Agriculture Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

I say to my noble friend that, for once, horticulture needs the involvement of Her Majesty’s Government. We need a strategy across government and industry; it is a small-scale industry, but it has such potential. Therefore, I make this plea to my noble friend—I believe it falls on productive soil—to look at horticulture, see what it needs, recognise its role of import substitution and get cracking to reinvigorate the industry, which was three, four or five times bigger in past decades than it is today.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I regret that we have to deal with these proceedings virtually; we would not normally do so, but these are not normal circumstances. It is a hugely ambitious and vital piece of legislation that must, of course, be debated, but also allowed to breathe. I fear—forgive me if I sound impertinent—that far too many of the amendments that we are seeing today and on other days will not improve the Bill but instead tend to smother it.

As my noble friend Lord Naseby just mentioned, this is the third day in Committee and we are still on Clause 1, with another 53 clauses plus all the schedules to go. I hope noble Lords will agree that as a responsible House we have a duty to exercise a little caution and even a little self-restraint.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, will forgive me if I offer a few words about her Amendment 47 on

“transitioning from livestock to plant-based food production.”

Last week we were discussing getting livestock out of the sheds and into the fields. This week we are getting the same livestock, which have just been put into the fields, out of the fields again and replacing them with plants. Even the cows are confused, so I have no idea how my noble friend the Minister will deal with that.

I have an even more fundamental objection to this amendment. Transitioning from livestock to plants en masse may be a good thing; it may not. There are very opposed opinions on this. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made some good points about the importance of a balanced diet. Wrapped up in this amendment is a clear political agenda, and the noble Baroness as good as acknowledged that in her extensive remarks. I am not afraid of politics, but taxpayers and consumers should not be asked to pay for a political agenda through the back door, as this amendment does, unless they voted for it—which they have not. This is not the stuff of fundamental legislation but for the political hustings. If it is so good for farmers’ incomes and consumers’ health, as has been suggested, they will get the point without any instruction from us.

In these difficult circumstances we have a responsibility to be brief, so I will finish on Amendment 35 on

“access to food that promotes good health and wellbeing.”

But of course. How can I say this without causing offence? This amendment, in this Bill, is apple pie so sweet it will make your teeth rot. It is totally unnecessary; indeed, it is inappropriate. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has acknowledged, it is beyond the scope of the Bill.

Some want to turn the Bill into a vehicle for fundamental social change, but this is a Bill on agriculture, not the Sermon on the Mount. I hope the Committee will show a good deal of self-restraint in both debating and pursuing these amendments, no matter how worthy some of their objectives may be.

[Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I first declare again the interests I declared last week, as in the register.

I am delighted with this set of amendments, because they put right a fundamental flaw in the Bill, which was to make a false distinction between food production, food and agriculture on the one hand and the environment. This is dangerous, because it plays into the hands of those who say that all that matters is the environment, which irritates the people who see their main job as producing food.

This debate has really brought back a unity and a recognition that food production is not simply a private good but very much a public good; I hope this is able to be incorporated in the Bill in some way on Report. We have seen two main reasons given, both very relevant: security and, of course, obesity. Security has come to the front recently because of Covid, and everybody who happily took the instant availability of anything they wanted from anywhere in the world got a rude awakening; we all did. I was taken back to my childhood days in the war. At home in Suffolk we managed to get a fortnightly delivery from Waitrose because we were locked up. My wife had ordered a bunch of bananas, and what actually arrived was two bananas—serves us right. The point is that food security means something: using what we have, not what we do not have.

The next important thing is obesity. It is the biggest epidemic we have, bigger and probably more important than Covid-19. This is absolutely a matter of better eating and eating more natural foods. I am not a vegetarian, but I believe that the simpler the food we eat is, the better. One of the great changes was when people stopped having porridge for breakfast. All sorts of sophisticated cereals were introduced—Corn Flakes, Grape-Nuts, Weetabix and so on—and very delicious they were. However, they soon became adulterated with far too much sugar and salt. Then we copied the Swiss and introduced muesli, which was originally simple grains, mixed, cold and raw, which you ate with your milk in the morning, but which has been adulterated and become a terrible product called Alpen, which is stuffed with sugar and fats and is quite revolting.

We must recognise that healthy eating is very important and the key to it is getting the consumer and the producer close together and making as many consumers as possible into producers. I very much support the remarks that have been made about horticulture. I will very quickly give one story of the first time I went to China, in December 1965, just before the chaos of the cultural revolution descended and swept away the Mao dynasty. I noticed when visiting a commune that the people who were happiest and who paid the most attention to life were those working their private plots in corners, which were very small and intensive, producing a great deal of food which obviously they ate themselves.

Small is beautiful, in farming as well as in modern technology, but we must spread the word of people getting involved in agriculture and getting consumers and producers together. Years ago, when I was on the Countryside Commission, the urban fringe was doing very badly. We had what we called Groundwork to clean it up. It was a great success. It got local people excited, and changed the nature of deprived and grotty, dirty, litter-filled areas, polluted ponds and so on. It is the same principle as the remarks that have been made about urban farming on this set of amendments. I am in favour of all that. The big lesson from this group of amendments is in exposing the false distinction between public and private good, in which food production is relegated to being a private good. Let us get together to improve our food, ensure the security of our food supply and, most of all, encourage the beating of obesity by the sensible eating of natural foods.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, there appear to be two different types of amendment in this group: those that seek to promote and incentivise advice and guidance, and those that seek to impose requirements on the Secretary of State. Amendments 58 and 119 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lord Caithness seek to promote advice; they are entirely right in that and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, spoke most eloquently about it. I will be interested in the Minister’s response; I am sure he holds all these leads close his heart. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, spoke so movingly about the challenges of change.

I suggest that Amendment 122 goes too far in requiring, rather than facilitating, advice—and across a large number of areas. This will inevitably make any advisory system more bureaucratic and less flexible. The object of the exercise is to promote opportunities for farmers, not bureaucracy. It is so important that we move flexibly and quickly in this area, rather than trying to set up another version of the common agricultural policy.

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I partially support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Lucas. Assistance should be given to training but there should not be just blanket financial assistance in this area. Last week, I received a letter from Defra about the environmental land management summary document; before I move on to that, let me put on record my thanks to the Minister for his tremendous work in tightening up matters at the RPA and improving BPS payment times.

The letter said, “Environmental land management: we want to hear your views”, and explained that, going back to February, there was a 10-week national conversation, which has been delayed due to coronavirus —fair enough. It also said that Defra was launching webinars, which I will take part in over the next few weeks. Then there is a six-page document setting out, very helpfully, broad details of the various tiers. I will summarise the purposes of each. Tier 1’s purpose is to incentivise environmentally sustainable farming and forestry and help to deliver environmental benefits; that is perfectly clear. Tier 2’s purpose is to incentivise the management of land in a way that delivers locally targeted environmental outcomes; that is a little more difficult. Tier 3’s purpose is to deliver land use change projects of a landscape scale to deliver environmental outcomes; that is not clear at all, in my view.

Then there is a chart about how you decide whether to participate in these schemes. Two key boxes say, “I decide which environmental outcomes and associated actions I am best placed to provide on my land”, and, “I develop a plan and submit my application”. For larger farmers, with the aid of advice, that will be not such a difficult thing, but as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said, for small and medium-sized farmers, it will be a very daunting task. Those farmers should get the financial assistance.