Agriculture Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, when opening the debate, observed that Clause 1 gives Ministers powers, not duties, so the financial assistance objectives of the Bill are only permissive and thus inevitably subject to the economic context in which it all becomes operational. It is all very well trying to allocate the most appropriate slices of the financial cake, as all amendments in this group do, but the overall size of that cake is the more critical issue for 2021 and beyond. Every single one of the bids for inclusion is at risk if the cake is drastically shrunken.

I said at Second Reading that I have no interests to declare, but in addition to substantial constituency and Commons responsibilities, until last year I had a small shareholding in a large farming company, and over the years, that enterprise had dairy and substantial arable interests, as well as renewable energy projects. I hope I can claim, therefore, to take an informed interest in the economic health of agriculture and rural areas.

The Bill is a legislative pig in a poke. Perhaps inevitably, but with dire consequences, it is entirely dependent on its context, and in the last week, since Second Reading, the likely context has deteriorated still further. First, the Government, for absurdly obstinate and dogmatic doctrinal reasons, refused to even consider giving the Brexit negotiators more room for manoeuvre by extending the transition. Secondly, Mr Frost then failed again to make any progress in the current discussions. Growers of fruit, vegetables and flowers are all too familiar with substantial frost damage. However, this frost damage is on an incalculable scale. We seem destined to charge towards a really bad deal for British agriculture, or, even worse, no deal at all. In his otherwise very comprehensive letter to us all on 29 June, the Minister completely failed to acknowledge this unprecedented uncertainty. He could make no concrete commitments. How could he, with the Covid-19 recession heading towards us at breakneck speed?

There are global trends to which our industry is especially vulnerable; for example, the failure of Trump’s attempt to build a market for US crops in China has left powerful American agribusinesses desperate to dump into the UK. On top of those major challenges, the combination of the Covid-19 recession and the Brexit failures is producing a uniquely unfavourable financial combination for UK farmers and growers, and the longer the crisis lasts, the nastier the results will be. For example, farmers will start to produce less. We are already experiencing the impact of having few of the 90,000 pickers we usually have from Europe. There will be resultant harvest losses. Then there is scarce credit. As operations slow down, loan terms are extended, cash is trapped and lenders are reluctant to finance commodities and are wary of volatile currencies. Governments everywhere will get scared. Export controls or attempted bans will cause price rises and shortages, with deprived communities hit disproportionately hard.

This all adds up to all the sectors of UK agriculture and horticulture finding it impossible to plan or invest in a climate of unprecedented uncertainty, just as the Government will be grappling with the worst economic crisis since the Second World War, and here, I thought the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, were very relevant. In these circumstances, Ministers can hardly be blamed for being so vague about the multiannual financial assistance plan specified in Clause 4. I am willing to bet that this appears only much later in the year, long after the Bill has reached the statute book.

In his letter, the Minister wrote:

“The Government intends to provide more detail about the early years of the transition, including Direct Payments and future schemes, in the autumn.”


I warn farmers and growers not to expect a cheerful Christmas present. With all the other competing claims—the NHS, the care sector, schools, reviving our already hard-pressed manufacturing sector and trying to stabilise service industries that are forced out of Europe—the Treasury is never going to be very generous to farmers.

Clearly, No. 10 plans to bury Brexit under the Covid-19 recession, but it risks burying large numbers of farmers and growers in the process, with calamitous consequences for consumers and for the nation’s food security. These amendments are crucial. They require the Government to be realistic and frank, because empty promises are literally worthless.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be back in the Chamber after nearly 15 weeks, and to reflect on what the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and others have said about the need to accommodate more Members and get back to normal as quickly as possible. I have a personal interest in that I have discovered that I am very poor at reading a speech into a computer microphone, or even improvising, and whatever skills I have in oratory, humour and irony are absolutely wasted when online—not that I intend to draw on all three of those this afternoon.

I want to reinforce points made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and to comment on the speech by my old—not in age but in longevity of friendship—friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. For those who do not know, the city of Sheffield incorporates in its boundaries a substantial part of the Peak District; in fact, a third of the landmass of Sheffield is in the Peak park. For the benefit of the noble Baroness, I can say that it is not, like some other cities, tatty—I think that was the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—land on the edge of the city. It is an essential part of the Peak park, as well as a breathing space, as it always has been, for the city itself.

The reason I mention it is that, as lockdown diminished—this was not one of those forays to discover whether I could drive a car safely—I went out into the area, still in Sheffield, around the Redmires Reservoir, and heard a curlew, one of the greatest sounds you can imagine. As the speeches this afternoon have emphasised, I simply want to say that in conserving as well as developing our agriculture, we should nurture the natural environment. I am all in favour of growing trees—they have to be the right trees—but we need our moorlands. On a point about water-gathering and conservation, we need to understand the essential nature of upland wet areas, particularly the peat bogs, which 13 years ago dried out to the point where, at around this time, in late June or early July, we had the most enormous flooding. At that time, civil servants told the Secretary of State, who happened—and continues —to be a friend of mine, that we were exaggerating when we said we had a problem. When the RAF lifted people by helicopter off the Meadowhall shopping centre, and when a 14-tonne piece of equipment was lifted out of its moorings and swept 100 yards from the Forgemasters factory in the lower Don Valley, I think they may have changed their minds. We need to be aware of what we do, how it affects our environment and why the Environment Bill that is to be brought forward and this legislation should go hand in hand.

I want to comment briefly on land management. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right to indicate that small farmers—tenant farmers, herdsmen—have a job surviving; they use their skills to try to make a sufficient living from keeping the countryside working. But I say to the noble Earl, Lord Devon, that there are large landlords who, like the Duke of Devonshire—no relation —have been struggling to manage the watercourse. They have been working to defend the river running through the land around Chatsworth House from the scourge of American crayfish—which is not one of the breeds that I hope we will be protecting so Amendment 27 is, perhaps, not appropriate after all. They have been trying to do this by persuading Defra to give them a licence so that, having dealt with these crayfish under proper regulations so that nobody thinks of farming them, they can dispose of the fish in a way that allows them to cover the enormous costs involved. I am talking about 20,000 crayfish per year from a stretch of water of just two miles, which destroy the embankments, undermine the area around and are incredibly dangerous in relation to flooding.

All these things go hand in hand. My plea this afternoon is that, as we go through this Bill in Committee and on Report, we reserve for amendments those things that are in synergy with each other, to ensure that the Bill comes out not as a Christmas tree but as a good English pine.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and strongly endorse his remarks with respect to the need to get back to this House properly, as soon as possible. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Fonthill Estate in Wiltshire, as listed in the register. I have read and considered all 36 of the amendments in this group and believe that the majority are unnecessary, even if they are well intentioned.

My noble friend Lord Lucas likes to use the verb “conserve” and attributes to it a meaning wider than words such as “protect” and “improve”. I sympathise with his intention to broaden the scope of the purposes for which the Secretary of State may provide financial assistance, but I am not sure that his suggestion to use “conserve” actually clarifies approved purposes, except in the cases of species of animals and plants.

My noble friend Lord Dundee and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, seek in Amendment 1 to clarify whether the Secretary of State really will provide financial assistance for the activities listed in Clause 1. I should have thought that this was obvious, but I welcome this amendment if it will encourage my noble friend the Minister to be much more specific in informing your Lordships of how much financial assistance will be made available under the ELMS scheme, and whether it will completely compensate for the loss of direct support payments, which will hit farming businesses hard in 2021.

It may be true that the larger estates are better able to survive the withdrawal of direct payments, but it is also true that the larger farming businesses employ a large majority of agricultural workers, and the prospects for those currently furloughed to return to the payroll will be enhanced if the Government can give a lot more clarity on how businesses can mitigate the loss of direct payments. Indeed, it should be made possible for those who are particularly innovative and active in introducing new, environmentally friendly practices to receive more than they have been receiving under the present system.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab) [V]]

On a previous group of amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to the quality of the contributions made during the course of this evening, and I echo that. It is true of the prolonged Committee stage of this Bill as a whole. The experience and knowledge that people have explored and delivered over these days has been remarkable, and I have learned quite a lot.

I speak in support of the amendments before us, particularly Amendments 175 and 176. It is clear to me that where the kind of disruption outlined this evening exists, the Government need to be able to intervene, but to do so to support the kind of farming that reflects the society we live in.

I will speak briefly on Amendment 176, because it has been dealt with previously. There is a slogan, “You are what you eat”. I think we are how we treat. At the very beginning of the debate back on Thursday 9 July —so long ago now that it is hard to remember—the noble Lord, Lord Curry, started the afternoon by talking about the educational quality of farming and the way in which children learn. In the past I have been struck, both in going into schools and with my own grandchildren, how they still believe that potatoes come from Tesco and eggs appear on Morrisons’ shelves but are not entirely clear on where they originate. The educative value of the way we treat animals is therefore crucial.

My noble friend and good friend Lord Rooker appeared on 9 July for the first time for many months and again this evening; I am very pleased to have him back. In the contribution he made on 9 July on Amendment 68—I am showing that I have been sitting in on these debates—he talked about poultry farming and the complexity, but also the importance, of the way we treat poultry and animals more generally. Linking this with the critical importance of being able to intervene—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has done in Amendment 176—is vital to ensuring that we get the balance right.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, also said earlier this evening that maybe speeches were too long, so I will pause.

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendments 174 and 285 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. As other noble Lords have said, Amendment 174 changes the wording in Clause 18 to remove “severe” twice and replace it with “acute or chronic”. Having checked the definition of acute—

“sharp and severe in effect”—

I think this is a better word than just severe. Chronic is even better, defined as

“persisting for a long time and constantly recurring”.

Adding at the end

“caused by economic or environmental factors”

defines more broadly the parameters when financial assistance may be given at times of crisis caused, as other noble Lords have said, by unpredictable natural phenomena such as the flooding earlier this year and drought more recently, and animal diseases. Amendment 285 extends this wording to Wales.

Amendment 175 partially covers ground covered in Amendment 174, but I prefer the broader aspect ofusb the former. I like the definition in my noble friend’s amendment of when exceptional market conditions exist.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I shall speak only briefly on this group of amendments in order to probe my noble friend the Minister on when we will have the Government’s response to the recent consultation on the activities of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. There was overwhelming support for keeping the existing levy, and I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that I do not think that farmers would welcome another levy in addition to the existing one. Support for the levy is fairly overwhelming at 66%, but it is important that we review the purposes for which it is used.

I want to place on the record the difficulties that abattoirs and auction marts are experiencing at this time because of Covid-19. I hope that we appreciate those difficulties and sympathise with farmers who, as sellers, are still not allowed to enter the auction mart because, as I understand it, the restrictions are still in place. Only the buyers are allowed to do so and if I was a livestock owner, I would find not being there very worrying. I would be interested to see the Government’s response to the consultation. I do not think that I have missed it—the website sets out only the responses that were submitted to the consultation.

Looking ahead to when we discuss other amendments to the Bill, I hope that part of the levy will be used for marketing and for export. I am sorry to raise my Danish connections again, but I have been hugely impressed by how the Danes use their levy, which is raised from livestock and other producers and then quite substantially matched by funding from the Government, to run marketing centres. I think that we are learning from that because we opened a marketing centre in Beijing and saw an immediate incremental rise in our exports of those parts of the pig that we do not like to eat. With those few words, I shall wait to hear my noble friend’s response.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, given her historic links to Yorkshire. It is not surprising that she has advocated a kind of danegeld in terms of this levy.

I am intervening in this debate because my name was not on the speakers’ list for the debate that took place earlier in Committee in which my noble friend Lady Mallalieu drew attention to the plight of small and niche abattoirs, many of which have gone out of business. This issue was flagged in the long-standing Radio 4 series “The Archers” when people engaged in a dialogue on it. I had been thinking mischievously of moving an amendment to try to get dialogue back into “The Archers” via this Bill. However, I take note of the stricture of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that many people have spoken at great length in these debates and so we are moving slowly through the Committee stage. For example, I spoke in the Chamber on 7 July and again at 11.05 pm on Tuesday night.

The point is that we need to coalesce the debates that have taken place. On Tuesday, I said that I have learned a great deal by following the debates and listening to those who have a great deal more knowledge than I do. My early time in politics was mainly informed by listening to my predecessor in the Sheffield Brightside constituency. His home and roots were in north Yorkshire, and his campaign to protect the rights of tenure of farm workers was successful. I come at this as a novice, but I believe that unless we get some clarity, both today and on Tuesday, on how we are going to take the Bill forward on Report, it is unlikely to see the light of day for a very long time.

I say to the mover of the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that I hope that in debating this levy, we take into account an earlier debate in Committee that revealed, to my surprise, the very small amount of land in the UK that can be described as being of grade one quality. Be careful what you do when allocating a levy, given the impact it could have on the different nations and geographic regions of the UK, as well as avoiding proselytising for vegetarianism.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I can assure him that my wife would be delighted if there were some means of restoring dialogue to “The Archers”. I want to speak briefly in support of Amendment 212, tabled in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Wigley. Clause 33 is a welcome step forward in making provision for a scheme which will address the long-running issue of a levy on livestock produced in one part of the UK but slaughtered in another being retained in that other part of the UK. This has long appeared to me to be unfair and has been the source of some contention, so the Government are to be commended for their initiative in this clause.

I support the amendment because it puts further flesh on the scheme to be devised by providing for the levy to be repatriated to the devolved Administration of origin, thus making it clearer what a key objective of that scheme should be. Quality Meat Scotland estimates that over £1.5 million of levy on Scottish animals is lost each year due to the fact that some cattle, sheep and pigs produced in Scotland are slaughtered elsewhere in the UK. I rather suspect that little goes in the opposite direction. If such a sum were repatriated, it could be applied to the promotion of quality Scottish beef, lamb and pig products. I therefore support the amendment and I hope that it commends itself to the Minister.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has withdrawn from this amendment, so the next speaker is the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, when this Bill was in Committee, I had the privilege of contributing on really critical issues to do with the protection of the environment and landscape, proper husbandry of soil for our future, the well-being of livestock, and the importance of protecting and securing our food supply, ensuring that it is environmentally friendly and good for our health. I believe that the amendment of the noble Earl contributes to this. It is clearly beneficial for smallholdings to be able to draw together all those key elements—the protection of the countryside and the decent ways we can grow our food and husband our livestock.

The intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is an important one. A third of the land-mass of the city of Sheffield is actually in the Peak District National Park, and a co-ordinated approach between local government and the park planning board to providing smallholdings and protecting those that still exist is really important, and that applies to national parks elsewhere.

The University of Sheffield is undertaking some creative and imaginative work on food production, which is being used around the world. That could be applied—expertise goes with the willingness of people to take on opportunity.

As the noble Earl described, the ability to work from home is now greater than ever, not just because people have learned during the Covid pandemic how to use the equipment but because the equipment is now more useable. People can combine one activity with husbanding the soil, and get a great quality of life from doing so. It also helps with local procurement, which will be an important issue, and therefore with the protection of our future food supply. It also benefits major urban areas, such as my own, where allotments have historically been critical, as well as smallholdings. Edward Carpenter, many years ago, was able to combine his wider activities with husbanding the land, and many examples of that sort exist.

I entirely support the noble Earl’s intentions this afternoon, but I offer one word of warning. I pay credit to Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx for this gem. Marx was once eulogising in one of the communist cells about how they would husband the land and livestock in the morning, then be able to write and have leisure and pleasure in the afternoon. One of those listening said, “And who will clean our shoes?” The answer came as fast as you would expect from Karl Marx: “You will”. Marxists have always felt that somebody would do something that would ensure that their lives were a little easier.

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and others argued that we will need to take action to promote the development of smallholdings in the variety of ways that they may manifest. The noble Earl has proposed that there should be guidance for local authorities to encourage the development, through smallholdings, of affordable rural housing, as well as to provide employment, promote biodiversity, reduce emissions, and improve soil fertility and the supply of local food. These are very ambitious and imaginative aims, and he introduced his proposals in a very compelling fashion with some very experienced supporters.

There will be areas around the country where local authorities are supportive of this sector; there are others where the sense in the farming community is that the local authorities face the town and never look to the countryside. Challenges to the latter are never addressed, even though the countryside is, at the very least, important for those in the town.

There is considerable concern about how the Government are currently reducing planning guidelines. This looks like a benign way forward, but post Brexit and post coronavirus, local authorities will be even more overstretched. They may not have the resources currently to be looking at this area effectively as well; they will need imagination and expertise. If this amendment is agreed, the Government will need to make sure that any such extra task is properly resourced, or it may mean little. I therefore look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.