Oral Answers to Questions
John Nicolson Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Mark Spencer
It is tempting to resign, to be honest, but I will resist at this moment. We continue to have those conversations. We recognise the size of the challenge. If the hon. Gentleman gives us a small window, we will be able to make a full assessment of where we are at.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mark Spencer)
The Government are working to ensure that UK agriculture and fishing sectors secure the labour that they need. We know that there is a shortage of labour and it is difficult for businesses across the food sector. That is why the Prime Minister committed during the leadership campaign to looking at expanding seasonal worker schemes. The Government have already expanded the number of people in the seasonal worker route to 40,000 for horticulture and poultry in 2022; we have commissioned an independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain in England; and we launched a £10 million skills and training scheme in August 2022 to support new entrants in the fishing sector.
John Nicolson
Ending the freedom of movement has been a catastrophe for constituencies such as Ochil and South Perthshire, with labour shortages in every sector, especially food production. The lack of seasonal workers and the food rotting in the fields are evidence of yet more Brexit chaos. We all must surely agree that food waste is a scandal. Given that the new Prime Minister pledged to expand the seasonal worker scheme if she was elected, when will that be done?
Mark Spencer
I think we need to give the Prime Minister longer than 48 hours to deliver on that commitment. The hon. Gentleman would have kept us in the common fisheries policy by remaining in the EU. The country requires an immigration system that benefits the United Kingdom; we should not just have an open door to anybody who wants to come. We need to be able to select the people who will assist the UK economy and make sure that the people who come to the United Kingdom benefit the United Kingdom.
Back British Farming Day
John Nicolson Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Theo Clarke
The Government have taken steps to ensure there are seasonal workers, and if I make progress in my speech, I will come on to that topic shortly.
I was interested to read an industry-funded report last year that revealed that during the pandemic alone, labour costs have increased by 15%, which follows a 34% increase in wages over the past five years. I have heard from my farmers in Staffordshire that they are very concerned about the cost for growers: they have been told that they may have to pay for workers’ visas, travel, and covid tests in future. To put that in context, one of my local farmers told me that this could cost his business an extra £1,000 per seasonal worker, and on the basis that a farmer might employ 200 or 300 workers on their farm, that is hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional investment. A lot of my constituents will be asking, “Should fruit and vegetable farming remain? Is it economically viable?” That is why I urge the Minister to look into this issue.
It is very clear from the conversations I have had with local growers and businesses that it has been very difficult to recruit domestically. Very admirably, they worked hard to try to recruit domestic workers, but I was told that unfortunately, the manpower just is not there. I will give the Minister a particular example from my constituency, which I heard about at my meeting last week. One farm received 7,500 applications to be a seasonal worker. One hundred and fifty people were shortlisted, and 85 were offered jobs, of whom only 48 turned up. Thirty-two of those left after one week, 24 after two weeks and five after three weeks, so we can see that that farm put a huge amount of effort into recruiting workers, but the labour was simply not there.
Theo Clarke
I would like to make some progress in my speech, if that is okay, because I know that many colleagues are waiting to speak.
That story, I am afraid, was replicated for growers from across the country, including Dearnsdale Fruit in Staffordshire, which I heard from as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for fruit, vegetables and horticulture when we hosted a roundtable on seasonal workers earlier this year. Access to labour is absolutely critical for ensuring the sector has the labour it needs. When it comes to perishable crops, such as strawberries, it is right that we have the workers that are needed at that moment. I commend the Government on the seasonal workers pilot scheme, which they expanded last year to 30,000 visas. It was a lifeline for many businesses and I thank the Minister for the role she played in getting the scheme set up.
Many colleagues would agree with me that there is uncertainty about the scheme. We need to know what it will look like in the future, so that farms can plan ahead. I urge the Minister to work with her colleagues at the Home Office to come up with a solution.
I move on to the environmental schemes in Stafford. I am a member of the Conservative environment network and am very supportive of the Government’s environmental agenda, particularly ahead of COP26 in Glasgow this year. Flooding is an all-too-frequent phenomenon in my Stafford constituency. I welcome that the new legislation works to incentivise farms and landowners to implement measures that will improve our environment and reduce the incidence of floodwaters entering people’s homes.
Part of the Agriculture Act 2020 is the environmental land management scheme, which is currently going through various trials in Staffordshire. I was dismayed to hear last week that some of my local NFU members are considering dropping out of the scheme. My constituency is predominantly made up of small farms. The farmers have told me that they find the costs associated with being part of the scheme prohibitive.
At this point, having talked a lot about fruit and vegetables, I should also say I wholeheartedly support our dairy and red meat sector. From correspondence with constituents and talking to them at the Staffordshire county show in the summer, I appreciate that bovine TB remains a highly emotive topic. I urge the Minister to work with DEFRA to come up with a long-term solution that means the lives of many animals will be saved in years to come, and that ensures my farmers’ livestock will be protected.
Last week I heard some pretty distressing stories about mental health from my farmers—the mental health of those living in rural areas is a subject I feel very strongly about. As a new MP, I set up the Stafford mental health network and we hold regular mental health roundtables. I am very pleased that my farming community is represented on that by one of their NFU members.
My farmers are concerned about the devastating impact of High Speed 2 on their farms and our rural areas. I want to share one shocking story. I heard last week that two farmers have been so severely affected by dealing with HS2 that they have had their shotguns removed, for their own safety, due to a mental breakdown because of not receiving compensation. To be frank, my constituents have been treated with absolute contempt by HS2. No one asked for their farms and villages to be cut in half by the proposed line. They feel they are being treated like an inconvenience. They have had land taken away and have not yet even had payment for it. Others are stuck in protracted negotiations.
It is fair that constituents should be paid the market value for their land or business, and I do not think that is something they have yet received. If HS2 has lessons for any of us, it is that compensation and right of access laws must be tightened to ensure a level playing field. It is a very practical example of where more action is needed to back British farmers.
I want to talk about increasing the volume of British food in public sector food procurement, which is a major opportunity to showcase British food’s high standards and environmental credentials to everyone. I was very pleased to sponsor the Food Labelling (Environmental Sustainability) Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). It would have required food manufacturers to better label their products to indicate the environmental sustainability of their origins, which would help consumers make more informed choices about the sustainability of the products they buy.
Supermarkets play a vital role in our local food supply chain and they have a very important role in ensuring consumers have the ability to make informed choices about the food they purchase. I have a policy idea to suggest to the Minister. All supermarkets should have what I am calling “an aisle for the British Isles”. Britain has some of the highest food standards in the world. I think the public want to buy food from British farmers. A recent survey said that 80% of respondents supported the increased procurement of British food in schools, hospitals and Government agencies. I totally agree.
The main reason people shop in supermarkets is for convenience. Would it not be a great idea for the consumer to know there was a whole aisle where everything in it was from the British Isles? There could be a local section or shelf for products from Staffordshire. I hope colleagues will support my idea of an aisle for the British Isles and that the Minister will commit to backing this concept, which would improve the situation for British farmers.
To conclude, although today is Back British Farming Day, I believe it is essential to back British farmers 365 days a year. To do that we need to deliver policies, not just in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs but across Government, that work for our farmers who go out in all weathers every single day to ensure that we are fed as a nation. Let us not take that for granted.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I thank the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) for securing this debate.
I begin by saying a huge thank you to farmers in my constituency. They put in tireless hours and are often very underpaid. Farmers are essential workers; they put food on our tables throughout the pandemic—they did not let us down. Yet, they are consistently let down by the UK Government.
The Government should heed the title of this debate and back British farming—not just with rhetoric, but with action. Farming is an essential sector for Scotland: it employs around 67,000 people and supports thousands more in jobs across urban and rural economies, generating a gross output of £3.3 billion annually, directly resulting in a contribution of £1.3 billion to the Scottish economy. However, it has been dealt a hard blow by Brexit.
Just before Christmas, during the chaos preceding the trade and co-operation agreement, a variety of constituents wrote to me; they were blackface sheep farmers and stood to lose thousands of pounds. In Scotland alone, the blackface sheep industry stood to lose £750,000 of sheep if lambs could not be moved to Northern Ireland. That had never posed a problem before Brexit. The then Cabinet Secretary in Scotland, Fergus Ewing, wrote to the DEFRA Secretary of State to raise the issue urgently. It took over three weeks to receive a reply.
Meanwhile, farmers, including some of my constituents, had no idea what they would do in the run-up to Christmas and how much money they stood to lose. That is just one example of how farmers were let down by Brexit, although there are many more. It is hard to see what the advantages of Brexit were for farmers.
Jim Shannon
It is good to have the support of the Scottish National party to oppose the Northern Ireland protocol, because that is what the issue is. Farmers in Scotland and Northern Ireland are suffering and something needs to be done. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?
John Nicolson
Unlike the majority party in Northern Ireland, we opposed Brexit. We thought it was going to be a disaster, and we opposed the Brexit agreement. I know the Democratic Unionist party has suffered considerably electorally since the results of their folly in supporting Brexit have been gauged by the Northern Irish electorate.
The UK-Australia trade agreement, when it was signed, was yet another blow for UK farmers. The UK Government, in their desperation to sign anything that might make Brexit appear less of an ongoing calamity for the economy, agreed to a terrible deal with Australia. I guarantee that champagne corks were being popped in Canberra the night that deal was signed. According to NFU Scotland, it was
“a slow journey to the Australians getting unfettered access to UK markets and with no guarantees that the promises of other safeguards will address the fact that very different production systems are permitted in Australia compared to here in the UK.”
John Nicolson
I will make some progress, if I may. The deal as a whole will deliver one 200th of the benefits of the EU over the next 15 years, and is worth only 0.01% of GDP. That causes two problems for farming. The first is the fact that Australian livestock farms will mean that farmers in the UK who operate on a much smaller scale will not be able to compete on price. On the price issue, in the UK we pride ourselves on high animal welfare standards. The same cannot be said of the Australians. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals chief executive Chris Sherwood warned that it is legal in Australia to mutilate the rear end of sheep, while chicken can be washed with chlorine and almost half of cattle are given growth hormones. That is a shocking record of animal welfare.
John Nicolson
I will pursue my point for a moment. Although the Prime Minister assured us that hormone-induced cattle will not come to the UK, we all remember he also promised at the last election not to increase taxes.
Chris Loder
May I just respectfully point out to the hon. Gentleman that what I said earlier still stands? The import standards for this country do not permit that. It is a matter of law, and if it ever changed there would be a vote taken in Parliament. Hormone-injected beef is not permitted to be imported into this country, and the same is to be said for chlorine-washed chicken.
John Nicolson
Let us see. Many of the assurances we were given on Brexit have proved very different in reality. Climate pledges were secretly dropped from the deal. Paris agreement temperature goals never made it into the final deal after pressure from the Australian Government. For 0.01% of GDP and to get a post-Brexit win, global Britain ditched essential climate change goals in the lead-up to the most important international climate summit in years.
John Nicolson
I will pursue my point. I have already taken two interventions and there is a limit to how many I can take in a speech. The impact of global warming on temperature and weather will be felt most acutely by those in the farming community. The Australian deal sets a worrying precedent for trade deals going forward. If any future deal with the United States throws farmers under the bus as much as the Australia one did, many more farmers will struggle.
I cannot finish without mentioning the litany of complaints from the hon. Member for Stafford about Brexit labour shortages and food rotting in our constituency fields. The hon. Lady sounded shocked, as indeed she should, at the appalling waste. But it is hardly a surprise. Once upon a time, right-wing tabloids and Brexiteer MPs assured us that, post-Brexit, townies would be jumping on trains to the countryside, filled with “Pick for Britain” zeal, and would return ruddy-faced from their exertions in the fields. It was never going to happen. It has not happened; Brexit has led to chronic labour shortages, and we on this side of the House clearly warned that that would happen. So please, let us not affect surprise at the clearly foreseeable consequences of Brexit.
We in Scotland have a choice; farmers, and the rest of us, have the option of re-joining the European Union as part of an independent Scotland and to have free movement once again. Farmers play such an important role in society, and I am proud to back them. I wish the UK Government would do the same.
Offshore Wind Farms: Unexploded Ordnance
John Nicolson Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the disposal of unexploded ordnance for offshore windfarm construction.
I express my appreciation to the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) and the hon. Members for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) and for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for supporting my application for the debate. All of us welcome the extraordinary potential of our wind and wave power. As we seek to meet our climate obligations, we have a God-given asset off our shores. I think it was the Prime Minister who called Scotland the Saudi Arabia of renewables.
To the casual observer, the bonanza ahead may seem low-cost and environmentally unimpeachable. If only that were so. Alas, the 20th century’s brutal European conflicts littered our once pristine seabed with a legacy: 100,000 unexploded 20th-century bombs—a monstrous monument to brutality,
“for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men”,
as Herman Melville tells us in “Moby-Dick”.
The great offshore wind turbines are anchored to the seabed, and the bombs—an estimated 100,000 of them—pose a mortal danger. What should we do with them? How do we make safe these aquatic minefields? Hitherto, we have got rid of these munitions in the crudest way possible, by blowing them up, using high-order disposal, as it is called, with a counter-explosive detonating the munition so that it can be safely moved—safe for humans, perhaps, but devastating for marine life. Due to the greater penetration of sound underwater, the explosion aftershock can travel up to 25 km. To give an idea of scale, that is roughly half the distance of the channel tunnel. Imagine the noise.
These explosions will kill any sea life nearby. If they do not die instantly, the pressure wave causes traumatic harm, such as lesions, haemorrhages and decompression sickness. Marine biologists tell us that, even if they survive the initial blasts, these can deafen aquatic mammals such as whales, porpoises and dolphins. Without hearing, they cannot communicate or navigate, leading to mass stranding. One recent example of mass stranding occurred when 39 long-finned pilot whales were stuck in the Kyle of Durness. A UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report concluded that the only external event with the potential to cause such a mass stranding was a munitions disposal operation. Nineteen of the stranded whales died. Last year, autopsies showed that scores of porpoises were deafened as a result of explosions used to clear second world war German mines in the Baltic sea. All died subsequently.
Do we have to choose between green power and mammal safety? Fortunately not. A new method of munitions disposals is available. I have seen it work. It is known as low-order deflagration, and it is a breakthrough. The technique was invented in the early 2000s and is used by the US military and 15 other countries’ navies worldwide, including our own Royal Navy, which has used it since 2005. The National Physical Laboratory has said that the new method
“shows considerable promise for noise abatement”
in bomb disposal.
In layman’s terms, this alternative system makes the bombs safe without blowing them up. It allows a small charge to penetrate the bomb casing without detonating it. That causes the explosives to burn out, and the device becomes safe. This system significantly lowers emissions and noise, thus reducing dramatically the danger to wildlife and the local environment. Scientists calculate that for some of the larger munitions, low-order deflagration could be several hundred times quieter.
Therefore, we understand the problem, and luckily the solution is straightforward. In answer to a written question from my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), the Government assured her that were Ministers to become aware of evidence concerning harm caused to marine life by the disposal of munitions, they would act, and Ministers have now included a request for developers voluntarily to use deflagration
“as an initial method of mitigation”.
Saying please is nice. However, as we well know, it does not always work. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Marine Management Organisation must update their current licensing regime to ensure that deflagration is the only option for munition disposal. After all, if the Royal Navy uses this method, why should not businesses do so as well? The Secretary of State must set out a realistic timeline for this requirement, so that businesses are able to adjust. No one wants to see renewable energy construction delayed any longer than is absolutely necessary, but none of us wants to see a bloodbath on our ocean floors.
This is one of those times when party politics can be set aside and evidence-based policy can be enacted with all-party agreement. The Minister’s team asked me yesterday to outline my arguments for today, to help them to prepare a response. I was happy to do so; I doubt that there will be much disagreement between us. But I will ask something in return. I ask the Minister to take ownership of these issues and regulate as soon as possible. Perhaps we could work together and invite Labour colleagues, too.
In closing, let me thank Joanna Lumley, who brought this issue to my attention. I was delighted to accept her invitation to become involved—indeed, who could resist?
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
I intend to give Back-Bench Members an indicative time—four minutes, please.
John Nicolson [V]
I thank all the people and constituents who asked for this debate, and the hon. Members who have spoken. I felt the Minister’s pain as she tried to cope with saying “East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow” a couple of times.
I was interested to hear the Minister say that whales, dolphins and porpoises are legally protected. They are not being protected if they are being blown up, which is what is happening at the moment. The Minister asked a number of times whether deflagration works, what the evidence is, and whether it is safe. Those are all excellent questions, but we already know the answers because the method has been tried around the world. We do not have to do our own independent research when research is available from other countries.
There is only one question that Members across the room want an answer to, and it is this: will the Minister ban the bomb—yes or no? Sadly, the answer appears to be maybe. I hope there is speedy progress.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the disposal of unexploded ordnance for offshore windfarm construction.