Sustainable Livestock Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Friends of the Earth and its many activists across the UK and, indeed, the world for the support and commitment that they have shown on this crucial issue. I am indebted to Martyn Williams and his team for the hours of work put in to bring the Bill forward. I should also like to thank Dairy UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust, the Soil Association, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, the National Farmers Union, Compassion in World Farming and many other groups for talking to me about their views on this matter.

A number of people have asked why a Member of Parliament who clearly enjoys his food, and who represents an urban constituency and one of the more deprived areas of the country, should be bothered about how animals are reared for food production. As I intend to explain, it is precisely for those reasons and more that the Bill must make progress through the House.

Let me illustrate my point. Many people watching this debate will see adverts depicting animals being reared on pasture. It is not without good reason that the marketing staff of a certain burger chain show images of green fields and cattle grazing. They want consumers to believe that their burgers are healthy and natural. Equally, a dairy company ad shows a child bringing a glass of milk from the cow in the field to the dairy door to make into yoghurt. Why do they show such images? Because it is a natural instinct to equate ruminants with pasture grazing, yet the truth is something that the ad men wish to shield us from.

The reality is that, with some exceptions, our livestock are no longer grazed on natural pasture out in the fields, where traditional hardy breeds can live all year round. Our livestock are now routinely kept indoors for anything up to the whole year, and are fed on cereals, especially imported soya. Hardy breeds are being phased out in favour of high-yielding, carefully selected animals. The more I have dug into the subject, the more troubling I have found it. There have been books and papers galore written about the issues. There are seminars and discussions taking place on the subject across the globe even as I speak. At the risk of making what is perhaps quite a suitable pun, it really was a case of opening up a can of worms.

The United Nations report, “Livestock’s long shadow”, notes that livestock farming is among the two or three most significant contributors to global climate change on every scale from local to global. It has calculated that from 18% to as much as 51% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gases come from livestock production. Some organisations will say that that is a myth, or else that the answer to the adverse effects is even greater industrialisation of livestock production. Indeed, some will say that it is all a vegetarian conspiracy or similar, designed to stop us eating meat or to put British farmers out of business. Rubbish.

Some of the drivers behind climate change are hidden. For example, the production of soya in south America requires high-nitrate fertilisers and weedkillers, and there are greenhouse gas emissions from both the production of those fertilisers and chemical sprays and their transportation to farms. There is also the high energy use involved in harvesting the soya and transporting it halfway round the world to Europe for use in animal feeds. As I shall go on to say, the land clearance to grow the soya also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and causes further climate change.

It is not just greenhouse gases that are an issue; there is the direct impact on people, too. The number of farms in the UK has declined, and with them, the number of farmers and their workers. Thankfully, the vast majority of farms are still smaller, family-run businesses in rural areas, but for how long? The advent of dairy super-sheds, such as the one proposed in Nocton in Lincolnshire, with its 8,000 head of cattle, can only hasten the demise of both the smaller British farmer and the rural economy that he or she supports. Our British farmers who get caught up in the vicious cycle of intensification are then at the mercy of soya prices, with their direct link to world oil prices.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the entire UK agricultural industry is responsible for just 7% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and that our industry’s emissions have already fallen by 21% since 1990?

[Robert Flello]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but the figures depend on how one measures emissions and where one puts the marker down, as organisations such as Dairy UK are more than prepared to accept.

It is not only in the UK that people are adversely affected by the issue. I met an activist from Paraguay who told me about the subsistence farmers in his country. They are forced off their land, either by the big-money soya farmers who are taking over vast tracts of their countryside, or through the indiscriminate use of glyphosate weedkillers, which are sprayed without consideration on to the genetically modified soya crops, poisoning the land and the water supply and, horrifically, in too many cases, killing and injuring local citizens. There are problems not just in Paraguay; in the cerrado area of Brazil, there were over 900 species of birds and 10,000 different species of plant. The cerrado or savannah has now been reduced to half its original size because of land clearance to grow soya and biofuels. The same applies to rainforests and other parts of the world.

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[Robert Flello]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and again, those are the issues that we really need to tease out in Committee.

The purpose of my Bill is not, contrary to what some have suggested, to add to the bureaucratic burden on farmers; that is nonsense. No one will find anything in the Bill that does that. Quite the opposite; the Bill says that the Secretary of State will have an obligation to ensure that British farmers are kept in their jobs.

[Ian Paisley]

Clause 1(2)(e) refers to

“changing the subsidies available to…support…farmers to promote sustainable livestock practices”.

Any change to the subsidy will have an impact on the application process that a farmer has to go through. That will put a practical burden on the farmer. Indeed, trying to adjust subsidies in the European Community is against World Trade Organisation and common agricultural policy practices and policies. I accept that the hon. Gentleman’s motivation is very positive, but the practical impact will be to impose red tape and a burden on farmers.

[Robert Flello]

I am grateful again to the hon. Gentleman. He will find that the CAP subsidy system is up for review in the next couple of years and there may well be changes anyway. That is even more of a reason to ensure that the future subsidy system operates in a way that is both efficient and effective for the farmer, but also promotes sustainability.

My Bill simply requires the Secretary of State to think about how every policy he works on can improve sustainability. It has been said by some that legislation is not needed—indeed, I am expecting speeches on that point very shortly—and that the Government could simply implement policies that tackle the problem. I wish that were the case. To my regret, the previous Government, despite documents such as “Food 2030”, which acknowledged the impact of soya on climate change, did not take action on that. I am sad to say that the coalition Government thus far have issued the natural environment White Paper, but the Department’s own business plan for 2011 to 2015 has no mention of the impact of soya. Clearly, legislation is definitely needed. My Bill is a “direction of travel” Bill that gives the Secretary of State wide leeway, but nevertheless requires her to take sustainable livestock seriously, and to take action.

I know that there will be some in this Chamber who, for whatever reason, will be unhappy about the Bill, so for them let me quote some words from a 2008 speech:

“Calorie for calorie, you need more grain if you eat it transformed into meat than you do if you eat it turned into bread…As a result, farmers now feed 250 million more tonnes of grain to their animals than they did twenty years ago. That’s enough wheat to feed the population of Brazil—for twenty-five years.”

Those are not my words; they are the words of the Prime Minister when he was in opposition in 2008. He identified the scale of the problem, but sadly not a single policy has found its way into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to do anything about it as yet—I hope it does. That is why we need the Bill, and why I hope that hon. Members across the Chamber will allow the Bill to pass today unopposed into Committee, where we can sort out the detail, have the discussions, get people around the table, which is exactly what the Bill proposes. I hope hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber will engage in robust debate, but then move on to the subsequent business of the day.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point, to which I shall refer later. One of the major problems with the Bill before us is that it is not clear on specifics. There is a danger that all we are doing, ultimately, is leaving the matter to be decided by the courts.

The effect of the Bill will be that the Secretary of State has no alternative but to increase the rules and regulations for the nation’s farmers. It will serve only to damage the prospects of our farming communities.

[Ian Paisley]

Clause 1(4) highlights one of the problems which the Bill, if enacted, could create—that is, the importation of meats and foods from other countries, in particular Brazil. It identifies the problem by stating that further action would need to be taken by the Government to ensure that it did not

“lead to an increase in the proportion of meat consumed in the United Kingdom which is imported.”

The very fact that the Bill identifies that problem suggests to me that it will create that problem.

[Mr Nuttall]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, which I will deal with. The clause is, in many ways, a fig leaf. It tries to give the impression that everything will be all right because the Secretary of State must take into account the amount of meat consumed in this country and should not do anything that would increase, the proportion of imported meat consumed in the United Kingdom.

Two dangers arise from that. First, the provision slightly contradicts the rest of the Bill and would put the Secretary of State in a difficult position. Secondly, clause 1(4), which I shall come to later, makes no reference to dairy products, which are excluded. It is purely about meat eating. There is no reference to milk, cheese, butter or other dairy products.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. It is worth noting that the Labour party had 13 years in government to legislate in the manner that the Bill suggests. It chose not to do so. As my hon. Friend says, there were a number of initiatives to try to meet the Bill’s objectives.

It seems reasonable to assume that the only way in which the Secretary of State can ever hope to comply with all her duties would be to impose new rules on food manufacturers and packagers. In fact, clause 1(4) places on the Secretary of State

“a duty to ensure that the steps taken in accordance with this Act do not lead to an increase in the proportion of meat consumed in the United Kingdom which is imported.”

I see why such a provision is considered necessary; subsection (4) gives the game away. It is clear from it that those promoting the Bill fully realise that its effect will be to increase the burden of regulation and red tape on Britain’s farmers. In turn, the cost of British meat will increase and inevitably lead to an increase in imports. In what I submit would be a futile attempt to stop that happening, the Bill attempts to legislate to prevent market forces from working.

[Ian Paisley]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a YouGov survey has demonstrated that 80% of consumers would buy cheaper meat regardless of whether its production had involved fewer CO₂ emissions? Therefore, because of the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, it is impossible for the Secretary of State to prevent the influx of cheap meat. The demand would be there. The motive of the person promoting the Bill may be fine and good, but the Bill will not do what it says on the tin. It will inflict on our industry a huge increase in foreign, cheap meat from Brazil.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Interventions should be short and stick to the point of the Bill.

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[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) on being so successful in the ballot and on bringing the Bill before the House. As he knows from my interventions and from a private conversation, I am not entirely in favour of his Bill, but I do congratulate him on securing this debate. It is important because it has brought the issue of agriculture back to the House and given us the opportunity to have an important discussion about where we want one of our most important producing industries—indeed, our critical producing industry—to go. This industry puts food in the bellies of our people and will determine the health of our nation, and this is an important debate for those reasons.

One of the best things that we do as a country—whether in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland—is produce high-quality, traceable, nutritious food that is also profitable. We should be proud of that fact. We should encourage the industry and do everything we can not only to sustain it but to develop it and to ensure that the food that is produced in this nation is some of the best in the world and, indeed, the envy of the world.

We, and indeed the Minister and the Government, face a real challenge in ensuring that that happens, because there are many pressures on our food producers and farmers. We should do all we can to promote their livelihood and their industry. We should not succumb to siren calls to change our practices unless we are utterly convinced that those changes will perfect and develop further an industry that is crucial to our people.

We need to put into perspective some of the points that have been made about our industry. The livestock sector—beef, dairy, pig, poultry and sheep production—contributed £2.3 billion to agri-food output in Northern Ireland in the last year for which figures were available. Of that, approximately 72%, or almost £1.65 billion, was sold outside Northern Ireland. That means that we run a very successful export industry, and it is called the food industry.

We should be careful about doing anything that changes the careful balance in our marketplace. The Bill could affect that balance detrimentally. I do not believe that that is the intention of its promoter, but it could be the effect. We should remember that more than 20,000 people are directly employed in the agri-food sector in Northern Ireland alone. Tens of thousands more are employed across the rest of the United Kingdom.

What are the devolved Government of Northern Ireland and, by extension, the other devolved Governments across the United Kingdom doing to ensure that we address some of the matters that have been brought before us as a result of the Bill’s trajectory? The Climate Change Act 2008 is already in place, and action is being taken. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Programme for Government has a target for a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors in the next 15 years.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman may not know that the Climate Change Act relates to emissions in this country and cannot possibly make any impact on, for example, deforestation in Argentina and Brazil. This Bill is designed to do that.

[Ian Paisley]

I accept that point and I will discuss it when I deal with that aspect of the Bill, which, I believe, reflects the promoter’s gut instinct.

Our stakeholder group in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development was formed at the end of July last year and wishes to consider how best to reduce greenhouse gases in the agricultural sector in Northern Ireland while remaining competitive in the marketplace. Our devolved Government have already taken several steps to address the issue, and I know that that also applies to the other devolved regions and to central Government in Westminster.

Do we need more legislation? Parliaments have a propensity to legislate when there is no need to do so. We should be careful not to load more bureaucracy—legislation for legislation’s sake—on to industry and the production of food. That is a key reason for my opposition to the Bill.

Given that work is already under way genuinely to address the problems, there should be no need for more legislative interventionism. Indeed, it would create additional bureaucracy and be less effective in delivering the necessary meaningful improvements and have an adverse impact on the agri-food industry.

There are three tests that the Bill must pass. The first is the economic sustainability test, which I believe it Bill fails. As I said, about £20 billion-worth of food is produced in the United Kingdom, and the Bill would force the Government to try to compel the new, ongoing common agricultural policy negotiations to change the subsidy rules so that every hectare of farm land in the United Kingdom would have to receive an increase in subsidy of between £100 and £200. For the life of me, I do not see the current European Union increasing food and farm subsidy in the current CAP negotiations. I wish that it would; it is not a realistic prospect, yet that needs to happen for the Bill to be effective. It will not happen in 2013, and we would therefore be arguing for something that is detrimental to the economy.

Production-limited support is contrary to World Trade Organisation regulations. If something is contrary to the CAP and WTO regulations, the likelihood of our getting an increase in the subsidy is small. The cost for farmers of having to purchase in a particular way in order to produce in a more carbon-efficient way would mean an additional burden and would be detrimental to the industry. Ultimately, who will lose? The farmer will put his hand in his pocket again and spend the money, but you, Mr Hoyle, I and the consumer will lose, because food prices will go up. Instead of good-quality, traceable food at a reasonable price, we will have more expensive food. The consumer will ultimately lose out.

What will the consumers do? They will do what all the polls tell us: they will buy not the high-quality food that is produced in the United Kingdom but the cheap, imported food, which will flood into the United Kingdom, further damaging our agricultural sector. In the past few years, we have fought against cheap meat from Brazil. If it is made even more accessible to our markets, when our consumers go to Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda, they will fill their trolleys with cheap Brazilian imports. Why? Because they are cheaper, and that is what will drive the consumer. We should realise that. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) that such prices will make us want to become vegetarians or vegans; they will just make us want to buy cheaper food. That is a genuine downside to the Bill, so it fails the economic test.

The Bill also fails the social test. My constituency is made up of lowland and hill farming, and there is a certain shape and scope to our land. A previous contributor described it as God-given beauty. It has been shaped by the grazing habits that farmers have introduced. Under the Bill, that would change. It will become more expensive to graze our animals on the uplands because it will be more expensive to import the food for them. The shape of our land would therefore change dramatically, so the social impact would not be as effective as the Bill suggests.

The Bill also fails the environmental test. It would use the sledgehammer of environmental protectionism to crack a nut. The entire UK agriculture industry is responsible for only 7% of our greenhouse gas emissions, and our emissions have already fallen by 21% since 1990.

John F. Kennedy memorably said:

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie… but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

We have heard some myths today which should be debunked. The Bill has an admirable aim to stop deforestation, but it will not do that. The House could pass the measure and say, “We want to stop deforestation,” but the Bill will contribute nothing to that aim. Indeed, its very publication contributes to deforestation because it needs paper. We must recognise the myth.

Another myth is that livestock will be raised indoors—that we will drive through our land and see great big silos and sheds where our livestock is raised. However, when I drive through my constituency, I see cattle and sheep in the fields.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman know that there is currently a planning application for a dairy farm in Lincolnshire, which will have more than 8,000 cows indoors practically throughout the year? There is also an application in Derbyshire for a pig farm that will host about 26,000 pigs. That is the direction in which the UK agricultural sector is moving. It is similar to what happens in some parts of eastern Europe and in America. That is a fact.

[Ian Paisley]

I accept that those two applications have been made—two applications in a massive industry. The planning service has the ability to restrict and reduce those plans if it considers them detrimental to the countryside. It is a myth that all farming will take place indoors. That cannot happen—milk cannot be obtained from cattle that are raised indoors.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am interested in the Minister’s response to that point, because when I criticised the move towards raising cows indoors, he told me recently at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions that I needed to go away and learn something more about dairy farming.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Lady can take that up with the Minister if she wishes. However, it is unrealistic to claim that, as we drive from the north of Scotland to the south of Devon, all that we will see in our countryside are huge sheds, inside which are animals that will never see the light of day. That is preposterous. It will not happen. It is a scare tactic that undermines the promoter’s good intention.

[Simon Hart]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that milking dairy cows is only one part of the dairy industry? Farmers also have calves and young stock, and produce beef—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are in danger of going into a general debate. This is not a general debate—we must stick to the Bill.

[Ian Paisley]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. We should get back to the point made by the Minister: the Bill will not affect cattle; it will have more of an effect on poultry and pig production.

In my constituency, there are 8,000 poultry producers. Those 8,000 farmers must raise poultry to compete efficiently and effectively with Brazil and other world producers. We export a lot of the poultry to the rest of the United Kingdom and across Europe. Indeed, most of the poultry that hon. Members eat—if they buy it in Marks and Spencer or Tesco—has been raised in my constituency, which is why it is so incredibly tasty. I encourage people to continue to buy it. By buying Moy Park and O’Kane Poultry produce, people are giving a vote of confidence to our local farming traditions. We should be proud of what we purchase and raise on our farms, and recognise that that productivity encourages and sustains jobs in the agri sector. Surely that is in all our interests. If we tamper with that and accept the myth that we are going to save a rain forest, we will lose jobs and end up buying poultry that is in fact produced in places where rain forests have been cleared—in other words, Brazil. That the Bill will stop the import of Brazilian-produced poultry or beef is a myth.

Another myth is that we require this legislation. We do not. It is in the interests of farming to be sustainable and to produce nutritional, clean and traceable food and to convince consumers across the United Kingdom and Europe of that. We therefore do not require legislation, because a good businessman—at the end of the day, farmers are good businessmen—will want to appeal to the marketplace, and the market wants good, clean, traceable and nutritional food. I hope that that produce is also profitable for the farmer.

Yet another myth is that the Bill will do what it says on the tin. It will not. It will do none of the things it says it will do. We need to recognise that even if we endorse the Bill and encourage such legislation, it will not do what it is supposed to do, which is to help our industry.

Let me appeal to the House. We all have different interests, but our key interest is keeping our people in employment. Farming is a key employer in my constituency and my country, and we should encourage, support and sustain it. We should not do anything that would undermine it.

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[Mr Paice]

The honest answer is no, but the costs would be considerable. In this time of major economic constraint, DEFRA clearly does not have the resources for this; a reduction in its overall budget has already been announced. Also, as my hon. Friend said in his excellent speech, the cost of the measures and of regulating them would have a considerable impact on the industry.

There are a number of reasons why the Bill is not the right way forward. I believe in the partnership approach of working with the industry that I have outlined. We are ready to show the necessary leadership and resolve to challenge the industry to act sustainably. That is the best way of producing the results to which we and the Bill aspire. Most of our farming leaders and the farming and food businesses they represent understand the Government’s resolve to ensure a sustainable future for livestock, farming and food.

We hope and expect the agricultural industry’s climate change task force to deliver its commitments to a greenhouse gas action plan with tangible measures for on-farm abatement. I hope that the plan will be published in the next few weeks. We will review it in 2012 and be ready to take the necessary steps should it seem unlikely to deliver the progress on farm-level abatement that we need.

We want to encourage all parts of the livestock industry to challenge themselves in thinking about the sustainability of their sectors and to set challenging goals for pro-environmental behaviours. In this time of restraint, and with the Government’s overriding priority of reducing the deficit, we need to focus resources on where they can make the most difference rather than on the statutory reporting and monitoring envisaged in the Bill.

Unsurprisingly, I repeat that the Government cannot support the Bill. Although its general sentiment is admirable, its terms are too broad, the duties it would impose on the Secretary of State are too ill defined and, indeed, undeliverable, and it is not consistent with the partnership approach that we want to engender. Let me return, therefore, to my earlier offer. Rather than impose additional layers of reporting, we would like to offer something substantive: our participation in a conference of interested parties in the first half of next year to take stock of the progress made by the UK livestock sectors in delivering sustainability objectives. I look to interested parties to set up and host the conference, but I give a commitment that either the Secretary of State or I will attend it. A year after the conference, DEFRA would report on the role of all parties with an interest in the sustainability of our livestock industry.

[Ian Paisley]

The conference proposal is valuable, but will the Minister ensure that it will be open to the devolved regions and organisations such as the Ulster Farmers Union?

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[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend rightly brings a cautionary tale to bear on this. My parents used to keep two pigs—one was called Humpty, and the other Dumpty. We used to feed them all the food waste, and there was never an outbreak of foot and mouth disease as a result. Those pigs were very healthy, and, because it was a time of rationing, when they were slaughtered we did not keep all the meat ourselves, but shared it among the people in a sort of collectivist action.

[Ian Paisley]

Do you think they’d swallow your speech?

[Mr Chope]

I was pausing to take breath, so I failed to hear what the hon. Gentleman said. However, I am sure that it was very witty and pertinent, and I look forward to reading it in the Official Report in due course.

My next point is one that my hon. Friend the Minister made. It is about the need to concentrate on putting resources where they can really deliver some good. Effectively, what he was saying was that if the Bill was to pass into law and these onerous duties were imposed on him, his Department would have to transfer resources from where they are being deployed at the moment to other areas. That would be a mistake. I have every confidence that my hon. Friend and the Secretary of State have a grip on the best allocation of resources within their Department to meet the Government’s policy objectives. If they were diverted from doing that by what is contained in the Bill, that would be a matter of regret.

My hon. Friend the Minister referred to the £2.9 billion that the Government are giving to deal with global climate change. That is a far more focused approach than that adopted by the Bill’s promoter, and it is regrettable that he did not refer to it in his opening speech. He might have said, “I respect and applaud the fact that the Government are doing so much in these areas, and this Bill is, in many respects, designed to encourage them to go further.” However, the Government do not need to be encouraged to go any further—they are doing more than sufficient with that £2.9 billion, which is, in anybody’s language, a significant sum of money.

My hon. Friend made an important point that is perhaps sometimes forgotten by those of us who mow our grass too regularly during the growing season—that grassland is itself a reservoir of potential carbon emissions. That introduces yet another set of conundrums and dilemmas in relation to promoting healthy livestock production while ensuring that we do not increase CO₂ or CO₂-equivalent emissions.

One part of my hon. Friend’s speech that he glossed over rather too quickly for my liking concerned clause 1(3), which says:

“The Secretary of State must ensure that policies in relation to negotiations and other activities at international level, including at the European Union, are consistent with sections 1(1) and 1(2)”

of the Bill as enacted. If my hon. Friend had been perfectly frank with the House, he would have said that there is no way that that is ever going to happen unless we withdraw from the European Community.