Family Farming in Devon

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and Tavistock) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered family farming in Devon.

It is a great pleasure to have been able to secure a debate under your presidency, Sir Mark. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for attending.

With exquisite timing, the Conservative party has managed to list an Opposition day motion in the main Chamber tomorrow on exactly the same subject as this debate. Although I welcome that, I also welcome the opportunity of having the Minister much more up close and personal than is normally possible in the main Chamber for what I hope will be a relatively civilised debate—we do not always manage that in the main Chamber, perhaps, although one would hope we would. We are here to discuss not the general questions affecting the entire country in connection with farming, but questions most specific to Devon, although they share common themes and subjects.

I forget whether I have yet been able to induce the Minister to visit Devon, but we hope that he will do so in the new year because we are likely to have a Dartmoor forum, which he and I have already spoken about, in connection with an important development for the management of Dartmoor—the Fursdon review and its implementation. I will speak of those in due course.

To set the scene, in 2022 the economic output of farming in Devon was valued at £1.369 billion. More than 20,000 people are employed in farming in Devon on more than 1.2 million acres of farmland. By far the largest proportion of those acres are held and worked by modest-sized family farms of between two and 400 acres. No farming families in Devon continue in farming to grow rich; Devon’s farms are principally grazing livestock and dairy farms. They do it because it is a way of life, and because of the pride that they take in producing some of the finest food and produce on the planet.

Those families also do it because many, even most, of them have farmed in that place and within those communities for generations. The names of their forebears, engraved on the tombstones of their churches and chapels, bear witness to the continuity of which they are the stewards and custodians. It is that value, which is precious to the entire rural fabric of Devonshire, that I will speak of most acutely and strongly to the Minister.

There is a preciousness about farms, many of which have herds that may have been looked after and developed over dozens of years, sometimes even a century. There is all that cultivation and nurture and all those traditions that those farming families represent. Often a farm will support not simply one family, but several; I know of many surrounding my home. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—although I do not farm, I have farmland in Devon, and, depending on the vagaries of the sustainable farming incentive, I may well be a beneficiary of those schemes in a modest way. I tell that to the House and the Minister in candour before I start substantively.

I am familiar with my neighbours, my friends—those who farm near me, around me and throughout the whole of Torridge and Tavistock, which I have the honour to represent. As I have said, those farms sometimes sustain not just one family but several: there may be two or three brothers, with their families. Children on those farms may be hoping in due course to have the opportunity of farming themselves.

These people do not farm to grow rich; they farm for the reasons that I have given. But they also farm because they love that way of life—they have grown used to it, and know that they are following in the footsteps of their forebears. They farm because they are proud of the produce and the animals that they rear.

That is why there is a special value in farming families and family farms in Devon. True it is that the produce is the most important thing, of which they are most proud, but they also contribute to the fabric. The Minister would love to come to the rural shows—the Clovelly show, the Okehampton show, the Holsworthy show and all the shows that take place throughout the summer months in Devon. They are extraordinary events at which people—not just the farmers, but the ancillary trades that depend on them—get together. In a convivial setting they discuss their industry and trade and create the fabric of rural life, which is so precious.

Farm incomes have been falling. That is not a secret—the Minister will be well aware of the fact. From time to time, fortunately, farmgate prices have remained relatively buoyant, but average farm business income for the year 2023-24, to the end of February 2024, was lower for all farm types except specialist pig farms and specialist poultry farms. Almost all the farms in Devon, bar those relatively rare exceptions, saw falling average business income.

On dairy farms, following the two better years, when farmgate prices were relatively buoyant, average farm business income was 68% lower, with a fall in the farmgate price of milk being the primary driver. On lowland grazing livestock farms—beef, sheep—average farm business income fell by nearly a quarter, to £17,300. For grazing livestock farms in less favoured areas, higher fixed costs were only partially offset by an increase in output of £23,500, which was 12% lower.

From those falling incomes must be deducted the living of those who work the land. Those incomes do not take into account the unpaid labour of those who own or tenant those farms. Families who live on them—sometimes several families—must from that £17,300 or £23,500 take their own living. We can see that most people would not regard the figures we are speaking about, falling as they have been in the last year or more, as easy to live on, particularly for more than one person, for multiple families.

These farming families, of course, have to live with not only the hardness of their way of life but the unpredictability of the weather. They also, sadly, live with a different kind of unpredictability and a different kind of weather: the political weather. I would not be exaggerating if I said that these days those farmers in my constituency, and I suspect it is not much different in the rest of the county, probably regard the political weather as even more random and unpredictable than the actual weather itself.

I mean no party political point, because I accept entirely that the weather under successive Governments has always been relatively unpredictable, but recently the weather has achieved a combination that could be described, without too much poetic hyperbole, as a perfect storm. We have had the Budget’s accelerated cuts to the basic farm payment, the delinked payments. It is true that the progressive reduction to the basic payment was introduced in 2021. It is perfectly true that, across all farm types, the average net payment received in the reference year 2023-24 was approximately £18,300—but that was 21% lower than the year 2022-23. Nevertheless, that average of £18,300 still accounted on average for 40% of farm business income.

In the meantime, the environmental land management scheme, which includes the sustainable farming incentive, is not replacing the income lost to farms. Considerable progress was made this year to improve those schemes under the last Government, but, while across all farm types net income from agri-environment activities increased by an average of 14% to £10,600 on average, which is welcome, that is by no means sufficient to replace the 40% of farm business income that the basic farm payment still comprised in the year 2023-24.

As a result of this Budget, family farms will now experience a further 76% cut this year in the delinked or basic payment, with a cap of £7,200. For many families, that will represent a dramatic and unexpected reduction, for which farm businesses have been able to plan, and which will require readjustment and inevitable retrenchment of investment and employment. The payments will, of course —as they were always intended to—reduce progressively over the next three years, but farmers were entitled to believe that they would be reduced proportionately. Instead, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has reduced them by 76% against the reference year, in a manner wholly unexpected to the industry.

Cumulatively, I will describe the additional problems that that has meant. There has been an inability to plan and an inability to adjust one’s cash flow. Halfway through potential investments on their farm, farmers find that the income they expected to have is not the income they will have. That is unhelpful. At the same time, the countryside stewardship higher tier scheme has been postponed, it is said possibly until mid-2025—I would invite the Minister to give us his view on when that scheme will be available.

The new, expanded sustainable farming incentive for 2024 does not appear to be readily available to all farmers, particularly to upland farmers, who have had so far very little access to that scheme. The countryside stewardship higher tier and the SFI 24, with the activities that are now coming onstream—or that will do, because I understand that some of the endorsed activities are still not ready—offered some prospect of mitigating the dramatic losses that the Budget has imposed, but the postponement has been a serious blow. Farmers are marooned in legacy schemes that are being extended in mirror agreements and cannot conceivably make up or mitigate the loss of direct payments that they are suffering because of the unexpected reductions.

The Ministry has also suddenly halted capital grants. The sudden closure of the capital grant applications has been a huge shock. Farmers are being asked to adopt measures to improve the environment, but have been left without access to the very grant schemes that would enable them to do so and help with their cash flow and their productivity. With applications timed specifically to fit in with the farming year and their enterprise activities, and no confirmation that all applications already in the system will progress, further uncertainty is caused to these businesses. Will the Minister comment on that?

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I saw him, in his characteristically civil and polite way, gently shake his head. Nothing would more alight the hopes of those I represent than if that gentle shake of the head meant something—meant that we were wrong to say that the capital grants had been ceased and meant that all those writing to me and colleagues, asking what to do now, have been living in an unnecessary nightmare.

I implore the Minister, if that gentle shake of the head meant anything, to let us hear it now. Let us hear him boldly strike out and say, “The capital grants will be resumed. They will not be postponed or delayed to 2025. Some relief is available to those who desperately need it.” Because they—the farming families of whom I speak—will also be affected by the increases in employer national insurance contributions and the minimum wage, and by the various measures, some quite small, that the Budget took in connection with those who pursue family farming.

In the meantime, like a slow and steady drumbeat gathering force, behind the ever more implausible rhetoric of support, they see and hear the concrete commitments of this Government. They witness the Government in action, not in words. They see how the Prime Minister at COP29 committed himself to a climate change target—a perfectly reasonable thing, some may argue, but the Climate Change Committee has told him that in committing to that target he will need to reduce the consumption of meat and dairy products by 20% over the coming five years.

These are the signs of the political weather, and so are the small measures—the small signs that, beyond the talk, indicate the revealed preferences and priorities of a Government. It is not about what the Prime Minister says when he stands at the podium and speaks to the National Farmers Union; we have already learned that we cannot trust that. What we realise, and what those listening today have begun to realise, is that it is in the small as well as the large measures that the Government are revealing their visceral and real preferences and priorities.

The small things include the reclassification of double-cab pick-up trucks. That might even have been missed in the Budget. Squirrelled away in the small print was a lancet aimed straight at hundreds of farming families in Devon, many of whom have a double-cab pick-up truck. Now, that is no longer deductible: it is not to be treated as a business expense simply because it has a back seat, when for years it has been so treated by the Revenue. The small measures reveal the real preferences and priorities of a Government. It is not the words, the rhetoric or the talk; it is what they do by which they are judged.

Of course, all those measures are outweighed by far by the subject that tomorrow’s debate will no doubt cover: agricultural and business property relief. The Government’s figures on the policy have now been widely discredited. The £1 million cap is not only on agricultural property relief but on business property relief. Both reliefs are used when a farm is passed to the next generation. As agricultural land prices have increased, a 200-acre farm, let alone a 400-acre farm, will almost certainly have a capital value, on the land alone, of more than £2 million. That same land often sustains multiple families—the brothers, the sisters and the cousins, all of whom farm that land—and from that exiguous amount of £17,300, or £23,500 in an upland area, they all have to take their living, provide for their children, pay for their energy and so on.

These farms are not wealthy; they are, as is so often said, asset-rich but income-poor. The Government say that the relief is doubled for a couple. However, bear in mind that a farm will have not just the land but other business assets, equipment and livestock, all of which require the business property relief to be deployed. And the business property relief, combined with the agricultural property relief, is now capped at £1 million.

As I said, the Government say the relief is doubled for a couple. But what about the 46% of farms that are owned by a single owner? If, for example, someone’s spouse has already died, they cannot inherit the allowance from their deceased husband or wife. The 46% of single owners of farms will receive no double relief—only the £1 million.

I say to the Minister that what is particularly wrong about this situation is—

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order. I understand that there is a Division in the House, so the sitting is suspended for 15 minutes. We will add that time on at the end—do not worry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order. As everybody has returned, we can restart a little bit earlier than we had planned. I call Sir Geoffrey Cox.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I was dealing with the impact the changes agricultural property and business property relief will have on farming families, although that will be debated in greater and finer detail tomorrow.

Just this morning I was written to by a farmer in my constituency. She lives in Sheepwash in Torridge in Devon. I hope she will forgive me for mentioning her age, because she is 86. She has a dairy farm, milking 250 cows. As she says herself, the cows may well be worth £400,000, the young stock another £250,000, machinery perhaps £250,000 and the farm buildings—into which investment, toil and effort have been poured by those who have worked that farm for generations—worth perhaps £1 million in themselves.

The farm may have a dairy parlour. It may be automated. It may well be able to milk 250 cows, or these days even more. One can see the cows going round on the carousel—I am sure the Minister has seen them, but I can show him these carousels in my constituency. The cows come in, they get on to the carousel, they go round, they come off the other side and they are milked. Those automated parlours are worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. All that would need to be offset against business property relief, which has now been capped not only for the value of those buildings and those business assets, but for the land, which is 400 acres.

To sell 20% of the herd to pay inheritance tax will, as my constituent suggests, not only severely deplete the profitability of a business that already operates on the wafer-thin margins of which we have spoken today, but cripple herds that have sometimes had lavished upon them 100 years of husbandry. They are closed herds, some of them; animals prized for their pedigrees and their quality, and prize-winning at the local shows of which I have already spoken and to which I have drawn the Minister’s attention.

But what she says next is the most compelling: she says, “At my age, I have very little time to plan. Even if I could give the farm away and survive the seven years that were necessary, I can’t, because I still need to retain a modest income from the business because my pension provision itself is modest. Taking out life insurance at the age of 86? Well, that is a non-starter. These changes and the implications for my family greatly worry me.” That is an understatement. Older farmers’ health and wellbeing are seriously at risk as we come to see ourselves as an impediment to successfully passing on the farm to the future generation, preserved for their generation to cultivate, to nurture, and to develop.

It is not so much the cap—although the cap is bad enough—as the complete failure of the Government to assess the impact on the basis of accurate figures. The Treasury figures are now widely discredited and different, as we know, from the Minister’s own Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is a complete failure to work out the impact it will have not only on businesses, but on people; a failure to consult them and to understand how these measures will impact the rural communities I have the precious honour of representing and speaking for this afternoon.

There is no time for those people to plan, and that makes them feel—up and down the length of this country and throughout the towns and villages of Devon—that they may be the impediment to the next generation. The same holds for the dramatic and unexpected cuts in the delinked payments: there was no income assessment, no consultation—it was all sudden. It is those small details, as is so often the case, that reveal the real preferences and priorities of the Government.

I want to talk about bovine tuberculosis. When I was first elected, that disease ran riot throughout the countryside of Devon. West Devon, Torridge, and parts of north Devon were some of the most densely infected areas in the country. For years, we banged our head on the brick wall of policy made by a previous Labour Government to get people to understand that the wildlife reservoir must be controlled. It was one instrument among the many that were unquestionably needed, including biosecurity, the development of vaccination and all those instruments, but we could not arbitrarily exclude the instrument of controlling the wildlife.

In the hills and fields of Devonshire I have watched badgers run between the legs of the cattle. One tiny, infinitesimal measurement of badger urine can create the bovine TB disease in cattle. It is impossible to prevent the infected wildlife reservoir in badgers, and for that matter in deer, from infecting the cattle, and it is widely understood by the veterinary community in Devonshire that wildlife is a vector in the disease. I pay tribute to my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the coalition Government, because it took moral and political courage finally in 2010 to agree, alongside the Conservatives, to introduce that single instrument that the Labour Government had declined to introduce for all those years.

I remember bringing the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn) down to the village of Clawton on the borders of Cornwall and sitting him alongside 15 or 20 farmers to hear their experiences. Although he was, like this Minister, civil, urbane, courteous, mild, kind and polite as ever, he was implacable in his refusal to adopt the rational proposal being made to him by those farmers that targeted control of wildlife was necessary, and that in the end all wildlife must be controlled.

In Torridge and Tavistock that control has led to a 55% reduction in herd breakdowns. The chief vet says that it has been a causative factor in the downward trajectory of the disease. I applaud the Minister for announcing the refreshment of the bovine eradication strategy, and for announcing that there will be no immediate cessation of that important instrument. It is an instrument that must be used judiciously, and only as part of a wider group of instruments designed to bear down on the disease, but it cannot be excluded.

In the first five years of my election to this place I sat on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that wrote the report that set the scene for the policy that the coalition Government introduced. My worry is that the refresh will prejudge the outcome. It has been already announced that the instrument will cease to be used at the end of this Parliament. That sounds like prejudging; it does not sound like evidence-led political decision making. It sounds like an ideological decision, not an evidenced one, when even the chief vet accepts that the instrument has been a contributory factor in the downward trajectory of the disease.

In my constituency, and I suspect in those of others in the Chamber, the instrument has unquestionably led to a dramatic fall in the incidence of the disease—a 55% reduction. I recall vividly that I could walk from one end of my constituency to the other on infected farms under restrictions. It is now quite impossible to do that, which is significant progress. There is a human impact of bovine TB. We do not need pyres 200 feet tall—as there were in Devon with foot and mouth disease—

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the right hon. and learned Member that there are others who may wish to speak and, unless he winds up his remarks fairly soon, they are not going to have much time.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I will indeed, Sir Mark. We do not need pyres 200 feet tall to see the invisible toll of carnage that cattle slaughter after bovine TB entails. I urge the Minister to remain open minded.

Finally, I come to the Fursdon review. I know the Minister understands that none of my remarks are intended to be personal—on the contrary; he is a reasonable interlocutor with whom it is always a pleasure to deal, and who has always consulted on matters of constituency and other regional importance. The Fursdon review is one such matter. I urge him to implement its recommendations in full. The review was superbly conducted and has been an extraordinarily valuable exercise in how light can be brought to difficult situations.

I applaud the appointment of the chairman of the Dartmoor Land Use Management Group and thank the Minister for that—that is good. I invite him to come to Tavistock for the next Dartmoor forum, where we have several hundred attending: the NFU, Devon Wildlife Trust and all the environmental groups will come. It is an important moment when the actors, the players and those involved on Dartmoor can see how this Government are as engaged as the last Government were in finding solutions to the uplands problem on the moor.

I conclude with this plea: if it was not an intentional weather creation, leading farmers up and down the country and throughout Devon to believe that this Government have no interest, no regard and no care and are in fact callous and indifferent to their welfare and fate, it is up to the Minister today and henceforth to change that weather by sending the correct signals. I have to say he will have a hard job and an uphill battle to persuade them after the inheritance tax relief and the other measures of which I have spoken, but if anybody in this Government can do it, it is the Minister. I hope he will, and I wish him success in doing so.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

I indicate that, because of the limitations of this debate, each Back Bencher should aim to speak for around five minutes, if possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

We can, because we simply look at the number of claims that have been made in the last few years. That is how we arrive at that conclusion.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

The figures that the Treasury published simply deal with the use of agricultural property relief. What they do not show is how many farms had already used their business property relief before needing to rely on agricultural property relief. They do not take into account the fact that it is not just APR, but BPR, being capped.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I refer the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the letter that the Chancellor sent to the Chair of the Treasury Committee, which goes into the issue in some detail. It says:

“Currently, of the population of affected estates that claim both APR and BPR, almost a quarter of claims include a claim for”

shares on the alternative investment market. That begins to show the complexity and that the situation is not always as it seems.

I will move on to the double-cab pick-up tax. As I suspect the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, that was based on a legal judgment by the courts. We respect that judgment, as I am sure he would wish us to. We are also saying, generously, that it will not affect the capital allowances treatment of anyone who already owns a double-cab pick-up. Anyone already leasing a double-cab pick-up from their employer as a benefit in kind will have until April 2029, or their lease expires, before these changes affect them.

I am conscious of the time, so I will just touch on bovine tuberculosis—a hugely important issue that of course has caused huge cost and huge suffering for many farmers. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman acknowledged, the Government have started work on a new bovine TB eradication strategy. The key part of that is pushing much more swiftly on developing a cattle vaccine, which I genuinely think will be the ultimate answer to this very difficult problem, and it very much builds on the evidence and conclusions of Sir Charles Godfray’s 2018 independent review. Alongside that, we will do the first badger population survey in more than a decade, develop a new national wildlife surveillance programme and establish a new badger vaccinator field force. I genuinely think that we can work together on eliminating the scourge of bovine TB.

I conclude by thanking all hon. Members for what has been an informative debate. It is always good to talk about what is happening in Devon. Let me reassure the House that I am absolutely committed, as are the Government, to a strong future for family farms and food producers across the country. I am sure we will be continuing the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

Thank you, Sir Mark; I can be quite concise. May I, through you, thank the Minister for, as ever, the polite, civil and gentle way in which he treats the inevitable criticism coming from the Opposition side of the Chamber? Some of it is justified, and no doubt some, he thinks, is unjustified. I have to say I found his responses on the inheritance tax changes pretty thin, but no doubt we will hear tomorrow from the Treasury Ministers as they stand up for themselves on a decision on which, from his silence, we can make a deduction.

The hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) asked the very pertinent question whether DEFRA was consulted, and the answer that came back was not yes; it was, “We are one Government.” If I have ever heard a piece of prevarication elegantly executed in this Chamber, that was it. That is the problem: we all sense that this was driven by the Treasury, tin-eared—completely deaf to the real needs of the farming world and community. I suspect that even after the relatively short time the Minister has been in office—he did serve in opposition, and I know he was an attentive, listening figure in that time—even he must understand that this has caused a restiveness throughout the community, and not just a restiveness, but a despair. The 86-year-old lady, living in Sheepwash, who now sees herself as an impediment to the passage of her ancient farm to her own children and grandchildren is a human example of the impact, and she is not going to be comforted by the answer, “Well, only 27% of farms will be affected.” She says, “What about me?”

Can we afford to lose, even on the Treasury figures, 2,500 farms over this Parliament? Even on the minuscule figure that the Treasury takes into account, it is still 2,500 farms the length and breadth of England that will be lost—500 a year. I say we cannot afford it. We will debate this tomorrow. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) will debate it forcefully, and the Minister will no doubt be relieved to be sitting by the side of Treasury Ministers, who are going to have to take the rap for the mess that they have made.

I would like to work with the Minister on bovine TB. The disease affects my constituency, and the constituencies of all of us in Devonshire, profoundly. We do not want to go back in history. I recall that history too well. I recall the foot and mouth pyres, but also, as I have said, the silent and invisible carnage with the slaughter of cattle as a result of bovine TB, and the restrictions on dairy farms, on livestock grazing farms. Those are cruel—cruel not only to the animals but to the people. We need together to find a solution. I have been told that vaccination is just a few years away every time I have had a debate of this type. It would be interesting to know how far away the Minister thinks the vaccination is, and has he solved the problems of exporting the milk and the produce, once it has been vaccinated, to our markets abroad? I ask because of course it is difficult to determine whether something detected is the vaccine or the disease, and it is not clear that our markets would be available. Those problems have to be resolved by him, and I am very happy to work with him to do that.

Finally, on the question of the landscape management unit in the Fursdon review, may I urge the Minister to recall that what is critical—

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Ben Lake]

I believe that I am safe in saying—I am grateful to Government Members for their encouragement —that the powers do extend to livestock grazing on common land. That is important because we need to ensure that when such attacks happen, the owners, regardless of the livestock concerned, are assured that police have the powers necessary to fully investigate and hopefully put a stop to any repeat attacks, which often happen in my constituency. It is believed that the same dogs have committed attacks there more than once.

I reiterate my support for the Bill and congratulate the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal once again on bringing it forward.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. I should make a declaration of interest: I own land on which livestock is kept.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal on doing an enormous service for livestock farming and those engaged in it not only through this valuable Bill but during her service as Secretary of State. Throughout her time in office, she took valuable steps towards enhancing the livelihoods of those whom I represent in my constituency. Her work is being carried on by the current Secretary of State.

I shall address just one or two elements of the Bill not in a critical spirit but in, I hope, a constructive one. I hope we can give some subsequent attention to my first concern about the Bill—the Minister may be able to help me by answering some of my questions or by reflecting on changes that could be introduced in subsequent stages—which is that at the moment several pieces of legislation could apply to the mischief at which this Bill is aimed. We have the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953, which this measure amends, but we also have the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Section 3 of the 1991 Act makes it an offence to be the owner of a dog that is dangerously out of control, and the guidelines that the Crown Prosecution Service published on that offence suggest that a dog that is causing serious injury to other animals, including livestock, is potentially evincing evidence of being dangerously out of control.

We have, then, the offence in section 3 and the offences under the 1953 Act. What we do not have is coherence in the guidelines for prosecution and enforcement between when the Dangerous Dogs Act can be used and when the offence is of attacks on, or worrying, livestock. Having served as a Law Officer, I think there may well be a case for the re-publication of new guidelines on enforcement and prosecution, but the reason why I draw attention to the matter is that, even with the changes that my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is introducing to the penalty provisions, it seems to me that they are extraordinarily light for the top end of this type of offending. An offence with a £1,000 maximum fine will generally be visited not with the maximum by a magistrates court but by a fine potentially of just a few hundred pounds—in other words, the cost of perhaps a few parking tickets—yet the impact, suffering and mischief that attacks by dogs on livestock cause to farmers and farming families are severe, and wholly out of proportion to a fine of a few hundred pounds.

My right hon. Friend will know—because I have discussed it with her—that just a few weeks ago the Dawe family, who are neighbours and constituents of mine, were subjected to an extraordinary overnight attack in which no fewer than 27 lambing ewes and lambs were killed—their faces ripped off and their bellies torn open. Many of them had to be put down when, in the morning light, that appalling scene of carnage was discovered. The irresponsibility of an owner who allows their dogs to roam free and to cause damage of that appalling character is not reflected by a fine of a few hundred pounds. Now, you may say to me, Mrs Latham, that perhaps in those circumstances an offence under section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act should be considered, and I would agree, but what we need is a coherent set of guidelines that sets out when the various offences in the hierarchy that exists should be considered by both police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The second point that I wish to make is an allied point. It is astonishing that neither the Dangerous Dogs Act nor, certainly, the 1953 Act permits the court to disqualify an owner from owning a dog. I strongly submit to the Minister, for future consideration, perhaps in this Bill, that this offence ought to be added to section 34 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which lists the offences that gives to a court the power to disqualify a person from dog ownership. It may be that there is a lacuna, and under the Dangerous Dogs Act the normal remedy in those circumstances would be the destruction of the animal, but if the court decides that the animal should not be destroyed, surely some attention should be given to whether an owner with a dog so dangerously out of control—or even a dog that worries livestock, whether once or repeatedly—should not be allowed to own a dog until further order.

The two points that I recommend to the Minister, then—it may be that those assisting him can say that my fairly preliminary inspection of the laws in this field is wrong, and I can be reassured—are twofold. First, we need coherent guidance as to the way police investigate and prosecution prosecute, as to the balance to be struck and the considerations to be thought through, and as to the application of either a section 3 Dangerous Dogs Act offence or an offence of worrying sheep or attacking livestock, of the kind my right hon. Friend is dealing with. Secondly, we need to consider whether the offences, even those she is amending, are sufficient for this purpose. A repeat offender will be fined under level 5. That is an unlimited fine and that is good, but the repeated worrying of sheep or worrying of any livestock is not, many would say, sufficiently visited with adequate punishment by a fine alone. I commend that approach to the Minister, and if I am wrong about that or the policy of the Government is not to adopt it, we need at least to consider when section 3 should be used.

Finally, we need to consider the question of disqualification and whether or not this offence should be added to the list of offences under the Animal Welfare Act that make an owner eligible for disqualification. The court, of course, would have discretion; all the usual balancing factors that are relevant under that Act would apply. Where there is a fairly minor case of worrying, one would not expect a disqualification, but in a really grave case—such as that of the Dawe family, whom I have the privilege of representing—a court may take a thoroughly different view.

With that—I say again that this is meant not in a critical spirit but in a constructive one—I congratulate my right hon. Friend again. This is an extraordinarily valuable set of provisions that has been widely welcomed and I hope that we can consider tightening them further in the Bill’s journey through the House.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, I am pleased to appear under your wise guidance, Mrs Latham, as we look at this vital and important legislation. I represent 200 square miles of rolling Hampshire downland, much of it dotted with sheep. Like my right hon. and learned Friend, we have seen our share of horrible incidents over the past few years; the legislation is therefore extremely welcome for me and my constituents—and I declare an interest as a dog owner.

I, too, have some small matters of detail that I want to raise for possible consideration on Report, in the spirit of trying constructively to improve the Bill. I will go through them, if I may. The first is about territorial extent. I am not as legally proficient as my right hon. and learned Friend, but I want to ensure that areas of Crown land are covered, not least royal parks, which often have their own legislation to cover what happens within them. Members will remember the famous case of Fenton chasing deer across Richmond Park—happily, in that case there was a prosecution and a conditional discharge for six months. We need to look at that. In particular, we need to think about the foreshore. There are parts of this country where sheep graze the foreshore, eating seaweed and whatever. It produces delightful slightly salty and sweet lamb, but the foreshore is a part of our landmass that has its own legal status and largely, I think I am right in saying, belongs to the Crown. It would be interesting to see how we can make sure that the legislation applies there.

The second issue that I want to raise is the retention of dogs by the police. When I was at City Hall, in a previous life, I started a campaign to drive out the plethora of dangerous dogs in London and improve the legislation. We got amendments then, but one thing that deterred the police from detaining dangerous dogs was the cost of holding them. Often, a dog would be detained, the trial would be awaited, the dog would be held—sometimes for months—the owner would not show up to the trial and the dog would be destroyed, but the police would be left with the cost. I understand that in this case there is a seven-day limit and I wonder whether we could consider that for amendment on Report.

In my honest opinion, owners will partially pay. They will get to seven days, plead that they cannot afford it and partially pay some of the costs to try to avoid their dog being put down. A game will be played. There needs to be firmer provision: either that, at seven days, partial payment is not good enough and the constable may dispose of the dog, or that an owner can agree immediately upon seizure of the dog that the dog may be disposed of. At the moment I cannot see in the Bill the possibility that, if my dog kills 27 sheep and is seized, I can say to the police there and then, “I don’t want the dog back. Do what you will with it,” at no cost to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

On disqualification, will the Minister go back to the Department and say to his officials that we ought to look at whether committing an offence under the 1953 Act should make someone eligible for disqualification from dog ownership? It would be a simple amendment that could be introduced in this private Member’s Bill, and I sense that there is widespread support for the proposal. If there is a good reason not to do it, the Committee and the House should of course listen to that, but I noticed that he was not going to deal with it—I hope he will forgive me; I may have been premature.

[Robbie Moore]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his intervention. I was just about to talk about the implications of the experience of the Dawe family in his constituency, which was a horrendous scenario where 27 ewes and lambs were attacked—I assume there will have been multiple scenarios where disqualification would quite rightly have applied. While disqualification is not covered by the Bill, it is something that I will consider with officials for the next stage. There may be reasons why that is not in scope of the Bill, but I am absolutely willing to take that away and consider it with officials, as it has been rightly referenced by my right hon. and learned Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed. With a former Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, present, I am conscious that the devil will be in the detail on aspects of law. It is my understanding that disqualification from ownership should be possible, certainly in England. It is technically an issue of animal welfare, which is devolved, so there is added complication there. However, I am happy to explore this further with the Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend to ensure that it is still possible to achieve the outcome that he seeks, whether through this legislation or otherwise.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

The Dangerous Dogs Act does permit disqualification, so although the Animal Welfare Act considers the welfare of an animal, the Dangerous Dogs Act aims at a different mischief. There seems to be no reason why livestock worrying offences should not be included under the same principle as the Dangerous Dogs Act.

[Dr Coffey]

I commit to my right hon. and learned Friend to go away and work with the Minister and officials on the details of that particular issue. It was my understanding that there were other legal powers available for the outcomes that he seeks, but if that is not the case—he has expressed some concern about the level of detail—we should look to rectify that in future.

Farming on Dartmoor

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of farming on Dartmoor.

I am delighted to serve both under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and in the company of so many of my hon. and right hon. Friends. It is good to see representatives from other parties present to discuss this question as well.

I should say at once that the issues connected with Dartmoor are enormously complex, and they have been debated over decades, if not longer. I do not intend to enter into the wider debate as to what is right or wrong in connection with overgrazing or undergrazing, or as to the causes of the problems that we face on Dartmoor today. The immediate occasion of the debate—I am grateful to the Minister for preliminary discussions—is a problem that has arisen in connection with the farmers on Dartmoor, the viability of their business, and the levels of stocking and grazing that are to be expected by Natural England in connection with the renewal of their higher level stewardship arrangements.

Farmers on Dartmoor sustain the communities of Dartmoor. They breed a particularly independent and hardy-minded type of family who are able to make a living from the harsh and adverse environment that the moorland presents. There are approximately 900 farms and 23 commons on Dartmoor. Dartmoor is owned by a patchwork of private landowners, including the Duchy of Cornwall—there are many other landowners—but it is divided into 23 commons. Some of the land is tenanted, but invariably the commoners have rights to graze on those commons, and there are hundreds of commoners. It is therefore a particularly complex environment.

The higher level stewardship schemes were introduced on Dartmoor in the early 2000s. They were 10-year agreements. Broadly speaking, they commenced in 2012 and 2013, and they are now due for renewal. It is open to farmers to extend their agreements by five years, and the first agreements started to expire in February of this year. The problem that has arisen is this: in or about February of this year, a letter arrived at all of the commoners’ associations, each of which is responsible for the management of one of the 23 commons, indicating to them that, if they were to enter into new agreements, they would have to remove their stock entirely from the moors in the wintertime. What in fact was said was that, other than ponies—you may be familiar with the famous Dartmoor pony, Mr Hosie—stocking and grazing in the winter would be permitted only if they could be justified on ecological and environmental grounds. In essence, that has been interpreted to mean—and Natural England does not appear to contest that it means—the effective removal of stocking and grazing in the winter.

The letter was followed a few weeks later by another letter to a particular common indicating that it would have to reduce its summer grazing by some 80%. Were those indications to be implemented, they would effectively mean the complete eradication of grazing on that common throughout the year and only 20% levels in the summer. That exploded a metaphorical bomb in the small and fragile communities that the moorland hosts. Throughout the entire moor, Natural England’s policy was interpreted to be to apply those stocking levels across the moor. I am glad to say that that is now apparently not Natural England’s intention, but the fact is that those letters were written without consultation or warning. Not a single organisation on the moor was consulted—not the Dartmoor National Park Authority, not the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council, not the landowners, not the farmers’ groups. Not a single warning was given before that sudden and unexpected announcement by the statutory regulator for the moor, which controls the sites of special scientific interest where statutory consent must be given and, more widely, advises the Rural Payments Agency on whether it should agree to these higher level agreements. Not a single word of consultation was given or received.

I think my right hon. and hon. Friends would agree that that was an extremely unfortunate step for the regulator to have taken, and I think it regrets it. I have had a chance to speak to representatives of the agency, and there is no doubt that it accepts that its communications were poor. The problem on Dartmoor is that there has been a steady and gradual breakdown in the relationship of trust and confidence that should exist between the statutory regulator and the farming communities that, by common consent, must implement the agency’s statutory objectives. Natural England cannot fulfil its statutory objectives without the people, the human capital of Dartmoor. Therefore, if that relationship of trust is damaged, the problem of how we manage this precious landscape for the future, both for Dartmoor’s inhabitants—its families and wider communities—and in the wider public interest, will get far worse.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend is making an excellent speech. On the subject of that relationship and communication, does he agree that the damage has already been done on other moors? Exmoor farmers in my constituency are already contacting me with concerns about their future in the light of what has happened on Dartmoor.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

It is a highly regrettable situation. My hon. Friends and I have absolutely no argument with the absolute necessary of Natural England fulfilling its statutory objectives—we gave it those legal responsibilities, and they must be fulfilled and enacted—but that can be achieved only in partnership with those who live and work in the area. That means building a positive relationship of trust and confidence. It means achieving, if at all possible, consensus.

My hon. Friends the Members for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter) and for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and I wrote to the Secretary of State and to my right hon. Friend the Minister. As our letter said, we strongly believe that Natural England on its own in Dartmoor will not be able to achieve the kind of relationship, partnership, co-operation and consensus that will lead to a way forward for the future. We all know that the sites of special scientific interest on Dartmoor are in an unfavourable condition. The farmers know that the moor needs to be brought towards a favourable condition. We can argue, as I said I would avoid, about the causes of that. Many say it is because of overgrazing. It is perfectly true that in the ’80s and ’90s the policies of the European Union, which paid farmers to intensify their livestock numbers because they paid headage subsidies, undoubtedly overgrazed the moor. Many farmers and experts would argue that since that time the dramatic reduction in stocking numbers on Dartmoor, which has been happening since the late 1990s, has caused problems with the consequential burgeoning of molinia purple moor grass, but I do not want to get into that debate today; I want to focus the Government’s mind on how we are to move forward for the future.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I accept that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is focusing on Dartmoor, but he mentioned a human element. Part of that human element is family tenant farms—those who want to hand over their farms to their sons for the future. Surely, with this way forward, Natural England has a big job to do with farming families who have an obligation to their families and to their sons, who want to take over afterwards.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, if I may be so bold as to call him that. One of the problems with stocking reductions, including the elimination of winter grazing, is that there are many tenants on Dartmoor. They are not landed people; they are tenants. They have no other farms than those they farm on Dartmoor. Where are they to put their flocks if they are told that they must be removed in the winter? What will happen is simple: those flocks will be lost. Either they will be sold if a commercial consideration can be obtained for them or they will be culled, because they may not be wanted anywhere else since they are used to the high moorland and the conditions they live in there.

These flocks are not just any flocks: in many cases they have been there for generations, for decades, for hundreds of years. They are hefted flocks; flocks, in Dartmoor terminology, that hold their leers. Leered flocks, put quite simply, are flocks that instinctively know the boundaries of their own grazing. It is a minor natural marvel of its own. It is part of the social and cultural heritage of Dartmoor, which, if winter grazing is removed completely, will be lost for all time.

My submission to my right hon. Friend the Minister and all Members who have attended the debate is that, as with so many things with life, Dartmoor presents us with a complex balancing exercise in which there are competing public interests to weigh and balance. Of course, the health of the natural environment is a primary consideration, but so I would argue is the cultural and social capital of Dartmoor, its communities and families who have farmed there for centuries—Dartmoor’s own unique heritage. In introducing the grazing calendar for the renewed agreement, we must have regard to that cultural, social and economic capital, which has been built up over the centuries and which is at risk if these destocking or stocking levels are insisted on. That is why my hon. Friends and I have called for an independent process in which, prior to the agreement of the new higher level schemes, an impartial facilitator and reviewer would lead the negotiation and discussion, review the contesting arguments and balance the competing public interests. 

I am glad and relieved to say that the call for an independent process has been heeded by the Dartmoor National Park Authority and the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council. Indeed, every relevant stakeholder on the moor, including Natural England, agreed on 4 April this year that such an independent process would be valuable. I would argue that we are now beginning to make progress. Unless we do something like this—unless we subject the factors that should go into these new extended agreements to objective review—we will constantly have a tug of war on Dartmoor, which will sap our strength and undermine our conviction and singleness of purpose to achieve the objectives we all want to see. I call on the Minister to give a fair wind to this important process.

The proposal is that an independent reviewer be appointed, possibly by the Minister himself, and paid for by the stakeholders at no cost to the Government. Who would look a gift horse in the mouth? The proposal is simple: we appoint an independent facilitator and all parties are brought into the process. He then reports over a period of 12 months, taking the views of all sides and proposing ways forward by negotiation and mediation. That seems to be a positive step forward.

We have been vexed for too long on Dartmoor by these entrenched positions—by the naturalists and environmentalists on one side and the farmers on the other, and by anybody else who wants to weigh in. The time has come for us to work together, and the way forward is via this independent process. Since all parties are now subscribed to it, I urge the Minister to agree. When one is presented with an opportunity like that, one does not spurn it.

My first call to the Minister is to allow the proposal to take place. It may require a degree of co-operation and assistance from the Department. The proposal is that for the first 12 months there would be no or minimal grazing level changes and the stocking calendar would essentially not change. However, the proposal is called “one plus four”, so that after the 12-month review in which the independent facilitator works to achieve consensus, the remaining four years would implement the recommendations of that review.

The park authority supports the proposal, and it is the park authority’s job to balance these factors. Part of its statutory definition and purpose is to achieve a balance between the communities, the socioeconomic factors affecting Dartmoor, the natural landscape and environment, and many other factors besides. If the park authority supports the proposal and Natural England is also in agreement, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to give it fair wind. However, it will need more than that. Once the independent facilitator has produced his recommendations, it may be that he makes recommendations for the adjustment of grazing on Dartmoor. The problem with the current situation is that in order to renew these agreements, which must be renewed now, none of the farmers concerned about whether to make adjustments in the business model that they have pursued for many years have any time to do so. The proposal would give time not only for an independent review and for the recommendations of an impartial and credible character to be advanced but, as the process unfolded, for farm businesses on Dartmoor to adapt. In many cases, they are fragile, particularly where there are tenants who have no cushion with which to adapt, but they would at least have the opportunity of planning how, over time, they would adapt to graduated changes, if that was the recommendation for the stocking calendar.

However, the Government can help in this way. It may well be that the grazing of molinia by cattle and ponies is regarded as a good thing, so why are the Government not considering incentivising hill farmers to graze molinia at the correct time—between May and July, when molinia is palatable to cattle? Why are they not producing a scheme for the upland areas that will join in tandem with the statutory objective of bringing these sites into favourable condition by encouraging the practices that will achieve that very thing?

I urge the Minister to have an open mind about how the new environmental land management schemes are being developed for the purposes of the upland areas. It may be that on particular moors there should be an element of bespoke, precise targeting of practices that will assist Natural England, and the families and businesses that farm there, to achieve objectives that we all want to see.

We appreciate that ELMS are experimental schemes. They are still being tried and tested. Although we have seen much welcome detail so far, we have not seen, perhaps, sufficient detail about the upland areas. That presents us with an opportunity over the next 12 months on Dartmoor to design the further detail for the upland areas in a manner that will be tailored to the interests of preserving those precious farms and farming communities, and achieving the objectives of Natural England.

That is my second call to the Government and to my right hon. Friend the Minister: support the independent process, allow it to do its work, and consider how, in designing ELMS for the upland areas, they might be tailored and designed to incentivise and encourage the wholesome objectives of Natural England while preserving viable farm businesses on the moor.

In my opinion and, I believe, in the opinion of my right hon. and hon. Friends who surround me, this is a compelling menu for the Minister to choose from. It achieves what we need to achieve on Dartmoor. I do not want to demonise one side or the other, but there is no doubt that the recent indications and announcements from Natural England have plunged Dartmoor into uncertainty. It would appear from the evidence of my hon. Friends here who represent other moors—indeed, I see across the Chamber others who represent moorland areas—that the same is true elsewhere, but certainly in the south-west, an enormous amount of uncertainty, anxiety and stress has been caused.

It is not just farmers who are experiencing that. Around this country, there are tens of thousands of people who regard with deep sentiment the welfare of Dartmoor and its communities—and also its ponies; we must not forget them. They are genetically unique, and precious to many thousands of people. They, too, are under threat from a policy that would eliminate winter grazing and dramatically reduce summer grazing. Why? Quite simply, it is because they are included in the stocking calendars. Given the choice between a productive unit or an unproductive unit, which will people choose? There is bound to be reduction in the number of Dartmoor ponies, to the extreme dismay of tens of thousands of people throughout this country.

The problem has simply been that Natural England has acted, no doubt with the best intentions, in a manner that fails to take into account that it is regulating a complex environment, in which there are multiple public interests and goods that have to be weighed. That might mean that it has to accept, as I believe it does, that the return to favourable condition of these precious sites, which we all want to see, might take place over time. We cannot simply explode on these fragile communities a sudden change in the models of what they have been doing for decades—the loss of their hefted flocks and all these social and cultural values—because of a single perspective that fails to take account of the complexity of the balance that must be achieved.

Not only have I described the problem, but I hope I have described the solution. Having served under two Prime Ministers in government, I recall that both used to say, “I don’t want problems, Geoffrey, I want solutions.” Faithful to that prescription, I hope I have adumbrated not only a problem that is of acute concern to many hundreds of decent people, whom I and my colleagues represent, that is precious and integral to the survival of their communities and way of life, but the solution, to which they are all subscribed and which, with one heart and voice, we call on the Minister to endorse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I am immensely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for what was an unexpectedly full acceptance of our proposals. It is heartening to see how the process we engage with in this House can sometimes lead to positive outcomes so quickly and efficiently. I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have participated, including those from the Opposition, and I endorse the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice).

We need to look again at the arm’s length agencies. If my right hon. Friend prepared a paper for DEFRA, it would be interesting to look at it. The reality is that Ministers did not have any awareness at all of what was developing on Dartmoor—I know that because I spoke to my right hon. Friend. With deference to the great deal of useful substance in the speech of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), it was what I would call “matter and impertinency mixed”, as the Fool said to King Lear, or King Lear said to the Fool.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a brief wind-up.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

May I conclude by expressing my gratitude to all who have attended, to the Minister and to you, Mr Hosie? Let’s make this work now.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of farming on Dartmoor.

Food and Farming: Devon and Cornwall

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Welcome, everyone, to this morning’s sitting. I am still asked by the House of Commons Commission to remind hon. Members to observe social distancing and wear masks—that, apparently, is still the guidance and advice.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered food and farming in Devon and Cornwall.

I am most grateful and delighted to have secured this important debate on food and farming in Devon. It is good to see so many of my colleagues from Devon, and it is very good, if I may say so, to see some honorary Devonians this morning: the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). It is a particular joy to see them so interested in food and farming in Devon. Of course, many of the themes on which we will touch will be of common interest to those whom they represent and so, speaking for myself and, I am sure, all my colleagues, we are delighted to see them.

I should say straightaway that I own farmland in Devon and derive an income from it. Although I do not myself currently farm the land, it is eligible for some of the schemes that I will discuss today and therefore it is possible that I might benefit from them.

A prosperous and flourishing agriculture in the United Kingdom is in the national interest—I do not imagine that that is a controversial statement in this company. It is not a dispensable or superfluous activity. Recent international events have confirmed, in the most dramatic way, that food production, and more specifically food security, is of increasing national importance and should be a vital Government priority. It does not need much imagination or foresight to see that, for some time now, we have been living through a new and unstable phase of international affairs. The effects of pandemics, wars—threatened and actual—and climate change are thrust upon us with every news bulletin. We cannot take for granted an uninterrupted international supply chain and an endless stream of imports.

On Monday this week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence observed that the impact of a Russian invasion in Ukraine—now already in action—would be to remove access to the breadbasket of the world. It would have the most deleterious impacts upon vulnerable states and nations throughout the world. Similarly, the gradual erosion by climate change of fertile and cultivable areas of the world, increasing regional tensions, confronts us with a growing threat to the interest of this country in ensuring a constant and adequate food supply to its people. Perhaps not for a very long time has it been so critical that our domestic agricultural policies—under our own exclusive control again after 45 years—should be got right. That is no doubt why the Government sensibly included a legal duty on Ministers, in devising the financial support schemes, to have regard to the need to encourage the production of food and to report each five years to Parliament on food security.

However, agriculture in Devon and Cornwall, like farming all over the country, faces a time of great unpredictability and uncertainty. It must adapt to the major implications of the Agriculture Act 2020 and of changes in our trading relationships after our exit from the European Union.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on initiating the debate. It is specifically about food and farming in Devon, but, as he rightly said, when it comes to farming, Northern Ireland is comparable. Does he agree that, while farmers in my constituency and across Northern Ireland have recently had a reported rise in income, their outgoings will far outstrip their income, and that, if any modernisation or diversification is to take place, the Government need to step up and implement funding streams that can be allocated to those who need them most, UK-wide? The right hon. and learned Gentleman and I discussed this before the debate. He and I understand well that our Minister in Northern Ireland has grasped the important issue of farming—I know that the Minister here has done the same—but does he feel that whatever happens in Devon, the same should happen in Strangford?

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I thought the hon. Gentleman wasn’t going to make a speech this morning.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

You might say that, Mr Betts; I couldn’t possibly comment. What I can say is that I agree with the hon. Gentleman: the commonality of interests between farmers in Devon and Northern Ireland is obvious and clear. Northern Ireland is an important part of the United Kingdom. It is important for farmers throughout our great country that these policies should be got right. Now is not the time to take unnecessary risks with our capacity to grow food and sustain the nation, but the time to seize the opportunities the moment brings.

[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I very much agree with the thrust of my right hon. and learned Friend’s speech. On self-sufficiency and food security, currently the UK enjoys 64% self-sufficiency. The Government have no shortage of targets in other areas. Does he agree that it would be quite sensible to have a target to increase that figure to, say, 75% over the next decade? What is wrong with that?

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I agree with every word of my hon. Friend’s intervention. Food security, as I will come on to say, should be at the heart of the Government’s policy making.

We cannot ignore the international context. What more does it take than tanks rolling across the border of a European nation—one that has been famous in history as the breadbasket of the world? Are we seriously going to assume that from now on the uninterrupted supply of food can simply be counted on? Or are the Government to start to take the precautions necessary to ensure that the food supply for the people of this country is guaranteed? One way to do that would be to adopt the measure proposed by my eminently wise neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter).

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Ind)]

On security of supply, one of the challenges that is clear to me is that we have the food, but not necessarily the people to farm it. I heard on Radio 4—yesterday morning, I think—of a pig farm of something like 300,000 pigs where 4,500 were going to have to be killed because it did not have the labour force. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the issue of the labour force in agriculture needs to be taken much more seriously by the Government? The concept that these incredibly complicated jobs are low-skilled or unskilled is utterly wrong; it is not worthy of the people who do them. We need to recognise the skill, reward it, and attract those workers, from both within the United Kingdom and further afield.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

The panel of wisdom assembled this morning is extraordinary; it is almost as if my hon. Friends have read the speech that I prepared last night. Of course the issue of labour is critical.

I supported the departure of this country from the European Union. I believed in every fibre of my being that the freedoms it would permit our nation, if seized and enacted, would bring great benefits, not only to the farmers of our country but to our country as a whole. I do not believe the people of this country would fail to understand the need of British farming for skilled labour. I do not think that was the objection of the millions who voted for Brexit. They would understand a policy of flexibility.

There is no need for us to maintain, with adamantine stubbornness, a policy that leads to labour shortages in British farming. So I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) completely. Nowhere is this uncertainty felt more keenly than in Devon, where 13% of the economy of the county consists of food production, almost twice the national average. No one seriously argued that an area-based direct payment scheme, such as the one we have, should be retained. Agricultural support should be aimed, as far as possible, at those who look after and promote the wellbeing of the land, or who genuinely make their livelihoods from it.

The aims and intentions of the Agriculture Act 2020 were widely supported, including by me, but those direct payments accounted on average for 55% of the total farm incomes of England. In the south-west, even with the farm payments, the farm business survey found that the average income of a lowland grazing farm in 2019 was just £4,048. Without those payments, there would have been a loss of £10,000, or closer to £14,000 if existing agri-environmental payments are included.

Last year, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board found that the levels of the new environmental land management scheme then published would, even at the advanced tier to which many could not aspire, not remotely replace the current payments. Yet, according to the agricultural transition plan, by 2024 the direct payments will have been reduced by half, and by 2027 they are due to end completely.

The Public Accounts Committee has described the Department’s approach as “blind optimism”. I do not know, but I certainly hope that that is not an accurate description, and I look to the Minister to reassure me. So far, however, no impact assessment has been published of the effects of the design of these new schemes on food production and farming in Devon, or elsewhere. Nor have measurable standards yet been published by which the environmental benefits and farming outcomes can be assessed.

The Minister herself, in answer to a question about upland farming in April 2020, nearly two years ago, said that she understood the need for payment rates to be attractive to achieve the level of uptake and the environmental outcomes we need to see. The Government have suggested—I believe is an accepted and understood figure—that only if we achieve participation in the sustainable farming incentive of around 70% of all farmers can the scheme succeed.

I understand that elements of the new scheme are still under development, but I must tell the Minister that neither the current published rates, nor the schemes as so far defined, are attracting much enthusiasm from the farm businesses and farmers I represent. They simply cannot yet see sufficiently how these schemes will be relevant to the economic survival of their farms. That anecdotal evidence is supported by the growing chorus of concern from the industry. The Tenant Farmers Association, farming one third of the land in England, has described the current plans as

“a complex patchwork of small schemes of limited impact with little which seems to stitch them together.”

The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—it is a pleasure to see its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), here this morning—the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have all expressed their growing sense of dismay and apprehension. Steadily and relentlessly, the clock is ticking down for Devonshire and Cornish farmers. In the meantime, as the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out, their costs continue to soar.

I understand that in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft coming in to land, sirens and alarms will go off if the plane is approaching the runway either too low or too slow. The sirens are going off now on the Department’s transitional plan. If the market is to play a greater role in farm incomes in the future, it might be less troubling if one could see the necessary vigour and energy invested in creating new markets for British produce around the world—if we could see a bright and bold new vision of a British agricultural export agency with a mission and a passion to convey the magnificent story we have to tell about the quality of British food and to convert it into new opportunities. Perhaps the Minister might say a word about what the Government are doing in this respect.

If Devon and Cornwall’s farmers could sense that the Government were willing to invest in them and back them with the kind of tailor-made and well-designed policies that would lift their collective sales, I have no doubt that they would accept with alacrity the challenge of adaptation, investment and flexibility that these changes will require of them.

[Jim Shannon]

I was watching “Countryfile” on Sunday night, and sugar beet producers in England were mentioned. As we all know, there is an onus on the Minister, but there is also an onus on the companies that buy the product to give farmers the right price for their product. In many cases, the processing company that was mentioned—its name has escaped my mind—has upped its price, but the price has not kept in check with the cost. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to press the Minister, but does he agree that we should also press companies to give the producers—the farmers—the right price for their product?

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I completely agree that fairness within the supply and the price chain is vital. I think we have lost some momentum that we gathered a few years back with the enactment of various measures that this Government took in trying to create greater awareness of these matters within the industry and the price chain.

The hon. Gentleman has pointed out one further aspect of what I am attempting to convey. What we need is a conviction at the heart of Government of the importance of British farming. I do not doubt that the Minister herself has that conviction. I do not doubt that the Secretary of State, who is a valued colleague of ours in the south-west, has that conviction. I sometimes doubt that, at the centre of the Government’s councils, that conviction is always as persuasive and influential as it should be. I simply say again: at a time when we are confronting another dictator on the borders of Europe, how much more evidence do we need that food security should be a crucial priority at the heart of Government policy making?

If farmers felt that policies were being designed in our post-Brexit world to lift them up and help them make the most of the market, I have no doubt that they would seize those opportunities with alacrity. They were told that regulation would be handled differently and would not, as so often is the case, stifle farmers with bureaucracy and penalisation, but that there would be—I quote from the transition plan—a “new, more effective approach”. Well, someone appears to have forgotten to send the memo to the Environment Agency. Its new guidance on the farming rules for water has caused widespread dismay about the spreading of muck. I understand that dairy farmers are being visited today and told that they must build more storage for their slurry and invest in their farms—investment that they can ill afford at the moment, and even if they can afford it, they are frequently refused planning permission at the instigation of Natural England.

Again and again I hear the same of other agencies like Natural England, whose chief executive I have invited to a summit meeting on Dartmoor later this year to discuss its relationship with working farmers on the moor. We must see this fabled new approach manifested in the everyday experience of farmers. We must take the freedom that our departure from the European Union has conveyed upon us and create the light-touch, unbureaucratic approach for which the farming community is yearning. We must also see the sums promised for investment in on-farm productivity materialise, increase, and be simple to access and draw down.

Perhaps it is too lugubriously pessimistic to remind oneself of the ill-fated Rural Payments Agency and the long history of misery that its performance in administering the area-based payments so often caused those who had to deal with it. Perhaps it is too easy to believe that the administration of these new, as yet undeveloped and unfledged schemes will suffer the same fate in execution as they have appeared to in design. There are more hopeful omens: all is not doom and gloom, as I know the Minister will tell us. The countryside stewardship applications have been simplified, the rates have been increased and—lo and behold—there has been a 30% increase in the uptake of that scheme. Nobody rejoices in that fact more than I, but as the Minister will accept, it is not by itself enough. I hope she will give us this morning greater grounds for hope than, I am afraid, my more pessimistic observation produces at the moment.

This is not just a question of the observable facts. Sometimes one must rely on one’s intuition, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs so often seems to wear an air of defeatism and lack the foresight, conviction and urgency that the situation demands. If they do not feel they are getting a fair audience at the heart of the councils of government, I understand that. That is why each one of us sitting here this morning can play our part in lending strength to my hon. Friend the Minister’s elbow and that of her boss, the Secretary of State. We stand here at their side, urging them on, willing to play any part—willing to march, to organise and to express solidarity with the team that we send into battle to fight the British farming corner in the Cabinet and the Government. In that fight she can count on my loyal, steadfast support.

I cannot, I am afraid, touch much more on optimistic and encouraging notes, because I must now turn to the topic of pigs. The Minister knows that pig farmers have suffered acutely from the effects of the pandemic. I have had correspondence with the Secretary of State on this pressing issue. The measures taken by the Government have been welcome, but inadequate to prevent a silent catastrophe on pig farms in Devon. Barely a quarter of the 800 visas for butchers have been taken up. The situation on the farms is just as desperate as when I first corresponded with the Minister last year—indeed, more so. One such local farmer has written to me just this week to say that even after culling hundreds of animals,

“we have 2,700 fattening pigs here whereas we would previously only have had 600 weaners and 650 newborn piglets. We have had to make significant investment”—

they have spent over £100,00—

“into adapting buildings to house all these much larger pigs, as well as buying two new bulk bins to store the extra food and also having to install extra feeding equipment. Meanwhile the cost of animal feed has continued to rocket. The financial burden is immense. The stress of this situation is terrible.”

Thus writes a farming family from Langtree, in Torridge in Devon.

Just yesterday the Irish Government followed other Governments, including Northern Ireland and Scotland, by announcing a hardship fund to allow flat-rate payments to farmers who send more than 200 pigs to slaughter each year. The week before last, there was a crisis meeting with the Minister. I would be glad to hear the progress that the Minister is making in this emergency—and it is an emergency.

There is a silent catastrophe going on in pig farms not only in Devon and Cornwall but throughout our country. The issue requires urgent action. The national interest demands that the Government place food security and agriculture in this country at the heart of their policy making. Surely, as the party of the countryside, we cannot stand by while farming—the very sinew of our rural communities—withers away. Of course adaptations to economic circumstances and modern requirements are necessary but, as the uncertainties and perils of world events remind us with acute and ever-growing force, the neglect of our domestic capacity to feed ourselves would be an omission for which the British people will, rightly, not forgive us.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Slightly out of order, I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, who I know has to return to a Select Committee meeting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I am grateful for the Minister’s response, which was, as I expected, a fighting performance. I encourage her to keep fighting; I know that those around me in Devon will support her. We will be her army; she needs only to point us in the right direction, light the blue touchpaper and retire. I thank all Members who have attended this debate and you, Mr Betts, for the extremely patient and civilised way you have governed us, though I hope we have not been too unruly.

I only congratulate the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), on his superb historical amnesia. I recall spending five years, in long and arduous opposition, bashing my head against a brick wall, trying to get a Labour Minister even to know where Devon existed on the map. I seem to recall that it was a “leafy area” that could look after itself. The behemoth—the leviathan—of bureaucracy was invented by the Labour party, so let us not throw too many brickbats across the aisle.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered food and farming in Devon and Cornwall.

Leaving the EU: Upland Farming

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on securing this important debate on upland farming after we leave the European Union.

The uplands have some of our most beautiful landscapes. Some 12% of land in England is in the upland areas, but it constitutes 75% of the world’s heather moorland. Some 70% of our upland areas are in national parks. The uplands are also home to important, vibrant rural communities. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr discussed the position in Wales and the importance of the uplands to rural communities there, and I agree with him on that.

The truth is that future agriculture policy will be devolved. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland already have some, albeit limited, scope within EU schemes to design their own approaches; we have been clear that we want them to have as much freedom as possible to design schemes and approaches that work for their own agriculture. We want them to have more freedom than they have now under EU schemes.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Might I put in a plea on behalf of Dartmoor farmers, whom I met recently? The one thing that matters most to them is that they are involved and consulted closely in designing whatever schemes come forward from Brexit. In that context, may I commend to the Minister the Dartmoor Farming Futures initiative? It is having conspicuous success in uniting farmers throughout the Dartmoor area in designing outcomes, including livestock numbers, and turning out and taking off dates. It is a model scheme. In considering how upland farming support should go forward, I urge him to look at that scheme closely.

[George Eustice]

I can reassure my hon. and learned Friend that I have already looked at that scheme; I visited it two years ago. The Dartmoor Farming Futures project can show us the way, and it is something that we can learn from. It has been developed as a pilot, as a bit of a derogation from existing EU rules. As we think about future policies, we are keen to work out how we can tailor them to an individual area and focus more on outcomes, rather than processes and inputs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, there is a small European Union scheme to support school milk, which is worth a few million pounds, but it is dwarfed by the much larger, much more important nursery milk scheme run by the Department for Education and the Department of Health, which is worth some £60 million a year.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

The Government’s proposal to withdraw operating licences for approved finishing units with grazing in culling areas is causing great concern to dairy farmers in the south-west. Has the Minister assessed the impact that that measure will have on dairy farmers’ ability to sell their calves, and generally on the market for livestock in the south-west? I urge him to think carefully about it before introducing it.

[George Eustice]

I can reassure my hon. and learned Friend that I consider such issues very carefully. Approved finishing units do have an important role to play as we try to tackle the long-term challenge of bovine tuberculosis, but if we are trying to roll back the disease, the risk associated with grazing on approved finishing units is greater. It is still possible to have a licence for housed finishing units, and there will still be finishing units in other areas where there is no cull.

South-west Agriculture and Fishing

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I can make my points to the Minister short. On farming, may I first make a plea for any priority for domestic agriculture policy to include the concept of food security? Food security has been a principle much spoken of but rejected by successive Governments, including the one in which the preceding speaker, the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), served so honourably and in such a distinguished capacity. However, food security is vital, and therefore a vital component of any domestic agriculture policy.

Equally importantly, it is also vital for us to promote our agriculture in a way that we have failed to do in recent decades. The Dairy Council is the organisation charged with the promotion of the health benefits of dairy products, but it is not charged with the kind of marketing and advertising function that we see in countries such as New Zealand. I therefore urge the Minister to take from the debate my suggestion, and that of many dairy farmers throughout the country, that we need an agency or organisation that is devoted to the activity of marketing and promoting the fantastic dairy products of this country. The Dairy Council is not an organisation that is suited to that end because it is based on a research function rather on a marketing one.

We need to get behind British agriculture; we need to promote and advertise it in a way that we have not for many years; and we need a domestic policy that prioritises food security and domestic production. We also need a policy that decides very quickly what we will and will not support by way of direct Government grant.

On fishing, my plea to the Minister is to let any policy we design be based on local, sustainable fishing fleets that support coastal communities. This is our opportunity to ensure that a domestic fishing industry revives in the coastal communities that have been so hard pressed in recent years. It is our opportunity to deploy intelligence and flexibility, and to do away with blanket bans—despite the plentifulness of certain species of fish in the Bristol channel, we have a ray ban, a spurdog ban and bans that fishermen local to the area know are not right or intelligent. Instead, such bans should be flexibly designed. Any policy must support the interests of those fragile coastal communities.

The key areas and priorities that I urge the Minister to take away, therefore, are promoting, getting behind and marketing our British agriculture; and support and sustenance for coastal communities and local, sustainable fishing fleets.

Recreational Sea Bass Fishing

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I am not a recreational angler, but I have every intention of taking it up. It sounds an immensely enjoyable pastime and one in which all Members of Parliament should partake. I do, however, have an inshore fishing fleet to speak up for, and I have to say that one thing I am depressed about as a result of reading some of the briefings for this debate is the tone that is taken towards decent inshore commercial fishermen. These are men and women who have families to support. They are not large concerns. Having clung to a traditional fishing industry, in places such as Appledore, Bideford and Clovelly, they have found the rug gradually pulled out from under their feet.

I agree with my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas). We are dealing here with an insane, illogical, irrational, fatuous policy. It is absolutely crazy that anglers cannot take two or three fish home for the table, when, at the same time, the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), has obtained derogations that allow netting to continue. Of course on the face of it, if we take the one, it is strange we do not take the other, but I propose a reason to the House. Ministers know, when negotiating in Brussels with their counterparts in other countries, that if they take away bass from the inshore fishing fleet, they will have nothing left to catch. In the north Devon industry, which I represent, they cannot catch spurdog; there is no cod, plaice or sole; no thornback ray; no blonde ray; and now there is a ban on small-eyed ray, which represents 40% of the take for the northern Devon fishing industry. Fishermen say to me, “What do we catch?”

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the ban is pitting the recreational fishermen against the under-10 metre fleet? I and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) met our Sussex inshore fisheries and conservation authority last week and found out that, as a direct result of the ban on sea bass, there are now restrictions on shellfish.

[Mr Cox]

I do agree. The policy is crazy, and Ministers know it. They wrestle with their consciences, they feel guilty and they try to push the envelope for the inshore fleet, but they know that the situation is untenable. They know that decent men and women with livelihoods to protect cannot go to sea for more than a few days a year and cannot cover their costs. I sympathise with my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann). Of course the position is crazy. It is an insane policy.

Of course the rod-and-line sea anglers must feel a sense of injustice. It is a direct and perverse consequence of a failed policy. That is the difficulty. How do I go back to Bideford and Appledore and say to my fishermen, “There’s nothing for you to catch”? Catching small-eyed ray, the last thing on which they depended, was banned in December. Why do we think my hon. Friend the Minister came back with derogations for gillnetting? It was because he knew that the small-eyed ray was banned, which meant 40% of the northern Devon fishing industry cut at a slice. Was there any consultation on that ban? No. Was there any warning? No.

The real injustice is the whole failed policy. It is time we got out of it. The people of this country will have the chance to withdraw us from it in just a few months. Then we can have a properly managed fishery in which the rod-and-line men and the sea anglers can be treated properly, and the inshore fleet, on which traditional coastal communities depend, can breathe again when we introduce common sense back into the counsels of our fishing policy.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

[Mr Cox]

No, I am not listening to a former Minister who presided over this policy and went cap in hand to Brussels begging for scraps. It is time we took back our fisheries policy. That will bring justice to the people my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall spoke for and to the decent men and women who have nothing to fish for in the north Devon fishery.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend has made an excellent point, although I do not think that the proposals that were negotiated, or agreed to, by the Government take us any nearer to that stage.

As I was saying, there are very few fish left in the sea for inshore commercial fishermen to target, and once they have finished with the bass, there will be nothing left. So here is the opportunity: let us create a recreational bass fishery that is the envy of the western world. In 1984, it was decided in the United States, on the east-coast Atlantic seaboard, that the inshore striped bass fishery would be recreational only. That fishery is now worth $2.5 billion to the economy, as people from around the world travel there, booking charters and staying in hotels in order to go out and catch those wonderful fish.

This is the opportunity that remains open to our coastal communities. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall said, it has been seized in Ireland, and that recreational fishery is now worth £71 million a year to the entire Irish economy.

[Mr Cox]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fishing tackle industry, and the supply of fishing tackle, are vital to all these crucial areas? May I commend to him the Summerlands fishing tackle shop in Westward Ho!? It is a superb exponent of that particular art, and I hope that he will go and see it and buy something from it.

[Mr Walker]

I think that, during his speech, my hon. and learned Friend unwittingly invited my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall and me to join him for a bit of fishing. We shall be able to introduce him to the delights of recreational angling, and that fishing shop will be the first place that we visit after breakfast, at 9.30 in the morning.

But I want to be serious about this. There is a huge opportunity here. As I have said, the value of recreational fishing—bass fishing—to the Republic of Ireland’s economy is £71 million. The value of the entire commercial catch of bass in this country is £7 million. I put to my hon. Friends representing fishing communities that the real prize, the real money and the real future for their inshore commercial bass fishermen is being at the forefront of creating recreational fisheries. There is a laboratory—a live case study. We can forget Ireland and the USA because they are established and thriving. The Isle of Man has decided to pursue that route to create jobs for charter captains and fishing guides, and jobs in hotels and restaurants. That is the opportunity that presents itself.

Fishing Industry

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and my friends the hon. Members for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and for South Down (Ms Ritchie) for helping to secure it. I also pay tribute to my friend the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who has just spoken in his final annual fisheries debate. He has been a steadfast supporter of the industry in this place for almost four decades, and I wish him all the best as he leaves not for pastures new, but for fresh waters.

As we consider the future of the industry, my views are mixed. On the positive side, from the beginning of this year the new common fisheries policy is in place, which provides an opportunity for the industry and those who work in it to have a better future. Special thanks are due to the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who worked so hard to secure that deal. However, there is a great deal of work to do to secure that better future, both for the industry nationally and locally in Lowestoft in my constituency.

There are numerous hurdles to overcome. Achieving maximum sustainable yields by 2015 where possible, and by 2020 at the latest, will not be easy. Neither will the elimination of discards, for which it is vital that the Government work very closely with the industry to ensure a smooth transition. Improved nets and gearing, good use of the best science, such as that provided by CEFAS in my constituency, and such initiatives as “Fishing for the Markets” will be vital, but it will not be straightforward.

The forthcoming meeting of the Fisheries Council on 15 and 16 December presents the Minister with a real challenge. Some of the proposed total allowable catches, if implemented, will place some fleets at real risk of being unable to survive, and the current parlous state of bass stocks must be addressed urgently. I also urge the Minister to take steps to stop electric fishing by Dutch trawlers inside North sea special areas of conservation, particularly the Haisborough, Hammond and Winterton SAC and the north Norfolk SAC. That activity is potentially in breach of article 6 of the habitats directive in an area where the UK has environmental obligations.

The issue that I really want to home in on this morning is the reallocation of quota. The fleet in Lowestoft today is a pale shadow of what it used to be. It is an inshore fleet of under-10 metre boats. Their fishermen, like so many of their colleagues around the coast, get a raw deal. Altogether they comprise 77% of the UK fleet and employ over 65% of its total work force, yet they currently receive only 4% of the total quota available in the UK. Unless that problem is addressed, they will continue to dwindle, and that will be a real tragedy for so many communities.

What is good for the under-10s is largely good for the ports in which they are based. They deliver significant economic, environmental and cultural benefits for their communities, many of which are among the most deprived in the country. The income they generate stays largely in their communities and permeates down a supply chain that has been built up over many decades but has sadly been much eroded in recent years. That is very much the case in Lowestoft, where it is now a small industry, although the infrastructure is still there and, with the right policy framework, it could deliver a lot more for the area.

The reallocation of quota is not an easy task. Fishing communities around the UK have their own unique special interests which they rightly guard jealously and fight for vigorously. In some respects, the Government could not be blamed for taking one look at the problem, placing it in the “too difficult” category, and moving on to the next challenge. This would be completely wrong and a dereliction of duty. It is vitally important that they, and all of us, face up to this problem. Article 17 of the new common fisheries policy sets out the criteria that member states should follow in allocating fishing opportunity. If the Government pursue that course and take full account of economic, social and environmental considerations for local communities, many of the problems faced by the inshore fleet can be addressed.

At present, under-10 metre boats fishing along the Suffolk coast receive what one fisherman described to me as a “miserable share of catch quotas”. The under-10 metre fleet is allocated a very small percentage of the TAC decided at European level, which is then augmented by swaps organised by the Marine Management Organisation from the producer organisations. Without these swaps, the under-10 metre pool would not exist. The MMO allocates catch limits to each vessel on a month-by-month basis. Individual skippers will be unaware of what their respective catch limits are until the envelope drops on their doormat at the beginning of each month. In practice, vessels can often end up with high catch levels for one species when it is not available and low levels for others when they are abundant. Reallocations of quota are neither predictable nor permanent, and they invariably take place towards the end of the season. This month-to-month, hand-to-mouth approach is not conducive to building a sustainable business.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the MMO is maintaining its function in monitoring the data in a timely and accurate way, or even competently?

[Peter Aldous]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that intervention. I would say that there is certainly room for improvement. The way in which we collect the data needs to be addressed, and I will come to that in a moment.

The work of fishermen still fishing out of Lowestoft in the inshore fleet should be contrasted with that of the seven affiliated vessels of the Lowestoft Fish Producers’ Organisation, which are now controlled by fishing interests based in the Netherlands and in Aberdeen. These large vessels hold fixed quota allocations totalling 79,097 units, but their contribution to the local economy is limited. When they were based in Lowestoft, they helped to sustain the smaller boats. Their departure has partly contributed to the collapse of the port as the capital of fishing in the southern North sea, and has exacerbated still further the decline of the inshore fleet. Across the UK, Dutch-controlled vessels fishing British quota boast a total annual turnover of £48 million, yet only 1% of the fish they catch is landed in the UK.

Article 17 provides the cornerstone for a root and branch reform to address these inequities and to ensure that economic, social and environmental benefits accrue to local communities. The judgment in the High Court in July 2013 in the case that some producer organisations brought against the Secretary of State for carrying out a very modest redistribution of unused quota—the case was dismissed—provides helpful guidance as to how we can move forward. Mr Justice Cranston was sympathetic to the view that fishing quotas and the fixed quota allocation system should always be considered against the backdrop, and based on the principle, that fish are a public resource. This dates back to Magna Carta. He also expressed the opinion that the producer organisations and their members have no proprietary interest in the fishing stock itself and that fixed quota allocations give no right to any specific amount of fishing stock in advance of the annual ministerial decisions on quota that will take place later this month.

There is a need for more information and a better understanding of what is happening in the industry. The fixed quota allocation register first published last December is a welcome step forward, but more information is required on how much quota is held by non-working fisherman, and on quota transactions. The current trading system is complex and opaque. This information will show who benefits from the nation’s fish resources and whether they are providing maximum economic and social benefit to their local communities. This is the first necessary step to the introduction of a new, fairer quota allocation system.

There is also a need to gain a full understanding of the under 10-metre fleet as to what percentage of those licence holders in receipt of monthly catch limits are active and how many may have made no or minimal landings in the past six to 12 months, and if not, why not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

It has been a great privilege to listen to the speeches of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray). Like the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), I cannot possibly emulate the extraordinary accumulated knowledge of the previous speakers.

On 12 October, as I sat in my office in this place, a bomb was dropped on the northern Devon fishery. The Marine Management Organisation announced that the entire fishery would have to cease fishing for ray. Ray accounts for 60% of the landings in the northern Devon fishery. The fishery supports about 100 fishermen and their boats, and 650 fish processors. The industry is worth about £100 million per year. Local authorities together with local enterprise organisations clubbed together over several years and, some years ago, invested more than £2 million in a new fishing dock and quay so that fish processing could take place in Appledore. But at one stroke of the pen, the livelihoods of those people were wiped out.

Last weekend, Mr Tony Rutherford, the boss of the Bideford Fisheries, came to see me. He is always a cheerful chap, as northern Devon fishermen seem to be, and on this occasion he was looking for a silver lining. It is hard to find one, however, when someone wakes up one morning to the sound of a letter dropping through their letterbox or of an e-mail arriving on their terminal saying that they no longer have a business.

That situation cannot continue. I was shocked. I am a lawyer and I have no sea in my veins—I get seasick in the bath—but the truth is that, when I started to look at the reasons why this extraordinary situation had arisen, I was shocked. For example, I found out that the MMO had traded away more than 100 tonnes of ray earlier this year. Just a few months later, three months before the end of the season, it told my fishermen and the northern Devon fishery that they could not fish for ray.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the MMO seems to lack the expertise for quota management that it used to have? Will he join me in calling on the Minister to ensure that adequate quota management measures are put in place for under-10 metre and non-sector vessels?

[Mr Cox]

Of course I join my hon. Friend in doing so. I was about to say that; she has stolen my thunder.

[Sheryll Murray]

Sorry.

[Mr Cox]

Not at all. My hon. Friend has every right—probably a greater right than me—to make such a point, given her experience.

As I started to look into this question, simply applying such intellect and abilities as I have, I could not believe the absurdity of the system we are operating. I was contacted by several marine experts from Plymouth and the south-west who had worked with the MMO. They did not want to be named—that is perfectly understandable—but they told me their experiences of looking at the data. Frankly, if it had been done by an accountant, the accounts would not be signed off. The quality of the information, the timeliness, or lack of it, of the data processing—none of those things has been done adequately or robustly enough to make any proper statistical judgments about what is swimming in the seas or what quota has been exhausted. We are doing no more than informed guessing, and on the strength of that we are playing with the lives and livelihoods of decent men and women up and down the country.

Northern Devon fishery is a fine fishery that has pioneered conservation for many years. The island of Lundy, as many hon. Members will know, lies in my constituency and within the fishery. For many years the fishermen have agreed to no-take zones, and to allow the area to lie fallow for certain periods of the year. Around the country and the world that fishery has been praised as highly responsible and one that—if any deserve the name—warrants the description “sustainable fishery”.

Ray is abundant in the northern Devon fishery and the Bristol channel. When the stroke of the pen came down, the Cornish fisheries association still had 100 tonnes of its quota left uncaught. How can that be right? How can guessing about over-fishing in one area of England mean that fishermen in the northern Devon fishery—where ray is abundant and makes up 60% of the take, and where people have worked night and day to ensure its sustainability—should find themselves with nothing to catch and literally nothing to put on the table the following week for their families? It is criminal!

As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said, we sometimes sit here and say, “It’s too difficult” and move on. However, occasions such as this are opportunities for Members of the House at least to put on record our forlorn and probably vain protest against the bureaucratic juggernaut that seems to be for ever steamrolling over common sense in its absurd and surreal way. If I sound indignant, it is because I have had to see so many fishermen in recent weeks, and I feel profoundly indignant on their behalf. They have no quota for sole or spurdog; they can catch a tiny amount of plaice, and their cod quota could be caught in a single day. How are they supposed to survive?

I believe, as does my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, that the time has come—I am addressing the Minister directly—to examine and review whether the MMO is fit for purpose and how its data processing is conducted. Has the Minister been to its offices and looked at its techniques and methods? Will he get a grip on that organisation, which has lost the trust of the fishing industry from top to bottom? If the information I have received from well-placed and expert sources is correct, something is gravely wrong with the system of examination, data processing and monitoring. I hear stories of data being processed weeks if not months late, and of inadequate or inefficient data processing. Those stories reach the fishermen I represent. If their livelihoods are to be in the hands of those people—a few months ago around 100 tonnes of ray were traded away and now fishermen have been told they cannot catch any more—the Government must be sure on their behalf that the MMO is doing its job properly.

Speaking directly to the Minister, for whom I have great fondness and regard, it is time for us to get a grip on the MMO and go in there, find out what it is doing, and insist on seeing exactly how it is processing the data. We must put experts in there to see whether the MMO will bear up to scrutiny as it should. If we do not do that, the continuing spiralling loss of confidence among the fishermen we represent will continue, and it will be fully justified.

Dairy Industry

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I want to make a few swift points in the time available to me. First, it seems to me that much of the problem that we are all addressing today could be helped by a general elevation of farming in the priorities of Government. I would like to see a Secretary of State for Agriculture sitting in the Cabinet. It is time to see that innovation, which would send a clear message to the farming community throughout our constituencies—like my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), I speak as a representative of a west of England constituency. The fields and pastures of Devonshire are synonymous with the finest dairy produce in the world. That community would like to see, if at all possible, a seat at the highest table being attributed to the ministerial representatives of farming and agriculture.

If we started to think about the dairy industry as a strategic industry that contributes to food security in this country, and an industry that should be spoken for at the highest table, in Cabinet, the message would be sent throughout the processing industry and the retail industry that the Government were at last attaching to the dairy industry, and the cattle and livestock industry as a whole, the priority that they deserved.

I agree with right hon. and hon. Members about the methods and techniques that need to be adopted. We cannot do much about global commodity prices, but we can do quite a lot about the domestic market. We can strengthen the voluntary code, which is important, and we should be considering making it a compulsory code, as the Select Committee is. It is clear from the review by the MSP, Mr Fergusson, that that code could do a lot of good. We need it to be extended, and the Government need to fight and encourage people to adhere to it.

I would be failing in my duty if I did not also mention the crisis of bovine TB, which prevails throughout Devonshire and elsewhere. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will say something about the need to ensure that the TB eradication strategy is implemented in full. When I was a child, I was told that the animal kingdom was divided into two sorts of animals: the vertebrates and the invertebrates. As it is with the animal kingdom, so it is with Departments of State. I hope that the Minister will prove himself to be a member of a vertebrate Ministry that will discover its backbone.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

With less than two minutes, I call Tessa Munt.