Agriculture: Regulation

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, globally, agriculture faces some long-term trends. As my noble friend Lady Byford said, there is a growing population, climate change, changing diet and competition for agricultural land. One would have thought that there were good opportunities for agriculture in the EU, but the EU is going backwards compared with the rest of the world. Our yields are flat. They are growing in America, Brazil and almost everywhere but in the EU due to overregulation. It was madness of the EU to bring in the regulation on chemicals and pesticides when there was no alternative. As a result, billions of pounds of investment and innovation money has gone out of the EU, and particularly out of the UK, which was so advanced in this field, and has gone to America and Canada. Jobs and some of our best brains have gone there—and one cannot blame them when one lives in this highly regulated environment, as we do as a result of the EU.

In the report on innovation in agriculture that we are undertaking in Sub-Committee D, we have evidence from Rothamsted Research, that:

“The disjunction between restrictive regulation in the EU and the lack of resources for agricultural research and innovation is probably the biggest threat to the long-term viability and competitiveness of EU agriculture”.

My noble friend Lord Henley has a huge job to turn that round.

More locally, could my noble friend tell me whether there are any plans to change the highly overrestrictive sheep regulations as a result of foot and mouth disease? Having tags in both ears has caused huge problems, including animal welfare problems, as some of the lambs are running around without ears, having been tagged too early. I have just heard that on Exmoor the tags that have been used, which had been authorised, are now no longer acceptable and farmers have to buy new tags.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about farm inspections. They are highly costly and need to be restructured. But perhaps the greatest threat to farmers is the draconian subsidy penalties, whether for cross-compliance or anything else. Small farmers cannot tolerate that; they make mistakes quite innocently sometimes, and they are not the people to be persecuted, but sadly that is what happens. I hope that the Macdonald report will bring that to the fore and that the Government will change many of the regulations and the severe penalty regime that are currently in force.