Independent reported last week that Cambridgeshire County Council’s goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions is going to be more challenging than originally thought, as peatland emissions will be included in Government calculations from next year. Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange, which strongly advocates nature-based solutions, identified—as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out—that peatland is a significant contributor to CO2 emissions in Cambridgeshire. Adam Barnett of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds tells me that that is a crucial issue. Consequently, the RSPB and other organisations rightly want to ban the burning of peat bogs, which releases carbon and is extremely damaging to the atmosphere. I hope that we shall get a response on that from the Minister. I know that questions have been put to Ministers about it before.
I have mentioned just some of the complex range of issues that there are to consider. The staff serving the Petitions Committee were kind enough to set up an engagement event on the topic in Cambridge last week, and we had an extremely well-informed roundtable with experts in my constituency. I record my thanks to the Clerks to the Committee for their work on it. Our discussion took place at the premises of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative in the iconic David Attenborough building, a conservation campus that is home to organisations that promote the natural world, such as the RSPB, Flora & Fauna International and BirdLife International. There, I was privileged to meet Dr Mike Rands, the executive director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, and Dr Andy Clements, the director of the British Trust for Ornithology, who shared with me their insights on natural restoration. Dr Clements hammered home the point that data and monitoring of natural activity are crucial. We must know the state of affairs to be able to improve it.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend has the great advantage that I have, of having a superb university in his constituency. Are universities, in partnership, doing enough in terms of leadership? I find that many universities do research and do not share with their local communities and groups, or even local government. Could more be done? Of course, many universities, such as Cambridge, are large landowners.
Daniel Zeichner
As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point. The University of Cambridge provides global leadership, but I occasionally point out to it that the link with the local community could be improved. Universities need to be close to their communities.
Sir Oliver Heald
On that point, Professor Sir David King, the former master of Emmanuel College and emeritus professor at Cambridge, who has been the Government’s chief scientific adviser on this, has been a strong advocate of carbon sinks.
Daniel Zeichner
Indeed, Sir David is of course one of my constituents and I happily canvassed him recently. Cambridge is a wonderful place in which to canvass, I assure the House.
Daniel Zeichner
Cambridgeshire is not as flat as all that, if you cycle around. However, in answer to the intervention of the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald)—yes; some important leadership, and extraordinary plans and ideas, are coming from such places as the University of Cambridge, about the dramatic interventions we might make to tackle climate change.
To return to the topic of data, there are many ways in which we can assess what is happening in the world. I was reminded, during the discussion we were having, of the work of immensely important organisations such as the Bumblebee Conservation Trust; its chief executive, the inspiring Gill Perkins, has pointed that out to me before. Its annual “BeeWalk” involves volunteer “BeeWalkers” walking the same fixed route once a month between March and October, counting the bumblebees seen and identifying them by species and caste where possible. That is important, and I suspect we are also all familiar with the hugely popular and important annual RSPB “Big Garden Birdwatch”. Those are just some of the ways in which we can monitor and assess what is going on. As hon. Members have suggested, such public engagement is vital. By encouraging each other to monitor the world around us, we shall, I am convinced, become better informed in our efforts to protect it.
During our discussion in Cambridge, the importance of data and evidence was further highlighted by Hazel Thornton of the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. She told me that out of 337 common interventions that it had assessed, only about a third were evidence based. That is a striking statistic. I suspect that all too often we do things that we think are helpful because they are what we have always done, without really knowing whether they have the desired outcomes, or—worse—whether there is a risk of unintended consequences.
Hazel Thornton advocated Government support for open-access data and decision-making tools, which should include consideration of costs and local values. She also called for Government funding for a long-term evidence monitoring system. I have considerable sympathy because, important as voluntary efforts are, they need to be complementary to rigorous scientific recording.
Dr Clements highlighted the need to tackle the carbon crisis and biodiversity crisis together. He pointed out that in some ways the carbon crisis is simpler to communicate to the wider public. We can probably all remember the need to limit temperature rises to below 2°C, but the biodiversity crisis, which is just as crucial, is perhaps harder to explain in simple memorable terms that capture public attention.
Almost as we speak here, discussions in the main Chamber will have an impact on the ways forward. The Environment Bill and our wider future relationship with our European partners will both have a significant impact on the issues that we are debating. A point that has been much stressed in the many recent debates is that, were we to leave the European Union, that should not lead to the potential regression of existing environmental standards. Dr Clements emphasised that to me and, as Members would probably expect, there is near-universal agreement among those who are expert in the field. The combined power and influence of 28 states acting together should not be lost. It is a global climate crisis and we must tackle it collaboratively.
Sue Wells, of the Cambridge Conservation Forum, focused on the need to take oceans into account when making policy. She explained that marine issues could get left behind in comparison with terrestrial projects. Another issue that was highlighted locally was fenland projects. Roger Mitchell, of Fens for the Future, talked about the need for nature-based solutions to the carbon emissions of the fens, which we have already discussed.
All this suggests a wider picture. When developing our land for our needs—housing, transport, infrastructure —we must maintain a focus on natural capital and on nature-based solutions to carbon emissions. Whether in planning flood diversions and defences with natural solutions, or in projects such as East West Rail, which affects my constituency, and the natural capital work there, we must focus on the environment alongside any development plans.
There are good examples of where past developments can be improved. Recently, I visited Anglian Water’s sewage treatment plant in Ingoldisthorpe, Norfolk, with the East of England all-party parliamentary group. We were all impressed with the work that had been done to create beautiful wetlands and increase local and regional biodiversity. The restored wetland removes the need for carbon-intensive, expensive nutrient-stripping techniques, while improving water quality; it is a great project led by the Norfolk Rivers Trust.
We must keep our focus on the environment when delivering investment for the future, and we must think long term. Sarah Smith of the Wicken Fen rewilding project told me the project has a 100-year plan to extend the nature reserve by 10 miles, as I mentioned earlier.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, as that allows me to put on record my tribute to the Cheshire Wildlife Trust, which runs the Eastwood nature reserve in Stalybridge. On the things that he has just mentioned, which I think we all agree with, does he agree that housing is perhaps the area that needs the biggest change? I see far too many generic, developer-led developments that have no relationship to the natural world around them. If we are serious about not just putting investment in, but changing how we do things, housing must be planned in a much better way with respect to the local environment. If we are serious about doing things such as garden villages, that could be the way, but I do not think the present approach will achieve the outcome he is quite ably describing.
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend’s intervention takes us off into a different debate in some ways, but I absolutely agree with him. It is much to be regretted that the very high environmental standards for new build that were in place in 2010 are no longer there, but I am sure they can be restored—if not before Christmas, soon afterwards, perhaps.
I spoke before about long-term planning. While Wicken Fen may be looking 100 years ahead, I am not sure Parliament can look forward 100 hours at the moment, but we do need to commit to long-term natural restoration.
Tracey Crouch
Can we put on the record the importance and value of roadside nature reserves, which are often forgotten in the dynamic environment we live in? Many of our wildlife trusts work alongside their local authorities to keep our roadside nature reserves wild and keep those species living in that protected environment, but there is no statutory requirement for local authorities to invest in them. It is important that we remember the value of roadside nature reserves in the context of this debate.
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Lady must be a mind reader, because that is my very next point. She makes an important point, because, as I was going to say, beyond those big long-term projects, there are quite simple things that can be done locally or individually. That was drawn to my attention by Olivia Norfolk, of Anglia Ruskin University, who said that simple solutions in urban environments to encourage nature restoration, such as not mowing road verges, can be important. However, she also argued that, while we can all act ourselves, we need urgent systemic changes to the way we run the country, and we cannot continue to export our costs overseas.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman’s exchange with my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) reminds me that when I served as Roads Minister in the 1980s, we planted over 1 million trees a year—they were not actually trees when they were planted, but many of them have grown into trees. Those nature reserves are very important, particularly if they can provide continuous habitat and corridors for animals to get around; it is not just about the foxes getting into town on the railways, but about providing a variety of planting that we do not often get in some managed forests.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for that intervention. It must be a wonderful thing to be able to see that the trees that were planted then have now come to fruition. That is also an important point.
If we are to consider all these points alongside a future generations initiative, we need to make not only individual and cultural changes, but systemic, Government-led ones. Tom Maddox, of Natural Capital Hub and Flora & Fauna International, told me of the need to adopt a holistic approach, and in 2021—
Daniel Zeichner
I will just finish the sentence. In 2021, the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration starts—a huge opportunity. Let us beat the curve and adopt those radical and far-reaching changes now.
Caroline Lucas
I apologise for interrupting. I thought there was a semi-colon there, but perhaps there was not. I know the hon. Gentleman is concerned about an outbreak of unanimity, so in case that should happen, can I put it to him that natural climate solutions must be supported, but only in addition to, not instead of, rapid emission reductions in every part of the economy? Does he share my concern that Heathrow airport, for example, is pushing a set of ideas about peatland restoration as part of its so-called carbon-neutral growth plans, but not changing business as usual? We must not use natural climate solutions as a way to avoid real carbon reduction.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to the hon. Lady; I am sure there is no danger of complete unanimity breaking out when she is in the room. She is right that, when it comes to the issue of Heathrow, there is certainly not likely to be unanimity. That is an important point, because sometimes—I am not saying this about that particular project—it is pretty clear that there is some greenwashing going on, and we must always be mindful of that.
I turn to the Government and ask for a couple of commitments—first, clear leadership and a commitment to implementing nature restoration measures, rather than simply leaving them to the market, where simplistic short-term economic arguments too often win out. Yes, restoration can make absolute economic sense on a macro level, but individual actors need encouragement, education and direction on why they should change their behaviour. Targets and monitoring are vital there.
Secondly, as I suspect is often the way, I want to press for more ambition from the Government. The 25-year environment plan includes measures that would improve our natural environment, yes, but many would say that we should go much further. The commitment to restore 500,000 hectares, for example, is half what a single company has pledged in Indonesia. We should look at what others have pledged in the Bonn Challenge. The commitment to raise forest cover in England from 10% to 12% takes us from sixth lowest in Europe to eighth lowest, still behind Scotland and Wales. Most European countries have over one third of their land covered in forest. Belgium has a similar population density to us, but over twice the forest, so we can do more, and we can challenge ourselves further.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I am glad to hear the hon. Gentleman pay tribute to the efforts of the Scottish Government, but does he agree that the efforts of organisations such as Network Rail hold them back? It is trying to cut down swathes of trees along the railway lines through my constituency, removing a nature corridor that is important to local people.
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Lady is absolutely right and points to exactly the kind of trade-off that I was referring to. As a member of the Select Committee on Transport, I should be at this very moment questioning Mr Williams on this issue. She is right to draw attention to the many trees that are being destroyed.
Let me conclude with a voice from a future generation, because last week I received a letter from Maggie, a 10-year-old girl from a primary school in my constituency, and I would like to quote one or two of the things she said:
“Sir David Attenborough said that ‘nature recovery’ laws must be created to ensure ‘habitats are expanded and reconnected’. Please ask the Government to pass a law to protect our wildlife!”
She went on:
“Secondly, our wildlife is endangered by the plastic in the sea and us cutting down their homes. We also need to stop littering around our environment, fields and especially on the beach! To sum up, I need you to tell the government that they need to act now and my question for the government is: do you want to keep ruining animals’ lives, or do you want to save the animals and our world from climate change?”
I must say that in my political life I have rarely invoked Maggie, but today I hope the Minister will rise to the challenge of 21st-century Maggie and act to protect her, and our, future.
Daniel Zeichner
On behalf of the Petitions Committee, I thank all hon. Members who have contributed. It has been a very good debate; there has been a considerable amount of agreement. I will not single out many—I know that we are possibly close to time in the main Chamber—but I will mention my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for all the expertise that she has brought to this subject over many years. I was particularly taken with her comments on the messiness of nature, which is an important point.
Finally, I strongly echo the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on tackling the climate and ecological emergencies together—they are absolutely interlinked. I was delighted to hear from the Minister a pretty strong pledge on ending peat burning. I will be able to go back to my constituent, Maggie, and tell her that he agrees with her, and I am sure she will hold him to all the promises on which she sought reassurance.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 254607 relating to restoring nature and climate change.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Theresa Villiers
There is a range of programmes under way to encourage people to switch, both to ensure that they get value for money and to talk up the advantages of moving to a more sustainable electricity supply. I will certainly be taking a personal interest in these matters in my new role.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Improving the energy efficiency of our homes is one of the best ways to tackle climate change, yet since 2012 there has been a 95% fall in home insulation programmes. What has gone wrong?
Theresa Villiers
The Government have a strong record on climate change, but I acknowledge that we need to do more to ensure that people are able to insulate their homes. We will be working on that in the months ahead.
Unsustainable Packaging
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 232684 relating to unsustainable packaging.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir George.
I welcome both Front-Bench spokespeople: my good friend and neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. When I entered this place, he was the Minister responsible for cycling, and since then he has held a number of important positions. I am tempted to say that although we might be debating single-use plastics today, there is no such thing as a single-use Minister. I wish the Minister well when the recycling period comes round soon, and I wish both him and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich success in their search for a solution to reusable packaging, which is a subject I am pleased to raise on behalf of the Petitions Committee.
Let me start by reading the petition:
“Ban the use of all non-recyclable and unsustainable food packaging. Today the Earth is at a crisis point due to our plastic consumption, and as a result, people in the UK are more willing than ever to engage in recycling. Yet so much food packaging remains completely, frustratingly unrecyclable. Let’s aim for the UK to lead the world with a 100% recycling rate. Every day we send to landfill, to decompose over thousands of years: cereal box inner bags; peel-off film (fruit and veg punnets/ready meals/yoghurt pots); almost all plastic supermarket fruit and veg packets; crisp packets; sweets wrappers; chocolate bar wrappers; Styrofoam; vacuum pack plastic, to name a few. The British public WANTS to recycle but we can’t get away from the vast amounts of waste that poorly designed packaging creates—appoint people to design alternatives and the UK will thank you!”
What an uplifting petition. The sentiment behind it speaks for itself. It has been signed by 247,048 people—nearly a quarter of a million people—illustrating the strength of feeling. That includes nearly 1,000 people from my Cambridge constituency, where this is a matter of great interest and concern. It is clear that the public mood about packaging, whether it goes to landfill or pollutes our oceans and rivers, has changed over the past few years. We have woken up. There is genuine public recognition of the climate crisis and concern about the natural destruction caused by non-recyclable waste.
Over 14 million of us watched Sir David Attenborough’s “Blue Planet II”, which revealed the impact waste is having on our seas and wildlife. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “War on Plastic” found UK plastic waste abandoned all the way in Malaysia.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
As a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, on which the Minister served when we had the inquiry, we heard from groups in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand that they had UK plastic on their shores. Is it not time that we stopped exporting plastic waste and reprocessed it all here in the United Kingdom?
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which I am about to amplify. He is absolutely right that we have international responsibilities. As the public watched, listened and participated, that so grabbed society’s consciousness that a constituent wrote to me saying that there should be “regular showings and reshowings” of those programmes, as they are so convincing and powerful. I suspect in Cambridge they are rewatched on a regular basis already.
Attenborough calls plastic waste an “unfolding catastrophe”, and, sadly, the evidence backs that up. A report from charities Tearfund, Fauna and Flora International, and WasteAid has warned of a public health emergency, claiming that between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year because of preventable diseases linked to mismanaged plastic waste in developing countries. These diseases include diarrhoea, malaria and cancer, all of which researchers have linked to plastic waste building up near people’s homes or being burned, which can result in damaging fumes.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I am pleased that in my local authority of Lewisham, recycling rates have rapidly increased in recent years and that there will be a consultation looking at continuing barriers to recycling in the area. I am also aware that many local authorities find it difficult to find solutions for certain types of black and low-grade plastic. Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Government are to reach their stated target of eliminating plastic waste by 2042, the Minister would need to better regulate the type of plastic businesses are using and to do more to establish suitable sites for recycling?
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I will come on to and which I suspect will be brought out in the wider debate. The black plastic issue is very real, and we need to ensure that our recycling systems are consistent across the whole country and can deal with these more difficult issues.
To return to the international significance of where our waste sometimes ends up, the reports I referred to suggest that one person dies every 30 seconds because of diseases caused by plastic pollution in developing countries. Such a statistic brings home how significant this is. What we do in our local recycling has global consequences. It is not simply waste in the United Kingdom that we must consider, and our ability to recycle.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing the debate. He is of about the same vintage as I am, so he will remember fish and chips in newspaper. Does he welcome the commitment made by some chip shops and fast food outlets to focus on paper rather than plastic? That should be praised. Does he also agree that there must be more focus on packaging for online businesses and they should work with the Royal Mail to determine what level of packaging will protect goods, as well as the environment? Chip shops and fast food outlets are doing their bit, but more can be done with the Royal Mail and online packaging.
Daniel Zeichner
We are already diverting into a range of issues, and I will mention some examples. The hon. Gentleman gets there first on fish and chips; I am of an age that I can remember fish and chips in newspaper, so I agree with him on that. The point about the Royal Mail is not one I intended to make, so he has added an important point to the discussion.
To get back to the wider issues, it is clear to me that public pressure for action on all these issues is growing. We saw from the Extinction Rebellion protests, which have happened nationwide and are strongly supported in Cambridge, that these issues have seized the public policy agenda. The school climate strikes, which I found magnificent, uplifting and inspired, show that the next generation demands change. I am sure we all have examples in our local areas. Last Friday, I was at the Spinney Primary School in Cambridge, and I was impressed not only by the quality of the questions the young people asked but by the fact that they had held an “empathy for earth” day a week or two before, and one could see the young people’s enthusiasm.
We can see the public’s desire for meaningful change. The question is, what can we do? One area that we can start with is the food we eat. When options are given to people to avoid non-recyclable packaging, they can be popular. There are good examples of that, which we have begun to touch on.
I thank the Petitions Committee staff for their excellent work surveying more than 20,000 people on their attitudes to food packaging. For fruits and vegetables, such as bananas, apples, potatoes and onions, more than 99% of respondents said that, given the option, they would choose to buy the items without plastic packaging—that is, almost everybody. A large majority said that they would buy bread without plastic packaging—94.6%—whereas 94.9% said they would buy breakfast cereal without it, and 97.1% said they would buy nuts and dried fruit. Nearly 80% said they would choose to buy meat or fish without plastic packaging, so there is considerable public appetite for change. I will come to some issues around that later.
Last Friday, I welcomed the Petitions Committee engagement team—I thank those involved for their work—to Cambridge. We held a roundtable discussion with various organisations that are working hard to improve sustainability in how we eat and live our lives. In that discussion I heard from owners of sustainable shops, cafés and businesses, such as BeeBee Wraps, the organic reusable food wraps business; Cambridge Carbon Footprint, which promotes sustainable living, local resources and services; and Cambridge Sustainable Food, which focuses on partnerships, projects and campaigns that capture the imagination and increase the sustainability of local eating.
That was an illuminating discussion, and many complex issues arose. For example, inventing new types of potentially sustainable packaging seems to be easier than putting in place the infrastructure and processes to deal with them. There was a concern about the proliferation of new so-called sustainable packaging products and different recycling schemes. Jacky Sutton-Adam described the situation, saying
“we’ve broken all our eggs into a bowl, mixed them up but haven’t made the omelette yet.”
While the Government ought to be investing more in solutions and incentivising people to try new things, Irina Ankudinova and others believed that manufacturers should be required to show that a system was in place to deal with the waste before new packaging products were brought to the market.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about the packaging surrounding the goods we buy, but there are also the goods themselves. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the prevention of plastic waste, I note that we have weaned ourselves off natural products and fibres and on to plasticised ones. Many of our clothes and carpets are polypropylene. We are wrapping plastic in plastic, and that is a real concern. Does he agree that we need to look at the big picture and have a shift back toward both more natural packaging and more natural fibres within the packaging?
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who makes a powerful point; I will touch on it a little later, but I suspect that others will want to amplify it further. When I look around the world, there are other countries that have perhaps not gone so far down this path, and some of their lifestyles are very attractive—dare I say it, but even some European lifestyles are very attractive indeed.
On Friday, I was also able to visit the Cambridge Cheese Company, which cycles its cheese deliveries around the city and presents gifts in recycled wooden cheese boxes. I am grateful to a very helpful assistant in its shop, Jade Tiger Thomas, who showed me the amazing aforementioned BeeBee wraps and explained a scheme that allows customers to bring their own Tupperware or reusable boxes to carry cheese home, and reusable jars for olives and deli items. The company is a long-established Cambridge gem. Many hon. Members find themselves in Cambridge from time to time, and I thoroughly recommend that they pay it a visit.
This is not an entirely new phenomenon. A long time ago, when I was a student in Cambridge, I remember going to the legendary Arjuna Wholefoods and buying spices measured into brown paper bags. That was happening long before it became fashionable, and Arjuna’s has proved itself a long-term Cambridge institution committed to sustainability and reducing food waste.
Buying food without throwaway packaging is becoming increasingly popular across the country. At the start of the month, Waitrose began a trial in its Oxford Botley Road store of a new “Unpacked” model, with a dedicated refillable zone of products from wine to cereals, frozen pick and mix and a borrow a box scheme. It also has refillable cleaning products and sells plants and flowers without plastic. Most of us have probably read the stories in the newspapers. It is too early to have solid statistics on the success of the trial, but Waitrose tells me that the reaction on social media to the announcement of the trial was 97% positive and the store sold out of some products within the first week of the trial. I was told that
“customers have bought into the concept readily—they arrive with their own containers ready to fill with the loose cereals, pasta, fish and more. This started to happen within just a few hours of us announcing the trial”.
That put me in mind of happy times past in my life, in places such as Venice, where the wine shops allow people to take bottles to be refilled on a regular basis. Now, perhaps, we can extend that to washing-up liquid, even if it is slightly less enticing.
When these schemes are well advertised and communicated and efforts are made to help people to get acquainted with new ideas, such as the borrow a box scheme for those who may have been unaware or do not have their own, behaviour and culture change are possible. That can also be done on a smaller scale: the University of Sheffield students’ union has its own Zero Waste Shop, which sells a huge range of spices, herbs, grains, legumes, dried fruits and nuts by weight, so people can buy as much or as little as they need. Customers simply bring their own container, buy one from the shop or use one of the recyclable paper bags.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning the University of Sheffield students’ union Zero Waste Shop. That is a well-established initiative, and I join him in celebrating the groundbreaking work that it has been doing for some time now.
Will my hon. Friend also celebrate the work of the university’s Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, which is looking at a range of approaches to eliminating plastic waste, recognising that, while we should be doing everything possible to minimise the use of single-use plastics, there will be some areas in which that is difficult? For example, we need to explore whether there is an opportunity to reuse single-use plastics currently used by medics. Similarly, the carbon emissions of recycling single-use plastic bottles could be more damaging than developing reuse. Does he agree that those areas are the innovations we should be looking at?
Daniel Zeichner
True to form, my hon. Friend raises the more profound points of the debate. Those are exactly the trade-offs that must be considered in depth and detail, and I will come on to some of them in a moment. He makes a powerful point that sometimes, the more obvious routes to doing the right thing might not have quite the consequences that one understood them to be liable to have.
I suppose the argument I am making is to encourage the zeal of the public to embark on this path, and the conclusion I will draw at the end is that they must be given help to ensure that they are indeed achieving the good outcomes that they are intending to achieve. This is a subject littered with potentially difficult trade-offs, and I am sure both Front-Bench speakers will refer those in the debate.
I will complete my tour of some of the great initiatives—
Graham Stringer
I am stimulated to get to my feet by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who is associated with the University of Sheffield, as I was some time ago, through the Sheffield students’ union. One of the things I learned at the university was that if we cannot measure it, or we do not measure it, we are unlikely to make progress with it.
Does my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) agree that some of the Government’s statistics are extremely dodgy in this area, particularly on recycling? When waste is exported, we assume that it is recycled, but that is unaudited. The best way to deal with these things is, first, to deal with them domestically and, secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central says, to reuse things rather than recycling them—glass bottles rather than plastic being an obvious example.
Daniel Zeichner
Once again, my hon. Friend introduces the gravity that I would expect of him, and he makes serious points. I am sure others will refer to the need to reduce, reuse and recycle in the correct sequence. The measurement issue is important. I am trying to adopt a non-partisan tone in today’s debate, because I suspect we are all trying to get to the same place, but he makes a very fair point about the need to ensure that the statistics on which we make decisions are reliable, and an even more important point that we cannot just export our waste and pretend that that is not having an impact somewhere else.
My final resting-point on my tour of great Cambridge places is Cambridge’s Daily Bread Co-operative, which is launching its zero-waste scheme this week. My point is that wherever we turn, we find people wanting to bring forward new and welcome initiatives. That brings me to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee; I am standing opposite its Chair, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), and I am grateful to him for being in the Chamber this afternoon. The Committee is in the midst of an inquiry on food and drink packaging, which has allowed me the delight of reading through both its proceedings and its evidence.
I suspect the hon. Gentleman will want to comment on some of that, but the experts consulted by the Committee tell us that while changes can be made, we must temper our enthusiasm with realism, because there is probably no easy answer or quick fix to the problem. Packaging plays an important role in keeping food fresh, safe and affordable, so although moving away from pre-packaged foods in shops, restaurants and cafes is probably possible, the question becomes more difficult and complicated when we consider freight and production.
Despite that, it definitely seems possible to me significantly to reduce the amount that we use here in the UK, but it would be simplistic to assume that we could just transfer that way of producing and transporting food all over the world, when in some places the same level of technology is not yet readily available.
It is important to remember where the most environmental damage is done. In evidence to the EFRA Committee inquiry, Peter Maddox, from WRAP UK, explained that
“when you look at a piece of meat, a nice eight ounce beefsteak in a package with a film on top…the carbon impact of the steak is over 100 times bigger than the carbon impact of the packaging. That packaging is providing extremely innovative barrier properties, which enables that meat to last a lot longer. If you did not have it in that pack, that meat might last three days. If you have it in a really good sealable pack, it will last 10 days. You start then thinking about what consumers want, reducing food waste and the fundamental economic value of that piece of meat. You need to think about it in terms of the whole product.”
Having read through the evidence, that message comes through loud and clear. The whole product and the whole life-cycle analysis are key. We must recognise that as we continue our efforts to reduce non-recyclable packaging. There is so much we can do, but it is realistic to admit that we cannot eradicate its use completely overnight.
However, we must not lose our ambition. The Royal Society of Chemistry, based in Cambridge, highlighted in evidence to the inquiry that, although bio-derived and biodegradable plastics will play a role in addressing the challenges caused by conventional plastic waste, they should not be used to legitimise a throwaway culture; they are not necessarily more environmentally benign than conventional plastics; and their impact as a replacement for conventional plastics must be considered on a life-cycle basis. This suggests that despite technological advancement, cultural awareness and change are still crucial. The UK cannot absolve itself of responsibility for mass corporate and personal behaviour change just because technology is advancing.
At the roundtable in Cambridge last week, Seigo Robinson and others were concerned that reducing non-recyclable plastic packaging was not necessarily compatible with the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For example, it was said that “carting around loads of refillable jam jars” would use “loads of CO2”; we may not have been precise or measurable on this occasion, but hon. Members will get the point. Alternatives to plastic packaging, such as paper, steel, wood and glass, could sadly have far worse carbon footprints. People said that plastic pollution of the oceans and carbon emissions needed to go hand in hand, and argued that recycling ought to be a last resort; people should look at using reusable containers for many years before thinking about the need for recycling.
Continuing my spirit of generosity towards the Government—I have no idea why I am in this generous mood, but I am—
Daniel Zeichner
Perhaps, and perhaps I have some sympathy with the Government’s current travails. However, it is fair to say that we have seen progress. The Government have looked at banning plastic straws, drink stirrers and plastic cotton buds, but I fear that they have so far been rather reluctant to introduce the fiscal measures that we now know do work. The plastic bag charge was discussed over many years, and it has now taken 15 billion plastic bags out of circulation. Imagine what proper fiscal incentives and taxes could do to change the way our society considers waste and how committed we all are to recycling.
The drink stirrer announcement grabbed headlines, but we need to seize this moment to make the “rapid”, “unprecedented” and “far-reaching” transitions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report called for in October. In evidence to the EFRA Committee’s inquiry, the Green Alliance recommended moving away from piecemeal action and approaching plastic, packaging and resource use in general in a much more systemic way. This means viewing plastic as just one resource among many used in our economy, all of which have environmental impacts of some sort.
Jim Shannon
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the general public need to have a good look at how they perceive foods? I am always aware of this issue when it comes to the general public buying potatoes. What they want to see in Asda, Tesco and all the big superstores is a nice wee carton of half a dozen potatoes, washed, cleaned and ready for the pot. Potatoes as I and others in the Chamber know them come in a half a hundredweight bag bought from the farmer. You know something? That is real potatoes.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for the intervention, but I think it leads us into a slightly broader discussion about people’s view of the world. I have to say that I rather hanker after a less homogenised culture in general. In a discussion we had last week, I recalled a time when we respected the seasons. We did not expect peppers to be available for 365 days a year, which perhaps gave us something to look forward to. There is something in the human spirit that we could look into. However, the supermarkets will say that it is what people want. That is the dilemma that we face.
Returning to the Green Alliance—I am on the way home from the supermarket—its overall recommendation is, to coin a phrase, to go back to basics: reduce the amount of unnecessary plastics used, reduce dangerous chemical use and rationalise the number of polymer types that go into plastic production to improve recycling, which is really important. That is all while promoting systems for reuse and ensuring that we use recyclable and recycled materials. It argues that this requires a more strategic approach to infrastructure, not simply leaving it to the market. I suspect this is where some of the political disagreements may emerge. However, I very much agree. I wish the Government would accept that challenge and develop a framework that advocates system change.
As the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton said when chairing the inquiry, reducing non-recyclable waste
“is going to be quite difficult to do…but it is how far we go and how wide we go…it is down to the big retailer as well as the consumer. It is going to be an interesting education for all of us”.
I very much agree. This is the point: we must take people with us, rather than being punitive, which is why education and making change easy for people are crucial. Essentially, if we make it too much of a faff for people to change their behaviour, people will be turned off and will not do it.
I believe that people want to do the right thing—to be environmentally conscious and to live sustainably—but time and resources dictate that we have to make this the easy choice, in a socially just way, and not simply for those who can afford the time or money to change their consumption habits. I hope the Minister will tell us how the Government might go about making this happen.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to this interesting and useful debate, which has been conducted in a positive and constructive spirit. The contributions from all the Front-Bench speakers were very welcome. I was particularly enthused by the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), and his passion for change, and I was very much taken by the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and her talk of a plastic calamity or crisis.
I will conclude by returning to the petitioners. When they say:
“The British public WANTS to recycle but we can’t get away from the vast amounts of waste that poorly designed packaging creates”,
they are putting out a plea to us to get this right. When they say,
“appoint people to design alternatives”,
I am not sure who they have in mind, but if we do get it right,
“the UK will thank you!”
That is something with which we could all agree.
I will end on a slight note of difference: I do not entirely agree with the Minister that we are in exactly the same place. I suspect that in the end, the Opposition are a touch more interventionist—in fact, we are much more interventionist.
Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
Let me take the slightly unusual step of saying from the Chair that this subject, which is hugely important to the people we all represent, has been covered so well that I am hugely impressed. I do not think that a single word was wasted in any speech made by anybody, on whichever side of the House. It has been a privilege to chair the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 232684 relating to unsustainable packaging.