Agriculture

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise to discuss the second instrument about direct payments, and I beg your forbearance and that of the Front Benchers, who I expect thought they would get away with being the only speakers this afternoon. I am sorry about that, but I put in because I did not get the chance to speak in the debates on the Agriculture Bill earlier this year. I hope the House and you will indulge me for a few minutes while I speak about Wiltshire farmers and the role I think farming could play in the UK after Brexit.

I much enjoyed the Bill Committee, and especially the erudition and good humour of the two Front Benchers. My hon. Friend the Minister and I have something in common, which is a parent in the public eye—both with some strong farming and food credentials, and both with some suspicions about what the Government are up to it when it comes to agriculture—

[Victoria Prentis]

indicated dissent.

[Danny Kruger]

The Minister denies it. It is true to say that I do not think she had the pleasure of the experience of a convoy of tractors driving through Banbury in protest at the Agriculture Bill, with a huge placard on the front tractor saying, “Daddy knows best”, which is what I had in Marlborough, with a placard saying, “Mummy knows best”. Of course, Mummy does know best; she just did not understand the question in that instance. I did of course disagree with those farmers on the detail of the Agriculture Bill, but I did and do share their concerns, and I want to try to summarise those today. There are basically two: there is a practical concern about farm incomes, and there is a strategic or philosophical concern about the place of farming in this country’s future.

Let me summarise the practical concern first. We are basically moving the subsidy—some billions of pounds—from farming as it is traditionally understood, as the management of land for the production of food, to environmental stewardship. The overall budget might be the same and individual farm incomes may be guaranteed for a few years, but this is a profound change in the business model of farming. I was very pleased to get assurances on Monday from the Secretary of State in his statement that the switch is not intended to reduce food production or to take land out of cultivation and put it to other uses. I believe him, and I am sure that is the intention. I fully support the overall mission of the reforms, which is to enable sustainable food production in this country, but the design and details of the system are essential to make sure that we do not inadvertently make people, against their best instincts and against the traditions of their own land, become unwilling environmental stewards rather than food producers.

We all know the jokes about farmers being asked, “What do you farm?” and answering, “Subsidies, mostly.” I am all for subsidies, and I am all for stewardship and for paying farmers to maintain the forests, the streams and the soil, but let us make sure they farm animals and crops. The details of the scheme are what matters here, and we need to get on with it. The time is tight for phasing out basic payments, and we still do not know the full details of what will replace them. I appreciate and applaud the reason for this—the Government want to consult with farmers on the best system for them—but I hope this can happen soon and finish quickly.

Let me finish with the strategic question, which, in a sense, underpins all the technical debate that we are having about subsidies. The Opposition spent much of the debate on the Agriculture Bill talking about trade deals. Although, in a sense, trade deals had nothing to do with that Bill, which was about support for and regulation of British farms, I appreciate why they discussed them. The fact is that a bad trade deal could undermine a good Agriculture Bill—and it was a good Agriculture Bill, especially once food production was recognised as something worth including.

I applaud the Government for the deal they did to keep the National Farmers Union and the Department for International Trade happy by ensuring proper statutory oversight of the trade deals to make sure that food standards and farming interests are protected. We are now in the process of negotiating those trade deals, and here is where the philosophical difference arises; I fear that there may be a philosophical difference between DEFRA and DIT.

It is right that the Departments have slightly different approaches. DIT is there to maximise trade for British companies so that they benefit from lucrative exports and British consumers benefit from cheap imports. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate my old friends Douglas Carswell and Dominic Johnson on their appointments as non-executive directors of DIT this week. They are great patriots with all the right instincts—so much so that I see that DIT has been dubbed by some Conservatives “the Ministry of Sound”. I am pleased about their appointments, but I am not sure that Douglas Carswell or Dominic Johnson has ever so much as grown a tray of cress, let alone planted a carrot or had anything to do with actual farming. I wish all power to the Minister’s elbow in the ongoing oversight that she will exercise over her colleagues in the trade deals that are being negotiated.

We must not offshore our carbon emissions or animal cruelty to other countries. We must not sell out our farmers. We must make a moral and political decision to rely more on British food. Partly this is about food security—as this year shows, it would be unwise to take land out of production that we might need in future crises—but it is also about a way of life. In a mysterious sense, landscape is a human construct bounded by walls and ditches, marked by copses and fields that have been maintained by people who owned or rented the land for generations. Land is made beautiful and meaningful because it is used, not just for the public good of environmental wellbeing, but for the private good of the people who live on it. That is why there is a special place for farmers as stewards of a landscape in use.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your patience; I thank the House too. Let me also express my appreciation of the Minister for her work and my support for these statutory instruments. We must maintain direct payments for our farmers. We must introduce variable tariffs to make it pointless for foreign countries to export to this country food made to lower standards than ours. We must protect our farmers, because their private good is the public good.