Agriculture Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. The nearest I can come to making a declaration of interest is that I live on the Isles of Scilly next to a farm which grows all kinds of vegetables and fruit, and which has pigs, cows and chickens. That farm is really suffering at the moment because of Brexit and transport costs, and the farmer has had to kill most of the pigs and chickens. That is just one example of the problems, mentioned by many noble Lords, of bringing forward this Bill at the same time as the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit. I support the key tests proposed by my noble friend Lord Grantchester regarding safe and traceable food, support for jobs, investment in research, and high standards. The Bill needs to deliver those.

On jobs, many noble Lords spoke about the need to improve skills for agricultural workers, but I believe that our immigration policy is putting the ongoing viability of many farmers at risk. Noble Lords will have read that several flights of workers from Bulgaria and Romania came in a month or so ago. None of them had social distancing on the plane. They were all exempt from the 14-day quarantine period, because there are no workers in this country. I enjoyed reading about the equivalent problem in Germany, where the chairman of their fruit and vegetable pickers association said that Germans are no longer the right shape to bend down and pick vegetables. I do not know what we will do, but the Government must set up some kind of long-term arrangement to ensure that there is a proper supply of seasonal workers in the sector and make them welcome.

On finance, I would welcome any scheme for agriculture that gives more support to local farmers and hill farmers, particularly those who have sheep. There is a double whammy here: I understand that in six months’ time, according to Professor Fiona Smith from the University of Warwick, if we do not get agreement on Brexit there will be a 51% duty on the export of sheepmeat to the European Union. How will farmers deal with this? It might be that the sheep can be exported elsewhere, but we ought to know a bit more about these things at this stage, with only six months before Brexit happens. The House needs a lot more time and much more detail.

My last point is that a lot of this traffic goes between the EU and the UK in trucks. There is still no border operating manual to tell operators and customers how they are supposed to move these goods, whether they are temperature-controlled fresh fruit and vegetables, meat or animals. Many of these journeys need phytosanitary controls. It is no good trucks queueing up for several days at Calais or Dover, because most of the product will be inedible or dead, sadly, before they get to the other side.

I hope the Minister will tell us a lot more about the information that operators and customers will need. I hope that he actually cares. I think that he does, but an awful lot of other people in the Government do not seem to care at all as long as we can get Brexit done and all our exports to the EU converted to the United States.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I lend my support to Amendment 87. I declare my interest as an honorary associate of the British Veterinary Association.

In the 1980s, we had an extensive network of small, family-run, easily accessible abattoirs, then along came an innocuous draft EU directive on slaughterhouses. As an MEP, I took soundings from many in rural communities. We worked very closely with what was then MAFF. Off his own bat, after years of waiting, and in a classic example of gold-plating, an official in MAFF took the opportunity to drive a coach and horses through the abattoir network and close many of the well-functioning, perfectly safe, smaller abattoirs serving the rural communities.

That brought devastating results in the early 1990s and again in the early 2000s, when we experienced BSE and foot and mouth disease. As the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said in moving this amendment, that led to longer journeys for livestock being taken to abattoirs, and potentially the spread of those diseases at that time. The noble Lord quite rightly identified this problem, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has just said, there are now parts of Scotland, particularly the islands, without abattoirs and completely dependent on mobile abattoirs. That raises costs to the producer, which goes to the heart of the viability of livestock production in the rural areas of the Highlands and Islands and, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, raises serious animal welfare concerns.

We must revert to a better and more extensive network, as we enjoyed before. This network of smaller, family-friendly, easily accessible slaughterhouses should be put in place and Amendment 87 provides the means to do so.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on this amendment, so ably proposed by him and the two noble Baronesses who have just spoken.

I am no expert on agriculture, but I live in the Isles of Scilly, and I want to give a small example of the need for an abattoir there, which may be similar to the example of Scotland just given by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. There are five inhabited islands in the Isles of Scilly. They all have livestock—cows and often pigs—and they provide some good conservation grazing, overlooked by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. All the farmers are very much in favour of having an abattoir on the islands and would probably increase the number of cows they have if this were the case.

One problem at the moment is that they go from the off-islands in their trailers in a small freight ship to St Mary’s, and then on to another freight ship to Penzance, which takes about five hours on a good day—it does not travel on a bad day. They may then be trailed as far as Plymouth, which probably takes another five hours or so, and then, as we all know, the animals are rested before being slaughtered. Another problem is that there is an enormous cost to this. Some farmers say that the feedstuffs they have to buy cost three or four times as much as on the mainland.

There is an enormous interest in having a fixed abattoir on St Mary’s. The Duchy of Cornwall, which is the landlord here, has told me that it would be keen to see one built here now that the problems of remote veterinary oversight, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, have been overcome. All the farmers would use it but the problem, of course, is the capital cost. It is expensive and would not be used all the time but, once it was operational, it would wash its face because there is a big demand for local meat here, grown locally. Even when it goes to the mainland and comes back in butchered portions it is very popular—I think it is really good.

My only comment on the amendment itself is that for us in Scilly, “slaughtering” would need to include a cutting room and butchery. They may need to be part of it. Again, I am no expert on this; some other noble Lords who have spoken, or the Minister, may be able to put me right. But if we are going to slaughter the animals here on this island—or, I suggest, in other remote areas in the Scottish islands or parts of the mainland—we need to butcher and prepare them, and then be able to sell them locally. That would be really beneficial to the local economy at this time, when many hill farmers and remote farmers are very concerned about what will happen after Brexit.

When the Minister comes to wind up, I hope that he will either agree to this amendment or invite us to a meeting or two and come up with his own suggestions on this small but very serious problem. It could enable the hill farmers and island farmers—and probably remote farmers in Cornwall as well—to survive and prosper, using local and rare breeds on occasions, along with many other benefits of local delivery. I fully support the amendment.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, my interests are as on the register. In addition, I chair The Prince’s Countryside Fund and this is an issue of deep concern to that fund, which has attempted to provide support to some of the threatened abattoirs, particularly on the Scottish islands referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I also declare that I speak as a former chair of the Meat and Livestock Commission, which I was when much of the EU legislation to which she also referred was introduced, leading to the closure of a lot of small abattoirs.

I very much support Amendment 87, sponsored by my noble friend Lord Trees. The geographical network of abattoirs across the United Kingdom is essential to ensure that local livestock producers have slaughtering facilities. These UK livestock producers are becoming increasingly worried about their future at present and feeling threatened on a number of fronts. There is high-profile media support for plant-based protein, for example, as referred to in debate on the Bill earlier this week, and that land should be converted from meat production to plant-based food. A vast proportion of the landscape of Britain is incapable of producing plant-based food for direct human consumption. It delivers a huge range of environmental benefits by grazing livestock, including biodiversity and carbon capture. This was referred to comprehensively by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in debate on the previous group of amendments.