Groceries Supply Code of Practice

Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Anthony Mangnall

Monday 22nd January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Kirsty Blackman]

My apologies. I hope that it gets the attention it deserves from not just around the House—it is clear that all sides agree that there is a problem and it needs to be solved—but the wider public; although some of them have taken the opportunity to sign the petition, others may not have heard of it. Hopefully, this debate will bring a bit more attention to it and ensure that more people are aware of the problems facing farmers right now.

I have some points from the Scottish Government and from a Scottish perspective. We are looking for clarity and certainty on the future of rural funding. We are committed to maintaining direct payments, but it would be incredibly useful to know exactly what will happen in the future. We are also still looking for more information on the EU labelling rules—the labels that say, “Not for EU”. The Scottish Parliament has the right to make decisions on labelling because it is a devolved matter. However, the UK Government are making decisions and saying that they apply across the whole UK. We do not want that burden to be put on our farmers when we are not choosing for that to happen. Anything the Minister can do to ensure that there are communications with the Scottish Government so that they are kept as up to date as possible on the labelling issue would be useful.

On spending and how farmers are managing at the moment, there continues to be an issue around immigration, in relation to both seasonal workers and food manufacturing —in particular when it comes to abattoirs—despite the fact that the Government have introduced temporary, short-term visas to allow people to take on those roles.

There is a significant issue with vets. Food manufacturing ends up costing significantly more because if it is much more difficult to get vets, it is even more difficult for farmers to get what they need in terms of producing costs. Lastly, the issue around seed potatoes continues to be significant and, as far as I know, does not look like it is going to be solved. It would be helpful if we were able to export seed potatoes again. The Scottish Government have created an £180,000 pilot fund for abattoirs and small food producers. If the UK Government were willing to look at the results of our pilot, once we have them, they may be keen to take on that way of funding small producers and abattoirs to ensure that they continue to keep their heads above water into the future.

We cannot lose our farming industry. We also cannot allow consumers to be ripped off when they are buying food at the supermarket. I have very little sympathy for supermarkets that are making billions when my constituents cannot afford food and farmers are being paid pennies—if that—in every pound for the food they produce.

The UK Government’s food security targets are all well and good, but there needs to be more intervention to ensure that they are met: things like the trade deals, for example. During my time on the EFRA Committee, it seemed to me that nobody had thought about how those might impact farmers in these islands. It seemed that it was just, “We have decided that this is a good thing and therefore we are doing it”, and that farmers’ voices were not heard during those negotiations. I know that lots of things need to be taken into account when trade deals are signed—I absolutely get that. But the fact that farmers seemed to be so sidelined and not listened to in the process really concerned me.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that important point. She is absolutely right that farmers should not be forgotten in our trade deals. As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, I ask her whether she will therefore welcome the fact that the Trade and Agriculture Commission is on a statutory footing. Will she also recognise that under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, we will have a debate on the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, which will give every Member the chance to debate this issue, talk about farming, and review the advice from the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which will be reviewing all future trade deals?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I appreciate that the Trade and Agriculture Commission exists, and I appreciate the CRAG processes, but I do not think that is enough. There should be more say for Parliament. I understand the UK Government’s arguments for why the commission does not have that, but leaving some of the most detailed scrutiny to Select Committees is not ideal. Select Committees do a great job, but every Member should have the opportunity to make decisions on this issue—not just to have a say on the CRAG processes.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank the hon. Lady for being so generous in taking interventions. I agree with her; indeed, this is becoming a point of violent agreement. Parliament is getting more of a say, because of the work of the Select Committee—not just my work, but that of many others on that Committee, who have pushed to strengthen CRAG, to ensure that we will have a voice in that process. We have also strengthened the ways in which Members are updated on the progress of trade deals. I gently make the point, because it is important, that over the last four years there have been fantastic cross-party improvements to our trade deals, although that is not to say that there is not further to go.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I am astonished to find myself agreeing with the hon. Gentleman, but there has indeed been progress. However, there is still further to go. More could be done to allow Members to have a say.

Mrs Murray, in this room you have heard today the voices of people who listen to their constituents and are heavily involved in their constituency. I would like those voices—indeed, voices from all parts of these islands—to have a say, but I still think that we are not quite there yet.

Farmers and crofters absolutely deserve a fair return for the costs and risks involved in their work. They produce the highest quality food and drink. Also, the environmental benefits of their work are significant. The landscape management and climate change mitigation work that farmers do has been mentioned, as well as the economic benefits of farming. All those things are important. Contracts should reflect the real costs of farming and should allow for regular review as well, especially in the event of unexpected shocks.

Although farming is absolutely about long-term planning, farmers cannot work out five years in advance that inflation and fertiliser prices will go through the roof, so contract reviews need to take place, so that they can reflect the costs that farmers face, particularly when those costs go up. Changing the GSCOP is important, as is giving the GCA more teeth.

Lastly on the SNP’s position, we agree with NFU Scotland that the UK Government have a key role to play in helping to engage the retailers and food service companies, to ensure that supermarkets do not price-gouge, that food growers and their supply chains are sustainable, and that food processors and producers, farmers, fishermen, food manufacturers and those involved in abattoirs are fairly compensated for their hard work and dedication to feeding the people of these islands.

House of Lords Reform

Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Anthony Mangnall

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I come to this debate somewhat prepared and somewhat remembering my A-level classes, where we had to debate the idea of House of Lords reform. As I stand here now, a few years on from my A-levels, and think about the merits of the House of Lords, I fear that the wolves are circling.

When SNP Members turn up to a Westminster Hall debate and promise to improve the constitution of the United Kingdom, I feel they are somewhat acting like pandas: they want to eat, shoot and leave our constitution. I worry about that and about the damage the proposals from the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) might cause. In his typically erudite way, he came up with a whole host of reasons for some of the mistakes and problems that can be seen in the House of Lords. Of course, we can see mistakes and problems in the House of Commons, and we should not be outright opposed to some reforms or changes. However, what the hon. Gentleman typically forgot to do was to talk about some of the positive aspects of the House of Lords and the important work it does, or about many of the occasions on which the SNP has been led to support the House of Lords when it has checked the Government on important pieces of legislation.

I will start with a few points of rebuttal, since I do believe this is like an A-level debate.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, supporting something and agreeing with a decision are two very different things. Just because, on occasion—particularly during Brexit—the SNP has agreed with decisions that the House of Lords has made, that does not mean that we support it or have ever said that we support it.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I was not suggesting for a second that the SNP had done so. I was more making the point that, although I hope Scotland always remains part of the Union of the United Kingdom, if the SNP wants to not be part of it, perhaps it should not be making comments on this topic.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North made a point about opulence and tradition—that he was not so in favour of it and that he is lost for words when he stands in the House of Lords. I, too, am lost for words when I stand in the House of Lords—because of the sheer magnificence, the history and the tradition. No nation was ever weakened by a love of tradition; in fact, a nation can be strengthened and improved by it. We can use tradition to our advantage.

When we talk about that tradition and that opulence, we can also talk about the important pieces of legislation that start in the House of Lords and make huge differences to people across the land, not because those in the Lords have necessarily been elected by the people, but because they bring with them a specific understanding and knowledge of sectors that would never normally put individuals into the public eye to make pieces of legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall]

If I may, the hon. Member’s colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow North, started off by saying that he was not going to be specific about individuals, and I do not think it is right that we are specific about individuals. However, if there is an individual who has done extremely well in business as a woman in the 21st century, I think it is important to note that. But I might also point out that the House of Lords has been a welcoming home to refugees, in the form of Baroness Helic, who fled the war in Bosnia. It also has extraordinary scientists, such as Lord Winston. These extraordinary people make an extraordinary contribution, and they are not the minority—they are the majority.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Glasgow North pointed out only a few small issues, rather than the vast majority of positive things that go on throughout the House of Lords. He made the point about cronies in the Lords; the House of Lords is still conditioned to the standards that Parliament sets, and it is still compliant with the rules that we too must follow. It is important to remember that it is not some lawless upper Chamber in which people can do what they want. It is set to the same procedures and scrutiny that we must follow. I do not think we should put that aside.

I have a few points to make. First, the House of Lords serves as an important check and balance. I notice that not a single SNP Member was at yesterday’s debate on the Procurement Bill, apart from the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), who was on the Front Bench. Dry, difficult and sometimes dull as procurement might be, it is a perfect example of how a Bill can be introduced in the House of Lords, shaped by fantastic expertise from across the Chamber and then brought to the House of Commons, where it passes its Second Reading, not with great confrontation and difficulty, but with acceptance that it is a good piece of legislation that will make a huge difference.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I would be interested to know whether the hon. Member thinks that the Government will undo some of the amendments the Lords put in and that the Bill will end up looking more like it did when the Government introduced it—rather than retaining what those experts in the House of Lords did to it?

[Anthony Mangnall]

It is perfectly acceptable to say that there will be scrutiny and change, as there always is, but that is not to say that the job has not been well done by Members of the House of Lords. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Aberdeen North may laugh about that, but that is exactly the point of the process. We want to be able to make use of that expertise in the House of Commons, and we want our legislative agenda to be scrutinised in the House of Lords. That is the way the system works.

Those important checks and balances have meant that pieces of legislation that have been passed on the fly—I have felt that, in some cases, they have perhaps been passed too quickly—have been checked and sent back by the House of Lords. When it comes to international development, which I am deeply concerned about, the House of Lords has been extremely effective in that regard. That is something that those on the Labour Front Bench might agree with me on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman]

My issue is not with the actions of individuals at certain ages or with the fact that there are many 71-year-olds who could run rings around significant numbers of us younger ones—I absolutely agree that that is the case. My issue is that it does not represent the population. We are supposed to have a representative democracy but it fails to be so because its membership does not look like the rest of the population.

I will take a moment to tackle another thing that the hon. Member for Totnes said. Some 57% of Members of the House of Lords went to private schools, which is ridiculously high.

[Anthony Mangnall]

That number is going down.

[Kirsty Blackman]

It is going down, yes, but much more slowly than if we had an elected Chamber where Members were not appointed for life. Some 6% of Members of the House of Lords are from a minority ethnic background, whereas 13% of people in the UK are from such a background. Because the unelected Chamber is over 800 people large, every person appointed to the House of Lords over a period of years would need to be from a minority ethnic background in order for the membership to look like the population. The unrepresentative nature of the House of Lords is a problem that cannot be fixed easily or quickly because of the fact that people in that House are appointed for life.

The issue of attacking the House of Lords because of what it is rather than what it does has been raised. That is the opposite argument to the one we hear from the Labour party, which suggests that we should not attack the current constitutional arrangement because of what it is—that we should not attack the current constitutional arrangement. The Labour party says that just because the Conservatives are in power, that does not mean that the constitutional arrangement for the devolution settlement is less than perfect, and that once we have a Labour Government it will be grand and everything will be significantly better than it currently is. I am not going to buy that. I am going to attack things for what they do and what they are. It is completely reasonable for us to have issues with the actions of the House of Lords or of the Government in the House of Commons, and with the way that those institutions are set up and run. I see no contradiction in making criticisms of both those things and am quite comfortable doing so.

I do not think that anybody here believes—I really hope they do not—that the current constitutional settlement and the way the House of Lords currently works and interacts with the House of Commons is 100% perfect. I do not think that anybody is willing to defend the current system as absolutely the best possible system we could have. I do not think that is the case, because the system is indefensible. We have a massive House in the other place, and one of the things that frustrates me most about the House of Lords is the fact that it can originate legislation. It is a checking and balancing system; how dare they originate legislation? Lords are unelected. It is done for reasons of timetabling. That is completely shocking if it is to continue to be an unelected Chamber.

I very much appreciate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North having secured this debate and allowed me to have a bit of a rant about the House of Lords and my criticisms of it. Obviously, the way to resolve this—I am quite happy to eat, shoot and leave—is for us to leave the United Kingdom and leave youse to it. In the meantime, while we are members of this United Kingdom, although currently against our will, we would like to improve it. We would like to try to make it better, and to do that we need to abolish the House of Lords.