Sewage
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 day, 18 hours ago)
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Tim Farron
The hon. Member would, of course, be enormously welcome to visit the lakes and the dales. He makes a key point, which I will seek to address, about the injustice of people being paid huge bonuses for failure at the top of these organisations. That is also money leaving the system and the industry that could have been invested in putting some of this right.
I have talked about my patch, but colleagues across the House, from every party and from every corner of the United Kingdom, will have seen the data for their communities too, and they should rightly be outraged.
Jamie Stone
My hon. Friend talks, quite correctly, about a beautiful part of England. I, too, represent a very beautiful part of the world. Here is an unbelievable fact for him—I have written it on my hand: in 2023, there were no fewer than 1,439 sewage spills in the highlands. What a disgrace that none of the Scottish nationalists, the governing party of Scotland, are here today.
Tim Farron
My hon. Friend makes an important observation from a constituency vast and rural—my constituency is the second largest in England, but it is bijou and compact compared with his. He makes a good point about the Administration in Scotland.
As the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) alluded to, sewage spills are not the only things that have increased; so too has the money leaking out of the system. Water company bosses received a total combined pay last year of £20 million and more, and the water companies responsible for these failures paid out £1.2 billion in dividends. Surfers Against Sewage, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), has led the way on this issue for many years, since before many others were even talking about it.
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why we have given the regulator new powers through the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025. The Conservative party could have done so at any point during its 14 years in power, but at no point did it take that common-sense action. We passed that landmark piece of legislation, which became law in February. It gives the regulator tough new powers to hold water companies to account, bans unfair bonuses when water company bosses fail to meet high standards, and imposes stricter penalties—including up to two years in prison—if water company employees obstruct investigations by environmental regulators, as well as severe and automatic fines for wrongdoing. Environmental regulators can now recover costs for successful enforcement, meaning that the polluter pays and the regulators gain new resources to enforce more effectively.
Jamie Stone
I suggest to the Secretary of State that the problem may be more deep-seated than we realise. He mentioned algal blooms in the Lake district. Not only do those blooms turn the water a strange colour; they suck the oxygen out of the water, leading to the death of wildlife in the water. Furthermore, sewage contains heavy metals and other toxic substances that can kill fish or affect their ability to reproduce, so we may find ecosystems that have been damaged over a much longer term than we realise.
Steve Reed
I recognise the catastrophe that the hon. Member is talking about. It is not just that the water is polluted; the water becomes toxic, and it is killing ecosystems and damaging the wider environment. Those are all reasons that we need to move ahead quickly with the reforms that this Government are working towards.
Farming
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on opening the debate and on the thoughtful and knowledgeable speech he made. I also compliment Members on both sides of the Chamber for what they have said.
I was brought up on a farm. I was the wee boy who shooed the cows home to the faraway field. I represent the biggest constituency in the UK. I have an awful lot of farms and crofts in my constituency. Farming is part of our way of life. It is about the food we eat. It is about the fight against climate change. It is about our heritage and, in constituencies such as mine, it is about the tourism economy. The change of Government has been difficult before. Brexit did not help—we all know that argument—and botched trade deals have not helped either.
Much has been said about the taxation, and I will not repeat it, but I will remark on one thing that has been said, which is that land prices in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland are much higher than in other parts of the United Kingdom, so the effect of the taxation will be rather larger there.
To compound this, cuts to DEFRA’s day-to-day spending mean that many family farms and rural businesses will struggle. That is why my party is saying that we should raise the farming budget by £1 billion. If we can do that, perhaps we can help. We want to see a renegotiation of trade agreements to protect British farmers and a strengthening of the Groceries Code Adjudicator.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
First, I should declare that my partner is a conservation farmer in Somerset.
Having been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Vince Cable, the then Business Secretary who set up the Groceries Code Adjudicator, I recall his frustrations that the then Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer refused to grant the adjudicator the power she needed. Does my hon. Friend agree that the adjudicator will never be able to exercise meaningful control over the big supermarkets, which fund its operations through a levy, if the cost of a single investigation is greater than its annual budget? May I ask the Minister through my hon. Friend to remedy this decade-old wrong?
Jamie Stone
My hon. Friend brings knowledge from the past, which is very valuable to the debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland is also a champion of this cause, and what he says strikes a chord among farmers in my constituency. Getting a fair deal is fundamental to making farms viable for the long term. It is not that we want to do everything, but I hope that the Government will engage constructively with my right hon. Friend on this. It is too important to let this one go, and it could be an easy win for the Government and for all of us.
John Lamont
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, but does he agree as a fellow Scottish MP that our farmers are facing a double whammy? Not only do we have to deal with the vindictive family farm tax being imposed by the Government opposite, but we face the hostile environment that the Scottish National party Government are creating towards our farming communities in Scotland.
Jamie Stone
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, and what a pity it is that our SNP colleagues are not with us at this point, because we both might have something to say about that. There has been a lack of knowledge north of the border—or a lack of understanding, I believe—of things that are fundamental to the way of life in the constituencies we represent at the different ends of Scotland.
Time is short, but I want to conclude by mentioning three things that are causing my constituents some anxiety. In particular, I spoke with farmers this week and there has been recent publicity about what is known as lab-grown meat, produced from cells in a laboratory environment. It is thought that this could be upon us within two years. Yes, it is a way of producing food, but what does that mean for our livestock farmers? That needs to be looked at very carefully indeed.
The second thing I am duty-bound to mention is the low price of malting barley. This is the highest-quality barley and is used to make whisky. It is low priced because not so much is being bought by the whisky distillers, a reflection of the fact that they are not selling so many bottles of whisky.
Jamie Stone
My right hon. Friend is indeed doing his bit and never ceases to do so, but this again goes back to an earlier point: that farming is intermingled throughout the entire economy. If we can have measures from the Government to increase whisky sales and to encourage exports, such as getting good-quality Scotch whisky into the Indian market, that will in the long term benefit the growers of malting barley, which will make farms more viable again. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) is not with us, because, in all fairness, he did make that point.
The hon. Gentleman also made a point about seed potatoes. I welcomed the Windsor framework at the time and was thanked by the then Prime Minister for doing so. It meant we could get our seed potatoes into Northern Ireland, but I know from talking to seed potato farmers that there are markets in Europe crying out to get hold of high-quality Scottish seed potatoes. They are the best, because they are some of the safest from virus, eelworm or whatever. I will be extremely grateful to the Government if they use every measure at their disposal to try to improve sales.
Finally, I want to make rather a strange point. A number of farmers have told me that people who have worked on the farm, sometimes for decades, are now moving on to other jobs. People who drove tractors or used implements to cultivate fields are sometimes taking the option of going off to drive a digger for a builder, and a labour shortage is beginning to occur on some of our farms. That should be a worry not just for way farms are run presently but for finding new entrants into farming.
I again commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland for his speech and for bringing this debate before us. Farming is absolutely fundamental to the country and the way we feed ourselves, and in a world that, as we have seen, is quite dangerous to say the least, the more we feed ourselves and the less we rely on imports, the better.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Rural Communities: Government Support
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Caroline Voaden
My colleagues are doing well at predicting what I am about to say. I have not shared my speech, but my next paragraph goes on to say that I heard from two pupils this morning about how they miss out on all the after-school clubs and activities because they have to be on the school bus and cannot get home later in the day. That directly impacts kids from more disadvantaged backgrounds, and embeds that disadvantage even further. It is something we must resolve.
We all know that there is an affordability crisis in housing, but it is massively exacerbated in areas with a high number of second homes and flats, and with flats and houses used as short-term lets rather than being residential.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. One of the big problems that we have in my very remote constituency is the cost of delivery charges and surcharges. They are a lot higher than one would pay in cities such as Glasgow or Edinburgh. It is the same for the highlands of Scotland as it is for the rural parts of England. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be good if the Government could look at this and try and take it down to a level playing field, so that people are not disadvantaged because of where they live?
Caroline Voaden
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to the delivery of services and the costs later on.
Higher than average house prices coupled with lower than average wages is a toxic combination. The median full-time salary in South Devon is significantly below the national average, but the average house price—at £337,185 —is significantly above the national average. Newly built homes regularly go on the market for around £1 million. That means the house price to full-time salary ratio in Devon is 10:6, well above the English average of 8:7. Devon as a whole has the highest ratio in the south-west.
On top of all that, we must also look at the issue of deprivation. Deprivation in rural areas tends to be dispersed, which means it is much less well identified. However, south-west England is one of the rural areas where deprivation is more prevalent. In small communities, just one or two very wealthy residents can skew the figures for the whole settlement, meaning pockets of deprivation can be even more hidden. The index of multiple deprivation, used to capture need for core local authority services, is a relative measure of deprivation based on data from 2019. The index is urban centric and it misses small, dispersed rural pockets of acute deprivation. It is simply not specific enough to capture need—especially in social care.
In Devon, most sub-domains are less deprived than the national average. However, Devon is considerably more deprived compared to the national profile, when looking at housing quality and barriers to housing and services. Of the total Devon population, 47% fall into the most-deprived fifth nationally for the indoor environment quality measure. In rural areas, one in four households do not have a mains gas supply, and are more likely to be reliant on oil or solid fuels for domestic heating, which are less efficient and more expensive.
In 2022, the average fuel poverty in rural villages, hamlets and isolated dwellings was nearly three times as high as the average for England as a whole, and 25% of the Devon population were also in the most deprived fifth nationally for the housing services sector, which measures distance from services such as GPs, food shops, post offices and primary schools, along with measures of housing overcrowding and affordability and homelessness. It is not all thatched cottages from the front of chocolate boxes.
The Liberal Democrats are concerned that using deprivation as an indicator of demand for services does not consider local authorities with a higher number of elderly or vulnerable residents, and the additional demands those residents place on our services. Under the previous Government, DEFRA and the then Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities commissioned a piece of work to investigate rural deprivation as part of an update to the English indices of deprivation. It was anticipated to complete this year, so I ask the Minister for an update on when this work will be completed and published.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
Food security is more important than ever, which is why we need to back British farmers to keep putting food on our tables, while protecting the environment. We are supporting farming with £2.4 billion of annual spending, an average boost of 10% for the sustainable farming incentive payment scheme, and new rules to ensure that farmers get a fair price for their products.
Steve Barclay
My right hon. Friend is right to focus on the importance of drainage boards, particularly in Lincolnshire. He knows that I have a particular constituency interest in the adjacent area. We have announced £65 million of funding, and the Minister for water, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), will make further announcements on that shortly. We are looking more widely at the huge pressure on farming from the wet weather, particularly in areas such as Lincolnshire. There has been a 60% increase in rainfall—these have been our second wettest six months—and we are looking at a series of easements, particularly with regard to SFI, to ensure that farmers get their payments.
Jamie Stone
On behalf of my party, I too wish Phil, the Head Doorkeeper, a very happy birthday.
As the Government know, we grow the very finest seed potatoes in the far north of Scotland. They are particularly good because, relatively speaking, they are virus free. That is probably because of the northerly latitudes where they are grown. I happen to know that farmers in Europe are crying out to get hold of these seed potatoes. I ask the Government to do everything in their power to ensure that the potatoes go where they are needed and wanted.
Steve Barclay
The hon. Member makes a valid point in terms of both the quality and the desirability of the products to which he refers. The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries is engaging actively with the EU on that specific point, and I am sure that he will update the hon. Member on it.
UK Food Security
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Sarah Dyke
I agree that there needs to be a balance between food production and housing supply. My view is that we need to ensure that housing is developed.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Further to the point that the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) made, many farmers in my constituency feel that, although rewilding is a fashionable concept, perhaps it goes a little too far, and we need to be more imaginative when deciding what can be rewilded and what should be kept and maintained in the same way, when not used for housing, for growing excellent British food.
Sarah Dyke
I agree that we need to balance food production with ensuring we protect our precious environment. Farmers obviously have a key role to play in that.
Jamie Stone
Farmers in my constituency have made the point that when a carbon capture audit is done of a farm, the value of grassland in holding and storing carbon is underestimated. That should be looked at again in the overall audit of these farms, which could help in turn to support the growth of excellent beef on our farms.
Robbie Moore
Having been involved in the agriculture sector for my whole life before entering this place, I know just how important pasture and grassland are to carbon sequestration. When we are rolling out environmental land management schemes, it is important that the benefits of pasture land through carbon sequestration are taken into account. That is why the reforms that we have introduced, through coming out of the common agricultural policy, are so important to supporting a highly productive sector that is environmentally sustainable.
In addition to the sustainable farming incentive, the farming investment fund and the farm productivity innovation funding will further improve farm productivity. Our schemes will ensure our long-term food security by investing in the foundations of food production, such as healthy soil, water and biodiverse ecosystems. Backing our farmers is so important, which is why the Prime Minister and the Environment Secretary announced a range of measures at the National Farmers Union conference to boost productivity and resilience in the sector, including the largest ever grant offer for farmers in the coming financial year, which is expected to total £227 million.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
As my right hon. Friend knows, I know that area well. I used to live in Whitchurch, which has the River Test flowing through it. We are making progress with our chalk stream action plan, but he will also be aware of the amendment that the Government agreed to work with Viscount Trenchard on and which is now part of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which I hope will become an Act very soon.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Some of the finest seed potatoes are grown in the north of Scotland. Right now, the seed potato farmers are worried sick, because a lot of their crop is below water. That also poses a question mark over the supply of seed for next year. I know that this matter is devolved, but as the Minister is a farmer will he put the maximum encouragement in the direction of the Scottish Government to please help the farmers?
Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman has done that with his question. I do not diminish the effect that the rain is having on the seed potato crop; once seed potato is under water for more than a week it will probably be destroyed. Scottish seed potatoes are some of the finest seed produced anywhere in the world and I encourage him to seek contact with the Scottish Government to get them to help.
Import and Sale of Fur
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Giles Watling
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, although we seem to be on a repeat cycle as I shall refer to those very issues later in my speech. I think he will be glad to hear my remarks.
Such health problems are widespread on fur farms and are the result of the grossly inadequate conditions in which the animals are forced to live. Investigations by organisations such as Humane Society International, to which I am incredibly grateful for its support during my preparation for the debate, repeatedly show the mental suffering of those wild animals, including a high frequency of stereotypical behaviours such as pacing and rocking as well as self-mutilation and cannibalism. Despite what the fur trade might like consumers to believe, there is no such thing as humane fur farming. Industry-led assurance schemes of high welfare fur farming permit a wide range of cruel practices, including the use of battery cages and cruel traps, such as leg-hold traps and even drowning traps for beavers.
At the end of their tragic lives, mink are typically gassed to death—veterinarians tell me that that is aversive to them, which of course it is, and that it causes suffering, which of course it does—while foxes and raccoon dogs are mostly anally electrocuted. Sickeningly, investigations, including one by Humane Society International in 2020 in China, show that animals are crudely beaten to death with metal poles and even skinned alive.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The hon. Member is making a fine speech. What brought the issue home to me was something that happened at school when I was 14 or 15. Our physics teacher, Mr Thompson, took an amber rod and showed us that rubbing it would produce a positive charge, but what he rubbed it with shook me to the core. It was a pussycat skin. He had a box of skins. He said, “It is all right; they came from abroad.” The hon. Member mentioned wild animals; that was a domestic moggy, somebody’s cat. That is what put me right off. Like the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), I have had numerous messages from constituents on the subject.
Giles Watling
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right: it does not matter where these skins come from, we should take it very seriously and consider legislating heavily against it.
Could fur production be made humane? The simple and truthful answer is “no”, because the fur trade’s economic model remains completely reliant on battery cages. There is no humane alternative to the fur trade’s model of intensive confinement. When the Governments of Germany and Sweden brought in laws requiring that foxes be given digging substrate and, in Germany, that minks be provided with swimming water, the respective segments of the industry in those countries closed down, as it was no longer economically viable to meet the requirements of those sensible laws.
It is not only animal protection organisations, such as the HSI and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, that are calling time on the fur trade. The former CEO of the British Fur Trade Association, Mike Moser, who was mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), resigned after 10 years defending the fur trade. In September 2020, he publicly pledged his support for the Fur Free Britain campaign to ban fur sales in the UK. It is worth reading his statement again:
“Over time I realised that whatever soundbites we devised to reassure consumers, retailers and politicians, neither welfare regulations nor any industry certification scheme, would ever change the reality of these animals being stuck in tiny wire cages for their entire lives.”
That is a good point, well made. An estimated 95% of fur traded—the majority—is from animals kept on fur farms.
Let us move on to wild animals. Wild animals trapped for their fur suffer different but similarly awful plights. In countries including the USA and Canada, such animals are frequently caught cruel leg-hold traps that have been banned in the UK since the 1950s. Animals such as coyotes and racoons can suffer for days in those traps before they eventually succumb to the elements or dehydration or are killed. Horrifically, it is not uncommon for animals to rip or chew off limbs in a bid to escape. Such suffering is impossible to imagine, all for the purpose of a sentient creature ending up as the trim on a jacket hood or fur cap.
The case against the cruelty of the fur trade is straightforward. Less commonly understood, perhaps, is that fur farms can act as a reservoir for viruses and present a risk to public health, as the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) mentioned earlier. More than 480 fur farms across Europe and north America have been affected by outbreaks of covid-19 over the past three years, with six countries confirming spillover events from fur farms back to humans. Some 20 million animals were culled to protect public health, but mink farming continues in several countries across Europe and beyond.
An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza on a mink farm in Spain last autumn further raised pandemic fears, with virologists from Imperial College, London, writing that it is “incredibly concerning” and “a warning bell” for humanity. A recent statement by the World Organisation for Animal Health warns:
“Some animals, such as mink, may act as mixing vessels for different influenza viruses, leading to the emergence of new strains and subtypes that could be more harmful to animals and/or humans. Recently reported infections in farmed mink are a concern, because infections of large numbers of mammals kept in close proximity of each other exacerbate this risk.”
By importing animal fur, we are importing cruelty, and we are facilitating a trade that could very well be the source of the next pandemic.
Lastly, let me outline briefly a final, compelling reason for the Government to act to end the UK fur trade: its sizeable environmental footprint. A new report published by Humane Society International has found that among the eight materials considered, fur from minks, foxes and racoon dogs had the highest air emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and water pollution per kilogram. The carbon footprint of 1 kg of mink fur was found to be 31 times higher than that of 1 kg of cotton, and the water consumption in fur production was found to be five times higher than that for cotton, with a kilogram of fur requiring a staggering 29,130 litres of water. The fur trade is bad news for animals, bad news for human health and bad news for the environment. An import ban, as they say in the vernacular, is a no-brainer.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
By means of an intervention, I have already said what I said about my teacher, Mr Thompson. The main point I will make is that that was then. I am quite old; that was an education in the late ’60s, in the hands of Scotland at Tain Royal Academy. Things change over time. That is precisely why the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) made the speech that he just did: things change and human opinions change. If someone talked to my three children, they would find the whole idea of the fur trade or breeding any animal to kill it by some ghastly means simply to have its skin, as has been outlined, abhorrent. There is a sense of decency out there, and I am proud that our country is saying what it is saying, and it has a lot more to say. We await the Minister’s response with great interest.
There is a sort of moral high ground. We are a nation of animal lovers, which is precisely why my constituents have been in touch with me in the way that they have. I take this opportunity to put on the record that I thank them for saying those things. I hope that we can spread the word to other nations that it is absolutely out of order to do what the hon. Member for Clacton told us about. We have only one planet together, and we are all—pretty much—sentient beings.
I have a much-loved pet cat at home called Hattie, which gives my wife and myself great pleasure; the same is true of everyone who has a pet, or, indeed, if I look out the window and see a blackbird hopping about or just a wild animal. In my constituency, we are blessed with an enormous amount of wildlife, from deer to badgers to otters, and even the occasional roving beaver, so I am led to understand. We all love that, and it makes our lives worth living.
This is a short contribution, but I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Clacton for raising the matter today. It is an honourable cause, and well done to him; I hope his constituents will see the good work he does.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Like the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), I did not plan to make a speech this morning, but I take the opportunity to congratulate both the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) on introducing the debate and the other Members who took the time to participate.
We are a number of nations—four nations—of animal lovers. Since we are mentioning pets, I do not think my own pet has been on the record before, so I will ensure that I mention Wee Jean, who, in 2019, won Westminster Dog of the Year—so I will get Wee Jean on the record.
Jamie Stone
I will just point out that several years ago my cat Hattie was runner-up for the Cat of the Year award.
Carol Monaghan
I thank the hon. Member for that.
On a more serious point, we rarely have constituents getting in touch—in fact, I never have—to say “Can we keep fur imports? Can we continue doing this?” On almost everything, we usually get constituents getting in touch on both sides of the debate, so we can say that in this case the issue quite clearly has the support of the public. Many high-street brands have already banned fur, and I believe that Marks and Spencer, H&M and Adidas have all taken a stand against it. There is no reason why we need it, because there are perfectly acceptable alternatives.
I mentioned Canadian bears—I think I said the Canadian brown bear, but I meant to say the Canadian black bear, whose fur is used for hats. There are alternatives. Last year, a group brought an alternative into Parliament and said that it had been tested under lots of different conditions. The group felt that it was just stubbornness and refusal to give up tradition that meant we were continuing to use real Canadian black bear pelts for hats. We need to move on. There is no reason to be doing this.
One thing the hon. Member for Clacton did not mention was foie gras. It is a cruel method of production for a luxury food item that really is not required.
I will mention one other thing. Just a few months ago, the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) successfully introduced the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill and got the support of the House. That was a real show of cross-party strength on an issue, and I think we can do the same for fur. I thank the hon. Member for Clacton once again for bringing forward this issue, and I look forward to other Members’ contributions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Rebecca Pow
I thank the hon. Member for that. I have met him many times on these issues, and I commend him for this work, but I have also met Professor Chris Whitty on this very subject. The hon. Member just needs to look at the forthcoming update of our clean air strategy. We are already working on many of the things that Chris Whitty has raised, and we have to get the Department of Health and Social Care to play its part as well.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
Agriculture is a devolved issue, and is the responsibility of the Scottish Government. Our farmers produce some of the best food in the world. In England, our environmental land management schemes are now open for them to access, and we will pay farmers to deliver positive environmental outcomes. We will also support the production of great British food, healthier soils and more pollinators.
Jamie Stone
For the record, may I say how surprised and disappointed I was that the lady who was offered the Rural Affairs job in the Scottish Government turned it down because, as it is reported, it was seen to be a demotion? I was born on a farm. My local farmers and crofters are vital to the economy of my constituency. All over the UK, it is about feeding the nation.
On the subject of feeding the nation, there is increased movement of cattle from Scotland to England. I will not go into the reasons why that is happening, but it is happening, and the Minister will know that. Does he agree that a universal electronic tagging scheme that matches the whole of the UK, perhaps including Northern Ireland, would greatly facilitate this sort of sale of livestock?
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Member for his question. Obviously, I work closely with Mairi Gougeon in the Scottish Government. She will probably be disappointed to have been re-offered her job, despite its being offered to somebody else, but we will continue to have a positive working relationship there.
The hon. Member is right to highlight the fact that co-operation across the Union is best for UK agriculture and best for UK food production. I think systems for moving cattle between Scotland and England need to flow as quickly and as easily as possible, so that that marketplace works efficiently for farmers on both sides of the border.
UK Food Shortages
Jamie Stone Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
I am conscious of what my hon. Friend says. Industrial glasshouses in particular are an emerging industry, not a long-established one, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will always be looking to consider who should be eligible. We will continue to make the case for why we think this is an important sector. I am conscious that there is a significant scaling back, recognising other issues, such as the wholesale price of gas which has fallen, and we expect to see a reduction in energy prices coming through.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I am concerned that these food shortages will impact on school meals. Should we be looking to give free school meals to far more children in England, just as Scotland and Wales already do?
Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Trudy Harrison
I reassure the hon. Lady that I whole- heartedly agree with her on the value of wetlands. I recently attended the Slimbridge Wetland Centre with the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and saw for myself how beneficial wetlands can be. In direct response to her question, the responsibility in DEFRA lies with me. I look forward to meeting her to explain exactly how we are creating more wetlands and how nature-based solutions will feature throughout our net zero and other strategies.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
Our environmental land management schemes are now open to farmers. The schemes collectively pay farmers to deliver climate and environmental outcomes alongside food production. We continue to evolve those offers, recently updating the countryside stewardship payment rates and bringing forward six new sustainable farming incentive standards.
Jamie Stone
The right hon. Gentleman is, I know, a horny-handed son of the soil, so he will know that some of the finest seed potatoes are grown in Easter Ross in my constituency. Many of those seed potatoes are in turn sold to English farms in Lincolnshire and suchlike—I might say that is one benefit of the Union. May I press the Minister to tell me what support can be given to those farmers in England to encourage them to grow more spuds such as Maris Pipers and hence to buy more seed potatoes from the farmers in my constituency?
Mark Spencer
I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, but I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to Scottish seed potato producers. They are undoubtedly the best seed potatoes available anywhere in Europe, and I know that is recognised throughout the industry. That is why we are supporting farmers across England to continue to grow great British potatoes based on Scottish seed potatoes.