Leaving the EU: Agriculture

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this debate. Like him, I am a farmer’s son. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), I am not farming now, but I did try farming for 10 years. It is a real honour to be farming Minister at an exciting time: we have an opportunity, for the first time in half a century, to design fresh thinking and coherent policy in agriculture.

As the Minister for Agriculture, I have wrestled with the common agricultural policy, and the rules and bureaucracy, for four years. It is stifling. Although there have been changes to the CAP over the years, in its current incarnation it is a bureaucratic quagmire. It attempts to regulate every single field and every feature in them. Our administrators spend their time fretting about the width of a hedge: whether it is too narrow or too wide, whether the gateway is too big and whether there are too many trees on a parcel of land. It goes on forever.

Every Administration in the UK feels deep frustration at some of the bureaucracy in the CAP. We have an opportunity as we leave the EU to do things differently and to design coherent policy. We set out our intention in the Queen’s Speech last year to bring forward an agriculture Bill later this year. Before that, we will publish further plans about our initial thinking—some time later in the spring or in early summer.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and others talked about the importance of UK frameworks. We absolutely recognise that and I think that all other parts of the UK do, too. As he pointed out, when we consider the UK framework, we will be looking predominantly at two areas: first, what is required to protect the integrity of the UK single market. Clearly, we could not have one Administration subsidising sheep farmers in a way that would be to the huge detriment of farmers in other parts of the UK. There would have to be some boundaries. Secondly, everyone accepts the need for UK frameworks when we talk about what is necessary to secure international agreements, be they on trade or other matters: things like phytosanitary, food safety and traceability issues to protect our export market. We will have to have some kind of framework and common outcomes and objectives to deliver those things.

I reassure the hon. Gentleman and others that we are engaging regularly with Ministers in all the devolved Administrations. We have regular meetings with them and in some of those meetings, different devolved Administrations lead on particular aspects. They have been updating us on some of the work that they have been doing. At official level there has been a very in-depth analysis, both to deliver what is necessary for the current European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and for the detailed work on the principles and features that a future UK framework will need.

Picking up on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) made, our critique of the CAP is that it is a one-size-fits-all policy, and it does not work for that reason. I want to ensure that leaving the EU and the CAP is liberating for everyone in this country—for all the devolved Administrations and for farmers right across the UK. As he put it, it is not our intention at all to have a DEFRA-centric, top-down policy. Far from it: we want to protect maximum flexibility and ability for each individual devolved Administration to design policies that work for them.

I will give an example of the sort of thing that we have to put up with. About 18 months ago, the Welsh Government got into a legal dispute with the European Commission because the Commission did not like the size and shape of the ear tag that they used as the second tag on cattle. I would have no intention of trying to dictate to other devolved Administrations what the size, shape or colour of their ear tags should be. All I would want to know is that they had proper traceability in place.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister’s policy is all very well, but it is meaningful only if we have the money to go with it. Will the Minister address the position of the Treasury in relation to funding of it?

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

The right hon. Gentleman pre-empted me—I was about to get to that point. We were very clear in our manifesto that the budget in cash terms for agriculture policy will stay the same until 2022. My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) asked the question: I reassure him and other Members that that applies to all parts of the UK. There would be no question between now and 2022 of any devolved Administration departing from that and using those funds for some other purpose—that would be a breach of the manifesto commitment.

As a Government, we have been very clear that we will keep the cash total the same until 2022, but we have given a very clear undertaking that we will seek to phase out over time the single farm payment and to replace it with the new environmental land management scheme, which will be funded. It is not the case that funding will end in 2022; at this stage we have not set out exactly what the figure will be post-2022, but we are absolutely clear that there will be a gradual transition and a funded policy to support our environmental land management scheme after 2022.

I am going to touch very briefly on a few of the areas that we are looking at in England as future policy. For a new environmental land management scheme we want to move away from the current direct payments, which are on an area basis. I do not think there is much sense for that. We want to directly reward farmers for what they do by way of delivering public goods—whether enhanced animal welfare or environmental goods. We want to move to a system where we are rewarding farmers for the goods that they provide. We are also looking at innovation and competitiveness, including the possibility of grants to support investment on farms, to help farmers prepare for a new world in agriculture.

To pick up on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) raised, we are looking at whether we can help support and foster the development of futures markets and insurance products to help farmers manage risks. We are looking at issues such as fairness in the supply chain, too.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton raised the issue of New Zealand. New Zealand is different: people often forget to take account of the fact that when it removed subsidies, it also devalued its currency by 45% and priced itself back into world markets. In doing that, New Zealand had certain problems with the environment—even today, New Zealand dairy has environmental impacts that we would not want to tolerate in this country. There are differences and there are things that we would not want to follow in the case of New Zealand. There are also things that we can learn—for instance, its support for investments on farms through grants.

I assure the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that I regularly meet with NFU Scotland—I can see its members today in the Public Gallery, carefully watching the debate—and we are very keen to get its engagement; we are not allowing that to be something that just the Scottish Government do. As the UK Minister, I want a UK perspective. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Jack) mentioned animal welfare. I agree with him; we have prioritised it and we are looking at ways that we can incentivise and support high animal welfare systems of husbandry. As I said, it is a public good and we recognise it as such.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) gave some positive comments on what she has heard so far. I very much look forward to her supporting us in the Division Lobbies as we try to take the Bill forward on that basis. She mentioned the issue of labour; I was formerly a strawberry farmer and I understand the challenges that fruit farmers face. We have been working with the Home Office to discuss what work permit arrangements we might put in place for when we leave. The Migration Advisory Committee has just started a big piece of work to look at the labour market in the round. I agree with what the hon. Lady said about some of the work of the Food Foundation. Horticulture often has been overlooked, and we have an opportunity to address that. I attended the launch of the project that she highlighted.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton talked about some of the pressure on the uplands. We recognise that, but I had a very interesting conversation with the Uplands Alliance just last week; it pointed out that although they are financially more vulnerable, it believes that there are more things that they can deliver by way of public goods—whether peatland restoration, flood mitigation work or public access. There are many opportunities for it to do that.

Farmers are the recipients of subsidies, but they are not always the main beneficiaries. Subsidies distort all sorts of markets. We have an opportunity to do things very differently. It would be remiss of me not to mention trade with the US. It is difficult to assign the description of “anti-American bigotry” to the Secretary of State, who is quite an Atlanticist, but we recognise and value our high animal welfare standards and we are determined to protect them.