British Agriculture

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, on getting time for this important debate.

In the world today we face a burgeoning population and a growing demand for food, yet EU and UK agricultural production is at best stalled and in some cases decreasing. Clearly not all is well. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has said that there are serious costs to UK agriculture from being in the EU. So what are the difficulties?

For the first time, the majority of the world’s population live in urban areas and for the most part understand neither farming nor the country. This will only get worse, whether we are in or out of the EU. The latest CAP reform was not fit for purpose. The three different crops for arable farms of over 30 hectares is the prime example. Decision-makers in Brussels pay too much attention to unelected, unaccountable NGOs. The so-called green lobbyists, funded in part by the taxpayer—quite wrongly in my view—are starting to do real harm. They will increasingly affect future decisions and regulations—and again, it does not matter whether we are in or out of the EU. EU regulations are far too often based on emotion and politics, not on sound science. A good example is the banning by the Commission of the neonic group of pesticides. This was a dubious decision that undoubtedly makes the lives of farmers more difficult.

The conclusion of the Anderson report on the plant-protection products regime as currently run by the Commission, commissioned by the NFU and others, makes for sober reading. It concludes that in the UK some crops, such as peas for freezing, carrots and apples, will probably not be grown in the future. The gross value added of UK agriculture will fall by about £1.6 billion per annum. There will be a drop of over 36% in farming profits, and a loss of between 35,000 and 40,000 jobs in the associated workforce. These are serious and worrying conclusions, and my noble friend must give us an answer today as to whether he agrees or disagrees with these findings.

I turn to GM crops. The EU position is not just to commit millions of the poorest to a worse diet and more starvation; it is driving research, development and production out of the EU when these are exactly what we need to boost growth and jobs. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, that the sacking by President Juncker of Anne Glover as chief scientific adviser, and the demolition of her job because of her approach to GMOs, was a huge black mark and a terrible decision.

Dr Roberto Bertollini, chief scientist and the WHO representative to the EU, said:

“Ideology and vested interests continue to dominate the public debate in Europe and elsewhere irrespective of the attempts to bring knowledge and science-based advice in the picture”.

Anne Glover’s sacking and the removal of her post was a victory for the green NGOs that sought to undermine her position and won. The result is that the future is bleaker than it should be.

Let me be fair. Good regulations do come out of the EU. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, will have welcomed the minimum apple content in cider that has led to an increase in cider-growing orchards in this country. Although EU regulations on agriculture are perhaps one of the best arguments for leaving the EU, that would be totally wrong. From time to time we are bound to have less good commissioners and Commissions, just as we have less good Governments and Ministers in the UK. One has only to look at ex-Prime Minister Blair, who failed us on many fronts and in particular gave away a large part of our rebate in return for reforms of the CAP that never happened. Getting out of the EU will not solve agriculture’s problems. It will probably make matters worse and is not wanted by most farmers, particularly those in Scotland. I know that the noble Lord is a farmer and that he wants to get out, but not all farmers do.

There has been an encouraging start by Commissioner Hogan, however, who has said many of the right things. I hope that he is more in the MacSharry mould than his predecessor. In his keynote address to the NFU conference in Birmingham two days ago, Commissioner Hogan said that he had made simplification a top priority for his work programme in 2015. He went on to say that he had launched a comprehensive screening exercise of the entire CAP to identify which sections may need simplifying. He went on to say that more than 200 Commission regulations implemented by the common market organisation will be reviewed and simplified. If 200 are being looked at, what is happening to the others? Why are they not being looked at? In what timescale will this happen? How will we hold the commissioner’s feet to the fire? He has said the right things; how will we make him perform?

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State at the same NFU conference highlighted many problems. She talked about the 30 hectare farming nonsense. Is that one of the reforms that Commissioner Hogan will look at, or does it fall into the category of getting at the principles of the recent CAP reform and is therefore untouchable?

The commissioner mentioned something else that is very important but which the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, did not mention at all. He rightly pointed out that not all the complaints fell at his door. With the greater flexibility produced under the CAP reforms, we need to look at our own Government and, in particular, gold-plating. I must commend Defra—in recent years, it has been considerably better than its predecessor, MAFF—but we still have problems. Let me give an example from Scotland. The debate refers to British agriculture. I know that the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, will not reply to this, but as recently as 1 January this year, the Scottish Government introduced a more aggressive penalty matrix to drive the prompt reporting of cattle movements to fit with Scotland’s three-day reporting window, rather than the EU’s seven-day reporting window. That is stupid, and also detrimental to farming.

I will not let Defra get away with it completely: it might not be making new gold plates, but what about some old gold-plating? What about the 2007 regulations about the density of poultry stocking? That was way worse than what the EU had recommended but has not yet been repealed. I hope that that will be first on my noble friend’s list of things to do after today’s debate.

Let me end on a positive note. Sometimes one forgets what we do in this House. Sub-Committee D has recommended a number of things. When I was serving on it, it produced an innovation report which we sent to the Commission. A lot of that was incorporated in the CAP review. As recently as 31 January, another initiative under the European innovation partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability was taken forward. That is to be welcomed, and Sub-Committee D deserves a pat on the back. It is worth staying in there and having our feet under the table—irritating as it is at times. That is the right thing for our countryside and our farming community.

Rural Economy

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury for introducing this debate. It is an important topic for us to be covering at present.

I am particularly grateful to be following the noble Lord, Lord Curry, for two reasons. First, he started with a point that I wanted to raise; that is, how difficult it is to define the rural economy. I have different figures regarding the benefit of the rural economy and there is a difference between those figures of well over 50%—so it depends what basis the figures are on. One must of course remember that the rural areas cover not just those lovely little green fields outside towns in Sussex and south-east London where people could be walking today, but the wild moors of Scotland, which in six months’ time will doubtless be under four or five feet of snow. People have to live, work and earn their living in both those circumstances, with whatever variety of weather nature throws at us.

The noble Lord, Lord Curry, also mentioned Kirkharle. I mentioned Kirkharle in the tourism debate in your Lordships’ House on 12 June. I am glad to see my noble friend Lord Gardiner of Kimble on the Front Bench. He answered that debate; he knows the points that I raised, so I will not go through them again. No doubt he will bring them to the attention of my noble friend the Minister who is going to reply.

The noble Lord, Lord Curry, mentioned what happened at Kirkharle and I want once again to mention what has happened at the Castle of Mey, of which I am a trustee. That now employs 50 people during the summer months, six on a full-time basis. That is what is keeping the rural economy in these remote rural areas going.

The question of broadband has been raised, so there is no need to reiterate that. My noble friend Lady Bakewell mentioned the date of 2017, but that covers only 95% of the UK. The remaining 5% will be in rural areas and they are going to be hugely discriminated against unless further action is taken. I ask my noble friend the Minister when the Government’s response is expected to the Law Commission review on the Electronic Communications Code. This will be an important step forward, because the present position is unclear and inaccessible.

I will move now to an old pet subject of mine—that is, housing. I used to be a land agent and was also consultant to an estate agency, so housing has been in my life since I became qualified many years ago. There is a balance to be struck between new housing and agricultural land, as my noble friend Lord Plumb said. Indeed, we discussed this many times in the agriculture committee of your Lordships’ House. But, undoubtedly, agricultural land will have to be surrendered, and quickly. The present situation with regard to affordable homes in the countryside is getting much more difficult. I remember how difficult it was to resolve when I was a Housing Minister more than 25 years ago, and it is much more acute now. It is a very difficult problem to resolve but when one flies over our green and pleasant land, as I do on a fairly regular basis, one sees many areas that could be developed reasonably, without causing long-term damage to the countryside or affecting necessary agricultural production.

My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury mentioned house prices. If we get more development in rural areas, there must be a greater chance of keeping open the post offices, shops and pubs which are closing at present. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury also mentioned country sports. These are immensely important, particularly in the more remote rural areas. In Scotland, they are a vital part of how the countryside and local villages operate. Surveys carried out in the rest of the UK and in Scotland show how much country sports are welcomed because they bring in extra tourism and extra finance and people who spend money. That is what is crucial. It is very nice to have our pretty rural areas but, unless people are active there and tourists and visitors bring in money, those pretty little areas will remain just that and will not be places in which people can earn their living.

I conclude by referring to the importance of investment. There are two types of investment: government investment and the more important private investment. The key to encouraging private investment is stability, whichever Government are in power in this country. Unless one has a consistent policy, people will not invest in the countryside in the way that they should. Therefore, stability is hugely important. There are enough problems given the whole question of the economy and the incidence of diseases that are unique to the countryside as opposed to urban areas.

I urge the Scottish Government to be very careful how they tread with regard to country sports, the countryside and its ownership because a delicate balance has to be struck. When it works well, it is very good and beneficial for all and for the economy as a whole. However, if one tinkers with it and tries to amend it, it will very easily collapse like a pack of cards.

EUC Report: EU Sugar Regime

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Carter, for introducing this debate, which is very timely considering the negotiations that are going on with the reform of the common agricultural policy in Brussels and elsewhere. I have found it a huge privilege to serve on the committee for a number of years. My time is up and I have now moved on, but it has been a great pleasure working under the noble Lord’s chairmanship. His fairness both to us as members of the committee and to those whom we interviewed became one of his hallmarks.

One of the other hallmarks of his chairmanship was the noticeable improvement in Defra’s communication with the committee, which has now come to a grinding halt with this report. It is extraordinary that I received notification that the government reply had finally been received, after numerous requests from our clerk and endless telephone conversations, when I was in Romania last week. It is a wonderful place. It used to be a communist country and grows its own sugar. I managed to ask some of the farmers there what they considered would be an appropriate response, and I can tell my noble friend Lord De Mauley that his officials would all get promoted under the communist regime. The farmers felt that the bureaucratic system that they endured was nothing compared to what we are enduring in this country at the moment.

I really hope that my noble friend will get a grip on his officials. It is treating Parliament and the committee with contempt that we did not get a reply for nine months. Even the European Commission got its reply in during March. Perhaps my noble friend will take the message back to his department and ask his Secretary of State to write to the Leader of the House and apologise for what has happened.

Much that I wanted to say has already been said, which is a great relief and one of the advantages of talking in the House of Lords. I will concentrate on two points. One is paragraph 31 in our report, where we rowed behind the UK Government’s position that quotas must be abolished in 2015 and import tariffs on raw cane sugar eased. However, the game has changed. The Government have already agreed, as I understand it, to support the Commission in relaxing the date for the abolition of quotas from 2015 to 2017. Why did the Government do that? Why did my noble friend’s department move the goalposts in the middle of the CAP negotiations? What did we get for it? There has been a huge protectionist influence on the sugar regime, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and my noble friend Lady Byford, and yet we have already given way on this. It seems ludicrous to me; if there is a good explanation perhaps my noble friend could tell us.

On the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on consumers, I thought that the Commission’s reply from Vice-President Šefcovic was perhaps a little arrogant, complacent and offhand towards the work of the committee. He was very dismissive of some of the suggestions that we put forward for the Commission. The noble Lord quite rightly highlighted the fact that precious little had been done on working with consumers, who, at the end of the day, are the ones who pay the bills. Have the results that were expected in February 2013 on the EEC study come in yet, and what are they?

In his letter, the vice-president states that the EU will undertake that in future, when the regime continues, the EU sugar growers and the EU sugar undertakings should have mandatory written contracts. I would be grateful if my noble friend could comment on that, on whether the Government find that acceptable and in what form those contracts will be.

The presence of my noble friend Lady Byford was hugely missed on the committee. It is one of the sadnesses of the ways in which some of our rules are interpreted that she could not take part. Her knowledge as a farmer and beet grower would have been immensely useful. She highlighted the briefing that we have received from the UK Industrial Sugar Users Group. I found that particularly interesting because it updates the graph in our report at figure 1 on page 11. It highlights how, since 2006, the EU sugar regime has failed. In July 2006, the EU average price for white sugar was 75% above the world market price in London and for a brief period in 2010 and 2011 they were about level. Then there was a coming and a going, but the work that had been undertaken and the falls that occurred started to work.

Since then, things have gone seriously wrong and the gap between the world sugar price and the EU reference price has increased from 75% to about 90%. That surely underlines the need for comprehensive reform of the sugar market. Unfortunately, it is already clear that that will not happen. The protectionist elements in Europe—other member states—are winning the battle. Employment opportunities in this country that are currently available will be in jeopardy unless significant reforms are undertaken. The industrial sugar market accounts for 70,000 people, with a turnover of about £12.3 billion, and that accounts for 70% of the sugar usage in the UK. It must be to our farmers’ advantage, to our employment advantage and more particularly to the consumer’s advantage that sugar is moved forward. Instead of it being a bitter pill, it should become a sweet pill.

EUC Report: EU Freshwater Policy

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of Sub-Committee B and thank the noble Lord, Lord Carter, for introducing our report so well. Like him, I thank those who helped us with the report and all those who gave evidence to us.

Water has been cast as the bloodstream of the biosphere; it is therefore absolutely critical that we get it right. However, the Minister should understand that water is a much bigger and more complex problem than the Government’s White Paper, Water for Life, suggested. An increasing number of individuals, companies, organisations and agencies are involved, some of which are area specific. They all need to work together within the same framework and the same integrated policy, looking at the big picture.

In paragraph 201, we welcomed the requirement of the National Planning Policy Framework to take into account water management issues. That is only a start. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, said, there ought to be much more integration among the water companies. Moreover, something that has not been mentioned yet is the vast amount of water involved in the production of energy. That, again, is a different government department. I hope my noble friend will consider the idea of having an overarching group to look at all these problems with a view to getting a sustainable water policy and water security by 2025. The Institute of Civil Engineers suggested the establishment of a water security task force. That proposal attracts me greatly because this is such a complicated area, covering so many government departments, that it needs a more holistic approach than is being taken at the moment.

One conclusion we reached was that the cost of water was going to rise. Even with the present cost of water, a lot of people are not paying the full amount. Can my noble friend tell me what percentage of households are not paying their full water bills at the moment? I think that it is quite a large percentage, but if water prices have to rise, it is going to be an even greater percentage unless we can link water bills to greater water efficiency.

On the cost of water, the Government replied to us in their summary that they were currently revising their social and environmental guidance to Ofwat ahead of the next price review in 2014. Having looked at that guidance, I think that it is horribly overprescriptive. That takes me to our recommendation in paragraph 215, which relates to water catchment areas. These will vary hugely across the country, depending on where the water is and the type of water that is within the particular catchment. The guidance to Ofwat is going to have to be a lot more flexible than that proposed by the Government in order for it to have the effect that we want of allowing the catchment areas to become the starting process for a better infrastructure for water.

The water framework directive is slightly odd, as we discovered as we continued our discussions and debates. It has a pretty good objective but in most circumstances its goals are unobtainable. It is slightly odd to welcome a directive where the goals are unobtainable and the Commission can take infraction proceedings against member states, but I agree with our report that it has driven member states forward in trying to improve the quality of water. Can my noble friend tell me what the Commission’s policy is with regard to taking action against member states?

Page 4 of the Government’s reply on this matter, concerning paragraph 188 of the report, states:

“Achieving good status”—

that is, under the water framework directive—

“is a long term goal”.

That is a misleading statement and I am sorry that the Government made it. Actually, the water framework directive requires that all inland, estuarial and coastal waters within RBPs must reach at least good status by 2015. That is not a long-term goal; it is only just over two years away. It is true that the water framework directive goes on to 2027, but it will start clicking in at a very early stage and there is no way that countries in Europe are ever going to meet the requisite criteria.

With regard to river basin management plans, which have been key to the water framework directive, can my noble friend tell me where we are with the four renegade countries—Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Spain—that did not submit plans in time? I find it slightly odd that the Commission produced a report based on river management plans when a sixth of the EU did not even submit them.

I turn, as did my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, to the subject of priority substances. I take a different view from the one that she takes. From the evidence that we got, I am not certain that the Commission has been given the right advice about the seriousness of these pollutants. It is very easy for it to say that it needs to prescribe more substances, and indeed on 31 January this year it put forward a directive to add another 15 substances to the priority substances list. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, identified, adding only one substance will cost £27 billion. These are huge amounts of money, and it will cost considerably more than £27 billion to deal with these problems. It is absolutely right that they should be dealt with if there is proper scientific evidence to back that up, but our evidence indicated that the Commission’s evidence for making decisions is not as good or as detailed as it should be.

I turn to our recommendation in paragraph 200 about governance. This relates to catchment management, which I have already touched on, but the government response also mentions the Environment Agency. We did not get written evidence from the Environment Agency, and I consider that to be one of the real downsides of our report. It is appalling that the agency did not write to us, although it gave us oral evidence. When it comes to catchment management, is not the Environment Agency now just too big an organisation to look at water on such a local level? It is the biggest agency in Europe, if not the world, and it is unwieldy and inflexible. Like Defra, handling anything that is not centralised is anathema to it. As long as a body such as the Environment Agency works in a centralised way, I do not see catchment areas working as we would hope. For them to work, substantial institutional, social and political changes will be required, but the present policy does not allow for that.

Paragraph 205 concerns payments to landowners. In their reply, the Government mention the work of the Forestry Commission. Can my noble friend update me on the current state of play there?

Paragraph 213 deals with the “polluter pays” principle. It is interesting that Blueprint for Water recently heavily criticised the Government in its assessment of where government work on water had got to over the past four or five years. The “polluter pays” principle is highlighted as one of the areas where not enough has been done. Of course, some polluters are easy targets—particularly farmers and landowners. They are easy to identify and it is on their land that a lot of the rain falls. However, to my mind it is not so much a question of tackling landowners and farmers; I consider urban waste water to be a far more serious problem, with chemicals being washed into the sewerage system. Individuals in urban areas have no understanding of the complications that they cause in relation to downstream clear-up. Not only should the polluter pay but the provider of services should be paid. The Government say in their response that they are going to publish an action plan with regard to expanding schemes. Can my noble friend tell me when that will be available? The government response indicated that it would be available later this year. This year is now almost over and we are approaching the next year, so can my noble friend update me on that?

Virtual water is a hugely interesting area and it will undoubtedly become much more topical in the not too distant future. What is interesting here is the amount of water that it takes to produce goods. If one looks at water on that basis rather than on a purely domestic basis, one finds that more than three-quarters of the water that we use in this country is imported, with less than a quarter coming from our own resources. It is also interesting to note that in the 20 years up to 2007 western Europe was the world’s largest importer of water, calculated on a virtual-water basis. The Commission is telling us how to conserve our water supply while we are taking water from the rest of the world, which in many cases has many more problems than we have, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said.

I go back to where I started; we should have an overarching body to look into the whole subject of water and guide the Government in getting a sustainable policy for water security in the years to come. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, referred to the report we are currently undertaking on energy. Germany’s dash for coal and the increase in coal-fired power stations have come in the recent past, subsequent to the Commission publishing its papers. What the Germans propose totally distorts anything that has been agreed, and it will be the same in this country. However we tackle the energy crisis, it will require a huge amount of water. That needs to be taken account of when planning how to use water throughout the country. I do not believe that the Government have got their head around this. They have two different departments dealing with the same substance. I hope that my noble friend will have something positive for me on that.

EUC Report: Agriculture

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow our chairman. In doing so, I declare my interests as a member of the EU committee on agriculture that produced this report and as a trustee of a trust that owns agricultural land and receives payments from the EU in relation to its agricultural activities.

I also thank our chairman for the very comprehensive way in which he introduced this report. It is, as he said, a hugely complex subject, and I do not think that he could have produced such a good report without the help of our clerk and specialist adviser, whom I should like to thank, as well as those who gave us evidence. It was a fascinating subject on which to take part and a fascinating report to put together in a comprehensive framework.

I always think it is rather sad that Europe is increasingly becoming the granny of the world. We realise that as we get a little older we become a bit more granny-like and the rest of the world passes us by. The chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, explained exactly what was happening in other countries with the growth of agricultural production. I believe that what is happening in Europe is utterly unacceptable. If we do not have radical change, we will get left behind even more and that will lead to disastrous consequences.

Farming is increasingly in the spotlight, as your Lordships know. It is facing pressure from all sides and from many different interests. Besides the Foresight report, which concentrates not just on producing more food but on producing food sustainably, there are the other interests of biodiversity, habitats, energy and indeed water, which is the subject of our current report and is vital to all of us. Therefore, farmers are in the pressure pot yet again with the world looking on.

That highlights that any future help and support for the farming industry and in a wider sense must be much more co-ordinated than it has been to date. You cannot look at farming separately from the impact of forestry, biodiversity or habitat, because that solution has failed. There has to be a much more comprehensive approach to see the implications of carrying out reform in one sector and how that might affect our needs. The situation is therefore much more complicated, and the EU bureaucratic structure is ideally placed to stymie anything going down that line.

The EU has to change. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, was absolutely right to say that CAP reform was a fundamental factor in all this. All of us in the committee were disappointed at the lack of imagination in the CAP reform. It is all very well to perpetuate the current system—to an extent, it has worked tolerably well, given the position from which we started—but in moving from an era of surpluses to an era of scarcity one has to adapt and be much more bold in one’s thoughts, particularly if there are to be the added pressures of coping with water shortages and different temperatures.

Where does this leave the farmer? It leaves him with one key ingredient: he needs good scientific advice and he needs his hand to be held at the right time—not to restrict him but to help him to adapt and produce the food that we all need in a sustainable way, as well as keeping the environment healthy.

It was interesting to see how the research for this science varied within the UK. It was evident that, in Scotland, liaison with universities and with the Scottish Agricultural College is much better and takes place on a much higher place than is the case in England. However, we are hugely spoilt in the UK. If one looks at appendix 1 on page 88 of the report, one will read some devastating comments about work that has been carried out on the constraints on agricultural innovation cross Europe. I refer to the two extracts from a report by the European Standing Committee known as SCAR in 2008. Our report comments on this:

“The lack of co-ordination between national agricultural knowledge systems is a significant weakness for Europe and means that the potential of its investment in World class research is not being optimised”.

That is a condemnation of the current system but it is very hard for the Minister to reply positively to it because it is a charge against the EU. It is the Commission that must adapt.

Albeit that the research budget has been doubled, that is not enough. There is not enough within the CAP reforms to make certain that the right research is being linked and can be produced on the farm. There is not just one way. A huge amount of research is being undertaken on farms that needs to be transferred back to the universities to be enlarged and developed. It is very much a two-way process.

My noble friend the chairman—if I may call him my noble friend—mentioned the CAP reform and the emphasis that we would like to see on Pillar 2, with more greening of it and more environmental benefits coming that way. I totally support that but I have a worry at the moment. With much of Europe bankrupt, one must remember that ‘under Pillar 2’ 50 per cent of the cost must be paid by the member state. Although we are right in principle to say that there should be more in Pillar 2, I cannot quite see how Greece and other countries will be able to give it the right amount of attention. It is laudable in its aims but I fear that we will not get quite the advance that we wanted there.

I turn to something that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, did not specifically mention in detail—GMOs. Immediately, memories come to one’s mind of headlines in some of our worst tabloids. That is one end of the spectrum. The other is that this could help us. I do not by any means say that GM is the complete answer but it is a possible way forward and would help us to some extent. It is very depressing that the EU has taken the line that it has so far. I was interested in the Government’s response to our recommendation on this—recommendation 33. I thoroughly support what the Minister said in his response, which was, “By allowing decisions”, to be made against producing GM crops “on non-safety grounds”, the EU,

“would undermine the current science and evidence-based assessment process”.

This takes me back to where I started. It is utterly key that we move forward in a scientifically proven and acceptable way. If the EU is going to put further spanners in the works, we will certainly not make any of the progress that we should. This is far too important a subject for us not to focus our minds. I hope that today’s debate will be read in Europe and that it will help the Minister in his negotiations there. It is in Europe, rather than in Westminster or Holyrood and the other devolved areas, that decisions have to be made.

Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, it was of course only in November last year that the House took the view that a proposal from the European Commission on the distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union did not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, and we sent a reasoned opinion to that effect to the Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission in accordance with the treaty. As the noble Lord, Lord Roper, stated, on 13 April 2011 the European Court of Justice annulled the provisions of the food distribution plan providing for purchases from the market. In consequence, the Commission has now submitted a new proposal, which we have before us, from 2011, document number 634 final, adding a new treaty base, Article 175(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which relates to social cohesion. As has been stated, the reason for this is that the Commission wants to make market purchases a permanent source of supply for the scheme when there are no longer the intervention stocks that used to exist in the Union. They have gone and the Commission wants to turn to the market.

The European Union Committee of the House has recommended that the objection on the grounds of subsidiarity that applied to the earlier proposal applies equally to the new one, and that we should issue the revised opinion in paragraphs 5 to 11 of the committee’s report. I agree that we should be consistent and follow the advice of our European Committee. Of course there may be good reasons for supplying food to the most deprived citizens, but today we are concerned only to judge whether this might be done at EU level and on the EU budget. The principle of subsidiarity that is in the treaty on the European Union in Article 5(3) states inter alia that,

“the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level”.

We do not agree that this proposal corresponds to that part of the treaty.

Although the principle of subsidiarity may not have much impact, it is none the less an important provision. It is in line with much of British opinion and we should play our role in seeking to ensure that it is respected. As we seldom see the text of a Commission proposal for legislation in this Chamber, I would add three short comments. First, the Commission proposal, which as usual is clearly drafted and easy to understand, is not a law. Bureaucrats in Brussels cannot and do not make laws on a subject such as this. Substantive laws are made jointly by the Ministers of the member states in the Council and the European Parliament. This may seem self-evident, but in view of the widespread public misunderstanding, I emphasise it in this case.

Secondly, it is interesting to note that the European Court of Justice annulled provisions of the earlier proposal because the legal base was not sufficient, showing the value of the oversight by the court. Thirdly, and lastly, as has already been stated, this case shows clearly the transformation of the agricultural policy of the Union—the old CAP—as market intervention has been removed or drastically reduced and intervention stocks are no longer generally available for this scheme. I support the proposal of the European Union Committee of this House.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow and to support everything that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles; our committee chairman the noble Lord, Lord Roper; and the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, particularly with his experience of dealing with the situation when it was entirely different. I propose to add nothing to what they say, but to ask a few questions of my noble friend. Does he agree with me that this is a serious matter? As far as I understand it, this is only the third reasoned opinion that this House has given, but it is identical to the one we passed on 3 November. Why are reasoned opinions passed by this House taken so lightly by the Commission? What negotiations has the Minister had with the Commission? What was its reaction to our previous reasoned opinion?

It is all very well for the Commission to make a slight tweak to what it presents to us because the European Court of Justice ruled it out of order, but that does not satisfy me. I want to know what the Commission has done to take on board our concerns. I hope my noble friend will update me on that. If the Commission does not take on board member states’ concerns about reasoned opinion, there is no point in us producing reasoned opinion. If it is as dismissive as it has been to date, it will only intensify the disregard and dislike of the Commission that many in this country have.

May I also ask the Minister about the current state of negotiations? I was appalled to read the letter from his fellow Minister, Mr Paice, of 15 November, in which the Germans seem to have decided with the French in, if no longer smoke-filled rooms, the corridors of power to do some dirty deal and produce a draft joint minute telling the rest of the European Union’s members what they can accept from the Germans and the French. That is pretty unacceptable, too. I hope that he has made strong representation to the Germans about this. Surely it is wrong in principle, as has been well said, for some sort of shady deal in which this matter is done at European level rather than at member-state level to the end of 2013. Let us hope that in negotiations about what will happen after that, when the French will be keen to continue this into the next round, the Germans will be in a weaker position than they would be if they remained firm and principled.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I should declare an interest as a member of the EU Sub-Committee D, which has brought forward this opinion. It has now considered this and similar proposals from the Commission on three occasions. On all three, it has taken the view that the proposal has little justification now that intervention stocks have more or less disappeared. Redistribution to deprived groups within society to relieve their poverty is essentially, we maintain, a matter for member states, not for the Union, and it is really ridiculous that CAP funds—€500 million—should be used to buy foodstuffs on the markets for such redistribution. If anything, such purchases would tend to drive prices up and exacerbate food poverty rather than the reverse.

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.

Adapting to Climate Change: EU Agriculture and Forestry (EUC Report)

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to congratulate my noble friend Lord Framlingham—the noble Lord, Lord Lord—on his excellent maiden speech and to welcome him to the House. Besides gracing the green grass at Twickenham, he is a great sportsman because he also captained the parliamentary golfing association and has participated in many other sports. He has also done lots of other things in his life. He has great experience, which he will bring to the House, in local government, having served on North Bedfordshire Borough Council and Bedford County Council before he contested the seat of Manchester Gorton in 1979 where he got over 38 per cent of the vote, and nobody has come close to that figure since then. He was realised as a good bet for the future, and he moved from a Labour stronghold to a fairly good Conservative stronghold in Central Suffolk which later became Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, which he served from 1983 to 2010. More important than that, he brings to this House huge experience in agriculture and, particularly, forestry, and we welcome him for that especially. He graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge with an MA. Presumably he played rugby for Cambridge rather than for the rather superior Oxford, which I would have supported, although I did not go there. His knowledge of forestry will be important in the future. We welcome my noble friend. We all enjoyed his maiden speech very much.

Turning to the debate, I say to my noble friend Lord Henley that I sympathise with him because he has an utterly impossible job. Far too much is expected of Governments but Governments cannot manage the climate. There is too much sensational press reporting on climate change and utter confusion in the minds of a lot of people who cannot separate climate change and manmade or man-encouraged greenhouse gases. Underlying all that, there is a huge lack of scientific knowledge. What there is is often contradictory.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about air temperature. Just to show that we are not all on the same side, I would rather welcome a change in air temperature and a little warming in Caithness. That would be good. After all, it was much warmer in the days of the bronze age, as can be seen from archaeological evidence. My noble friend Lord Teverson will know that from Dartmoor. I know it from Caithness. It was certainly warmer when my ancestors, the Norsemen, came over to this country and benefited by integrating with the Picts.

Air circulation, an issue on which we are short of scientific knowledge, concerns me more. We are told that because air temperature is going to rise it will be more stormy. But the storms that bring the rain to this country, mostly during the winter, arise very much because of the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes. The wider that temperature, the greater the storms. If, as it is, the Arctic ocean is increasing in temperature, the gradient between the two temperatures is decreasing and the chances of storms are decreasing. We believe that that is what happened in the times of the Norsemen who went Viking. That could bring positive benefits but it could also mean that we will have very variable rainfall in the future. I am rather more sceptical than the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, as regards manmade climate change but I take the precautionary principle. I think that that is based on the fact that I am more of a countryman. I really believe that we have abused our planet in far too many ways.

On agriculture, the key to adaption, mitigation and changes for the future is the common agricultural policy, reform of which is essential. In her excellent introduction to the debate my noble friend Lady Sharp spelt that out clearly. However, what is more important about changing the CAP is the fact that it is the only way in which the EU will ever get close to playing a part—I hope a strong part—in feeding the burgeoning world population. I believe that to be a much more serious threat than manmade climate change. That is why paragraphs 68 and 69 of our report are so important and I welcome the Government’s reaction to that point.

I hope that my noble friend Lord Henley will work towards a reform of the common agricultural policy that is flexible because each area in Europe is different. Each area in the UK is different. Some of the solutions will need to be quite local. We have talked about the air circulation of the jet stream, which affected our weather this winter and brought on the early snow. Sutherland and Caithness are adjoining counties in the north of Scotland; one has hills and one has not. A local solution will be extremely important. Perhaps I may stress to my noble friend Lord Henley how worried some of us were about evidence that we received from the Commission, which seemed totally to lack comprehension that we are a maritime climate, unlike most of the rest of the continent. Therefore, our problems are different, particularly in the less-favoured areas.

As my noble friend Lord Framlingham said, there is a change of perception of forestry. There also is a change of perception as to how people view the countryside. That is why paragraph 150, in which we say that farmers and foresters must be compensated when they make a provision of public goods, is important. The Government gave a warm response to that recommendation. However, that is the easy bit. The difficult bit is how to value the provision of public goods. If my noble friend can say anything on that, it would be very helpful.

A point that has not been raised is regulation in agriculture and forestry. In our current report alluded to by my noble friend Lady Sharp, we took evidence from Rothamsted Research, which said:

“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”.

We will discuss that rather more fully next Tuesday evening, so I will not say anything more now.

I want to say a brief word about forestry, which was mentioned by my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lord Teverson. We do need more trees. That is essential not just for their significance as regards carbon but also for preventing the further degradation of soils. However, unless trees are profitable, they are not going to be planted. If they are not profitable, the taxpayer is going to have to subsidise the landowner or planter of the trees. That brings me back to paragraph 150, which I have just mentioned. Agriculture is one thing: you grow a crop and harvest it in the same year. When you plant a forest you are looking at what your grandchildren will harvest. Therefore anyone who is going to plant trees has to have confidence in the Government. As Governments change, we have seen time and time again that what one Government promise, the next may renege on. More importantly, the woodland owner has to compete with the Forestry Commission. As we discussed the other day, the Forestry Commission is both judge and jury in its own right. It controls anything a private owner can do and can set up in competition to the private owner. My noble friend faces a huge challenge in creating a climate in which people can have the confidence to plant trees for the future. It is necessary, but under the present structure with the Forestry Commission, it is not likely to happen.

I end with a brief word about innovation and research. There is no doubt that our research base, which, as my noble friend Lord Selborne said, has stood us in good stead, is now at severe risk. We were prime leaders around the world, something the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, knows far better than me. British agriculturalists did a phenomenal amount of good work in Africa and elsewhere. Unless we put more into research and allow farmers to innovate by ensuring that the resulting knowledge reaches farming and forestry people, I am afraid that we face a fairly bleak future.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clark, induces me to get to my feet, if only to correct him. He made that lovely, sweeping statement that all those on this side of the House are landowners and farmers, particularly those who spoke on 1 December. If I may correct him, I am not a landowner and I am not a farmer. I was a land agent. I acted for farmers, I acted for landowners, I acted for tenants and I acted for farm workers. Therefore I have no interest to declare and I do not fall into the category in which he sought to portray me.

We are all extremely grateful to see my noble friend Lady Byford back in her place and active again. She adds a great deal of common sense and a huge amount of knowledge to our debates on farming and the environment. I thought what she said was very soundly based, as indeed was what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said in Committee. I listened with care to what the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said. I found nothing new from what she said in Committee, although she did praise the strength of the arguments for those supporting her amendments in Committee. I would only praise the strength of the arguments against.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords that, because the House has made such good progress today, I was not present at the beginning of the debate. However, as my name is attached to the amendment, perhaps I may touch on two issues, neither of which has been mentioned since I have been in the Chamber. If either has already been mentioned, I apologise.

The first point follows on from what my noble friend Lord Clark has just said. The structure that the Agricultural Wages Board sets does recognise skills throughout this sector. The fact that many workers in many parts of the country are paid more than the legal minimum does not take away the need to have that structure. The requirements of agriculture are becoming more and more sophisticated at one end, but less and less sophisticated at another. At the higher end, those skills need to be rewarded. The structure provided by the AWB allowed individual farmers and farm enterprises to base their actual wages on a similar structure.

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, will know by now that every farmer you meet will tell you that every cost saving that he makes is immediately recouped by the supermarkets. One of my fears in this is that, once it is known that there is a reduction in the legal minimum, which sets a floor above which voluntary payments by employers stretch to quite high levels for some workers, the supermarkets and the big processors will say, “Your labour costs need to go down by the same degree as the legal minimum goes down”—that is, in proportion to the difference between the wages board minimum and the statutory minimum wage. For the total bill, that is an enormous amount of money and therefore a saving to the supermarkets. I know that the Government intend to address other pressures that the supermarkets put on the agricultural sector, but this will be one more excuse for them to lean on farmers to reduce their prices and therefore to reduce their wages. If the noble Lord wishes to start that process, there will be real dangers, and the skilled force will begin to disappear.

At the other end of the labour force, a lot of agricultural labour, and particularly seasonal labour, depends on migrant labour and is operated by a set of gangmasters. There is nothing wrong with labour providers, provided that they obey the rules. But one of the main ways in which the exploitation by some gangmasters of the workforce is identified is that they are not meeting the legal minimum set out in the Agricultural Wages Board regulations. Once that is seen—and it is a relatively simple thing to establish—all sorts of other abuses over conditions of health and safety, immigration status and tax and national insurance become apparent. As a result, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority has been able to clean up a lot of that end. It has been a very important way in which the authority can do so. If we remove that clear legal minimum, I fear that it is one less lever for us to clean up the supply of labour in what has been, in some parts, a very exploited sector.

There are all sorts of reasons why, historically, there is an attachment on this side of the House and in the Labour movement as a whole to the Agricultural Wages Board. I am a Dorset man myself these days, so I come from a great Tolpuddle tradition, but I am not simply relying on history. I am relying on the effect that the removal of this one remaining legal-minimum, sector-specific wage will have on the quality and quantity of the workforce in agriculture and how it is treated. In the end, if that happens it will be to the detriment of agriculture as well.

Forestry Commission

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, those who expect a rational debate on this, as the noble Lord, Lord Clark, has mentioned, will be totally disappointed that we are limited to two minutes, which was the decision of the Labour Party. The recent debate on forestry has neither been measured nor rational, which is in large part due to the Forestry Commission itself.

I ask my noble friend Lord Henley to justify the role of the Forestry Commission today. It is funded by the taxpayer and has always made a loss. With its huge inbuilt advantages, it competes with the private sector for land in the production and sale of trees and timber yet, at the same time, it totally controls what the private sector can do, often through its overbureaucratic and costly regulations. The private sector must have an approved management plan to plant and manage woodlands in order to obtain grants from the Forestry Commission, which are often delayed. That only adds insult to injury for the private sector.

I recall that when we privatised water my late friend Nicholas Ridley, Lord Ridley of Liddesdale, made the bold decision to break up the river management authority organisation and separate the regulator from the producer. I hope that my noble friend will be equally bold in looking at the Forestry Commission. Who, for instance, would support the idea that the Bank of England should not only be the Bank of England but should run high street banks? Why is the Forestry Commission any different? It is not. It is acknowledged by everybody that we need to plant more trees in the UK but there is no way that those trees will be planted by the private sector unless it can be assured that it can produce managed, sustainable woodland at a profitable price. With the present structure of the Forestry Commission, that will not happen.