Agriculture Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 16B.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to consider:

Lords amendment 18B, and Government motion to disagree.

Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu of Lords amendments 16B and 18B.

[Victoria Prentis]

I should start by declaring my farming interests and the fact that I come from a farming family, but that is not the only reason hat I think this is one of the most exciting Bills before the House this year. This Bill matters to everyone who sees a great future for British farming as we leave the EU and the confines of the common agricultural policy. As we have seen from the huge amount of public interest in it, this Bill matters to everyone who is interested in what we eat and in where and how it is produced. Food standards are important, particularly as we forge new trade deals around the world.

This Bill has been much improved during its passage through this place, and I must thank Members on both sides of both Houses for their assistance, starting with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Lord Gardiner and the Minister for the Environment, with whom I am working closely on future farming policy, and our marvellous Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones), who is a strong voice for her farming community, as is Emma Pryor, our Spad. I should also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), Lord Grantchester and Lord Curry of Kirkharle.

I thank the many Members who voted for previous incarnations of the Bill, voicing their concerns privately to me and believing, rightly, that it would come right in the end. We must recognise that a large number of people outside Parliament have been involved in the debate on standards, including the National Farmers Union and the many members of the public who signed its petition, and many British farmers.

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[Victoria Prentis]

I will not, because many Members wish to speak and I have been asked to be as quick as possible.

We are putting the Trade and Agriculture Commission on a statutory footing. The House asked for scrutiny of trade deals, and I am pleased to provide it. Parliament will have the reports from the Trade and Agriculture Commission, and it will have time to study the texts and specialist Committees in both Houses to examine them in more detail. It will be the lawful duty of Ministers to present both Houses, and indeed the devolved Administrations, with the evidence they need to scrutinise future trade agreements.

I believe that the Government amendment provides a comprehensive solution that really gets to the heart of this important issue. I therefore urge the House to reject Lords amendments 16B and 18B and to accept the Government’s amendment in lieu.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call the spokesman for the Opposition, I warn Members that there will be an immediate limit on Back-Bench speeches of three minutes. We obviously have very little time and many people wish to speak, so the shorter the better. I remind Members that brevity is the soul of wit.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 16B. Like the Minister, I declare an interest: my little sister is a sheep farmer in Cornwall. I thank all farmers for their work throughout the covid-19 pandemic and the work they will be undertaking during the second lockdown.

We have been here before, and we may yet be here again. I welcome the Government’s adoption of large parts of Labour policy since the last time we spoke about the Agriculture Bill. I have to say to the Minister that we are not quite there yet, but we are nearly there. The vote on food standards today is being followed by people in all our communities. It is a decision about what type of country we want Britain to be. I want Britain to be a country of high standards that respects the welfare of animals and ensures that environmental protection is baked into our food chain. We therefore continue to press Ministers to put our high food and farming standards into law.

I turn to the Government’s concessions and the amendment in the Minister’s name, which puts them into action. I am glad that, after voting against attempts to strengthen the Trade and Agriculture Commission a short time ago, the Government have changed their mind and listened to farmers, the National Farmers Union and Labour, in particular, on strengthening it. I thank Ministers for their efforts, and in particular the Farming Minister for her personal effort in trying to reach a compromise on that. I am grateful for all the work she has done. In particular, I thank Lord Grantchester, Baroness Jones and the Lords Minister, Lord Gardiner, for what has taken place. It has been a team effort, and it has included the work of the National Farmers Union and Minette Batters.

The Minister was up against a hard deadline to pass this Bill because of the Government’s decision to oppose an extension to the powers in the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020, which Labour proposed when we discussed this on 21 January. We suggested that Ministers take an extra 12 months of power so that they would not be up against a deadline, and I recall Ministers saying that that would not be necessary. It turns out that a bit of forward planning is a good thing. I encourage Ministers to look at such amendments the next time we introduce them, rather than arguing against them simply because of where they came from. It is important that farmers are paid.

Working side by side with our nation’s farmers, we have helped to secure two key concessions from Ministers. The first is that the Trade and Agriculture Commission should be put on a statutory basis, renewable every three years. That will happen in the form of an amendment to the Trade Bill. That amendment has not yet been published, so we cannot see the words, the meaning and the effect that it will have. When will we see the Government’s Trade Bill amendment on strengthening the Trade and Agriculture Commission so that we can understand how it will work legally with the new clause in this Bill?

We know that the International Trade Secretary and the Environment Secretary have not always agreed on food standards. The truth is that I do not trust the Department for International Trade not to break any promises once this Bill is passed. It is clear that despite having one Government, we sometimes have two competing food agendas. Will the Minister confirm that discussions about the wording of the amendment will take place with the Opposition and will involve DEFRA and DIT Ministers?

Will the Minister also give a commitment on the membership of the Trade and Agriculture Commission? Although it is broad at the moment, we feel it could be strengthened by an enhanced consumer voice, and with trade unions being part of it. I know that there is a proposal for trade unions to sit on a small union sub-committee, but having unions—a voice of the workers in our food sector—as part of that main body would be important.

The second concession that the Minister accepted was to enhance the scrutiny of trade deals, in recognition that the proposals put forward previously were inadequate. Strengthening that is supported on both sides of the House. There is more that can be done here. That is an argument that the shadow International Trade Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and I have been making consistently, but I feel that we can go a wee bit further.

I welcome that the Government will require a report to assess any trade deals against the standards of animal welfare, environmental protection and plant health, but this is extra scrutiny; it is not a vote on this matter. That is what we agreed and I think what should happen. The amendment the Minister has tabled only proposes that the report will be laid before parliamentary Committees and not to the House itself. It will not be subject to an automatic vote; only to a circuitous and fragile route. The House will know that, for a vote to happen, the CRaG process requires that the Government, in their generosity, would award the Opposition an Opposition day to challenge the trade deal if that trade deal falls below the standards we expect, regardless of what the TAC report may say.

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[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Much of the debate on this significant and ambitious Bill has homed in on animal welfare, food and environmental standards as part of our future trading relationship as we leave the EU. It is fair to say that this has been a difficult issue that has caused tension and concern, meaning that at times it has been easy to forget that we all want the same thing—namely, not to compromise on the UK’s already high standards in each of these important areas. Indeed, my objective has always been to ensure that Cheshire farmers are at the heart of a trade policy that maximises opportunity and does not undermine those standards.

That is why—as those on the Front Bench know very well—I have pressed upon Ministers the need to widen the remit and increase the length of the Trade and Agriculture Commission so that it has the real teeth that we now see in the amendments. Those amendments before us and those to future Bills will go a long way to enabling many of us to support the position we have now reached. I think they also reflect well on the work that has been done by the NFU—including NFU Cheshire and its chairman, Richard Blackburn—and many others to get us to this position. By putting the commission on a statutory footing and ensuring proper parliamentary scrutiny of all trade Bills, we have reached a sensible, legally sound template for ensuring the maintenance of our animal welfare, food and environmental standards, which will put us in a strong position to export our standards and our great British goods and produce further and wider across the world.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We have more time than I thought. I call Wera Hobhouse to speak for two minutes.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Goodness—two minutes! I will just rush though this. The Lords were absolutely right to try to strengthen the Bill. They are listening to British farmers and British people, and this House should, too. My constituency of Bath is home to one of the first farmers’ markets in the UK, where local producers sell directly to local people who can be reassured that they are buying quality food produced to high standards. Our city’s UNESCO world heritage status is strongly linked to our green surroundings, and our fields, hedges and trees are all symbols of our agricultural heritage. Many towns and cities across the UK are the same. They are home to small family-owned farms that are run by people who want to farm and who know farming.

I have watched this Government slowly renege on their promises to British farmers, telling them to compete internationally or die. Are we to subsidise them to run their farms as public parks for the recreational benefit of city dwellers? Can the Government not understand why this is causing a great deal of anger? One million people signed the NFU’s petition to protect the British food standards, and this issue is not going away. The Government say that the Trade and Agriculture Commission will have teeth and that there is therefore no need to enshrine British food standards in law, but teeth for whom? Concerns about chlorinated chicken and hormone-produced beef have been dismissed as alarmism, and attempts to protect British food standards have been brushed off as protectionism disguised as self-sufficiency. The Government are not the people who will stand up for British farmers; we on this side are. Instead, they will force farmers to lower their standards in order to compete. That is not good enough, and we will support the Lords amendments.