Groceries Supply Code of Practice

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Murray.

I thank the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) for opening this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee, and for delivering such a well researched and thoughtful introduction to it. I thank colleagues from all parties for their contributions; there has been a remarkable amount of agreement, and the Minister has been sent a strong message. Of course I also thank Guy Singh-Watson of Riverford Organic Farmers for his work organising the petition, which has secured so many signatories. Clearly, he has touched a nerve.

I also thank the 49 scarecrows that we have heard about. Obviously, I am not referring to parliamentary colleagues, but to the 49 scarecrows that apparently are in Victoria Gardens to represent the 49% of farmers who fear going out of business, with 75% of them citing pressure from supermarkets. That is a powerful image.

I thank Orla Delargy at Sustain and Vicki Hird, now at the Wildlife Trusts, for providing me with very helpful facts and observations about the food supply chain over many years, since the passage of the Agriculture Act 2020. I also thank Lesley Mitchell, whose excellent report for last year’s Oxford farming conference is an important contribution to this debate.

It is not a great surprise that the petition has elicited so much support, not least because it is clear that farmers and growers in this country are struggling. They have been grappling with formidable challenges over the last few years: the skyrocketing costs of fertiliser, animal feed and energy; tight profit margins; avian flu; a rocky transition from the common agricultural policy to environmental land management schemes; and more.

Also, of course, over the past four to five years, the sector has experienced significant shocks: in 2019, there were the uncertainties around Brexit, closely followed by the covid-19 pandemic; and then in 2022 there was the start of the war in Ukraine. Additionally, throughout 2023 and into this year, climate events across the globe have impacted on many crops and harvests. Too many farmers have had to endure the distress of seeing the destruction of their crops or livestock due to floods, such as the devastating ones we have seen recently, and sometimes, sadly, because of the persistent shortage of labour.

As we have heard, farmers’ tight profit margins have been squeezed at the other end by supermarkets and intermediaries driving a hard bargain. Too often, primary producers get a tiny portion of the final product price, and little or even no profit from selling into mainstream supermarket supply chains. The 2020 report commissioned by Sustain, an independent study, tried to ascertain the profit margins of the suppliers. The report, “Unpicking Food Prices”, looked at five everyday foodstuffs—apples, cheese, beefburgers, carrots and bread—and found that, after intermediaries and retailers take their cut, farmers are sometimes left with less than 1% of the profit. That really cannot be a fair reward for the efforts that are made.

Farmers take a large proportion of the risks of production, working with unpredictable natural circumstances and often long timeframes to produce a crop or product. Alongside that, public support payments that, for years, have meant the difference between viability and going bankrupt for a large proportion of UK farmers have been changing. Somewhere in the food supply chain, there is clearly an issue of unfairness and imbalance, and in some cases, as we have heard from other speakers, the situation has become so difficult that farmers are pulling out of producing staples such as eggs and vegetables altogether because it is no longer economically viable. It is reported that almost half of that panel of 100 UK food and vegetable farmers fear that they may have to give up their farm within the next 12 months. As a consequence of all this, sadly, UK farmers are producing less food than previously.

Put simply, the reward must outweigh the risk if farmers are to continue producing food. For an increasing number of them, that risk-to-reward ratio is out of kilter. Many farmers have raised concerns about the behaviour of supermarkets, with 69% agreeing that tougher regulations are required to address the imbalance of power between farmers, processors and the supermarkets—points well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather).

Farmers and suppliers have repeatedly claimed that retailers—particularly the big supermarkets—are not giving them a fair deal. For example, it is claimed that they take far too long to consider cost price increase requests that are justifiable when costs are rising dramatically; that they take too long to pay invoices; that they do not honour the original order, or change or cancel it; and that they reject produce on grounds of aesthetics, rather than quality—not to mention the wider arguments over de-listings and promotions. As a consequence of all this, there is huge waste in the system. One grower told me that he sells only about 50% at best of the lettuces he grows. The waste is particularly depressing during a cost of living crisis.

For many years, I have heard farmers’ reports, as I think we all have, of a really quite problematic and in some cases deeply unpleasant—one might almost say toxic—dynamic in the relationship between buyers and suppliers. This disturbing dynamic, exacerbated by the other pressures that growers have had to face, has understandably taken its toll on the mental health and wellbeing of too many.

I hope and understand that the more unpalatable and aggressive tactics deployed by retailers may be less common than they used to be. Credit must go to successive Grocery Code Adjudicators for their role in curbing such unacceptable behaviour, but I think we were all dismayed to read in the GCA’s most recent report that many suppliers feel that we have gone backwards, and that supplier-retailer relations have regressed. Indeed, his report paints a pretty bleak picture of what one stakeholder has called the “brutal” environment that suppliers are being exposed to. The report quotes survey responses that complain about “combative” retailers, who have returned to pre-pandemic behaviour and have chosen to conduct “warfare” with suppliers rather than take collaborative action to handle the flood of cost price increase requests and more recent demands for deflation. The report found that, while supermarkets have been engulfed by demands for CPIs in the past two years, the tide has begun to turn, with retailers demanding cost price decreases. The GCA states:

“Some major retailers have begun asking for price decreases, accompanied by delist threats, forcing suppliers to operate at a loss, which they feel has created an unfair playing field and changed power dynamics.”

We must be careful not to jump to conclusions about exactly where the fault lies. Supermarkets are often lambasted as being the sole cause of all ills in the supply chain, which is not entirely fair or accurate. Behaviour varies considerably across the retail sector: some supermarkets really value and nurture constructive long-term relationships with their suppliers. I also appreciate that they are in tough competition with aggressive rivals, some of whom—I am thinking of some of the relatively new entrants to the market—are not subject to the same pressures to deliver short-term shareholder value as public companies.

Although consumers care very much about the quality of their food, and about where and how it is produced, they understandably want low prices, particularly during a cost of living crisis. We are all deeply unhappy about the soaring price of food over the past 12 months, which reached as high as a 20% increase last spring. The statistics from the Trussell Trust about the escalating reliance of many families on food banks are shocking.

The behaviour of the supermarkets is rightly scrutinised, but the role of the intermediaries—food manufactures, processors, importers and packers—can be somewhat overlooked in these discussions. Often, the more fraught relationships are between suppliers and intermediaries, rather than the big supermarkets, yet the intermediaries are not required to abide by the GSCOP. Having said that, I have heard worrying anecdotal evidence that some retailers game the system by instructing suppliers to deal with intermediaries as the buyers, rather than with the retailer, so that the latter cannot be held to the code. I was also struck and concerned by the comments of Mark White, the Groceries Code Adjudicator, in launching the most recent report. He said the report showed that supermarkets

“appeared less invested in the continued relationships with their suppliers”,

adding that

“Suppliers feel there is now less good faith shown by retailers in CPI negotiations”.

He expressed disappointment at the feedback from the survey, and concern that poor negotiations over CPI have had a significant impact on the relationships between retailers and suppliers.

I mentioned the 2023 report of the Oxford farming conference. The report from this year’s conference by Ged Futter, founder of the Retail Mind, touched on similar issues. He has predicted that relations will worsen in the months to come—that the next six months in the grocery market will be more brutal than any time in the last four years. He claims that retailers have focused solely on lowering costs, and that they have even asked for cost decreases in some cases in which they did not grant an increase in the first place. There is a problem here that needs to be addressed urgently before the situation deteriorates further.

We know that it has taken the Government a long time to use the powers in the Agriculture Act to look at the dairy and pig sectors. Can the Minister explain what plans the Government have to rectify these system-wide problems? Have the Government, in the first instance, conducted a thorough assessment of the robustness—or lack of it—of the food supply chain? Where exactly are the weaknesses, and how much progress has been made in mitigating them? Why is it taking so long to devise and/or implement the fair dealing codes set out in 2020?

It seems that the Groceries Code Adjudicator has been working hard and is making inroads on improving some retailers’ compliance with the GSCOP. I am encouraged by the tone of the GCA’s remarks following his recent report; it indicates a willingness to get tough with those who do not abide by the letter and spirit of the code, and to get to the bottom of what is generating negative comments such as those made by suppliers during his deep-dive survey. His determined efforts are to be applauded, but I am aware, as has been referenced, that he has quite limited resources at his disposal. That makes me, too, ask whether those resources are sufficient. Does the GCA have the capacity to be as effective as we need it to be? Relative to other regulators, the GCA is extremely small and understandably constrained in the number of investigations it can conduct, the number of complaints it can investigate and the extent to which it can provide arbitration. It is worth considering whether the size of the GCA is proportionate to the challenges that it faces, particularly as those challenges grow and become more formidable.

I understand that both suppliers and retailers articulated the view that the GCA needs more resources, so I ask the Minister whether the Government have considered that issue. Last year, the Government were considering subsuming the GCA into the Competition and Markets Authority, which I think was widely considered to be a retrograde step. What is the current thinking on this issue? Are the Government committed to retaining the independence of the GCA, and in considering that merger, did they review the remit, responsibilities and powers of that body? It is worth looking at that question closely, because it strikes me that there are gaps in the suite of powers granted to the GCA.

Intermediaries are not obliged to abide by the GSCOP, and the GCA has no remit with regards to the relationship between suppliers and intermediaries. Many stakeholders have suggested to me that the GCA is well placed to take on that additional responsibility. I remind the Minister that the Opposition argued that point during the passage of the Agriculture Act. Have the Government explored requiring more transparency when it comes to data and pricing in supply chains? Many stakeholders are calling for the implementation of rules for transparency in supply chains to ensure that farmers have greater bargaining power when negotiating prices and deals.

In addition to the range of pressures that farmers are having to contend with, I have also become increasingly aware of the growing burden of audits that, according to the Oxford farming conference report, is at “a record high”. The report suggests that one supplier interviewed was audited in 40 out of 52 weeks in 2022, with more than 190 audits, many of which were unannounced. Each audit not only requires people on the day but needs to be followed up afterwards to ensure that any actions are carried out. It seems to me that there must be some room for consolidation and rationalisation. Have the Government considered how they can help by working with the range of bodies that ask for those audits to lighten the burden on farmers, particularly at such a challenging time?

It is perhaps also worth returning to the time-honoured question of whether there is more scope for suppliers to collaborate with one another to strengthen their hand. The culture of fierce independence here in the UK, with a preponderance of small producers doing their own thing, does not always help. In many ways, it is admirable, but I fear that culture may be weakening the bargaining position of farmers and growers. In that environment, one supplier usually capitulates to pressure from the retailer to suppress prices. The Oxford farming conference report talks about a prevalent mentality of “last man standing”, where some farmers think they can hold out in selling their produce at a very low profit margin until everyone else has crumbled and vacated the market, and then somehow they will emerge triumphant as the monopoly supplier. That pyrrhic approach, however, is usually counterproductive or very short lived, as the retailer usually looks elsewhere and quite often will source the product in question from overseas at a lower price. If collaboration happens, the report claims that it is often a last-resort tactic

“when ‘backs are against the wall’.”

If we look abroad to Spain and France—earlier we were encouraged to be more French sometimes—we can see much more collaboration with many more co-operatives. Co-ops can bolster collective bargaining power to secure better deals from supermarkets and reduce price volatility. However, co-operative farming now constitutes only 6% of our domestic agricultural market, compared with 45% in Spain, 55% in France and 68% in the Netherlands. This morning I visited the Arla Foods dairy in Stourton, outside Leeds, and I could not help noticing that the co-operative has protected the interests of its farmer members very effectively, as well as being highly successful commercially—frankly, we need more of that.

In conclusion, the issue is increasingly urgent, and we need to take complaints from suppliers very seriously. It is not about blocking, hampering or meddling with market forces. It is about making a problematic market, the food supply chain, work much more efficiently, effectively and equitably so that it becomes a market where risks and rewards are shared more proportionally and fairly. The danger is that if nothing is done to improve the supply chain, more suppliers will be driven to the brink and they will pull out of producing food altogether. We are already losing too many British growers and food companies: that is bad for them, bad for the UK in general, and bad for UK food security. The petition is timely and I again thank the petitioners, in particular Guy Singh-Watson and Riverford Organic Farmers, as they have raised a really important issue that merits a strong response from the Minister.

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray, and I start by drawing Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests. I congratulate the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) on leading this important debate and, of course, the petitioners on reaching the threshold for it. The number of people who signed the petition demonstrates how highly the people of the United Kingdom value their farmers, and they want to see them getting a fair deal. It is also telling that the debate has been well attended and there has been quite a lot of cross-party consensus. The contributions have been well informed and a spectrum of information has come from Members, which also demonstrates how important farming is to their constituents.

The petition asks the Government to amend the groceries supply code of practice to better protect farmers from “unfair behaviour”. The Government want all farmers to receive a fair price for their products, and we are committed to tackling contractual unfairnesses in the agrifood supply chain. We recognise that some poor practices affect producers across several agricultural sectors. We are taking action to address them, but we do not believe that amending the code is the most appropriate way to do so. The key issue is that relatively few farmers sell directly to supermarkets. Far more often, they sell their produce through intermediaries and processors, and the Government are therefore committed to using powers in the Agriculture Act to introduce statutory codes that apply across the whole supply chain to deliver fair prices to all farmers.

I should declare that I was a member of the Bill Committee for the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, and the groceries code was put in place following a detailed market investigation by the Competition Commission in 2008 that found that suppliers of groceries to large supermarkets faced unfair risk that adversely affected competition. For producers that supply directly to the 14 largest retailers designated by the Competition and Markets Authority, the code already covers the issues raised in the petition. For example, it prevents the unilateral variation of supply agreements, specifically covers issues such as wastage and forecasting errors, and requires retailers to pay invoices on time. The code is enforced by the Groceries Code Adjudicator, who is appointed by the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. The Secretary of State is required to undertake a review of the effectiveness of the GCA every three years. The most recent review was published in July 2023, and found that the Groceries Code Adjudicator continued to be an effective regulator.

The positive impact of the GCA is clear in the latest results of its annual survey. It now receives responses from over 2,000 suppliers from the UK and abroad. In 2014, just after the GCA was set up, four out of five direct suppliers said they had experienced an issue with the code. That figure has now fallen to fewer than one in three. It is, of course, concerning that suppliers are being let down in some cases, but those achievements have been delivered through the Groceries Code Adjudicator’s collaborative approach to regulation, which involves gathering insight from a range of sources and working closely with a small number of regulated businesses to quickly change their behaviour.

Of course, that does not mean that all unfair practices have been permanently stamped out, and we have heard examples today of farmers who have felt unfairly treated. Unfair practices can be exacerbated by external factors, such as the recent cost price pressures. The Government are aware that there are behaviours throughout the supply chain that are not covered by the GCA, and crucially the code does not always reflect the farmers’ indirect relationship with supermarkets. In 2016, in response to a call for evidence that explored the case for extending the GCA’s remit, we highlighted our intention to target further interventions on a sector-by-sector basis. As a result, we took powers in the Agriculture Act to enable the introduction of statutory codes of contractual practice to protect those farmers. The codes will apply to any business purchasing agricultural products directly from farmers. They will provide greater certainty for farmers by ensuring that clear terms and conditions are set out in contracts. We intend to tailor the powers to those sectors that need them, because we acknowledge that the problems experienced by each sector differ quite widely. We must avoid introducing broad regulation that places burdens on sectors that may not require intervention, but we must make ensure that we concentrate on those areas that do.

We carried out the first review, in the dairy sector, in 2020, and it was clear from the responses that a minimum framework of contractual standards was required to offer improved protections to those farmers. We have worked closely with industry to ensure that the regulations are tailored and proportionate, providing the flexibility required in a global commodity market.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Does the Minister agree that it has been a slow process? We still do not have the regulations. Could he give the House an indication of when we might expect to see them?

[Mark Spencer]

That is a fair question from the hon. Gentleman. We have been working closely with not only retailers but processors, Dairy UK and the NFU to ensure that the regulations we are about to introduce will work for the sector across the board. I cannot give him a date as I stand here, but I will go out on a limb and commit to him that we will table them before the Easter recess. I acknowledge that we should have done it quicker, but it was more important to get it right. I am confident that we have got it right in the end.

Pet Abduction Bill

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). I congratulate the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) on her success in the ballot, on introducing this Bill, and also on her very comprehensive introduction to the debate. We have heard excellent speeches on both sides of the House—I thoroughly enjoyed the contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for West Ham (Ms Brown), and I listened closely to the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) and commend him for his expertise and good work on this issue. Of course, I also listened closely to my near neighbour the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), who is not in his place at the moment.

I would also like to associate myself with the hon. Member for Southend West’s warm words about her predecessor and our former colleague, the late Sir David Amess. Sir David’s office was close to mine over in 1 Parliament Street, and we often chatted in the lift, sometimes conspiring together to try to expedite or improve legislation relating to animal welfare. He remains very much missed.

Indeed, I rather suspect Sir David would have approved even more if the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill had been proceeded with. While it is once again a pleasure to be debating the Minister today, she will no doubt be expecting me to berate her for the delays, and I hope I will not disappoint. It was actually the Minister’s former colleague at DEFRA, the right hon. and learned Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis)—now the Attorney General—who led for the Government on that Bill.We spent many days in Committee. Yes, there were amendments and suggestions, but there was also very strong support from the Opposition for what the Government were trying to do, because we were addressing

“the very real problems of the day: the suffering of caged primates; the worrying by dogs of farm animals; puppy smuggling; cruel mutilation such as ear and tail cropping; and the pain of pet theft. All that and more has been happening every day since. For almost 1,000 days, the Government have allowed those abuses to continue.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2023; Vol. 742, c. 1201.]

If that rant sounds familiar, it is because I said the same when we debated the Animal Welfare (Live Exports) Bill. The same question arises, and I hope that one day a Minister will address it: why was the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill pulled after all that work, when it had such strong cross-party support? Why did a change in the ministerial team mean that Conservative manifesto promises were dumped time and again? Yes, we understand that bits of the Bill are being brought forward in dribs and drabs, but that is subject to all the uncertainties and vagaries of the private Member’s Bill process, without the expert evidence sessions that helpfully inform our discussions. I do not expect to get an answer, but the question remains and we will keep putting it—not least because of the strength of public feeling on these matters, as evidenced by the range of petitions linked to the Bill.

The Opposition welcome the Pet Abduction Bill. We support it and will try to improve it, but we want it done swiftly. We all know that dog and cat abduction can happen for a range of reasons, which sadly include resale, extortion, breeding and dog fighting. All those are devastating for owners and can involve distress and sometimes cruelty to the animals involved. I am grateful to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home for sharing its thoughts ahead of the debate. Data analysis from Scotland has found that in 32% of instances of dog theft investigated in 2019-20 and 2020-21, the offence was related to domestic issues or ownership disputes regarding the dog. That shows how complex dog and cat abduction is, and how far the crime is tied to deliberately creating distress for the human victim.

Dogs and cats are now sentient beings under the law, and owners view them as part of the family, yet if a pet is stolen, the offence is treated as akin to stealing an inanimate object. Currently, although sentencing can take into account the emotional impact on the human victim, the dog or cat’s financial worth is the biggest factor. That means that the punishment does not come close to fitting the crime or to acting as a deterrent.

The Opposition have been seeking action for years. Some 32 months ago, on 22 June 2021—this was before the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill—my Labour colleagues tabled amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to tackle pet theft. I urge interested Members to look up the very good discussion that took place. The Government batted away our efforts, and it took until the penultimate day of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill for the Government to table what was, I have to say, a panicky and poorly drafted amendment. That amendment was debated on 18 November 2021; again, I urge interested Members to read the debate. Interestingly, that was after the pet theft taskforce had reported.

At the time, I expressed some surprise that pet theft had been smuggled in “through the back door”, as I put it, but I and others agreed that urgent action was needed. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Member for Banbury said:

“This is being done quickly; I am not apologising for that because I think the situation is one that we need to resolve quickly.”––[Official Report, Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Public Bill Committee, 18 November 2021; c. 172.]

I agree, but that was over two years ago. Actually, I find myself agreeing with the right hon. and learned Lady rather frequently these days. At the time, she was rather unkindly derided by Quentin Letts in a distinctly catty but quite funny column in The Times for being the Minister for cats. Frankly, in her current role she must often feel like she is herding cats. However, she was right that it was urgent then. It remains urgent now.

I argued at the time that the Government’s formulations “connected persons” and “animals capable of forming bonds” were problematic, and I suspect the Minister rather agreed. I am pleased that the present Bill uses a different form of words, as has been discussed, but I am not sure that the new formulation is without problems of its own. As has been explored today, the question of ownership within households is hard to define. I suspect we will wish to explore that further in Committee. For example, if Larry the Downing Street cat were to go AWOL—I am sure that that would not happen under the current occupant, but I am not sure about some of his predecessors—I wonder quite how the current wording would work.

I also have to wonder quite how the legislation will work when a much-loved cat is taken by an out-of-control pack of foxhounds, a situation that sadly still occurs. Again, that is something to be explored further. Although I welcome the protection of cats in the Bill and the regulations allowing the powers to extend the regulations to protect other species commonly kept as pets, there is an irony here, is there not, because the Government appear to be creating a probably unintended route to protect those who keep primates as pets from the abduction of their animals, yet they are failing to ban the keeping of primates as pets, as promised in a Conservative manifesto in 2019—something that was at least attempted in the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill.

I finish where I began: Labour strongly supports these measures to tackle pet theft and pet abduction. We will support the Bill, but we want it strengthened, and we want it done speedily.

Draft Wine (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2024

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve once again with you in the Chair, Mr Gray. I thank the Minister for his exemplary introduction. I had always pictured him with a pint of bitter in his hand, but perhaps I will now picture him with an ice wine chaser to go with it. Let me reassure the Minister and the Whips that, given the support that the industry has expressed for this SI, and given that it concerns a very niche product, we do not intend to press for a vote.

I note the important contribution made by the wine sector to this country’s economy. The vast majority of wine consumed here—some 99%—is imported. We recognise and accept the need for the rules inherited from the EU to be updated and streamlined to help the sector to operate even more efficiently. I appreciate that efforts have been made through this legislation to bring the UK’s wine regulations in line with the CPTPP as regards ice wine.

The Minister has explained that the instrument restricts the use of the term “ice wine” to products made exclusively from grapes naturally frozen on the vine, as opposed to those made from frozen grapes. In relation to the CPTPP, as the Minister has told us, Canada is the major producer of ice wine, but CPTPP’s progress puts us on a different parliamentary scrutiny and legislative path. We know that the economic benefits of the treaty appear to be small. The Government’s impact assessment indicated that the long-run increase in GDP would be worth only 0.06%.

As with so many of these trade deals, we need to watch with great care to see whether these small economic benefits are being achieved at the expense of our environmental or welfare standards. The Trade and Agriculture Commission report on the CPTPP notes that the Pesticide Action Network UK has reported that there are 119 pesticide products not permitted for use in the UK that are permitted to varying extents by one or more of the 11 parties to the CPTPP treaty. It needs to be made clear that the deal does not enable food and wine produced elsewhere to lower standards to compete unfairly with our own producers. In this case, of course, we do not have producers. In relation to unfair competition, the Trade and Agriculture Commission report on the CPTPP noted:

“This is important, as CPTPP is likely to lead to increased imports of products that have been produced at lower cost by using pesticides in…parties that would not be permitted in the UK.”

[The Chair]

Order. I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. I think that what he is saying regarding the CPTPP in general is beyond the scope of our discussions. We are simply discussing whether or not these grapes can marketed here under a particular name.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful, Mr Gray, and I understand the point that you make. May I point out that our concern is that pesticides could have been used on vines that produce ice wine? It is about the changing circumstances for different parties and different rules.

Will the Minister explain what legislation is planned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on wine as a result of the CPTPP and when we can expect those changes to be introduced? Having taken heed of your warnings, Mr Gray, I shall not make the wider points that I was going to make about the concerns of the wine sector about additional bureaucracy, administrative burdens and rising costs. I have possibly made that point without raising those concerns.

A serious point was made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords—the measure was discussed in the other place last night—about parallel legislation in Scotland and Wales. The Committee pointed out that Northern Ireland would be subject to the different rules that apply in the EU. Given that we had a lengthy discussion in the Chamber on Monday evening about the export of live animals for slaughter and the implications for Northern Ireland, I suspect the Minister hopes that members of the Democratic Unionist party are not ardent ice wine drinkers, but is he completely satisfied that there will be no impediments to the movement of ice wine products between Northern Ireland and Great Britain? For instance, does he expect that the labelling of ice wine will be completely consistent across the UK? I leave him with that thought.

Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to respond to tonight’s debate, not least because we are graced with no fewer than four former and current DEFRA Secretaries of State on the Government Benches this evening. I found myself looking for a collective noun to describe them: a swarm, as in bees, a shiver, as in sharks, or a crash, as in rhinos. There are endless possibilities.

May I offer festive greetings to those on the Government Front Bench? I am afraid that is going to be the end of my kindness for tonight, because what is inescapable is that the Bill is massively diminished in ambition, just like this Government. I say to the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), who spoke with real passion, conviction and knowledge—I agree with much of what he said—that the issue for the Opposition is that this could all have been done more than two and a half years ago. Those of us who sat on the Bill Committee for the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, as I did, will recollect the days and days of interviewing witnesses, taking up their time and expertise, and raising their hopes and the hopes of millions across the country that action would be immediately forthcoming. Days were spent in Committee. Yes, the Opposition tabled amendments and made suggestions—that is our job—but there was also strong support from the Opposition for what the Government said they were trying to do, because that Committee was trying to address the very real problems of the day: the suffering of caged primates; the worrying by dogs of farm animals; puppy smuggling; cruel mutilation such as ear and tail cropping; and the pain of pet theft. All that and more has been happening every day since. For almost 1,000 days, the Government have allowed those abuses to continue. Perhaps the Minister will explain why we have had to wait so long.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about measures in the kept animals Bill. Several other measures, including the foie gras ban, are in scope of this Bill, but the Government have chosen to use private Members’ Bills to try to further that agenda. Is that not a hugely flawed approach?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who hits the nail on the head. The Government are so timorous and afraid of further suggestions—[Interruption.]. You should be, actually. They are so afraid that they have had to resort to this piecemeal approach. Frankly, it a complete abrogation of responsibility, and what a profound disappointment to those voters who in 2019 read the Conservative manifesto and thought that the Conservatives cared about animal welfare and would do these things. What a let-down.

This pared down slither of a Bill is welcome only in that there is finally, belatedly some action on this one issue. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) said in her opening remarks, we welcome it, we will not oppose it, and we will try to improve it in Committee.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

The shadow Minister mentioned the Conservative party’s 2019 general election manifesto. My predecessor Neil Parish sought to amend the Agriculture Bill to prevent the ratification of any trade agreement that did not guarantee that the same animal welfare standards would be applied to imported food. Does the shadow Minister agree that standards for UK production are only half the picture unless we demand those same animal welfare standards are applied to imports?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Absolutely. Of course, Labour Front-Bench Members made that point repeatedly, as did the hon. Member’s predecessor and others on the Government Benches, including, of course, former Secretaries of State who find themselves no longer in their posts and now free to speak their minds.

These issues matter because the British public really care about the health and welfare of animals. We have seen this in many polls, but a recent one has indicated that more than two thirds of respondents believe that we should do more to improve animal welfare and protect animals from cruelty. We really are a nation of animal lovers, as many have said, and a significant majority think that the Government have a clear responsibility to protect innocent and vulnerable animals from unnecessary suffering. It is indeed one of the main roles of the state to protect the most vulnerable in our society, and that must include animals. The Government’s track record on animal welfare, which did indeed once look promising, is now in tatters, but we are relieved that at least some progress is being made in the form of this ban on live exports. As my colleague stated at the outset of the debate, we will support the Bill and look forward to its being signed into law at very long last.

Public Sector Food Procurement

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) on his characteristic vigour and energy in introducing such an important topic and launching a volley of questions that I am confident the Minister will evade. Let me also thank several people for their assistance in preparing for this debate: James Bielby of the Federation of Wholesale Distributors; Vicki Hird, formerly of Sustain and now of the Wildlife Trusts; and Joss MacDonald from the Food Foundation whose excellent report, “The Broken Plate”, is invaluable.

Given the time constraints, my comments will inevitably be brief, but we know from masses of research, including Henry Dimbleby’s excellent “National Food Strategy”, that the food consumed by the majority of adults and children in the UK does not currently meet the requirements of a nutritious diet. Most adults and children consume in excess of the maximum recommended intakes for sugar, saturated fat and salt, and do not meet the recommendations for fruit and vegetable, fibre or oily fish consumption. Is that an issue for just those individuals? Frankly, I do not think so. It has got to be about system change, and Government procurement is an important lever.

Sadly, I see no evidence that the current Government have a strategic approach to the food system. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and the hon. Member for Totnes mentioned a whole series of pieces of work that we are waiting for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to respond to by the end of the year. I remember that the food security strategy was sneaked out on the last possible day a couple of years ago, so maybe we will have lots of Christmas presents in the offing in a couple of weeks’ time. Those pieces of work include not just the public sector food and catering policy consultation but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said, the demise of the long-awaited horticultural strategy. There is a widely held consensus that the Government’s national food strategy is inadequate and fails to build on the strengths of the Dimbleby report.

A future Labour Government will take these issues far more seriously. They are much too important to be left to chance, and they deserve a considered and strategic approach. For Labour, food security is national security. For the benefit of the consumer, the producer and society as a whole, we need more seasonal, sustainable and nutritious British-grown food. Instead of encouraging more low-quality imports, a Labour Government will back British farmers to produce more locally grown, healthy food in this country. One of the ways that we will do that is through public procurement. We will ensure that 50% of all food purchased by the public sector is locally produced and sustainable. That will be £1.2 billion of public money spent on quality food that is genuinely better for people’s health—a clear target for every year we are in government.

[Anthony Mangnall]

The hon. Gentleman has done a dangerous thing: it sounds like he has produced a Labour party policy, which must be the first we have heard in many months. Perhaps he might answer this. He has suggested that Labour will produce food locally and set a national target, but how will it make that compliant with WTO standards? I would also make the point that, although I am happy to have a prod at the Government for what they have and have not done, the landmark piece of legislation that has passed is the Procurement Act 2023, which does all the things we want and which people on both sides of the House have been asking for.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am always grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s interventions. He is a touch prickly, and I think he will find that there are hundreds of worthy Labour party policies out there. I am happy to engage in full consultation and dialogue with him on what the future holds. I also have to say that it is not beyond the wit of people to find ways through this; others have done it, and we will do it.

As I said, we are talking about £1.2 billion of public money being spent on quality food that is genuinely better for people’s health—a clear target for every year in government. Fifty per cent is just the minimum—just the start—and we will do everything to go beyond that, so that we can maximise the power of public procurement to drive up standards and fortify food security.

As part of our aim to improve children’s nutritional intake, in particular, and to build a future where children come first, we will introduce fully funded breakfast clubs for every primary school in England—another excellent Labour policy that I commend to the hon. Member for Totnes. Our free breakfast clubs will put money back in parents’ pockets, give every primary child a healthy meal at the start of the day, and be an important first step on the road to building a modern childcare system, enabling parents to work and providing an important spur to economic growth. We will improve children’s diets by finally implementing the 9 pm watershed for junk food advertising. The Government’s own impact assessment found that that policy would lead to children eating nearly 12.5 million fewer calories across the UK.

But that is for the future. Sadly, the situation at the moment is getting worse. The wholesale sector supplying the public sector has been hard hit by rising costs and inflexible budgets. Many in the sector are struggling to fulfil their public sector food contracts, with some servicing them at a loss. The Government response has been frankly woeful. Their announcement to increase the funding rate for universal infant free school meals by 12p per pupil was a belated token acknowledgment of the problem. That increase remains well behind the current rise in food inflation, which for wholesalers is running at 20%, and fails to consider the range of external factors the food and drink industry currently faces.

Soaring costs are putting the public sector food industry under considerable strain, forcing conversations to be had about the realities of fulfilling public sector food contracts. Inevitably, the quality and quantity of the food being served to young and vulnerable people are being adversely impacted. Public sector caterers are struggling to meet food standards and being forced to reduce portion sizes and to use less UK-grown produce, directly contrary to the Government’s stated aims. The quality of the food used to service public sector contracts will continue to decline in order to mitigate rising costs if the Government do not take action. The impact of food inflation has already resulted in pupils being forced to accept smaller lunches with a lower nutritional value. In some cases, schools have opted to offer only cold packed lunches because of the cost of energy. I am sure we will remember the scenes during the covid crisis when some of the meals on offer were shameful. Several wholesalers that supply school contracts have mentioned to me that they are reducing portion sizes by, for example, offering less protein less frequently.

In conclusion, we need a new way. Labour’s mission-based strategic approach will help us to see the food system as a whole and will ensure that we all have access to more nutritious, sustainable, local, British-grown food.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), and the new Secretary of State—I believe he is the fifth during my time in the shadow Environment team. The fish our fishers catch is vital to our food security, but the recent antics of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which is, in the name of safety, implementing new medical rules, are leaving many inshore fishers at their wits’ end. Can it really be right that a fisherman in the prime of his working life risks losing his livelihood because he was brave enough a few months ago to admit to a doctor that he felt anxious? I do not think it is, so will the Secretary of State corner his colleague the Transport Secretary in order to get him to do better than a temporary pause on this and to look urgently at exemptions for smaller boats, as other countries have sensibly done?

[Steve Barclay]

It is great to have Cambridgeshire so well represented on these important issues of fishing and farming. The shadow Minister raises an important point, because there have been concerns in the fishing sector. The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries and I have been in touch with Department for Transport colleagues on this issue. There have been amendments to the regulations as a result of those discussions, which are ongoing. However, we should not alarm people either, and the way that the shadow Minister characterised this—suggesting that someone went to their GP and raised an issue, and that prevented them from following their livelihood—is not what the regulations do. I recognise that there have been concerns in the sector. We are looking at them closely and following them up, but the situation is not as he characterised it. That would cause undue harm to those in the fishing sector.

Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments and Consequential Provisions) (England) Regulations 2023

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Robert. This is a weighty instrument. In fact, it is probably three instruments. It is a shame that the three issues cannot be considered separately, because, while we support the intention of moving away from basic payments and support an environmentally friendly sustainable food system, frankly, we are deeply unimpressed by the way that the Government are doing it, and we have significant concerns about the potential environmental risk caused by the removal of cross-compliance. However, we must decide on the instrument as a whole, so we will not be opposing it today, but that should not be read as approval for the Government’s failures.

These draft regulations are familiar grounds. I have discussed many very similar statutory instruments over the past three years or so, and debated the Agriculture Act 2020 and indeed the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020 with the Minister’s predecessors. I am sure that the Minister will be delighted to know that I have at hand both his and his predecessors’ speeches, from which I can quote. This instrument marks another step in the Government’s long-drawn-out post-Brexit reforms to the farm-support system over the past five years and counting. One is tempted to ask, “Are we nearly there yet?”

It is worth repeating that we on the Opposition Benches agree that farm support should be changed to a system that uses taxpayers’ money to incentivise public goods in the form of environmental benefits. We have also repeatedly and consistently argued throughout that those public goods should include support for sustainable food production, and that a baseline of farming regulation is critical to ensuring that the environmental gains are genuine. Furthermore, the system should not end up with farmers who do not wish to take part enjoying an unfair advantage at the expense of our wildlife and landscapes. Those remain our key tests for the Government’s plans, and I am not particularly convinced that this set of regulations does enough to meet them.

Large sums of public money are at stake. Even with the reductions that have already taken effect, the National Farmers Union has estimated the amount to be paid out in 2024 alone will still amount to around £700 million. The taxpayer is entitled to ask what public value will be got from all that cash. Equally, what has happened to the money that has already been deducted from farm payments during the transition period? According to the figures in annex D of the Government’s original 2020 transition plan, in total, from 2020 to 2023, around £1.3 billion to £1.4 billion should have already been saved by the end of this year, with another £1 billion to come next year. Can the Minister confirm how much of that has actually been paid out to farmers to date under the new environmental land management scheme?

The Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) told us in 2021:

“All funding released from the reductions will be reinvested in new schemes in this Parliament.”—[Official Report, Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee, 18 March 2021; c. 3.]

And, in March 2022, she said:

“All moneys that are saved by those reductions will be invested in farming and farming businesses.”—[Official Report, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 15 March 2022; c. 11.]

The Minister himself told me, only in February this year, that he was, “more than happy to” reassure me

“that we will deliver that cash”,

and that as

“we move into these new schemes, we will transfer all that cash from one pot into the other.”—[Official Report, Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee, 28 February 2023; c. 10.]

So, if not all of the £1 billion already saved has yet been paid out, where does that cash now sit, and what are his plans to get it out of door in the remaining few months before the election? What is the Department doing to record what has been saved, what has been paid out, and what has been delivered for that money? As I have asked before, will he explain how any underspend will be dealt with and for how many years it will be rolled forward? I am advised that underspends in the European Union schemes could be carried forward for up to three years. Has the Department agreed with the Treasury that that arrangement will be mirrored?

The Government are fond of claiming that payments under the common agricultural policy went mainly to better-off farmers. We are used to seeing the Institute for Fiscal Studies produce a detailed distributional analysis setting out the impact of Budget measures on people at various points in the income distribution. Will the Minister consider commissioning the IFS to produce a similar analysis of the success—or otherwise—of his new method of allocating funding, according to how well it supports farmers most in need of the cash, or whether, as one might suspect, the lion’s share has gone to those who are already very well-heeled?

The Government have also claimed that reducing basic payments would have an impact on tenants and land values. When we debated this in February, the Minister told me that

“we have not seen that impact on land values, but what is more interesting is the impact that that might have on rental values going forward, and we will have to monitor that to see what impact some of these changes will have on the rented sector especially.”—[Official Report, Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee, 28 February 2023; c. 9.]

So, nine months on, what has that monitoring shown?

Frankly, after our experience of the Government’s cavalier approach to public money during covid, with some £4.3 billion written off, taxpayers might find it a little odd that the plan set out in this instrument is that farmers will get paid for the next few years whether they farm or not. That picks up on the interesting observation made by the hon. Member for Amber Valley. I must say that do not think that the Minister’s explanation is mirrored in the explanatory memorandum, because that itself makes this rather extraordinary admission, in paragraph 7.4:

“There will be no requirement for the recipient to continue to have land.”

I wonder whether the Minister can marry that up with the answer that he gave to the hon. Member earlier.

How does the Minister plan to explain to the people of this country, who have seen their tax burdens rise by £4,300 per household under the Conservatives, that he will be paying out £700 million next year with no requirement that the recipients do anything at all— not even complete an application form, according to paragraph 7.15 of the explanatory memorandum? That is a very efficient system for handing out money to people for apparently doing nothing. I would not have thought that that was necessarily the traditional Conservative approach to public money, but maybe times have changed.

Again, in our debate in February, the Minister referred to people who might “take the mickey”. Given how much the enforcement capability of his Department has already been cut, and that further cuts must now be delivered after the autumn statement, how exactly does he plan to find and deal with any delinked-payment “mickey-takers”?

I am pleased to note that the Department does seem finally to have taken on board my complaints about its habit of making baseless claims in previous explanatory memorandums and have taken out the statement that

“Direct Payments are untargeted, can inflate land rent prices and can stand in the way of new entrants to the farming industry.”

Therefore, we do have some progress after three or four years. However, we are asked to believe, yet again, the Department’s claims, in section 12 of the explanatory memorandum, that

“There is no, or no significant, impact on business,”

and that no impact assessment has been prepared because it relates to grants and is “not a regulatory provision”. So, £700 million is being paid next year, with no claim needed and no requirement to do anything, and there is no impact? That seems odd.

I explained earlier that we have consistently argued for a regulatory baseline of standards that all farmers should meet, but the instrument will remove all of the so-called cross-compliance conditions that still apply to farm payments and require recipients to meet environmental, animal-welfare and public, animal and plant-health standards. As Wildlife and Countryside Link and the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee have pointed out, while some of those requirements will continue in other legislation, with others, I am afraid, there are gaps.

In particular, from 1 January, there will no longer be legal protection in place covering hedgerows, soil cover and watercourse buffer strips that are not covered by the farming rules for water. It also risks enforcement gaps on compliance with regulations, such as domestic public rights of way, that benefit from conditionality for payments, which falls away from 1 January. The Scrutiny Committee’s report concludes:

“We note that some elements of the new compliance regime are still work in progress, while other cross-compliance requirements will be set out in guidance, codes of practice or incentive schemes. This raises questions as to whether they can be enforced as effectively as the current statutory requirements.”

Wildlife and Countryside Link has called for the Government to commit to a new system of farm regulation and conditionality to ensure genuine environmental benefits are being delivered by the new environmental land management schemes. Wildlife and Countryside Link has commented that the explanatory memorandum refers to

“generalised and outcome-focussed rules in existing regulation”,

but it points out:

“Many of these domestic standards are guidance and voluntary incentivisation frameworks that do not apply to all farmers…they are not appropriate replacements for enforceable rules under regulatory conditionality. This also creates an unlevel playing field between farmers, risking a ‘race to the bottom’ as those who comply with voluntary standards are disadvantaged commercially.”

I ask the Minister: what assessment has been made of the environmental benefits of removing cross-compliance? I will take his likely silence as confirmation that no such assessment has been made. That is hardly surprising, given that it is actually quite a hard thing to do without the proper bassline assessment that we called for at the beginning.

In conclusion, we support an agricultural transition, but the Government have never set out the destination clearly, so it is unsurprising that they are failing. We will have to pick up the pieces. We want it to work effectively in order to move to a more environmentally friendly and nature-positive food production system, but as we see in this instrument today, we remain concerned that the Government’s piecemeal and long, drawn-out approach is failing to deliver for farmers, taxpayers, or the environment.

[Mark Spencer]

May I start by clarifying the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley. Delinked payments will only be made to farmers who claimed in the previous schemes in 2023. In the basic repayment scheme, there is not the necessity to hold that land in future, but in practice, if people take on lots of land from neighbours, those rights could be transferred if businesses are amalgamated and changed. Technically, it is possible for someone to receive payments without farming that land, but these payments are very much on a diminishing scale and will evaporate very soon, which is the whole purpose of this transition. This transition is to move away from that basic payment scheme to improve our environmental footprint, and to help farmers on that journey of improving our biodiversity and our environment as we move forward.

The hon. Member for Cambridge again asked me about the budgets, and as I have told him in the past, the budget is clear—it is ringfenced. It is £2.4 billion-worth of cash, and it is there to be invested in UK farming to get the outcomes that we want to achieve. If there is an underspend, such as if we spend £2.3 billion this year, we could spend £2.5 billion next year. That is agreed with the Treasury and we can roll that money forward and it will be invested. That is why we have been able to do some of the great schemes that we have been able to roll out to allow farmers to invest in slurry.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The Secretary of State confirmed only the other day at the Country Land and Business Association conference that only 800 sustainable farming incentive schemes are currently being paid out—that is compared to 80,000 basic payment agreements. There is a gap, and I wonder if the Minister would agree to write to me to explain where in the accounts that money is located.

[Mark Spencer]

Of course, I am more than happy to write the hon. Gentleman, but he fails to mention the doubling in the number of people that are receiving countryside stewardship agreements—a 93% increase. We now have slurry infrastructure grants, calf housing grants, beef housing grants, and investment in robotics and new technology. All of those were not available under the basic payment scheme, but farmers are now eligible to apply for those capital sums to invest in their own productivity going forward. Of course, I will write to the hon. Gentleman and try to reassure him again, but I fear that he may not want to be reassured, but instead wants to try to frustrate.

That leads me to the hon. Gentleman’s distrust of UK farmers and his worry that UK farmers are going to wreck our beautiful landscape following the loss of cross-compliance. I have to say that that is the environment and the landscapes that they created over generations. Let us just look at the landowners up and down the country who do not receive basic payments and who are not under obligations to meet these rules. Why is he not worried about local authorities that may cut hedgerows in May or June? Why is he not worried about the Coal Authority, which owns vast amounts of property and may go and commit those crimes, as he has indicated? Why is he not worried about golf courses, which may well go and cut their hedgerows in May and June? Why is he only worried about farmers—the people who have protected those landscapes and created them over generations? I trust those farmers. I believe in those landowners and farmers to do the right thing. They have done it for generations, and they will continue to. We are going to help and support them on that journey by investing in them and ensuring that they can do the right thing to improve biodiversity and their environmental footprint.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Wine (Revocation and Consequential Provision) Regulations 2023

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer, and to hear the Minister’s introduction. I start by reassuring him and the Whips that we recognise the constructive approach the Department has taken with the industry on this instrument and that, given the support the industry has expressed, we will not oppose it. That said, there are of course some issues, which were aired in last week’s debate in the other place and on which more clarity would be helpful.

As we have heard, the wine sector makes an important contribution to this country’s economy, and I thank the Wine and Spirit Trade Association for its help in preparing for this debate. I noticed that it is quoted in the impact assessment as saying that the UK wine market was worth over £10 billion in 2022—I think the Minister said £11 billion, but what is 1 billion between friends. However, it is certainly a very large amount of money in off-trade and on-trade sales, with large volumes of wine imported, bottled and re-exported across the world. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Easington, we are the world’s 12th largest exporter by value. Wine is a very important part of our highly successful food and drink sector.

As has been said, the vast majority of wine consumed here—99%—is imported. We recognise and accept the need for the rules inherited from the European Union to be updated and streamlined to help the sector operate even more efficiently. I also appreciate that efforts are being made in this legislation to provide consumers with clearer information and to reduce unnecessary packaging—for instance, by removing the foil and mushroom cork requirements for sparkling wines—and we have heard that the Minister intends to bring in another two instruments to make further changes and to consolidate legislation.

I understand that today’s instrument needs to be in place before 1 January—just a few weeks away—which rather answers the question raised in the other place: why not do all three together? To put it kindly, DEFRA is clearly a just-in-time Department; putting it less kindly, this is all rather last-minute. Perhaps the Minister can explain why this could not all have been done a bit earlier, and therefore in a more rational way.

I also understand that the Department has yet to reach an agreed way forward to ensure alignment across the GB internal market. Of course, this is not the only such issue, as it has also failed to agree a UK deposit return scheme, which could accept wine and other glass bottles. Will the Minister therefore provide more clarity around what exactly the other two instruments will do? How will they impact on the labelling requirements? What further changes is the Department planning for 2024-25? What is getting in the way of it reaching the agreements needed with the devolved Governments on this and other important matters? Perhaps the Opposition could help. How exactly does the Minister plan to reach a consistent regulatory approach across the GB internal market?

We are grateful to the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its useful report on this instrument, which makes for sobering reading and is worded quite strongly. In addition to the questions I have asked, it expresses concerns about the potential negative impact on consumer confidence if labelling ends up providing less information for consumers or is just less clear. It states:

“it will be important that all products are labelled clearly so that consumers can make an informed choice of what they are buying.”

The issue was raised in the other place, but the response of the Minister’s colleague there was a little vague.

I am sure that many of those present today study wine labels closely, and many of our constituents who buy wine will be used to seeing specific information showing the origin; the grape varieties used; by whom, how and where the wine is produced; and other important details, such as the percentage alcohol content and units, whether the wine is fair trade or organic, and whether it contains sulphites or egg white. They may feel wary of that sort of information being presented in a different and perhaps more generic or less informative way. Will the Minister clarify exactly what the changes in the regulations will mean in practice for the information on wine bottle labels? How does the Department plan to inform consumers, so that their confidence can be maintained?

In conclusion, much in the regulations is to be welcomed, but if we dig into the detail, support for some of the measures was not as strong as the explanatory memorandum suggests. It would be sensible to pick up some of the points when the other instruments are brought forward, so that the new regime can be considered as a coherent whole.

[Mark Spencer]

I am grateful for the support of the shadow team, and I will address some of the points made by the hon. Member for Cambridge.

Of course, it would be much better to do these things across the whole UK. It is a question of ensuring that we take our friends in Scotland and Wales with us. The hon. Gentleman slightly pressed me on why we are bringing the regulations forward so close to the deadline. We have been engaged in many conversations with our friends in Wales and Scotland, cajoling them along the same route. To be clear, they have not said that they will not do this; they are still considering what they would like to do. We are helping and supporting them in that decision-making process and to come on board and do some of these things in Scotland and Wales. Those conversations are ongoing, and we will continue them.

We are doing this SI first, and we will do the other two when we get to them, but more detailed work is needed with the industry to ensure that we get the legislation right.

[Daniel Zeichner]

May I press the Minister slightly? In a few weeks’ time, will we not end up with produce being regulated differently in different parts of Great Britain?

[Mark Spencer]

To be clear, absolutely not. We will not have products that are regulated differently, but we will have an industry that is regulated differently in terms of blending. It will be possible for a winemaker in Cambridge to blend a wine in Cambridge and to sell it throughout the United Kingdom—it will still be possible to sell Cambridgeshire wine in Cardiff and Edinburgh—but it will not be possible for someone to blend a wine in Cardiff and to sell it in Cambridge. However, we hope our friends in Wales and Scotland will catch up.

The hon. Gentleman asked some specific questions about labelling, and it is important to get across that it is fundamental to these changes that the consumer is not misled, and nothing in them will mislead consumers. People will have to be absolutely clear. It will not be possible for me to buy in some Australian wine, blend it with three grapes from Sussex, bottle it in Nottinghamshire and call it Nottinghamshire wine. Clearly, that would be misleading, which is not permitted under these regulations. We must be clear about the percentages, the blends of grapes being used and the origin of the wines.

That is all clear for those who are doing it, but the regulations do give importers flexibility to blend different varieties and types of wine to maintain a standard product throughout different seasons, because wines can change, and they can also change in transport.

Draft Plant Protection Products (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2023

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Gary, and I thank the Minister for his introduction.

We are all aware that farmers and growers have been grappling with some formidable challenges over the last few years given the sky-rocketing costs of fertiliser, animal feed and energy; tight profit margins; a rocky transition from the common agricultural policy to environmental land management schemes; and a trade and regulatory regime that has thrown up yet more barriers and red tape. Many farmers have had to endure the distress of witnessing damage to crops or livestock due to the devastating recent floods, and too many have suffered from persistent workforce shortages. So I absolutely understand concerns about any prospects of further crop loss due to disease and insect infestation and anxiety about the availability of effective tools to prevent such problems and their financial consequences.

We recognise that the farming and amenity sectors need to plan ahead and adjust to any changes in the pesticides, and seeds treated with pesticides, that they are permitted to use. Indeed, they would probably also welcome news from the Minister today about the long awaited pesticide national action plan. Can the Minister enlighten us about when that is expected?

On the instrument before us today, we appreciate that farmers and growers need access to these products in time for the 2024 growing season and that without these temporary extended permissions, there could be adverse impact on both crop yield and output. As we have heard, maize, which is used extensively for cattle feed and energy generation, would be particularly affected as 99% of all maize seeds are treated with at least one of three plant protection products that do not currently have GB authorisation for use as seed treatments. We read in paragraph 7.2 of the explanatory memorandum that

“Since EU Exit no new seed treatments for maize have been authorised in GB.”

The curious reader might wonder why. The issue begs a bigger post-Brexit question, of course. The fact that there are no UK authorisations points to the highly integrated nature of crop systems across Europe. Maize seed is not produced in the UK, and we therefore have to rely on at least one of our European neighbours—hopefully, given today, not Greece.

Although we support the extension, it is not clear to me or others I have consulted how the period of three and a half years was arrived at for the provisions that allow the import, sale and use of seeds treated with a plant protection product authorised in at least one European Union or European economic area member state prior to the implementation period completion date. I am advised that the standard registration period is 18 months; I think the Minister said in his opening statement that the period had been carefully considered. Will he say a little more about how that three and a half years has been arrived at?

Similarly, we do not object to the reinstatement of trade permits for importing plant protection products that are authorised in the UK for up to two years, so we will not be opposing the instrument. However, an explanation would be helpful—not least because I am told by those in the industry that most parallel importers have moved to product authorisation in the transition period. Again, will the Minister say more?

Regardless, in our view these extensions should be temporary. We strongly urge growers to use this time efficiently and productively to seek alternative solutions to crop protection and we urge manufacturers to develop and submit applications for new alternative products that minimise environmental harm. We are committed to working with farmers and scientists to find alternatives and will follow the scientific advice on the licensing, regulation and impact of pesticides. I ask the Minister for an assurance that the permissions are indeed temporary and to outline the measures that the Government are taking to facilitate and accelerate the development of alternative systems for crop protection.

Let me finish by reminding the Minister that there are concerns about some pesticides, still in use in the UK, that some believe threaten insect and animal life as well as human health, including through carcinogens and/or neurotoxins. With new research, and growing concern about these issues, a number of pesticides have been added to the EU’s list of “substances of very high concern”. That is because they have been found to be carcinogenic or to affect the reproductive system, as well as being persistent in the environment and bioaccumulative.

Bans on chemicals are generally preceded by a listing on the “substances of very high concern” list. The last additions to the UK’s list were made more than three years ago, in June 2020. Since then, the European Chemicals Agency has added 26 substances to its equivalent list. It seems that the UK is falling behind. That is disappointing because the UK played a key role in setting up the EU’s gold standard chemicals regime, yet now we are lagging behind the EU in tracking and regulating harmful substances. Why has the UK failed to add any chemicals to the list of substances of concern, when our EU neighbours have added 26?

The regulations are a temporary fix—they could be deemed a sticking plaster. We need to develop new ways of protecting crops without harming the environment. We will work closely with the farming sector, the crop protection sector, and the wider food production sector to find alternatives that provide sustainable, secure supplies of food but also work for nature. That is a prize worth seeking.

[Mark Spencer]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for his contribution and to hon. Members for their attendance today. I hope that colleagues will recognise that the regulations are crucial to ensure that farmers continue to have the tools that they need to protect their crops. I shall address some of the shadow Minister’s questions.

The national action plan on pesticides is coming soon; we have been liaising with colleagues from the devolved Administrations about it for some time. Those discussions have reached a fruitful conclusion and I hope that we will be able to launch the plan very soon.

Why have there been no new applcations? Obviously, these chemicals and new technologies take a lot of developing. It takes a long time for chemical companies to come forward with products to the marketplace. There is actually a biopesticide that is very close to being rolled out, but the authorisations have not been gone through so far. We need to make sure that we have all the data available to make a credible assessment of whether it is safe for the environment and the operator. We will not shirk away from going through that rigorously. The Health and Safety Executive does an excellent job in giving us that data and knowledge.

I think we pitched the period of two and a half years about right. We think that is a window of opportunity to engage with the sector and make sure that those coming forward with products that they want to register will have ample opportunity to do it within that window. Eighteen months would have been quite tight; it might have been achievable but we want to give a credible time for those applications to come forward and be properly considered.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I understand the point that the Minister is making, but what does he expect to happen at the end of those three and a half years?

[Mark Spencer]

I hope that by that time the sector will have had the opportunity to come forward with its own applications to the Health and Safety Executive and for us to have looked at that data and granted UK authorisations. We are committed to working with the sector and we have a good working relationship with it.

The shadow Minister commented about how our friends in the EU had withdrawn some products. We are keen to help our food sector to have the tools available to continue to produce great food. We need to balance that, of course, with the impact on the environment and the safety of operators who use the chemicals. By their very nature, these chemicals are designed to be harmful to some organisms—that is the purpose of their existence. We will make sure that all those health and safety criteria are put in place and that those operating with the chemicals are legally obliged to use the correct equipment.

I hope that colleagues will support the regulations and extend and reinstate the current arrangements. We can do that safely for the benefit of our food producers and the environment. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

To maintain that healthy, sustainable food system, farmers need a level playing field, so when the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) made his recent comments about the benefits of importing hormone-injected beef, it sent a shudder through the industry. This time last year, he was at the very top of Government, alongside the Secretary of State. Given the Minister’s long experience in Government, can he tell us how many others at the top of his Government privately harbour that view?