Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Committee: 1st sitting
Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare]

Yes, chalk land, just like the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). I thank my hon. Friend for that sedentary heckle. It is more chalk land and therefore is predominantly, although not exclusively, arable.

Certainty is important because we are dealing with long-term planning. Do farmers have the confidence to ask lenders for money to buy a new piece of farm equivalent? Do they have the confidence or certainty to plant a certain crop? Some of my local farmers in North Dorset now grow milling grains for the German beer sector. Some of them are growing white poppies, the stalks of which are exported to Hungary for medical purposes—so that medical opium can be extracted to provide painkillers. If someone is going to put their herd or flock into a growth spurt, and if they want to see them calve and lamb, they want certainty that there is some basic underpinning to their sector. That is what the Bill does, which is why it is to be supported.

The huge scope for agritech is important, and I am certain that we will hear that echoed in the debates on the Agriculture Bill—this Bill and the Agriculture Bill are in effect two sides of the same coin. Again, the agritech sector needs certainty. There are productivity benefits and environmental benefits to it, so we must make sure that the sector, which is growing and really taking root in the UK, has the confidence to continue.

My final point is with regard to audit. Various Members have probed the Minister about the performance of the Rural Payments Agency and how, effectively, it will look. Some within the agency will be suffering from Stockholm syndrome, and they need to be freed from that and to be able to take a lighter touch. However, in reference to the point about the audit trail made by the Chairman of the Select Committee—I congratulate him on his recent election—we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The British taxpayer must be certain that the payments made to farmers are fair, needed and transparent. Therefore, let us make sure that there is a clear audit trail on this homegrown UK system, so that not only British farmers have confidence and certainty, but the British taxpayer has certainty that their money is being put to good purpose to support and to encourage agriculture, that vital mainstay of the British economy.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on his re-election as Chair of the Select Committee. He brings a wealth of experience to that position, and we wish him well in it.

I am very pleased to speak in this Bill Committee, both on direct payments and on the commitment that the Minister has given. As always, I am pleased to see him in his place. He understands agriculture, just as he understands fishing, for which he also has responsibility. We look forward to his co-operation with the Northern Ireland Assembly, and particularly with the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Edwin Poots, who is my party colleague.

The agrifood sector is vital to the economy of Northern Ireland, and of my constituency in particular, whether we are talking about milk, beef, sheep, lamb, poultry or arable crops. Sustainability, to which the Minister referred, is critical to enable the agricultural sector to maintain its high food standards, and to gain through its partnership with the manufacturing companies.

[Neil Parish]

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that family farms are a structure that is to be found across the whole United Kingdom, but nowhere more than in Northern Ireland. This Bill and the future of agriculture are critical to Northern Ireland.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree wholeheartedly, and will go into that shortly.

I want to talk about the farmers who do well, the companies that work through them, and the partnerships that are established. Lakeland Dairies, which employs some 260 people, produces milk and powder and exports them across the world. There is also Rich Sauces, Willowbrook Foods and Mash Direct. Those are just four of the companies in Northern Ireland that work in partnership with farmers. Farmers with direct payments enable those companies to produce good products, which they sell across the world.

Farmers in my constituency and in Mid Down are ranked second for milk production across the whole of Northern Ireland. I declare an interest, Madam Deputy Speaker: I am not only a member of the Ulster Farmers Union, but a farmer, so I understand the importance to my neighbours of milk and the whole sector. I received correspondence from the Ulster Farmers Union, the sister organisation of the National Farmers Union. I welcomed the announcement from Her Majesty’s Treasury on farm funding for 2020, as it delivers on the commitment made by the Conservative party, and by the Minister. It is essential that Northern Ireland’s share of UK farm funding is maintained. It is my understanding that Her Majesty’s Treasury has confirmed to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in the Northern Ireland Assembly that the money will be rolled over from 2019 to 2020.

We hope that DAERA will be able to pay 100% of payments by mid-October. Has the Minister had an opportunity to discuss the nitty-gritty directly with the new Minister in Northern Ireland, and is there an understanding of how we will achieve the things that we wish to?

Getting a new Northern Ireland agriculture policy up and running by 2021 will be very ambitious, but I hope that the Government are up to the challenge. Last week, the Ulster Farmers Union’s beef and lamb policy committee met to discuss the priorities for the new Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister. The UFU’s hill farming policy committee will meet this week to look at its key priorities. I tell the Minister that because it is important that we work together, and that what is happening in Northern Ireland is mirrored by what is happening here.

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[Luke Pollard]

I thank the Minister for repeating what he said in Committee of the whole House. There is cross-party support for the Bill but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said, that does not mean that there are not some issues worth highlighting. As I said on Second Reading, I declare an interest in that I am a proud brother of a sheep farmer in Cornwall who farms rare breed sheep and is married to a beef farmer; in fact, they are both based just up the road from the Minister’s constituency.

We will not be opposing the Bill, but I need to add the climate crisis to the context that the Minister set out, because listening to the remarks of Government Members there seems to be a slight disconnect between what is in this Bill and the forthcoming Agriculture Bill, and what is in the notes that they are being given to read out. It is really important that we get this right. The Government are proposing moving from a system of supporting farmers via the land they own to a system of supporting farmers based on environmental land management and other environmental public goods. This will be a good scheme if delivered correctly. It is not a subsidy for productivity or food production. After listening to some of the speeches on Second Reading and today, I am concerned that not all Government Members have quite understood this, so I encourage colleagues to consult the recently re-elected Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to whom I pass on my congratulations; it is always good to see Members from Devon in places of authority.

It is important that we get this right because if we are fighting on the wrong pitch, we cannot do a decent job of scrutinising the biggest fundamental changes to our agricultural system since the Labour Government’s introduction of the Agriculture Act of 1947. That is why we need to make sure that this is done properly.

The Minister could address elements raised by his hon. Friends and, indeed, by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, about the future of the Rural Payments Agency. The hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) raised some valid concerns about the culture of the RPA. I commend the work of the officials there who have been working under immense pressure not only because of the potential changes how the CAP has worked but because their budget has gone down from £237.6 million when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 to just £95 million in 2017-18. If we are to change our agricultural system, the culture of the organisations that work in agriculture will also need to change, and that will need to be properly scrutinised and given time to bed in. It would be worth the Minister reconsidering our amendments that would have given Ministers slightly more leeway to look at that.

This Bill needs to be seen in concert with the Agriculture Bill. I appreciate that the Minister said that time is of the essence, and indeed it is, but time has not been of the essence over the past 14 months as Ministers sat on the Agriculture Bill, the Fisheries Bill and the Environment Bill. They have been taking it very easy, with a laid-back and pedestrian attitude. It is therefore somewhat cheeky but appropriate for the Minister to say in this context that parliamentary scrutiny cannot be delivered now because we have taken so long to get to this point. That excuse needs a bit more work, because we need to guarantee that Henry VIII powers are not being used disproportionately. I fear that in this setting they should have been used in a slightly different manner. We do need to get this right.

There are also elements of how we can support rare breeds, and other items that were discussed on Second Reading but were not mentioned in Committee and are still issues of concern for our rural communities—not only for hill farming, which I mentioned before, but for crofters, as raised by colleagues in the Scottish National party. We need to make sure that those specific types of farming are supported in any extension or new form of agricultural support. The Minister has a timeline whereby he wishes to reform agricultural support in the next few years or so, but by loading all the changes towards the end of that process, and not the start, we are giving our farmers notice that there will be considerable changes but not enough time to get it right.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) spoke about the importance of the ELM schemes and getting those right. This is a technical detail that I am not sure that everyone has been following. If we are to get this right, it is really important that the ELM schemes are properly scrutinised and given time so that we can not only see what the consequences are but improve them before there is a large-scale roll-out. The farming sector is willing to work with Ministers on this to get it right. We know that the “public money for public goods” approach is a philosophy that is supported by many in the farming communities, but we cannot have a new philosophy, a new approach and a new funding system implemented too fast without the proper time to bed it in and improve it to make sure that it all works. The Minister is speeding through this Bill when we could have the option of looking at whether the system needs to be extended for a further year in due course.

[Jim Shannon]

On the point about the importance of this transfer, does the hon. Gentleman feel that it is very important in terms our sheep markets, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said? The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) referred to the 95% of lamb produce that goes out of Wales. In Northern Ireland the figure is 97%. With the changes coming in, it is very important that we hold on to the markets where we can sell that stuff in the meantime.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. This goes to the heart of some of the debates that might transition into our discussions on the Agriculture Bill.

I want us to have a farming system that reflects the climate crisis, taking due cognisance of food miles and the carbon intensity of importing food from one side of the planet to another when our home-grown local produce is of exceptional quality and something that we can be very proud of. Speaking as a west country MP—indeed, the Minister is another—I think we need to recognise that the south-west creates some of the most fantastic foodstuffs in the country. Representatives from right around the country have their own produce that they can be very proud of. British produce is something that we should be very proud of. I encourage all Members to support buying goods with the red tractor logo to make sure that we take steps to encourage consumer behaviour in buying local.

That is really important, because in any future trade arrangements discussed in other legislative vehicles, we need to ensure that our UK farmers are not undercut. It is important that we set out what that means, because chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef are of concern to many people. This does not mean that UK farmers will be treating their chickens with chlorine or using antibiotics on an industrial scale as US agriculture does; it means that we will be allowing access to our market for food produced in that way. It is not the chlorine or the antibiotics that are the main concern—it is the fact that they are used in the first place because the animal welfare standards for those animals are so low. We will need to rehearse and repeat this argument as we get closer to Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill.

It is also important to set out that we need a fairer form of farm support that makes sure that our farmers get their payments on time. Improvements have been made but there is still more progress to be made. We need to support our farmers in decarbonising agriculture, partly by allowing our natural habitats to thrive. We must ensure that farm run-off does not pollute our watercourses, as we heard earlier. We must create a system where we are moving effectively and efficiently towards public money for public goods, not a form of farm subsidy.

This Bill completes a technical amendment that the Minister could, should and probably would have made a year ago, if he had been allowed to by the Whips. I am glad it has been done now. However, as we lead up to the Agriculture Bill, we must make sure that we have a system of farm support, and a debate, that is worthy of the importance of the high-quality, nutritious, locally produced, decarbonising food production that all our farmers and, indeed, our voters want to see.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who speaks passionately for his constituents. He talked about the importance of farming to his constituency and the high-quality products that his farmers produce. My farmers in Strangford produce equally high-quality food that goes all over the world. One example is a milk product that goes to Lakeland Dairies and then travels as far as China. The former International Trade Secretary helped to secure a contract with the Chinese authorities worth £250 million over five years for that product. That high-quality produce made in my constituency is so important.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that, while it is important that any payment system to farmers be directed towards protecting the rural environment, it is equally important that there should be no disincentive to produce high-quality food?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention and agree wholeheartedly with him.

Direct payments have made some really important environmental projects happen across Northern Ireland—projects that probably would never have seen the light of day and that tie into the Government’s policies on the environment and climate change. As I said to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) earlier, it is not possible to stop those environmental schemes, especially where tree-planting is involved, because it is important that a number of organisations continue that work over time. The National Trust has made a commitment to plant trees in 500 of the properties for which it has responsibility. The Ulster Farmers Union and the National Farmers Union are encouraging their members to do likewise. It is vital to ensure that those schemes continue. We cannot remove a tree-planting scheme and turn the land back to agricultural land; it is not possible.

[Ben Lake]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Surely this underlines the importance of ensuring that we get things right now, because as he just outlined, it is not easy to make up for any mistakes that are made.

[Jim Shannon]

Absolutely. The Government and the Minister have ensured today that the regional Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are part of this project together. It is my hope that, under this Bill as it is coming forward, direct payments can continue. I would like them to continue long beyond that, but this process moves us towards where we need to be.

There is a very important point for Northern Ireland. The Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), referred to this earlier, and I want to conclude with this comment. In Northern Ireland, we have a history and a tradition of small farms. My farm —the farm we have in our family—is only 62 acres. Farms are getting bigger now because they have to do so to move forward, but I think it is really important that this direct payment scheme enables small farms to be viable and makes them sustainable for the years to come. Many, myself included, probably across all of Northern Ireland, were reared on a farm of 60 or 70 acres, with their children going to school, and their whole life was sustained on that. It is really important for the future that Northern Ireland and those small farms can be sustained, be viable and have a future. We wish to have that future within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We do not want to be any different; we want to be treated the same in Greyabbey, where I live, as in Gloucester or anywhere else.