UK Sea Bass Stocks

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[George Hollingbery]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I will allude to the study that he is referencing a little later in my remarks. On the ecological damage done by pair trawling and indeed by other sorts of trawling, including otter trawling, there is no doubt that it is very destructive to the environment. Although it is effective and useful for commercial fishermen, all of us interested in sea angling should look to do something about it more generally than just with specific reference to sea bass. That is an important issue.

Finally in the sorry tale that I was outlining, the average recruitment—the number of sub-one-year-old fish being added to the fishery—between 2008 to 2012 was less than a quarter of the long-term average. We are fishing more, we are increasingly targeting sea bass, we are specifically fishing out breeding shoals and we are not allowing the young stock to reach spawning age. How much more is there to say other than that, in an ecosystem that is supposed to be carefully managed, such practices are, to use an American phrase, as dumb as dirt? I do not know how else to describe the situation. There could not be a worse way of managing a fishery that we apparently want to keep for the longer term.

Before looking more closely at the current policy proposals for managing the problem, it is worth spending a bit longer talking about the economics, to which my hon. Friend just referred. There is a crucial difference between the returns in the commercial and recreational sectors. If we are to reach a sustainable, long-term solution, it is critical that we understand that well. The best data we have on the catches of the commercial and recreational bass fishing sectors in the UK are in the “Sea Angling 2012” report published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. That study modelled the recreational share of the total as being somewhere between 20% and 33% of the retained catch landed in the UK, but it is clear about the lack of statistical certainty in the data on recreational catches and angling activity:

“Respondents were self-selecting and unlikely to be representative of all sea anglers. On average they were more avid and successful anglers than those interviewed in the other more statistically designed Sea Angling 2012 surveys, reporting higher catch rates, more days fished, and higher membership of clubs and national angling bodies.”

In short, there are good reasons to believe that the likely level of recreational landings is much lower than the report suggests, or is, at the very least, at the bottom end of the report’s estimate.

It is also clear that the economic activity generated by recreational angling dwarfs that of the commercial sector. “Sea Angling 2012” shows that there are 884,000 sea anglers in England. They directly pump £1.23 billion into the economy, and 10,500 full-time jobs depend on that spending. Indirect spend is equivalent to £2.1 billion and 23,600 jobs. Those figures are direct from the Department.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. On a day when we are celebrating our long-term economic plan, does he agree that we need to support individual anglers and the economic activity he describes? If we need evidence of the difference he proposes, we can look to our hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), whose actions in government have directly caused an increase in economic output off the north-east coast by reason of the salmon that is now seen in the Tyne.

[George Hollingbery]

I agree completely. It is always difficult to quantify exactly the economic benefit of fishing done for fun, but all the evidence points inescapably towards it being an extremely important stream of revenue, in particular for less economically advantaged areas, of which there are a great many in the south-west and the part of the world that my hon. Friend represents.

It is also worth noting that the VAT alone that is collected from sea anglers dwarfs the entire first sale value of all commercial fish landings in the UK. That demonstrates the scale of the economic benefit of recreational angling. That was further reaffirmed by a detailed study released last Friday, to which my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) referred, by the highly respected Marine Resources Assessment Group on behalf of the Blue Marine Foundation. The study took a detailed look at sea bass fishing in the Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority—a control area for fishing—and its conclusions are nothing short of startling. Its low-end estimate was that the economic and employment benefit per tonne of fish removed by recreational bass angling was more than 40 times that of commercial fishing—a pretty extraordinary statistic in anybody’s book. Despite the much smaller weight of fish removed by recreational anglers in the Sussex IFCA, the total benefit to the local economy of recreational angling was still, as my hon. Friend said, more than three times that of commercial fishing.

We know for a fact that recreational bass fishing is worth far more to the economy than commercial fishing, and is a great deal more sustainable. That is one of many reasons why the current EU proposals are puzzling to the point of bewilderment. As the Minister knows only too well, they propose limiting recreational anglers to only one fish per day, despite the fact that, as far as I understand it, the EU has no competence over people who go fishing for recreation, and, indeed, the pretty skimpy evidence that recreational anglers are the problem. For one spawning area, area IVc—I will happily share the map of the areas with colleagues who wish to see it—the EU makes an as yet incomplete proposal to limit the daily amount of fish taken during the spawning period by a certain number of vessels. We genuinely know no more than that. How that is supposed to make a meaningful difference to the current situation is, frankly, anybody’s guess. In my view, it is the political equivalent of trying to stop your house falling down by painting it a different colour.

We all know what needs to be done. The French know it, the Dutch know it, we know it—everybody knows it, so for goodness’ sake, let us get on and actually do it, finally, for once. We have to drastically reduce the amount of fish taken. We have to allow fish to reach sexual maturity. We have to stop most, if not all, fishing in the spawning season. We have to do a better job of protecting and enhancing nursery areas. Finally, we have to grasp the undeniable reality that converting the fishery to one dominated by recreational fishing is the only long-term solution that will protect our economic interests and give the fish a future. Any solution that markets itself as long-term but does not deal with all those issues will fail; of that there can be little or no doubt.

Dairy Industry

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I might press on now and not take quite so many interventions, because I will cover many of the points that are being made. I fully accept, however, that people will wish to write their press releases soon, so I will try to be as generous as I can.

The industry recognises that overproduction is a problem and affects price. That is a given. The industry also recognises reduced demand as a result of changing buying habits in China and of Russian sanctions. As a consequence, we are in for what one newspaper described as a long period of low prices, without any indication of what those low prices might bottom out at or of how long is “long”. Analysts are already pointing to considerable uncertainty.

There are those, although not—I am glad to say—many of them, who think that all of that can be dealt with through efficiencies in farmers’ production methods. As we have touched on, however, the short notice that people get about their milk prices cannot necessarily be offset by instant cost reduction measures or alterations to milk production methods. Some such alterations might take one, two, three or even more years to take effect, while the price reduction has an instant effect, so that is a simplistic way of addressing the problem.

An additional problem, which I suspect many Members who represent more isolated parts of the UK feel, is that there are limits to the diversification programmes that farmers can enter into. It is not always possible for people to open a suite of holiday units or a farm shop, because they might be two or three miles off the beaten track, have significant planning problems to overcome or be on a tenanted holding, the landlord of which may have a different view of the sort of developments that can be undertaken.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I represent the county with the smallest population, where the point that he is making is particularly apposite. Does he agree that it is utterly important for the Government to provide better guidance on how our co-operatives and producers can come together to get a better contractual relationship with the people who are buying their milk?

[Simon Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for a contribution that I will add to my list of questions for the Minister. He has put his finger right on a problem that particularly affects the more isolated parts of rural Britain.

That all leads conveniently to the issue of supermarkets. The milk price public battleground always centres on the role of retailers, in particular the better known ones. Some 50% of British milk is not traded globally. We talk about global influences, but we must not forget that the other 50% of our milk is not traded globally and that its price is a straightforward consequence of the relationship between UK-based retailers and the processors. The retailers cannot escape criticism by blaming it on the Chinese or the Russians. A lot of the price is about straightforward UK contractual arrangements between two important parts of the chain.

What can the Government and the processors do? There are some long-term proposals and ideas. They are nothing new, and no one in the Chamber will be unaware of them. We must—this is an easy expression to use—continue to strive for and identify new markets. Of course—that is stating the bleeding obvious, some people might say. It cannot be done in a hurry, and it cannot necessarily be done by Government alone; it has to be done by a combination of processors and Government. Identifying and exploiting new markets is of course critical, but it will not solve the problem facing my constituents in the next few weeks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) raced late into the Chamber like a perspiring postman. It is good of him to drop in on us and now that he has had a chance to recover his breath, let us hear from him.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

T7. After that introduction, Mr Speaker, I hope I do not disappoint, but thank you for calling me, in any event. What steps are being taken to increase the planting of commercial forestry in this country so that we do not face again the problems of yesteryear, and businesses have the timber supply they need?

[Elizabeth Truss]

There is a huge opportunity to expand the market for high-quality British timber, and I am pleased to say that since Grown in Britain started last year, we have seen an 8% increase in the amount of domestic timber and British wood products that we are selling. I congratulate my hon. Friend, who has the very large Kielder forest in his constituency, and I look forward to its future success.

Food Fraud

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Roger Williams]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to introduce a political point which is far outside the scope of the debate.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Let me return it from the political point-scoring of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) to the fact that we all support the fundamentals of the report. More specifically, and more importantly, does the report not ram home the point that our constituents should be buying from their local butchers whenever possible, because they offer the greatest possibility of traceability in the food chain?

[Roger Williams]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am tempted to give a long list of local butchers in my constituency, but I will confine the list to butchers in my village. Brian George operates a very fine butcher’s shop, and slaughters the animals in the back. I am told by the Welsh Assembly Government that the hygiene standards there are excellent. I also know that it is possible to walk around other butchers’ shops in my constituency, and to be told “This piece of beef came from a bullock belonging to Mr Price of Llanafan”, or “Mr Jones of Drostre”. After the horsemeat scandal, there was a tendency to use local butchers, but, unfortunately, people now seem to be going back to supermarkets and more processed food.

My father always used to say that he would never eat any meat other than in slices, because then he could see where it came from. Once people started mincing it up, he said, there was doubt. That takes me back 30 or 40 years, but it strike me as good advice which some of our retailers could have taken during the horsemeat scandal.

Professor Elliott rightly observed that the main priority should be a “consumers first” approach. That returns me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) about the interface between the retailer and the consumer. Given that interface, the retailer should take the responsibility.

Sale of Puppies and Kittens

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Flello]

Information is important, but someone may have the best information in the world and yet happen to be buying a container of goldfish food from the local pet shop with their family and see a cute puppy or a cute kitten—that is when a problem arises and there is an impulse purchase. However, my hon. Friend makes a good point. I will now take the intervention by the hon. Member for Hexham, but I am not going to take further interventions for a short while after that so that I can make some progress.

[Guy Opperman]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I congratulate him on securing this debate and support the motion, on behalf of the many constituents who have contacted me. May I make a simple point? The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has gone through the process of traceability for cattle, sheep and other animals, so surely the way forward must ultimately be a register of and traceability for cats and dogs.

[Robert Flello]

I would certainly like to see more work done on the compulsory microchipping that is going to come in; I would like us to have a proper database rather than just something that floats out into the ether, never gets updated and will just continue to grow and not be used properly. I am hoping that the Minister is listening carefully and will take the message back to DEFRA that the chip is a good thing but the database behind it is the important one.

Let me return to the issue of high street pet shops. The only place most of them can source their puppies and kittens from has to be breeders that put minimal effort into breeding and rearing; there is a “pile ’em high” mentality. In addition to domestic operations, there is a rapidly growing trend of selling puppies brought into the UK from overseas breeders. We hear of breeders in the Irish Republic with 1,000 breeding bitches, which dwarfs the figure for even some of the Welsh breeders—I am sad to say that as I am sitting alongside my Welsh colleagues—who have more than 300. Although regulations are in place to address the import of cats and dogs, I know from my own experience this summer how very easily the pets passport system can be evaded.

I also know from meeting Eurotunnel and ferry companies that they are concerned about the situation and are unhappy that they are, in effect, policing something they do not have the training for and that this is not properly resourced. It simply does not work. Ultimately, the retail end of this chain drives it, with up to 100 high street pet shops in England licensed to sell puppies or kittens on their premises. That is responsible for the pain and misery of thousands of animals. Although the number of pet shops selling puppies and kittens in the UK is relatively small, there are no signs of a downward trend. My intention, with this motion, is not to vilify pet shops per se, but in almost every case where they sell puppies and kittens they simply cannot meet the specific needs required in this developmental golden period for puppies, in which puppies learn their future emotional template, in order to exhibit normal behaviour patterns and safely adjust to family life. In addition, there are all the health implications to consider.

Clear patterns have been established between early experiences and the development of aggression in dogs. A US study, for example, found that puppies obtained from pet shops were three times more likely to display aggression directed at their owner, and almost twice as likely to show aggression to other dogs they did not know, compared with dogs obtained from a small responsible breeder. By tackling the sale of puppies and kittens in pet shops we can remove the most impulsive means of purchasing, giving prospective owners the chance to research ownership and everything that goes with it. We can protect these prospective owners from the health and behavioural problems associated with pet shop puppies and kittens. We can also take a big step towards curbing irresponsible breeding practices and over-production of puppies and kittens.

Elliott Review and Food Crime

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea, and it is also a great pleasure to see the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), whom I have not been in a debate with since his elevation to Minister with responsibility for food.

It was a great shock to the British people in 2013 to find that our food system could be so badly infiltrated by crime. It started to corrupt our food system, and horsemeat was introduced into our meat products. That was shocking, because food is not just any consumer product; the public need to trust food. We need to ensure the highest standards to secure long-term stability in the food sector as a whole. The scandal changed food habits. Immediately afterwards, £300 million was knocked off Tesco’s share price. Long supply chains are now seen as serious liabilities. I hope that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs sees the need for a much more systematic assessment and analysis of the food sector—not just the production side, but all its segments. We could have anticipated some of the problems that we faced in the horsemeat scandal, because certain conditions were present.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I also congratulate the team behind the Elliott review, which made helpful and important recommendations. On Tesco’s share price going down, she will be aware that local markets and butchers enjoyed a renaissance, as people—certainly in my area of Northumberland—realised that the safest, most secure and best place to buy meat was the local butcher, not the supermarket.

[Laura Sandys]

Absolutely. In many ways, the scandal rejuvenated the way we used to buy food in the high street from local suppliers. To be frank, while one trusts one’s local butcher, this systemic problem will face everyone in the food retailing sector if we do not start to recognise that certain characteristics are creating certain underlying problems. Food crime has risen across Europe, and we have to ensure that we protect smaller retailers from infiltration by food crime, which can come through any weak link in the system.

I come back to anticipating and predicting problems in the food system. Since 2008, there has been a 30% increase in the cost of base commodities. Over that period, one would expect some early warning signs. We may not have expected crime, but we had to expect that something would give, because food prices in shops did not rise to the same extent as commodity prices. Given that 30% increase in commodity prices, anyone looking at the marketing of food would say that profits would have to fall, prices would have to increase, or the products would have to adapt. How is a supermarket frozen cottage pie that was £1 five years ago still £1 today, after a 30% increase in base commodity prices? What is in it is probably not illegal, but it is certainly not very desirable, and there is no flash across the packaging saying that there is 30% less meat in it. That disconnect between price rises and supermarket retail prices should have created some sort of early warning signal within Government.

[Guy Opperman]

To take the cottage pie example, should not the message from this debate, aside from all the points about the Elliott review and security, be that we should encourage cooking in our schools, and encourage people to buy the meat from the butcher and the potato from a grocer, so that they can create a wonderful cottage pie themselves, rather than buying it in Tesco or other supermarkets? That must be the message.

[Laura Sandys]

Yes. It is an incredibly important message, and I am happy to accept any invitation to have a cottage pie cooked by my hon. Friend.

Fly-Grazing of Horses

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and it is important not to generalise. Many people have owned horses for generations, and they do so responsibly.

I suggest to the Minister that our priority in the immediate term must be to disrupt irresponsible and cruel practice where it appears. Part of that may be about further propagating and encouraging partnership working, based on the best practice that exists in some parts of the country. The National Farmers Union points to south Wales and Durham as examples of places where there is good co-operative working between the police and local authorities.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). Does my hon. Friend agree that the ultimate solution would be to amend the Animals Act 1971, strengthening this area of the law and empowering local authorities and the Government to address this issue? However, we must be careful not to transfer the burden immediately on to farmers.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will come to the legislative points in a moment.

I wonder whether further guidance on best practice would be useful for local authorities and police constabularies. There might also be innovative and different ways of utilising publicly owned land to keep seized horses.

Water Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. We used to have heavy industries in our cities that used large amounts of water, as I know well, having worked on Merseyside for 25 years. Merseyrail has had problems with water because so many of the extractive industries have gone. There is no problem with the volume of water; it is about getting it to the right place at the right time and by the right means. That is what I hope the Bill will facilitate.

Our reforms will increase water supplies by making it more attractive for landowners to develop new sources of water, or for innovative businesses to treat and dispose of waste water. Let me take a hypothetical example. If a brewery with its own borehole has spare capacity, it might be able to supply its pubs in the area more cheaply than they could be supplied by the local water company. The brewery could put its spare water into the water company’s supply system or work with a retailer providing broader services to those businesses.

We also want to make it easier for our farmers and land managers to develop new sources of water, such as on-farm reservoirs, and to hold water back. For example, a farmer with an on-site reservoir that more than meets the farm’s water needs could make an arrangement with either a licensee or the incumbent water company to enable it to put water into the supply system. The water could be supplied regularly or only at times of high demand. Either way, the farmer would have a new product that he could sell.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I applaud the Secretary of State’s notification that Northumbrian Water is doing great work at Howdon. On the creation of future reservoirs, how will we provide financial incentives for the farmers and other providers of such future reservoirs, whether big or small, to go ahead and do the necessary infrastructure planning for such operations?

[Mr Paterson]

It is known as the market; where there is demand, people will invest. We are hoping to create a new market for this product, and I am absolutely confident, given the freedoms we are releasing in this Bill, that there will be significant investment. We should not forget that £116 billion is an extraordinarily large amount of money that we would never usually have got from the Treasury under any Government of any colour. This is a great success. We want that investment to keep flowing in for exactly the sort of projects that my hon. Friend discusses.

For the first time, we are opening a market for businesses to recycle and reuse waste water as a new water resource. They will also be able to purchase sewage sludge that might otherwise have been sent to landfill—for example, for use in anaerobic digestion plants.

We need to increase the number of options that water companies can use to store and supply water to their customers. The solutions will vary across the country, reflecting different levels of water demand and availability, geography, and geology. For some, storing more water in new reservoirs or in recharged aquifers will help. Others, particularly in water-stressed areas, may need more action to cut demand, including through greater water metering. For others, improving interconnection to move water around between their supply systems will help. Companies such as Severn Trent, Anglian and Yorkshire Water collaborated on practical solutions during last year’s drought. This Bill will make such supply arrangements much easier to put in place. It will enable water resources to be used more flexibly and efficiently, reducing the need for expensive new solutions that customers would have to pay for.

The Bill provides flexibility for the regulator to work with the industry on shaping and introducing these new markets. It also includes checks and balances so that the Government can ensure consistency with our policy framework. We will be issuing guidance to Ofwat on how it must set the rules of the game. We have already published charging principles so that people can see how Government policy will shape the new regime. Since the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill, we have strengthened the role of Government, with a power to veto Ofwat’s charging rules, and the new market codes. I am extremely grateful to Members of this House, especially those on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, who scrutinised the draft Bill. The Bill is stronger as a result of that scrutiny.

Governments do not create successful markets. Well-functioning markets are created by participating businesses and are allowed to evolve over time. That is why the detailed work to develop these new markets is being delivered by the experts. Through the Open Water programme, we are working with the water industry, Ofwat, the Scottish Government, regulators and customers on the detailed work required to prepare for implementation of these new markets. We are committed to reforming the abstraction regime so that it is fit to face the challenges of the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. If I felt a degree of paternalism towards the water White Paper, I feel one even more towards the Canal & River Trust, which is one of the great successes. It has seen volunteer numbers rocket since it went from being a government organisation—as British Waterways —to being in the charitable sector, and Members on both sides of the House should take pleasure in its success. Will the Minister respond, if not tonight, at some point, to the real concerns that the CWT has about clause 12? I hope that we can allay its fears because, as the Secretary of State rightly said, the CWT will be an important player in delivering the kind of connectivity we want in our water sector. The CWT will also be a huge resource, in terms of the economic regeneration of our cities, the potential for tourism and the social dimension of volunteer numbers. So I hope that the Minister is able to address the CWT’s concerns, which have been eloquently voiced to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

A debate is rightly taking place about the affordability of water. That was of primary importance in the Government’s mind as we developed the vision in the water White Paper and in the Bill, and I know that it is a great concern of the Minister as he steers the Bill through. Those who believe in price caps can relax about water, because we have a price cap for water—the five-yearly price review. Ofwat provides a price cap for customers, albeit one that is done by negotiation. It has been an effective way of keeping water relatively affordable, although I know that some of my colleagues from the south-west have views on that—we have partly addressed those. Obviously, there are ongoing concerns about water prices, so it is also important to recognise what the Walker review said. It found that the rateable value of a property bears no relation to a customer’s ability to pay and it discovered that 40% of low-income households live in the top rateable value properties.

The concerns and fears that people have about increased metering do not necessarily correlate with the idea that we should leave as many households as we can paying for water through a rateable system. In the next price review period, possibly with the aid of some legislative stimulus, we could see a much higher rate of metering. Knowledge is power for households. We will not be having this debate in 20 years’ time, because we will all be managing our utilities on our laptops at work. We will be able to see that a rocketing in our water usage could be down to a leak in the system. We will be able to manage our household bills more effectively. The high level of metering in the south-west and the work that Southern Water and Thames Water are doing to increase the level of metering should be applauded and supported.

The WaterSure scheme and other social tariffs are important tools, but we should consider the whole question of affordability in a much more holistic way. The effect of a freeze in council tax, of getting more families on low incomes out of paying tax altogether and of other measures will have infinitely more impact on the total expenditure of those households than will tinkering around the schemes with some of these points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, made an important point about bad debt, but I refer her to her own local water company, Yorkshire Water, which is an exemplar in dealing with bad debt. The money we all pay on our bills for bad debt varies around the country. Some are paying £14 or £15 and some are paying a lot more, because our water companies might be bad at dealing with bad debt. I was impressed to hear that, at Yorkshire, a resolve scheme negotiates repayment terms for customers with arrears of more than £500. A couple years ago, some 5,000 customers paid back £650,000 of bad debt, and the water company wrote off £1 million of bad debt. It is that kind of partnership approach that is delivering a much lower figure of bad debt, which should be seen in the context of affordability. Ofwat estimates that the next year’s price review could reduce bills by between £120 million and £750 million, which seems an awfully wide difference.

Of course we all want to keep water bills low and as many people as possible out of water poverty, but we concentrate on that at the risk of reducing investment. I have spoken about that matter recently in the House and I will continue to do so. A high level of investment is better for customers. It is about stimulating innovation and resilience and reducing the impact on the quality of people’s lives and ultimately on the bills they pay.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North mentioned my comments about the drought. In the spring of 2012, the Environment Agency said to me that there was a 3% chance of us having enough rain through that summer to refill the reservoirs and depleted aquifers. We were fortunate because it started to rain in May. It rained right through the jubilee and stopped just as the first athletes started arriving in the Olympic village. We all thought, “Thank goodness”, although we did have a number of flooding incidents in certain areas. That rainfall might have caused us a problem that summer, but we were planning very seriously for a third dry winter. I put to the House this question: are we really content to see people in the most economically active part of the UK, which is sixth largest economy in the world, reduced to collecting their water from standpipes in the street? That is the sort of image that brings down Governments and causes wholesale, serious and endemic problems in society, and we must use this Bill to avoid that.

[Guy Opperman]

I represent Northumberland—probably the wettest county in England—and we should probably have held the Olympics, as there would then have been no such fears. The Secretary of State referred to water supply earlier, when he called on business men, farmers and other people to get involved and create smaller reservoirs. As my hon. Friend drafted the White Paper on water and knows so much about the subject, can he say what assistance will come from DEFRA and the Bill to incentivise and assist such people to create those reservoirs?

[Richard Benyon]

There is provision in the Bill to establish an inset regime and allow new entrants to design innovative infrastructure, which can link into the water system. Moreover, under the capital allowance system, farmers can invest in new reservoirs and have the right to give the surplus of that water to their water companies. In dire circumstances, the Environment Agency can purchase that water to keep rivers flowing. Real opportunity exists for people. I am not saying that that will resolve our water resilience issues; many farmers will need to build many reservoirs for that to happen. None the less, there is a genuine opportunity.

I have one plea. Yes, we can get involved in lengthy debates about whether we should have a primary or a secondary sustainability duty, or whether the robust new resilience duty—I urge hon. Members to read about that—will provide an added incentive; but if the rivers do not flow, our reservoirs are empty and our economy suffers, we should be absolutely determined to concentrate on the outcomes. I appeal to Members in this Chamber and in the other place not to get stuck on the tokenism of any duty, but to consider the outcome that it can deliver. I am relatively agnostic about whether Ofwat should have a primary or secondary duty to deliver sustainability. I am much more concerned about the outcomes, and I have yet to be convinced that just changing the wording will make a huge amount of difference. A really important gain in all this is the resilience duty on Ofwat.

Beef Cattle and Sheep (Carbon Footprint)

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

Indeed. When we import meat from South America, Australia or New Zealand, we should take into account the length of time that it takes to get here, especially if it comes by air. Of course, if it comes by sea, it is argued that the carbon footprint is not as large, but it is there none the less. That is why local home-produced food that travels very little distance to the abattoir and that is grazed nicely on good permanent pasture must be of great benefit to all the United Kingdom.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I applaud both the fact that we are having this debate and the work that my hon. Friend and his committee have done. Does he agree that, while this is a legitimate debate for us to have, our fundamental job in the House is to stand up and support our beef and sheep farmers?

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The purpose of this inquiry and report is to look at the benefits of producing grass-fed beef and lamb, to keep sustainable grass pasture and to produce very good meat. We would not necessarily want or be able to plough such land, and a huge amount of carbon is captured within the soil. We took some evidence that showed that over years of permanent pasture the carbon actually increases, so there are many good reasons for producing this high-quality beef and lamb.

I will, if I may, continue with my contribution. The footprint of sheep, according to the PAS 2050, is 11.86 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogramme of live weight. The comparative figures for Wales were 7.51 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogramme of live weight and 8.6 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogramme of live weight.

As that has demonstrated, even within a country, there is significant variation in the statistics and no way to determine whether they were driven by different efficiencies or by different ways of producing data. That makes any form of comparative assessment of carbon footprint challenging and poses major difficulties for policy formulation. There is no international consensus on sequestration—the process by which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by pasture land through a process of absorption and deposition in the soil, which acts as a carbon sink. In essence, that is a natural form of carbon capture and storage.

The importance of including carbon sequestration is highlighted by Mr Bill Grayson, a producer who gave evidence to the inquiry. He ran four models on his farm’s emissions. The PAS 2050 model, which does not include sequestration, concluded that his farm was a net emitter. The other three methods, which include sequestration, put his farm as a net absorber of carbon. Evidently such significant differences make sensible policy development almost impossible.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords]

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell), whose remarks I echo. This has been a great cross-party debate and Members want to make sure that the Bill is good and right. I also welcome the fact that Ministers from the Departments for Business, Innovation and Skills and for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are at one on this. Even the Select Committees are united. There is parliamentary unity on the Bill, so this must be one of the greatest moments of all time.

I say to the Ministers that the Bill will need to have real teeth, for the simple reason that one of this country’s retail traders has more than 30% of the trade, a larger turnover than many small countries, and huge powers. It is a great idea to name and shame retailers, but we need to have the powers to fine them and to keep fining them. If they do not adhere in the first instance, there must be real pain, by which I do not mean tuppence ha’penny from the billions of pounds of turnover; the fine has to mean business. We have to turn this situation around.

I am not here to slam the supermarkets—they do a great deal of good—but we have to make sure that enough money cascades from what the consumer pays for his or her product at the supermarket back down to both the producer and the grower.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I endorse what my hon. Friend is saying and I know that the growers and producers in Northumberland will support this Bill wholeheartedly. What robust measures does he think would genuinely hold the supermarkets to account?

[Neil Parish]

I would like to see fines incorporated into the Bill—I am sure that the Government will listen when it is debated in Committee—so that there is real pain. I believe that the threat of fines, as well as that of naming and shaming, will help make sure that not too many of the large retailers will have to go before the adjudicator. If they have nothing to hide and if their retail trade practices are right, they will have nothing whatsoever to fear, either from the Bill or from potential fines.

It is not only the producer who is at risk in these trades. Many of the direct contracts that the supermarkets have with farmers in the dairy and meat trades are excellent. However, supermarkets may decide to have a price war and to reduce their prices, perhaps by using these products as loss leaders. That is wonderful for consumers, provided that it is the supermarkets who pay for those loss leaders, and that they do not go back down the chain and squeeze not only the producer, but the processor.

[Guy Opperman]

I know that my hon. Friend is a champion of the dairy industry. The Minister who will respond to this debate is the Minister who responded to the dairy debate in Westminster Hall. Does my hon. Friend agree that the dairy industry is the biggest example that we can cite of a price compromise affecting the farmer and the producer such that they effectively go out of business?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Much work was done by the previous farming and food Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), to get voluntary dairy codes in place. The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) is carrying on that good work. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) said that we need to be sure that the groceries code adjudicator will be able to look at the voluntary codes and contracts. I repeat that it is essential that a share of the money that the consumer pays for his or her product goes to the processor and the producer.

We are moving into a world of some 7 billion people. That world does not have oceans of cheap food. In many ways, that is a good thing, but it is also difficult for consumers across the world. There are people in this country who are struggling to buy food and it is essential that they get a good deal. However, in order to get a good deal, we must ensure that the producer, be it of milk, beef, lamb, carrots, potatoes or other vegetables, gets a return. If they get a return on their investment, they will produce more food and do so efficiently. That is the way to ensure that we can deliver products at a good price on the supermarket shelf.

Some of the ways in which large buyers and retailers have abused their position over the years have made food prices higher rather than lower. In the short term, when the supermarkets have a price war that drives prices down, it seems like the consumer is getting a good deal, but it drives many people out of business, meaning that there is less production than there was before.

Until now it has been possible to go around the world and bring in the extra product that is needed. However, to take the meat sector, where is the beef that is out there in the world? Forty years ago, the Chinese were eating 500,000 tonnes of beef a year. Now, they are eating 5 million tonnes of beef a year. The UK produces about 1 million tonnes of beef, so one can see that instead of eating half as much beef as we produce, China is now eating five times that amount. All the beef that used to be sloshing around in Brazil and Argentina, which could once be bought cheaply and used, dare I say it, to drive down the price of beef in this country, is no longer there. That is why it is important not only to get things right for the consumer and the trade, but to ensure that we will have reasonably priced food in the future.

In the summer, 3,000 dairy farmers protested outside Westminster, and we had a huge meeting. It was absolutely right for the farmers to protest. They had some of the worst weather that I have seen in my lifetime, and the cost of producing milk went up while the price went down. However, is it right that those farmers with family farms have to march up the hill every time and show how desperate they are to make a fair living? Is it right that we have to use social media to name and shame supermarkets? Again, the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire made that point. It is not right. There is something wrong with the process of trade in this country, and that is why the groceries code adjudicator is so important.

We set much store by the Bill. Other hon. Members referred to the common agricultural policy and the single farm payments. All Members want farmers to get more money and more of their income. Farmers would much rather have more of their income from the market—from what they produce—than from what they receive in the single farm payment. They would thus not be so vulnerable to the politics of not only Britain, but the European Union.

The rising population, the need to produce more food from the same amount of land throughout the world, global warming, and the fact that northern Europe and Britain will need to produce much more food, mean that we should be able to get a good price for that food. However, if we have not got the market right, the price of food will not go back to the producer, and we will not produce the amount of food that we need.

There is a need for food security, and a moral issue about producing food. Some people in the world cannot afford to eat and it is therefore important that we produce more food—sustainably, and in an environmentally and animal-welfare friendly way. That is what our consumers want: to be sure that, when they go to a supermarket or a small retailer, they get they get a fair deal, and that that also applies to the producer and the grower, not only in this country, but in developing countries. Our supermarkets often do not give producers throughout the world a fair deal. Let us hope that the groceries code adjudicator can do that.

We have rightly talked a lot about the retailer and the producer today, but we must remember that nearly 500,000 people in this country are involved in food processing, and 80% of the food that they process is grown and produced in this country. The Bill is therefore good not only for the producer but for the processor and I believe that, in the end, it will be good for our supermarkets.

Much as one would perhaps enjoy a major war with the supermarkets and the big retailers, it is ultimately not a war that we want because where do 70%, 80% or even 90% of the population buy their food? They buy it in supermarkets—they want to shop there. We must be sure that, when they shop, the groceries code adjudicator will have enough teeth to ensure that the consumer, the producer and the processor—everyone in the food chain—get a fair deal.