Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(1 week ago)
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Daniel Zeichner
I talk regularly to the National Farmers Union of Scotland. I respect it fully, but I genuinely say, as I have said on many occasions, that we need to look closely at the figures and look at the detail. We will find that the vast majority of farmers in this country will be fine.
Daniel Zeichner
We seem to be discussing this endlessly. The figures on agricultural property relief are absolutely clear. I have kept asking people to look at the detail, because what they will find—listen to the tax experts and the people who have actually looked at the policy in detail—is that fewer than 500 farms will be affected. That is the reassuring message that the Conservatives should be conveying to British farmers.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Britain’s farmers, who feed us and care for our environment, deserve better than the betrayal they received under the last Conservative Government, and better than the attacks in this Government’s recent Budget. In Cumbria alone some 1,400 family farmers, many of whom live on less than the minimum wage, will be hit by this tax, but the more immediate threat to farming is the Government’s rash decision to cut the basic payment by 76% next year. That will hit livestock farmers, upland farmers and dairy farmers, and destabilise the whole industry. Will the Minister think again?
Daniel Zeichner
We have always been very clear that we will do nothing in trade deals that would undermine this country’s important standards.
Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)
Food security is national security, and underpinning it are farmers and farmland. Labour’s ill-judged and heartless family farm tax will put all of that in jeopardy: family farms lost; tenant farmers unable to continue farming; communities hollowed out; rural mental health damaged; and precious food-producing land lost to developers or investors. No farms, no food. No farmers, no food. Will the Government please now admit that they have got this catastrophically wrong? Will they do the right thing by reversing this farm tax to protect our country’s food security?
Budget: Implications for Farming Communities
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place—he will make an excellent Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—and thank him for the opportunity to talk about this important issue.
As the Minister for Food Security, I can assure the House that food security is national security. The Government’s commitment to supporting farmers and rural communities is unwavering. We have committed £5 billion in the agricultural budget over the next two years—the biggest ever budget for sustainable food production and nature recovery in our country’s history. We are also releasing £60 million to support farmers whose farms have been devastated by severe flooding, and investing £208 million to protect the nation from potential disease outbreaks that threaten our farming industry, food security and human health.
However, as we are all only too aware, the Conservatives left behind a £22 billion black hole in our nation’s finances—[Interruption.] Yes, you did. And this Government have had to take tough decisions on tax, welfare and spending to fix the foundations and deliver change, including a series of decisions on tax to protect the payslips of working people. That is possible only by making changes to other taxes, such as agricultural property relief, which was previously available to all agricultural property at a rate of 100%. Currently, small farms can find themselves facing the same levels of tax bills as much larger farms, despite having a much smaller asset. Twenty per cent of agricultural property relief is claimed by the top 2%; 40% is claimed by the top 7%. That is not fair, it is not sustainable, and sadly, it has been used in some cases by wealthy landowners to avoid inheritance tax. That is why the Government have announced plans to reform agricultural property relief.
The Secretary of State met National Farmers Union president Tom Bradshaw this morning. We absolutely understand—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Dr Mullan, I heard you before, and I am certainly not putting up with it this time. If you want to leave, do so now, because I want to be able to hear others. Do we understand each other?
Daniel Zeichner
The Secretary of State met Tom Bradshaw this morning. We completely understand farmers’ anxieties about the changes, but rural communities need a better NHS, affordable housing and public transport, and we can provide that if we make the system fairer. The reforms to agricultural property relief mean that farmers can access 100% relief for the first £1 million and 50% relief thereafter—an effective 20% tax rate. That means that an individual can pass up to £2 million, and a couple up to £3 million between them, to a direct descendant, inheritance tax-free. Currently, 73% of agricultural property relief claims—
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not know whether you are aware, Minister, but you only have three minutes. How long will you be now? Are you coming to the end at this minute?
Daniel Zeichner
Seventy-three per cent of agricultural property relief claims are for less than £1 million. The vast majority of farmers will not be affected. They will be able to pass the family farm down to their children just as previous generations have always done. It is a fair and balanced approach that protects family farms while also fixing the public services that those same families rely on. It is part of a Budget that will restore economic stability and begin a decade of national renewal.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Mr Carmichael
I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this urgent question. I also thank the Minister for his statement, but I fear that it illustrates rather well some of the lack of understanding that has brought us to this point. More than any other industry, farming relies on stability and long-term planning. That is why many people in the industry relied on undertakings given by the Secretary of State when in opposition that the Labour party in government would not change inheritance tax reliefs for farming.
Every farming business is capital-rich but revenue-poor. Those businesses also trade in a market that has been more heavily influenced by government intervention than any other. Agricultural property relief is not a loophole; it has been a deliberate policy of successive Governments for the past 40 years, designed to avoid the sale and break-up of family farms. Is that still a goal to which this Government adhere? As the NFU put it, the Government have seemingly failed to grasp
“that family farms are not just small farms, and that just because a farm is a valuable asset it doesn’t mean those who work it are wealthy.”
As the Minister will be aware, some of the figures he has just given the House have been vigorously challenged over the past few days, particularly the assertion that only one in four British farms will be affected. Will the Minister and his Treasury colleagues publish the data behind those figures? In particular, does the figure that 73% of farms will not be affected rely on the inclusion of very small holdings?
These changes will have a ripple effect across the whole rural community. Will the Government publish their impact assessment for other rural businesses? Can the Minister also explain why the Treasury has removed the ringfence around farm support to be spent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? That ringfence was introduced after the Bew review. If it needed a review to introduce it, how can it just be abolished now out of the blue?
The Prime Minister has said in the past, and the Minister has repeated today, that food security is national security. Can the Minister point to one measure in this Budget that makes achieving that aim easier, rather than harder?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. Can I say how much I enjoyed visiting Wales, with the Welsh Minister, very early in my tenure? It was an important sign from this Government that we take farming seriously across the entire United Kingdom.
I share my hon. Friend’s very strong points about the importance of the family farm. What we are doing here is protecting the family farm. I have visited right around the country over the past five years, and on almost every visit, people have told me that they are concerned about people coming from outside—they often say “up London” or “down London”—with a lot of money and buying up local farmland over the heads of local people, not because they care about farming but to use that farmland for tax evasion purposes. This policy can be helpful to family farms and protect them against—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench says from a sedentary position that it will not, but it is people from his area who have been telling me about these problems. They repeated them constantly when we were in opposition, and here are a Labour Government doing something about it.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to my hon. Friend because she makes some important points. Ahead of the Budget, there were lots of predictions about what would happen. Of course, what happened is that this Government have protected the farming budget—indeed, raised it—and we are absolutely committed to paying out to farmers the £60 million that they deserve for flooding. That is £60 million, of course, that was not really budgeted for by the Conservatives, as part of their £22 billion black hole. The difference between us and them is that we are taking a responsible approach, which means that farmers can look forward to a stable future, as opposed to the chaos of the last decade.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Farmers across the United Kingdom are coping with the lingering legacy of betrayal—betrayal from the trade deals that happened under the last Government, which threw them under a bus; and betrayal from the transition from the old payment scheme to the new one, which saw many of them going bust or forced into making business decisions that they would never, ever have chosen. That legacy of betrayal is one that hangs heavy, and it is why farmers in my constituency and elsewhere feel so utterly disappointed by this Government’s Budget last week.
Let us look first at the agricultural property relief changes. There are 1,500 farms in Cumbria and 440 in my constituency affected by this. Has the Minister done an investigation into the number of farmers who are living on less than the minimum wage each year in terms of income, but who have a property that will be affected by these changes, particularly given the 41% decrease in farm incomes under the Conservative Government over the last five years? Will he also assess the impact on tenant farmers? Some 50% of my farmers are tenants and will be affected by the disruption that this change will create. Would it not be wise for him to implement the Rock review of tenant protections before introducing something like this? Will he also look again at the £2.4 billion budget and increase it by £1 billion, just as the Liberal Democrats suggest? If we do not feed ourselves, we are a failing country.
Daniel Zeichner
I see the hon. Gentleman nodding. He is well versed in that; he knows.
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I just say that brevity will be helpful? I believe that everybody has a constituency interest, so I really want to get everyone in. If we can have shorter answers, that would be better. Also, if the Minister looked at me now and again, that would help me hear what is being said.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)
I declare my interests as a farmer.
A 75-year-old farmer emailed me last week and said
“we work long hours, usually alone.”
He said that agriculture
“has one of the highest suicide rates of any industry. There is a great deal of talk these days about mental health and the need to alleviate stress in the workplace, yet”
last week the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for agriculture
“destroyed everything I have ever worked for.”
How would the Minister answer that?
Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)
I spent about 14 months in this place asking the former Government about water management, but I was always on a hiding to nothing. Does my hon. Friend recognise that the farmers in my constituency have a lot of expertise in water management and land management? Will he tell us how the Budget supports farmers to bring that expertise to the fore and work in partnership with us to manage that land and water?
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The schemes we have in place will help us to work with farmers on those issues—alongside, of course, the payment of the £60 million that the previous Government promised.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Are the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Chancellor aware that so serious are the consequences of this policy that the heads of farming families in their 80s and 90s are seriously considering committing suicide before it comes into place? [Hon. Members: “Shame!”] Shame on you! [Interruption.]
Daniel Zeichner
I find it hard to respond to a question like that. I spoke earlier about using language carefully, and I would just reiterate that point.
Mr Speaker
Order. Sit down, please. The question was long enough. We do not need to start playing politics around the Chamber.
Daniel Zeichner
I do not recognise those figures. When I look at the figures that the Treasury gave for the number of claims in the last year available, that is very close to the number in the hon. Lady’s own constituency, which seems unlikely to me.
Daniel Zeichner
I understand the point but, first, much of this can be avoided through proper planning. Secondly, Devon is one of the counties where we most often hear it said that people are coming in and buying up land for the wrong reasons.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Indeed, some are more positive about the improved connectivity potential in and around Cambridge, but the Minister will be aware that his colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recently established the Cambridge delivery group, which is looking to create 150,000 additional homes, which will in turn create a whole series of transport challenges. Will he tell the House what structures are in place to ensure proper dialogue between his Department, DLUHC and East West Rail?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
What are the Government doing to support farmers? Quite a few people are asking that. When one looks at the evidence of what is going on, the survey this week from the National Farmers Union into farmer confidence revealed that a staggering 65% of farmers are facing declining profits, or their business will not survive at all. Their prospects are worse than most Tory MPs, it suddenly seems. Why is it that farmers do so badly under the Conservatives?
Checks on Goods Entering UK
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
We recognise the need to ensure the UK’s biosecurity, but I echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). What a mess. It is 29 April and the new checks are being introduced tomorrow, but the businesses involved are unclear about how the system is supposed to operate—and that is after the five delays that we have heard about and huge sums wasted on border control points. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how much has been wasted on Portsmouth, for instance.
We want these checks to work. I have been to the London and the Dover port health authorities and been extremely impressed by the work that they do, but it is baffling that, in the battle against Asian swine flu, at Dover, the Minister is taking away vital funding, as the Government move the checks 22 miles up the road to Sevington. Can he tell the House how food vehicles will be controlled on that journey, as Dover Port Health Authority tells me clearly that they won’t?
The Government have admitted that the cost will be an extra £330 million annually. Others say it will be more. What definitive figures can the Minister provide for the inflationary impact that this Government’s border measures will create for food supplies in the UK? What assessment has been made of the savings and efficiency that would be made if we were to achieve a better veterinary agreement with the EU?
In conclusion, the British chambers of commerce says that DEFRA has failed to listen to industry over these changes. Others say the same. Many businesses are exasperated by the endless delays and the repeated and continual lack of clarity and certainty in the implementation of the new system. Why have the Government left businesses and even border chiefs in a position where they simply cannot plan properly and are left in the dark, as one put it, at one minute to midnight in terms of being told about the essential features of the new system? What is the Minister going to do to sort out the mess?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Farmers need support against potentially devastating contagious diseases, such as African swine fever. I recently visited Dover, where the diligent Port Health Authority regularly seizes contaminated meat. Yet next month, its DEFRA funding will be cut by 70% and, incredibly, those border checks will be moved 22 miles inland. Why are the Conservatives putting the farmers of this country and our national security at risk?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(9 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Cambridge has long suffered from the antisocial behaviour problems associated with short-term lets and Cambridge City Council has long asked for action, so I welcome this long overdue announcement. Will the Minister say more about enforcement and the resources that are needed for councils to enforce, so that we can actually deal with the antisocial behaviour problems that, sadly, too often come with short-term lets?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Last week’s report from the Government’s environmental watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, was a damning indictment of the Government’s record. It said they were “largely off track”, with just four of the 40 targets being achieved. When it comes to the environmental land management schemes, can the Minister tell the House just how much environmental improvement they have helped farmers to deliver so far?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 1 month ago)
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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?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Last week, past failures caught up with the DEFRA ministerial team. First, the Climate Change Committee castigated them for lack of progress on agriculture and land use, and then the report they had commissioned from John Shropshire and his team detailed the crop losses and lost productivity and production caused by their failure to address labour supply issues. This week, could the Minister tell the House if he knows whether the UK is more or less food-secure than this time last year, and will he explain how he has reached that conclusion?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Minister sometimes characterises my line of questioning as a touch gloomy, so I will try to cheer him up this morning by saying how pleased I was to hear his announcement at the NFU conference that the £2.4 billion per annum of agricultural support would be ring-fenced and that, if there was underspend in one year, it would be carried forward into future years. I am sure we are delighted that the Treasury has become such a kind, benevolent, caring organisation, but will he just repeat that promise in the House this morning, and maybe get one of his officials to write to me to point to where in his Department’s accounts that money is, so we can all keep an eye on it?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
We want ELMs to work, but as it stands, the scheme risks going the way of those magnificent elm trees that have so suffered across the English countryside over the past 40 years. The Minister has admitted that the uptake of sustainable farming incentives is low—indeed, the National Farmers Union rightly described last week’s announcement as “too little, too late”. Will the Minister come clean and tell the House how many farm businesses he will allow to go to the wall because of this failing agricultural transition process? Will he sit down with us and work out a simpler way forward that keep farmers farming and secures the environmental goals we all share?
Annual Fisheries Negotiations with EU and North Atlantic States
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing the urgent question. I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration that it took an urgent question to hear about the negotiations. I hear what the Minister said about the timeframes, but there was a convention under which each year the House had a proper discussion about the outcome of the negotiations. I hope the Minister will promise today to return to that convention so that we can have proper and full discussions.
I pay tribute to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and other charities, as well as the fishers, who last week intervened so effectively to save human life in the channel. I remind the Minister of the continuing anguish that is being caused to many in the inland fleet at the hands of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency; the Minister really needs to work with colleagues to get a grip on that.
On the recent negotiations, it is clear that many industry players have welcomed the outcomes of the various sets of talks, and that is positive, but may I ask the Minister about the status of the Faroe talks? What efforts were made to ensure that the deals made with the EU and other coastal states included a commitment to keep Russia’s fleet out of their waters? Although we welcome the promise to stop the fishing of sand eels in our waters, will the Minister tell us when that will take effect and whether we have secured commitments from others during the negotiations?
In general, we will, of course, want to see the detail of the outcome and understand the potential environmental impact, but not everyone in the industry is quite as happy as the Minister says. Therein lies a fundamental problem that we have identified in the new architecture, including in the latest version of the joint fisheries statement, something also recently published and not discussed in this House. Although the Minister speaks for the UK Government, the devolved Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also play an important role in fisheries management, so we ask again: who speaks for England?
Labour has consistently pointed out that no one fights the corner for English fishing in these negotiations. The statement has been welcomed by the Scottish Government and fishing sector, but can the Minister explain how much of the increase in catch will be available to the hard-hit English fishing sector? What will be the overall impact on jobs and economic opportunities in our English North sea fishing ports and surrounding communities?
The Minister mentioned the distant fleet. Jane Sandell, the chief executive officer of UK Fisheries Ltd, which is based in Humberside and operates in distant Arctic waters, did not react with any positivity about this outcome. She called it
“yet another body blow for fishers in the North East of England. While the government is gloating over its ‘success’ in the Norway talks, we are having to make skilled people redundant in the Humber region. It’s an absolute travesty of fairness and common sense.”
She also said:
“The few extra tonnes of whitefish in the Norwegian zone won't come close to offsetting the loss in Svalbard due to the reduced TAC. Defra knows this, and yet it simply doesn’t seem to care about the English fleet.”
That was borne out at the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs a couple of weeks ago, when the Secretary of State appeared to be unaware of the problems facing the English distant fleet. So perhaps the Minister can explain today why the English distant fleet has fared so badly, and what he plans to do about it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(2 years ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Food production is vulnerable to animal disease, and we have heard about the impact of avian flu on supermarkets, which are limiting the sale of eggs. This week, the Public Accounts Committee highlighted what it describes as
“a long period of inadequate management and under investment in the Weybridge site”
of the Animal and Plant Health Agency. The PAC warned that the APHA would struggle if there were a concurrent disease outbreak. As the Secretary of State well knows, other diseases do threaten. Although staff are doing their very best, what is her plan if we face another disease outbreak, or is it just fingers crossed in the hope that it does not happen on her watch?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Cost, of course, is incredibly important but so is availability. The UK food system is dependent on two factories for CO2, one of which has been shut for months and the other has been operating at relatively low levels. Before Christmas, the Government were slow to intervene and coy about the terms of the agreement. Can the Minister tell the House today what that agreement was, how much it cost and what the plan is to ensure that the UK food system is secure in future?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
More data may help in the negotiations, but data is no justification for the much-loathed catch app that the Government are imposing, which requires fishermen to guess the weight of their fish before they land them. When I was with Essex fishers in the estuary earlier in the week, they told me just how difficult that is.
I am not going to slap a dead fish on the Dispatch Box, Mr Speaker, because that would not meet with your approval, but I do have a copy of Tuesday’s Hansard, so I wonder whether the Minister can guess its weight. If she is not within 10%, will that make her a criminal? That is what the new rules will do to England’s fishers from the end of next month.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(3 years, 12 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Question 4 has been withdrawn. If the substantive question cannot be answered, do not worry. I call the shadow Minister.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
May I associate those on this side of the House with the Secretary of State’s comments on the appalling loss of the Joanna C?
Twenty-six per cent. of our food comes from the European Union, and it is reported that last week the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ head of food security warned industry reps to expect just 40% flow rates. I am sure the Secretary of State will want to provide reassurance on that, but as we have already heard, his attempts to placate livestock farmers recently led to some pretty dreadful headlines in the farming press. “Laughable” was the comment from the Farmers Guardian. So can he do better today and explain the plans he has in place to keep our food supplies flowing in just 35 days’ time?
Business of the House
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The national data strategy was unveiled recently, and I am sure the Leader of the House knows how important it is that we secure a data adequacy agreement with the European Union soon. He may also have noticed that commentators were surprised at what they termed the “buccaneering” language used in some of it, which I would perhaps attribute to Mr Dominic Cummings. Given the importance of securing data flows with the European Union, can the Leader of the House make time for a statement from a Minister on this very important issue soon?
ARM: Foreign Acquisition
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. It is a half-hour debate. I have not been told that you wish to speak and I am not sure whether the person who is holding the debate has either. You can intervene, but I have not been given notice of anybody else. Have you been told, Daniel Zeichner?
Mr Speaker
Has the Minister been told? Three people are meant to know in an Adjournment debate: the Minister, the Chair, and the person whose debate it is.
Outsourcing and Tax Credits
Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Lindsay Hoyle(8 years ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Last but certainly not least, Daniel Zeichner.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I think we have got the message that the Minister wants lessons to be learned. Will he assure us that all that the minutes, recordings and transcripts relating to the process that led up to the tendering of the contract will be published?