Agriculture Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, first, for the purposes of all of Report, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner, as chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and chair of the advisory board of the Government’s Global Food Security programme on research. In Amendment 29, we have the key to getting the whole new farming and environmental land management programme to work on the ground. It is exciting that we have a new approach to helping farmers produce our food and manage our countryside. But with some basic ELM schemes still being piloted, neither we nor even the Government know exactly where we are going.

The pilot stage of ELMS is, in a way, providing the Government with their own training. I hope they will learn from it, but one thing is certain: farmers and land managers will need all the help and training they can get if we are to make this new approach work on the ground. Because there is little time between now and the putting in place of thousands of ELMS contracts, we must get a training scheme in place as soon as possible—training a farmer not only in how he can best judge what he and his land can provide of value for the nation, but in how best to deliver that value. With proper training it will be better for farmers, better for our flora and fauna, better for visitors and above all, as others have said, better for the taxpayers, who might then get the best returns that their money can buy.

Farming is one of the most isolated jobs in the world. Farmers are not necessarily slow to change, but without some form of proper training scheme it will be hard for them to engage successfully with this brave new world. Without their successful engagement, not only will the brave new world not happen but farmers themselves will fail financially, in their droves.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. No? Then we will move on to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, while I thoroughly support the aims of this Bill and the direction in which the Government are taking us, I have to say that I get more and more concerned as we delve into the detail of the Bill and the experts who are farmers—such as the noble Lords, Lord Curry and Lord Carrington, my noble friend Lady Rock and others—expose the concerns that farmers face. It is for that reason that I support many of these amendments.

I tried to put my name to Amendment 36 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, but there was already a full house of supporters. However, I supported this amendment in Committee and would do so again now. The argument is very compelling that the pilot schemes have only just started and it is going to take a long time for them to report and for the department to go through them, gestate them and work out what the future is. There would be very little time for the farmers to implement the results. Therefore, putting the whole thing back by a year would be a sensible, pragmatic and welcome solution to one of the many problems that the farmers face.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, made some very good points when he moved Amendment 37, which also deserves support. On the points made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on Amendment 38, I reiterate that you do not have to be an organic farmer to protect the environment. You can farm in a perfectly normal way and bolster it. My main concern is Amendment 42, to which I have put my name and which has just been so well introduced by my noble friend Lady Rock.

The noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, put it very succinctly when he spoke of sucking out the good of the department—I think those were his words. My concern is that as we move to ELMS, inevitably the department will move the good people into the new scheme and the less good people will remain with the old scheme. I hate to categorise the department in that way because all the members of Defra are good, but inevitably the really bright ones will be with the more attractive new scheme, and as the old scheme runs out, there will be an inevitable tendency for it not to receive the same attention that it gets now.

My noble friend Lady Rock was absolutely right to say that the one thing farmers need is certainty. As that support is reduced, so it is imperative that the payments are made promptly and on time. What recourse does a farmer have if he or she is made bankrupt because the Government, using taxpayers’ money, do not pay as they should? The area of financial support is hugely concerning and we must get it right. As the Bill stands, I am not convinced that we have got it right, which is why I support Amendments 36 and 42.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I call this group of amendments “Mind the Gap”, as I did in Committee—although I note that others have called it “The Valley of Death”.

The Minister has shown some flexibility over Clause 4, on the multiannual plans. He has listened well to the views of this House and adapted the Government’s position on Clause 17, on reports to Parliament on food security, but it seems strange that here, where there is every excuse in the world for delay, there has been no shift in the Government’s position—as yet. I am always hopeful.

It is a good two years since this Bill was first published, and since then there have been numerous delays in the implementation of what I have already called the “brave new world” of ELMS. The long, drawn-out shenanigans over Brexit froze everything in its tracks for a good 18 months, with this Bill being withdrawn from its parliamentary passage more than once during that time. Then of course there was this year’s lockdown, which paralysed the system and slowed everything up even more.

Above all, since my first meeting with the ELMS team at Defra early last year, there has been a gradual realisation that the introduction of ELMS is not going to be quite so simple as was first thought. We now know that it will take several years to get ELM schemes up and running across all the country, yet in the Government’s transitional timings there appears to be no allowance for the fact that the brave new world will not be a firm reality until 2024 at the earliest.

All the farmers that I have spoken to are very worried about their future. How are they going to survive, when no one really knows how things are going to work in future? Even the Government do not yet know, and yet, in spite of all the delays—mostly not the fault of Defra, as I said—we still seem to be stuck with the 2021 start of the transition period. This cannot be right. With the rug of the old world being pulled out from under them, and the new rug unlikely to arrive for some time, more farmers than necessary are going to fall down that gap.

So Defra has every reason to take this one back and think again. I do not care how it does it, but we need something to close the horrible gap that is looming. Amendment 37 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Carrington and Lord Curry, gives everyone the best chance of survival, while giving the Government the greatest room for manoeuvre. A 25% cut in the single farm payment will be enough of a shock to force farmers to throw themselves into the new training for the brave new world that we are assured will be available, but it will not be so much of a shock that they drown before they get there.

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Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

43: Clause 16, page 12, line 44, at end insert—
“( ) providing new socioeconomic support programmes to help farming households”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that Defra has the ability to assist farming households through a variety of non-production related schemes, so these households can continue to farm and manage their land.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 43 is a very harmless amendment, which merely gives Defra powers to introduce schemes to boost the rural economy. It does not force anyone, including Defra, to do anything, but merely enables them to ensure that as many as possible of the farming families, who are the backbone of rural England, will be able to survive on their land in years to come—particularly in the next five years, through the dramatic changes being introduced by the Bill. The fact that such powers also allow Defra to support the wider rural economy, and thus justify the rural affairs bit of its title, is incidental to the Bill, but it is hugely important to the majority of the people who live in our countryside. We should never forget that all the UK farmers and foresters together represent only about 4.5% of the rural population.