Agriculture Bill

Debate between Dave Doogan and Sarah Dines

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

As a relatively new MP, I have been astonished by the commitment of this Government, the ministerial team and the Parliamentary Private Secretary to put the rights of farmers and this great nation at the front of this outstanding Bill.

On my election, I became forged to representing the interests of farmers and the farming industry in my constituency. Farming comes up on a daily basis, and I would like to speak personally about that, rather than about the international scene. The farmers of Derbyshire Dales are of hardy stock. They are wedded to the rugged land and the livestock they raise. They are farmers such as Simon Frost, who picks me up in his Land Rover and takes me around the land that his family has farmed for centuries, and his wife, Suzanne, who has spent her working life in science and animal welfare. They are custodians of land, such as Sir Richard FitzHerbert at Tissington, who showed me around the dales that he and others love so much.

I am also grateful to the agricultural team at Bakewell, and to Alastair Sneddon, auctioneer, who goes out of his way patiently to brief me on the ins and outs of what is happening. Because of those constituents I stand here today to support this outstanding Bill. My constituents have also been well served by the National Farmers’ Union, represented by Andrew Critchlow in Matlock, by Jane Bassett from Hartington, and by Andrew Broadley from Derbyshire Dales.

Derbyshire farmers were understandably wary of newcomers, and I was one of them. Although I had small landowners and tenant farmers in my family, it took them a while to accept me, and to understand that I had their interests at heart. Once elected, I made it my mission to badger the poor ministerial team—they know what I mean—and I sat on the Bill Committee, and worked jolly hard for my constituents whenever I could. I know and am confident that this Government have the interests of farmers and the rest of the population at their heart, and that includes local issues in constituencies such as mine. I think about Hartington Stilton, Dovedale blue cheese, Peakland White, and Peakland Blue, and I know that Ministers have the backs of my constituents who work in those small businesses, and who possibly wish to go global.

We were elected on a manifesto of commitment and of not compromising our standards, and we will not do so—the passage of the Bill has proved that. We have maintained existing protections in law through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and the Bill contains many safety and reviewing features. I am so proud of what we have achieved. This is a listening Government. The jewel in the crown has to be the Trade and Agriculture Commission, and I am delighted by the expertise of those who contribute to that. I therefore support the Bill.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I shall keep my remarks brief, out of courtesy for those further down the call list, but also because there is little left to say about the Bill and the Government’s ambitions therein. I support amendment 16B and its provisions on equivalence for agrifood standards in relation to future trade. The amendment places a benign requirement on the Government to have, as a negotiating objective in trade deal negotiations, the ambition of achieving equivalence of standards. While noting that, I would point out the Secretary of State’s insistence that proponents of protecting food standards, environmental protections and animal welfare standards are seeking to mandate precisely the same standards as we produce here in the UK. That is a tendentious misrepresentation of the pursuit of equivalence, encompassing as it does the same or higher standards.

Amendment 16B does not tie the Government’s hands when negotiating or bind them to any requirements and outcomes, meaning that the Government would still be free to prioritise other negotiating objectives above the duty to seek appropriate equivalence thereby representing the wateriest of all provisions, which if the Government oppose it—as they will—should leave us all very concerned.

I have to say that the Minister has been very generous with her time in discussing these matters with me and listening to my deeply held concerns about the Bill. She debates in such a conciliatory and kind way that I come away believing that she has agreed with me when in fact she has done no such thing in any given instance. [Laughter.]

If this is the last thing I say on this subject, I will observe that I believe the Government have wilfully lost sight of the fundamental importance of the material we are legislating for. We are transacting frameworks for the import of production domestically, not of timber or textiles or televisions, but of the foods that we will eat, and that is what is at risk when the Bill passes unamended, as it inevitably will. The food we prepare and feed to our children has not received the protection it deserves, and nor has its intrinsic worth been recognised—a theme which is manifest in the Agriculture Bill, but also in the Government’s Trade Bill and, of course, the detestable smash-and-grab United Kingdom Internal Market Bill. Everything I have done and said in the passage of this Bill has been in the interests of those working in farming and food production in Angus, in Scotland and across the whole of the UK. The people of these islands deserve better than this, whichever nation they call home. Scotland will have better than this, as the dawning of independence supports.