Farming

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Thérèse Coffey

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure to contribute to this debate on farming. The previous speeches show the importance of farming to our national security.

The primary purpose of farming is to produce the fine food that we enjoy, and we need farmers to keep doing that. They need to have good and fair reward, and we also need their help to protect and conserve the countryside and the natural environment.

As the Member of Parliament for Suffolk Coastal, I am blessed to represent a special part of our country that is well known for its pigs, potatoes, parsnips and much more, including poultry and its splendid natural environment. I referred in my maiden speech to the importance of listening and learning from those who expertly rear and grow so much of the produce that we enjoy in this country. We want to help them get best value for their produce by making sure that the best British food is valued across the world.

One of the challenges in drafting a national policy, as so eloquently set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—moving from a blanket 85%, based on a particular characteristic, with a bit of environmental for the other 15%—is recognising the difference between the Administrations of the United Kingdom. There are some pretty dogged elements in Wales, with farmers being instructed that, to get any support at all, they have to give up quite a lot of land, rather than potentially making improvements. I am conscious that, on the frontline, the challenges vary sector by sector and county by county. That variance is often because of the soil, which can be so different even on opposite sides of the A12 in my constituency.

We recognise that farmers face different challenges, day in and day out, to have a fruitful industry, and one challenge is water. Farmers have way too much water right now, but there are often concerns in my part of the country about drought and restrictions on abstraction. We are now seeing other challenges to do with yield.

We must continue to be agile and flexible in listening to feedback. The Rural Payments Agency has a history of saying, “Computer says no.” Instead, we should undertake analysis and carefully consider the policies that we are pursuing, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth set out, while ensuring that we stick to our target for the distribution of funding across the country. We want to make sure that 70% of agricultural land and 70% of holdings participate in the environmental land management scheme by 2028. I would be grateful for an update on that from the Minister.

Another aspect that links to food security is that some farmers are considering whether to opt out of food production entirely, which was not the intention of ELMS. We should consider restricting how much land can be taken out of production because, as my right hon. Friend said, there is an opportunity to improve the productivity of much of our farming sector to get the food security that we all believe is vital. I hope that officials are continuing, or have finished, the analysis that I commissioned, so that we not only look at national income and national averages, but look constituency by constituency, and certainly county by county, to get a sense of whether people are taking up these opportunities.

For example, about 305 farmers in Suffolk Coastal are eligible for BPS—BPS does not apply to quite a lot of farmers in my constituency, particularly pig farmers—but only 55 have so far applied for SFI in the current year, despite the scheme being opened to pig farmers. It is worth undertaking that analysis, which is why I asked the RPA to share the recipients of BPS with me. I do not want to know how much they earn, but I want to understand why people are not taking up the opportunities. We need to listen and get feedback.

We have a fine, experienced Farming Minister in my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer). After lawyers and trade union officials, I expect that farming is the No. 1 occupation of Members of Parliament, certainly on the Conservative Benches if not more broadly.

It is important to be alert to the issues on which, at times, only the Government can help and intervene, but we also need to understand the barriers to participation.

Biosecurity continues to be the issue that should keep most politicians awake at night. We have already heard about bovine TB, and I absolutely believe that we should continue to cull until things are more stable. Science continues to advance our understanding of how vaccines can be applied much more readily.

We have made sure to tighten up issues at the border, but I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) updated us on where we are with the important Weybridge upgrade to make sure that we can assess those issues.

On protecting the countryside, I am delighted that Labour has abandoned its right to roam. I think Labour has listened to farmers, and I hope it will listen a bit more on bovine TB and the use of chemicals and pesticides —they are not applied willy-nilly, as they cost farmers a lot of money. It is important that we continue to ensure that we deploy what nature gives us in an appropriate way, while still being understandably concerned about the impact on the natural environment. The two can go hand in hand and it is vital they do, because if the farmers and landowners do not help us in supporting the natural environment, it does not matter what scheme we have. We might have the best scheme in the world, but if it is not taken up, we will fail. Having a practical and pragmatic approach continues to be really important in that regard.

We have already heard about skills and visas. I was delighted when the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education listened to the concerns raised by my local agricultural college. T-levels are replacing BTECs, but there was a gap because pig husbandry was not included in the curriculum—again, this is part of the challenge of having national approaches. The organisations were saying that there was not enough demand for that, but there was, certainly in my constituency and in other parts of the country. I am delighted that the Government listened and are making sure that that will be in the curriculum.

As for the progress we have made, it has been a journey. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) wrote the blueprint, “Health and Harmony”, ably assisted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth. Through the creation of the Agriculture Act 2020, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath set in place the architecture. It is also fair to say that when things are not quite working, it is okay to have a few tweaks along the way. That is not a failure in where we are; the direction of travel is still there. However, as I say, we have to have something that works.

Water is one of our bigger challenges in Suffolk. The local microclimate is pretty much like Israel’s; parts of East Anglia are exceptionally dry. The new president of the NFU, Tom Bradshaw, will know that very well from his farming in Essex. That is why I was delighted several years ago to help support the creation of the Felixstowe Hydrocycle, which is so good it was included in the “Plan for Water” four times, at my insistence. We need to bear it in mind that although plenty of farmers have too much water right now, we often do not have enough. Thinking about the risk to future production is important when the Environment Agency is trying to balance a variety of environmental regulations alongside what can be done to make sure that farmers have enough water to grow crops. I have been trying to get permitted development rights for small-scale reservoirs. I encourage the Minister to pursue that within government. Internal drainage boards are vital and sensible in trying to manage that delicate balance.

I am very conscious that we have the highest welfare standards in the world and that people have concerns that not everyone is playing by the same rules. That happened while we were in the EU and we still see those challenges in our trade agreement with the EU. It is important that we continue to market that welfare not only within this country, but elsewhere in the world. That is why it was right to reject a lot of the calls from foreign markets about why they should come into this country, and I was pleased that the Prime Minister stood up for British farming at the time.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but does she agree that it is vital that when we negotiate future trade deals, we include in them the fact that Britain has some of the highest welfare standards in the world, and that we should not sacrifice those for the sake of doing a trade deal?

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. Welfare is one of our selling points when it comes to trade deals and what we sell abroad—people recognise that brand. There are other ways in which the industry has tried to promote its elements.

There is still a lot of clamour in this country to do even more ratcheting on welfare, with the idea that somehow the rest of the world will automatically follow us. Frankly, we still have to get the European Commission to implement all the European rules. There are still derogations in existence and a lack of enforcement. I would rather we focused on people in this country who are not following the rules than on ratcheting further. However, I hear what my hon. Friends says about what happens in other parts of the world.

We need to make sure that farming is fit for the future. There are not many sectors where, across the UK, the Government give out more than £3 billion a year to support an industry. We have made the change to public money for public good, but we can go further in making sure that our funding arrangements are fair for tenant farmers and that the contracts we have are fair. I do not believe that the Government should get involved directly in setting prices. As we have seen recently with sugar beet, there are some delicacies where Ministers had to crack heads together to get a reasonable outcome.

We need to crack on with many of the other Brexit bonuses. For example, we passed the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 and we now need the Food Standards Agency to get the regulations in place so that we can take full advantage of it. We should also be getting the FSA and DEFRA to take advantage of the opportunity to deregulate. Deregulating does not mean making things worse; it is about making things more straightforward, for example in relation to small abattoirs and Trichinella testing. There has not been a case of Trichinella in at least 20 years, if not longer, and it was a European problem, not one here in the UK. I look forward to more deregulation coming along.

As for waste, there is no doubt that there are challenges with pollution coming from farming, which is why six years ago regulations were put in place to do with water. We should recognise that we have been able to increase the amount of money that has gone into things such as slurry covers and other aspects of managing that. There is plenty more we can do in that regard.

On trade, quality is undoubtedly one of our big selling points. I was pleased that we were able to double the number of agricultural attachés, and we really need to take account of that. We should be challenging the European Commission on the fact that France seems to be putting up trade barriers. People want to export our goods, yet they cannot do so because there are no facilities in the ports across from Dover, in Calais, to allow that to happen. That is a barrier to trade that we should be challenging through the European Commission.

There are other aspects that have already been covered well today. We do need to make sure there is availability of labour and there is more we want to do on investing in the future. There are other aspects that I hope the Treasury will look into—for example, that the tax relief is passed on. Conscious of the ups and downs that can be experienced in farming, we brought in the five year averaging of tax relief. That was an important change, but there is a problem at the moment whereby as soon as people stop giving up land—the extra patches at the edge of their land—they can no longer necessarily get the tax relief that is then passed from generation to generation. By contrast, if people bring in a solar farm and sign a lease for only 20 to 25 years, they keep all of the tax benefit that they enjoy. We need to see the same for nature too.

I am conscious that many people want to speak in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but let me say that I want to make sure that DEFRA is practical and pragmatic in its delivery. The RPA needs to be agile and flexible, and it needs to listen to feedback. A good example of that is one of perhaps only two times when officials and the agency flat refused to deliver ministerial instructions. There was feedback from visits to farmers around the country and from being out in the frontline about what had been happening with certain aspects of mapping. We can go further on simplifying that and we need to make sure that that absolutely happens. It is important that farmers have trust and confidence in our delivery agency, and that that agency has trust and confidence in the policy, so that when Ministers say they want to change something simple, straightforward and necessary for farmers, that will be delivered without hesitation.

I could say much more. I have been Secretary of State for DEFRA, which was a responsible, worthwhile and challenging job. We should all ensure we have farmers at the forefront of our minds when we think of the food we eat, the animals we see and the countryside we enjoy. Frankly, this country would be worse off without farmers, which is why we need to ensure they are at the forefront.