British Agriculture

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, for raising a series of very important matters. Like the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, I start by declaring an interest as the owner of a farm and the beneficiary of the common agricultural policy.

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has repeatedly emphasised her vision for our farming industry to be the best in the world. Indeed, at the NFU conference earlier this week, which has been much mentioned in this debate, she set out a long-term economic plan for food and farming which will ensure that this vital industry continues to grow and create jobs. One key element of this plan—making EU regulations work for British food producers, so that they can innovate and grow their businesses—is closely linked to the subject of today’s debate. As we have heard, being part of the EU brings benefits as well as challenges—regulations, in fact, on most areas of British agriculture and on the consumer. Quantifying those impacts is complex and challenging. However, noble Lords should be aware that the Government’s review of the balance of competencies between the EU and the UK, published last year, addressed these matters in great detail. Three of the reports published related directly to regulations affecting British agriculture. The consensus was strong support, including from the British farming industry, for the single market for agricultural goods, and for the EU’s powerful role in negotiating global trade deals for those goods.

Still, it is important to note that the views on more specific issues varied considerably. We have heard about several areas of division already today, so perhaps noble Lords will allow me to address some of them directly. On the common agricultural policy, we advocate a fundamental review of the current system of support payments. We want to see more emphasis on measures targeted at improving competitiveness and protecting and enhancing the natural environment. We were firm in advocating these beliefs during the CAP reform negotiations in 2013, and continue to press for further reform to reduce burdens on farmers and improve value for money. More immediately, we are committed to simplifying our own implementation of the CAP now. We are actively engaging in the latest CAP simplification agenda initiated by the European Agriculture Commissioner, Phil Hogan, of whom my noble friend Lord Caithness spoke optimistically.

Although I would never suggest that we have arrived at an acceptable CAP, I would like to give some examples of how the UK has applied pressure to improve the original proposals from the Commission. First, the original proposal did not cut the CAP budget at all, which would have been a disgrace. The final agreement cut the CAP budget by 13% in real terms.

As a result of our efforts, greening has been made less burdensome by raising eligibility criteria and adding more flexibilities. The crop diversification procedure proposals, for example, were originally for everyone with more than three hectares of arable land. Then there is the issue of ecological focus areas, which were originally to have been 7% of arable land. They have been reduced to 5% and, furthermore, nitrogen-fixing crops will now count towards the farmer’s EFA.

The original proposal for the active farmer test involved farmers’ accounts being checked to see what percentage of their income was from agriculture, which would have been hugely bureaucratic. We now have a much simpler approach based on a negative list of businesses deemed not to be farming.

Several member states argued that production quotas for sugar should continue for the whole of this CAP programme. In the end, we successfully argued to end these quotas in 2017. I am not saying that the result is good. However, we have been able to move it from terrible to bad. That is why we are maintaining the pressure.

To the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, with whom I agree on a surprising amount in this whole area, I have to say that I do not recall such effectiveness from the previous Labour Government. He asked why we had not done a better job. The answer is that we have to negotiate with the Commission and 27 other member states, but I can give him some examples of what we have done in terms of lobbying. A great deal of pressure was brought to bear by my right honourable friend Owen Paterson when he was Secretary of State, and my right honourable friend Liz Truss has retained that level of pressure. She wrote to the new Commissioner in October stating our concerns about the greening measures, and met him at November’s Agricultural Council to discuss the issue. Senior officials met their counterparts at the Commission in November, and my honourable friend George Eustice met a number of MEPs in December, January and February to raise UK concerns on greening and to encourage them to feed into the Commissioner’s CAP simplification exercise. The Secretary of State hosted a visit from Commissioner Hogan on Monday ahead of the NFU conference. They met farmers directly affected by the three-crop rule, allowing them to put their views to the Commissioner face to face. The Secretary of State is replying in very clear terms to the Commissioner’s request for suggestions on simplification.

It is not only the Commission and the Parliament with which we have engaged; at the meeting last October of the Stockholm group—consisting of senior officials from the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden—simplification was high on the agenda. The UK, Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Sweden signed a letter to the Commissioner in December calling for ambitious action on simplifying the CAP. And so it goes on.

As a result of all that work, Commissioner Hogan has committed to simplifying the CAP. He is currently, as my noble friend Lord Caithness said, undertaking an exercise to identify areas to reduce red tape and administrative burden. In answer to my noble friend, he has committed to producing a simplification strategy by the end of the year. He wrote to all member states last month asking for ideas on how to simplify the CAP without opening up regulations, focusing on the administrative burden for farmers. We consulted with the devolved Administrations and across the UK farming industry, and the Secretary of State will be responding tomorrow, calling for more ambitious action to simplify the CAP, including extending the review of the EFA requirements for greening to include the three-crop rule by 2016. Commissioner Hogan has also committed to reviewing direct payments, which include greening, ready for the 2017 payment year. The UK will be fully engaged in pushing for the most ambitious action to simplify the CAP in Commissioner Hogan’s mid-term review in 2017 to make UK farming more competitive. We believe that the only way to simplify the CAP properly is by making changes to the regulations, hence we are calling for more ambition and providing Commissioner Hogan with suggestions that require changes to legislation.

Various questions were asked by noble Lords. My noble friend Lady Byford talked about crop diversification, specifically in the area of dairy farming. She might like to know that farmers with fewer than 10 hectares of arable land are exempt from the crop diversification requirements, and those with 10 to 30 hectares must grow at least two different crops. It is therefore stepped so, to the extent that a dairy farmer is not growing arable crops, he will not bump into those rules.

The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, referred to current pressures on dairy farmers more generally, and he is quite right. We are doing all that we can to help dairy farmers overcome current pressures. The Rural Payments Agency has paid EU direct payments to 98% of farmers more than two months ahead of schedule, and almost every first-milk farmer has been paid. We are also working on longer-term resilience. He will know that the global market for dairy products is actually growing so, provided we can make ourselves as competitive as possible, we should be able to take advantage of that. The question is how we bridge the gap until we get there, and that is something we are acutely focused on.

On pesticides, the noble Lords, Lord Willoughby de Broke and Lord Grantchester, and my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lady Byford, among others, referred to neonics. The UK has consistently argued that decisions should be made on the basis of proportionate risk assessment, not an approach that rules out any conceivable risk, however improbable.

Noble Lords are right in what they say about the effects of a ban on yields. We raised these issues repeatedly with the Commission last year, and will continue to pursue the point with the new Health Commissioner. There is a review clause in the EU regulation and we will press for that to be carried out thoroughly, taking full account of costs as well as benefits. The European Commission has given an undertaking to commence a review of the science on neonicotinoids in 2015.

My noble friend Lady Byford asked about research on bees. I assure her that there is a great deal of research and monitoring on pollinators and this will continue, including under the national pollinators strategy.

Several noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Willoughby de Broke and Lord Grantchester, talked about GM. I know that they would not disagree that we must ensure that all GM products for cultivation in the UK must have passed a rigorous safety assessment. As written, the EU regulatory regime could allow timely market access for safe GM products but, in practice, as we all know, most member states oppose GM and vote against the science. Over time, this has become increasingly problematic and restrictive. We have been pressing hard for positive changes in the operation of the regulations. We want a pragmatic and proportionate regime. The recently agreed cultivation proposal did not go as far as I would have liked, but it could help to unblock the EU-level approval mechanism as it will allow those member states that do not want to cultivate GM crops to restrict or ban them while allowing countries that are open to the technology to use it.

A large number of questions were raised in this debate and I do not have time to answer them all. I will respond to noble Lords in writing where I find that I have not been able to do so in the debate.

My noble friend Lord Caithness raised a really important point about gold-plating. We are committed to avoiding, where at all possible, going beyond the minimum requirements of any measures being transposed. Taking such an approach will ensure that the UK does not create unnecessary legislative burdens and place UK business at a competitive disadvantage. To ensure that we do not gold-plate, my department must satisfy the reducing regulation committee that it has identified the aims of the EU law and the relevant policies of the UK Government and how, save in absolutely exceptional circumstances, it does not go beyond the minimum requirements of the measure being transposed. The policy teams have clear guidance and, indeed, specific training on policy development and consultations to ensure that they take steps to check whether their intended policy goes beyond the minimum requirements and to provide stakeholders with maximum opportunity to engage with us on our proposals.

Several noble Lords referred to Professor Anne Glover. I regret that the Commission decided not to continue the post of EU scientific adviser. Anne Glover was, and I know will continue to be, an enormous force for good in science. She served extremely well in Brussels and we intend to work closely with the Commission to ensure that any new arrangement is well suited to the purpose, providing first-rate scientific evidence.

I fear that I am out of time. I know that a number of other important points were raised; I will do my best to summarise them in letters to noble Lords.