Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

I thank the House for allowing me to speak momentarily in the gap. I had thought that my name was on the list to speak. I declare my interests as a dairy farmer receiving EU funds and having been chairman of a dairy farmers co-operative.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for his excellent introduction to the two reports and congratulate the committee on the comprehensive nature of both of them. They deserved separate debates for which Back-Bench advisory time could have been increased. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, on his maiden speech.

The first issue is obviously support for single farm payments under the CAP. Average farm income is £38,000. I know that averages hide wide discrepancies between farms and the various sector differences. The AHDB Horizon report has indicated that this could fall to £15,000 under a poor outcome on leaving the EU. This underlines the key area of defining the support to be adopted following the ending of government commitments to fund the £3 billion of support that UK agriculture in its widest sense currently receives. To vulnerable sectors where direct support is a key part of revenues in beef, lamb and cereals, the economic survival of farming and the UK’s production of food is at stake.

The second key issue is that primary processing must be maintained in the UK and be competitive as much of agriculture’s perishable output is consumed within the UK. Ideally this should be UK-owned as, in that way, the decision-making is done from a UK perspective to UK-defined priorities.

The next issue is overseas trade where, in the UK, an overriding percentage, some 80% of agricultural product trade, is undertaken with the EU. The Government like to talk of free trade deals. Is it the measure of success whether it is free trade or not? I pose the question as trade seems to be spoken about only in terms of “free” trade, without qualification. Against the background where every trading bloc supports its agriculture, implications need to be examined and an equitable level field maintained. To leave the EU, the portion of tariff trade quotas needs to be split and then allocated. There is also the position of aggregate measures of support to determine.

It is not a wise, more a glib, retort to state that no deal is better than a bad one. It needs underlining most stridently that no deal under WTO rules is the worst possible kind of bad deal in any continuum of definitions. The belligerence being shown—that the UK must somehow have its own trade policy—must be tempered with reality. The US has already objected to the UK and EU’s representations to the WTO on splitting the TRQ between the UK and the EU. The European Union has answered that the EU and UK intend to maintain the existing levels of market access available to WTO members. Will that split happen at an average across all the agricultural sectors? As was discussed earlier, average settlement could distort or displease the various commodity sectors. A letter from the UK mission in Geneva suggests that a sectorial approach, based on historical trade and consumption patterns, will be pursued. Can the Minister confirm this? Can he also confirm whether it is agreed that aggregate measures of support may also be split and allocated to the UK, as the EU currently has an allowance of €72 billion, of which it uses only a small portion?

There is so much of importance in these two reports. I echo the conclusion that the UK must confirm and clarify continued support to agriculture on action-based measures for improved productivity across the industry sectors while delivering environmental benefits and enhanced production standards with high animal welfare assurances.