Agriculture Bill

Lord Cormack 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 Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 27. The consultation with the dairy industry highlighted a need to define how the codes of conduct will be enforced and how that enforcement will be financed. The dairy industry must be given a chance to provide views about enforcement. A range of options are possible. Arbitration or an ombudsman model are suggested. In either of these models, the cost must be considered. Legal advice and litigation costs will have to be considered. All such costs will ultimately fall on consumers. In this pandemic era, consumers must be considered. Families of lower income and those facing homelessness must be protected. Does the Minister agree that all such extra legal costs must not fall on consumers?

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly to two amendments: Amendment 2, in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 5, in the name of my noble friends Lord Caithness, Lord Dundee and Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I agree entirely about the beneficial effects of being able to enjoy the beauties of our countryside; that should go without saying. But I also very much agree with my noble friend Lord Caithness and, indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, about the position of the landowners and farmers in question.

As we begin what I hope will not be quite such a marathon stage of the Bill, I very much hope that we will never, at any stage of our deliberations, lose sight of the fact that this is the Agriculture Bill, and its prime purpose is to protect and enhance British farming and those who earn their living from it. It is to underline their duties to be custodians of the countryside; it is to underline their responsibility to enable people to enjoy the countryside.

But we have only to reflect briefly on some of the ghastly things that have happened since Committee to realise how important it is that not only are farmers and landowners responsible but that those who enjoy the countryside are responsible. We have witnessed some, frankly, despicable scenes over the last two or three months—people going into the countryside and not enjoying it but pillaging it, defacing it, neglecting what it truly is and creating horror and squalor where there is, and always should be, beauty. I hope we can bear all those things in mind as we go through Report.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who has been exceptionally kind to me in previous debates. It deeply saddens me that I do not quite agree with him: I think there will always be a tension between town and country, and some of that comes down simply to a lack of information available to those who despoil the countryside, and that is something we should think about.

It gives me great pleasure, even joy, to be speaking on Report on this Bill, with such a broad consensus on shaping a greener future for British farming and land management. The sheer volume of amendments on the Marshalled List is testament to the scale of ambition shared by noble Lords across the House, and it is unfortunate that your Lordships may not be able to divide on as many amendments as we might have liked.

I was going to speak only to Amendment 4, because I thought it was the most radical, in terms of opening up new paths and new opportunities for people to walk, but now that my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle has given me the opportunity to range wider, I shall speak to some of the others.

I am pleased by the cross-party, non-partisan way in which the House has come together to focus on some of the most important issues, so that the Bill addresses some of the most pressing issues facing the health of our people and our planet. I felt that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, was very brave in going to California. I have watched with horror the pictures and the testimonies from a California that is clearly suffering and will clearly have a problem feeding and nurturing its own residents in the near future.

The amendments in this first group can be broadly categorised as improving public access to the benefits and beauty of British land, and anything that can be done to expand the public’s access and use of the land is a positive step. The Bill already makes broad overtures in that regard. Despite having a great respect and liking for the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, I am not quite sure about the word “voluntarily”. On a path that I regularly walk, the farmer puts all sorts of impediments in the way, and that footpath has been there for many centuries. For example, one often finds wire fencing, flocks of geese or cows that are about to be milked—it makes it quite difficult for the average walker.

Some of the other amendments are simply common sense. It would be perfectly logical for the Minister to go back to the Government, and when the shadow, the spectre, of Dominic Cummings looms over him, I think he should say “Dom, you know nothing about this—go away, and let us improve the Bill”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and his very interesting thoughts on commons. That is a very useful debate to have and one we must take seriously. I echo the words of those who have been talking about the need to get new entrants into agriculture and develop diversity.

I have added my name to Amendment 16 in the name of my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Dundee, who have already spoken about it adequately. I am delighted to see that climate change mitigation is in the list, because we have to take it seriously. I know that the NFU has set an ambitious target with regard to being net zero, so that is something that the agriculture sector is taking very seriously.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Caithness on his myth busting around the fact that farming can be eminently profitable and nature friendly. As we have all been hearing, nature-friendly farming is the way forward. I also send my congratulations on his words about the Allerton project of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. I visited it a few years ago and was incredibly impressed by the work there. He mentioned the grey partridge. In conjunction with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, National England and others, there is also the Peppering Partridge Project, which shows that not only can farming be very beneficial to wildlife but game shooting can be very beneficial to wildlife. That might seem slightly counterintuitive, and I speak not as a shooter myself, but it shows how all those different aspects can work together.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, talked about trust. I have immense trust in the entire ministerial Defra team. We are very fortunate in this House to have my noble friends Lord Gardiner and Lord Goldsmith, and in the other place we have other very committed people who take the environment and farming interests very seriously. There is always the case of not knowing what is going to happen later but, at the moment, I have immense trust in them and wait to hear what they have to say.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating and thoughtful debate, and I would like to make a few remarks about three amendments. My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering set us off to a good start. However, I want to talk not about Amendment 6 but rather about Amendment 7, and really for the reasons mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who referred to those very important words “pasture fed.”

The only thing that really terrifies me about farming is the increasing move in certain places, particularly across the Atlantic, towards what can only be called factory farming, with vast sheds occupied by living creatures who never see the light of day. The glory of farming is, in many ways, pasture farming. Anything that we can do we should do to encourage our farmers to pasture their cattle, have their sheep on the hills and, indeed, to have their pigs eating their mast in the woods —and, of course, to make sure that we move away from that ghastly poultry farming which so polluted one of the loveliest stretches of the Wye earlier this year, when it seeped out from massive chicken battery farms. Anything we can do to emphasise the importance of pasture farming should be done.