Rural Economy (Rural Economy Committee Report)

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Foster on the scale and ambition of this work, which will surely go on people’s shelves for years to come as a reference work when it comes to the economies of rural areas. Having said that, I think that some of it has a slightly old-fashioned approach, and I will explain why in a minute. The noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, talked about how much of the countryside now looks rural but, in terms of its function, is actually quite urban. This is absolutely true. I was musing, as somebody who can remember that dreadful night when Grace Archer died in the fire, that in those days “The Archers” was genuinely about countryfolk. Nowadays, a great deal of it is about middle-class people who live in the countryside. That is a symptom of the way the countryside has changed.

Much of this report seems to be based on the urban functions of the countryside and it misses out quite a lot about geography and the environment, which are different from urban areas, and the things that really make the countryside different. I was looking back on previous debates we have had on these matters in your Lordships’ House and came across the debate on agriculture, fisheries and the rural environment on 2 November 2017. I discovered that during that debate I quoted some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, had said slightly earlier in the debate. I thought, “These are very sensible. I will quote them again”. Then I discovered that he is to speak immediately after me, which makes it a very dangerous thing to do—he might stand up and say he has changed his mind since then, but I do not think so. I might be making part of his speech for him, I do not know, but what he said was that:

“Any vision for our countryside has to include agriculture, the environment and rural communities. They are all interlinked … what is our countryside for? There are services that society will want to buy from our land managers: landscape, improved access opportunities for leisure and health and greatly improved diversity of habitats and species”,


as well as farming economy and the rest. He spoke about the need to “create more diversified jobs”, including tourism, partly to help farmers,

“and their households … survive on the land”.—[Official Report, 2/11/17; col. 1447.]

I do not see a lot about this relationship in this report.

I want to speak a little about rural tourism, particularly outdoor activities and recreation. In that same debate I talked about the organisation Walkers are Welcome, which I paid tribute to and which is still going strong, I think. I talked about the detailed outdoor survey from the British Mountaineering Council—I declare an interest as a patron—in 2015-16 about just what people do in the countryside and how much more it could contribute to rural economies. In February 2017, an excellent report, Reconomics Plus: The Economic, Health and Social Value of Outdoor Recreation, from Manchester Metropolitan University set out a whole series of statistics. There are 3.2 billion visits by adults to the great outdoors, of which over half are to the countryside—plus, of course, visits by children, for whom it is so important. Some 1.31 billion went to the countryside and 456 million used pathways, cycleways and bridleways. I remind the House of the Question for Short Debate I tabled two or three months ago about the cut-off date in 2026, which is causing a great deal of worry for a lot of people who are working hard to claim historic footpaths and bridleways. It is something I shall come back to and I hope that the Government will come back to it, to put that deadline back, at least.

In 2015, £2.6 billion was spent on outdoor activities in Great Britain. Obviously, a lot of that was spent in the countryside. There were 250 million day visits in Great Britain which involved outdoor activities, of which 113 million visits had outdoor activities as their single main activity. One key issue we have talked about in various debates in your Lordships’ House is the need to work together, to integrate and to prevent the conflicts that can easily arise, some being conflicts between people going to do outdoor activities, et cetera, in the countryside and people using the land for other purposes, notably for agriculture. There are also conflicts between catering for local needs—the needs of people already living there—and the needs of people who want to go and live there.

My noble friend talked about the importance of allowing rural councils to decide whether to have right to buy or not. I remember, back in 1974, when I had become the chairman of the housing committee of the new Pendle Borough Council, that there were two rows of nearly derelict old water board houses in the village of Barley. One thing I managed to do was to persuade the old water board to transfer the houses, at midnight on 31 March, to the new council that came into being on 1 April. The clerk was the same person in each case, and I am not sure how he did it, but he did and we renovated those houses in the village as council houses, in co-operation particularly with the local WI. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to exempt them from right to buy, and I think that all of them, or perhaps all but one, have now been sold and do not provide the social housing in that village. I am still proud that they have not been pulled down, which was what was going to happen, but it is not quite what we wanted. We were not allowed to take sensible, local decisions on the basis of local circumstances at that time. Unfortunately, that is the case in too many instances.

On 16 May 2013—a long time ago—I instigated a debate on the contribution of outdoor activities to the United Kingdom economy and to the health and well-being of the population. I ended with a quote from John Muir, who, as noble Lords will know, was a founding father of the modern conservation movement. I will repeat it, because it emphasises just how important an active, well-run countryside is to everybody, not just the people who live there:

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul”.


I hope that that kind of thing will be remembered when the Government bring forward their 25-year environment plan—if that is still in existence and still going to happen, and whoever form the Government—and that we will be able to integrate the question of the geography, the landscape, the environment and value for everybody, as well as for the people who live in the countryside itself.

Japanese Knotweed

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Greaves]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent steps they have taken to eradicate Japanese knotweed.

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

My Lords, we are trialling biocontrol methods to control Japanese knotweed. The Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International is working to establish the highly specific psyllid, Aphalara itadori, into the United Kingdom. This summer, a population of a more climatically suitable psyllid from Japan will be brought here. It is hoped that this will be the key to unlocking the potential of this agent to reduce the effort and cost of managing Japanese knotweed and its invasive capacity.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is 30 years since Lady Sharples started asking questions about Japanese knotweed, and about 12 or 15 since I joined her, but all we get is the same answer every time: that this wonderful psyllid, Aphalara, will come galloping over the horizon and solve everything. It is absolutely clear that the problem of Japanese knotweed is getting worse and worse and causing more and more problems, and it is simply not being tackled. Do the Government agree that two things need doing? First, owners of land need to be put under a legal obligation to eradicate Japanese knotweed, and allowing it to grow should be an offence. Secondly, when transactions or contracts are made relating to land that has Japanese knotweed on it, or when people walk on it and may spread it, they should be notified that this dreadful, awful weed exists or has recently existed on that land.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, trials often take longer than we wish, but I assure the noble Lord that we are collaborating with Canada, because it has a similar problem, and with experts across Europe and the United States. I agree: it is frustrating that the psyllid has not established as we wished. We are working on another form of control, which is also under evaluation: a mycoherbicide. This is all part of using the science. I agree with the noble Lord that it is very invasive. That is why I will read some of the advice in the Science and Technology Committee report that came out this morning. We need to attend to this. The problem with the noble Lord’s first point is that, if someone fly-tips spoil with elements of Japanese knotweed, will the landowner really be required to remove that fly-tip? That is the problem if you make it a legal liability on the landowner to remove it.

Environment: 25-year Plan

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I enjoyed reading this report and I wondered what it will be like in 25 years’ time. I cheered the good points, I laughed at some of what I thought was the nonsense in it and I was increasingly concerned by what may be the underlying philosophy of it, but I will come back to that. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, pointed out that the environment is not just rural, green, nice and good for health and well-being; it includes the urban as well as the rural environment and much of the urban environment is very good, of course. However, it also includes harsh, cold and wet streets where homeless people are living; shoddy new housing in badly designed estates; dirty streets, due to cuts in local authority spending; A&E departments where staff and patients are struggling in conditions of squalor; and roads full of potholes, not least where I live. So when we talk about the environment, let us talk about the whole environment.

There are some good things here and I pick out one or two. Restoring peatlands is a cause I have championed in your Lordships’ House in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, pointed out that upland peat is in very bad condition. Can the Minister say whether the stuff in the plan about peatlands includes upland peat? There is mention of the northern forest and again I give notice to the Minister that I will keep banging on to make sure that part of Lancashire, at least, is part of the northern forest. Protecting and recovering nature, reviewing national parks and AONBs—this is all good stuff. The area in which I have misgivings is what is called “natural capital”, which at times is just mentioned and at others seems to be the underlying philosophy, described as “the new approach”. Page 19 says:

“When we give the environment its due regard as a natural asset—indeed a key contributor—to the overall economy, we will be more likely to give it the value it deserves to protect and enhance it”.


It is clear that that means monetary value. It goes on:

“Natural capital is the sum of our ecosystems, species, freshwater, land, soils, minerals, our air and our seas … This value is not captured by traditional accounting methods”.


It mentions wildlife as being a particular difficulty. I ask: why should wildlife be captured by traditional accounting methods? There is a question here and I will come to it at the end.

If you are looking at a hierarchy of the systems of all sorts that we operate and live within, the financial and economic systems do not come at the top. The first is clearly the planet on which we live, the structure of the land masses, the atmosphere and oceans that are crucial to life of all kinds and what we do, and then the whole of the biosphere. These things exist and would exist without us. Economics is a human construct; economic theory and economic systems are one way in which we make sense of and organise what we do. The problem of economics is that it tends to regard environmental issues as “externalities”, as resources that are put into the economic system. It talks about “ecosystem resources” and thinks about inputs and places to dump waste when we do not want it any more. The ecosystems—the environmental system on the planet—is surely much more fundamental than economics, which is just one of the systems we have, along with our social systems and the rest, that take place within the environment. If the aim is to develop a means of giving everything a monetary value, there is a real risk that we will end up knowing the price of everything and the true value of nothing.

If noble Lords think I am exaggerating a bit, page 133, tucked away at the back, says:

“In order to improve our understanding of our natural capital we will: continue to work with the Office for National Statistics to develop a full set of natural capital accounts for the UK that are widely understood and shared internationally. Taken with the new outcome indicators, these accounts will provide a much richer picture of changes to the environment over time … We will also develop new digital tools and maps to make the use of robust economic values easier for everyone”.


Then, over the page, it says:

“At present we cannot robustly value everything we wish to in economic terms; wildlife being a particular challenge”.


So I went to an excellent and very revealing website describing everything that the Natural Capital Committee, this group of seven professors, does. I quote:

“The Natural Capital Committee defines natural capital as ‘those elements of the natural environment which provide valuable goods and services to people, such as the stock of forests, water, land, minerals and oceans’”.


Then it talks about assessing the value of it. I wonder, if this is fundamental to the report, whether it has got it upside down. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury earlier in this discussion said: “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment”. I think that is the right way around.

If natural capital is just one approach that informs our discussion, it can be useful, obviously. It is obviously useful, if people are looking at the value of the coastal path and coastal access, to look, among other things—matters of principle, perhaps—at the value to coastal economies. That is a valuable approach and I have talked about it in your Lordships’ House. If it is the thing on which everything else depends, that is fundamentally wrong. It will result in a large amount of gobbledegook. Some of the natural capital documents I found had mathematical equations in them. I was going to bring them but not only did I not understand them, I did not know how to read them out, so I did not. It will be bogus in practice and it will be used to overturn local and democratic debate, wishes and decisions.

I will finish with a quote from John Muir, the famous Scottish naturalist and conservationist, who went to America and founded the national park movement. He said:

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world”.


That is the way we should be looking at this. When all this natural capital stuff is discussed and proposals are put forward, we should treat them with a certain amount of scepticism and make sure that they are not just an attempt to impose so-called neoclassical economics on everything—including plants, animals and the whole of the natural world.

Waste: Chinese Import Ban

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Greaves]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking following the Chinese ban on imports of plastic and other waste.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have put down their names to speak in this debate. I declare my interest as a member of a local refuse collection authority.

The Question is about the ban by China on yang laji—or foreign garbage, as it may be translated—comprising 24 varieties of low-level waste, including paper and plastic, which started at the beginning of this month. I declare that I have a lifetime love of paper and a lifetime dislike of plastic but, most of all, I have a lifetime hatred of waste. I remember back in the Liberal Party in the 1970s, when we declared that we should as a country move towards zero waste. The in-phrase is now “zero untreatable waste”; people seem to be catching up with us. We have the 5p plastic-bag charge in operation, which I remind noble Lords was a product of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition Government. The Daily Mail likes to claim credit for it, but who cares really?

Today, the Prime Minister launched the Government’s new environment plan—I have not read it yet; it has 151 pages, apparently—and launched herself as an environmentalist and the saviour of the planet. That is okay, so long as it happens. It is perhaps more down to Sir David Attenborough and his “Blue Planet” series. But let us not mock. To quote Shakespeare’s Brutus:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,


Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune …

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures”.

Whether the present concentration on plastics and plastic waste is a result of the Daily Mail, the Liberal Democrats, Xi Jinping or anybody else, the tide is flowing, and let us float or sail on it while it lasts.

My noble friend Lord Teverson asked an Oral Question on the same subject as a sort of taster for this short debate. The Minister said in reply that the Government,

“has been working with key partners and issuing guidance”.

It would be helpful if the Minister shared the guidance with us. To the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, he said that,

“it is clear that we need to do better, and that is why we are working on this issue”.

The Minister is always helpful and friendly with his answers and his responses to Members of this House. A little more hard fact and detail today would be welcome.

The Minister had no clear answers to a question from my noble friend Lord Teverson on the storage of plastics and the problems of potential pollution and fire hazards, responding similarly to a question on incineration asked by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He said that landfill was a “last resort”. The problem is that local authorities and others may quickly come to find that landfill is the only resort. Can the Minister not only provide some answers to my noble friend Lord Teverson’s questions on pollution and fire hazards but say whether the Government are expecting and encouraging more incineration in the present short-term crisis?

In answer to a question on alternative markets for plastics from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch—who, no doubt, will press this later in this debate—the Minister said that,

“we need to address this issue on a global basis”.—[Official Report, 9/1/18; cols. 115-16.]

Is the Minister saying that it is a question of new and more markets for the products of recycling and remanufacture of plastics, or are he and the Government looking for new markets for our waste, to dump it somewhere else? Will he give us an assurance that, in particular, we will not try to dump more waste on other countries in the third world such as in Africa, which already suffer badly from toxic waste from Europe? Michael Gove said that the UK must “stop offshoring its dirt”. Is that an absolute commitment, and how will it be achieved?

Finally, how much EU waste goes to China and what joint solutions are we seeking within the European Union and the internal market to try to solve this problem? Is it not a bit ridiculous that we are trying to leave the European Union internal market when it is so valuable when issues and problems like this come up?

The statistics are eye-watering. Between 2012 and 2016 the UK exported 2.5 million tonnes of scrap plastic to China. The developed world consigned some 7.3 million tonnes of used plastic to China in 2016 alone. China’s scrap paper imports in 2016 were a massive 28 million tonnes, 3.8 million of that from the UK.

The new ban—which, I have to say, in many ways I welcome because it is making people wake up to the problem—threatens to destroy the business model of the UK waste industry together with its supply chain, and threatens to leave local authorities firmly in the lurch. The chief executive of the UK Recycling Association, Simon Ellin, told the BBC that he had no idea how the problem could be solved in the short term:

“It’s a huge blow for us … We simply don’t have the markets in the UK”.


The UK organisation RECOUP, which recycles plastics, said the China ban would lead to stockpiling of waste and a move towards incineration and landfill. Do the Government agree? Peter Fleming from the Local Government Association said:

“It’s a challenge—but mostly in the short term… and we will cope”.


Local authorities cope, but increasingly in unsatisfactory ways. My own local authority is being forced by the county council’s scrapping of the recycling subsidy—because of its financial problems—to go on to four-weekly instead of two-weekly recycling collections. We do not want to do it but we have no alternative whatever. We are going the wrong way and we need help from the Government, which means more money.

The UK has been slow to react to the China ban. As we know, Defra is working overtime on Brexit agricultural and fisheries reform, producing a two-year late, 25-year environmental plan, which, at last, has been published today. We welcome that and look forward to debating it in your Lordships’ House. Will the Minister give us an assurance that he will do everything possible to get a debate on the new plan in this House as soon as possible? We seem to have a lot of time for debates at the moment. Defra is also planning to get thousands of new environmental laws on to the post-Brexit UK statute book, and, no doubt, that is taking up some time.

According to the Prime Minister in her speech this morning—which I enjoyed watching on the television—plastic waste is one of the great environmental scourges. We must reduce the demand, reduce the amount of plastics in circulation, increase the recycling rate and rationalise all the different kinds of plastic that bewilder all of us who are not chemists by training. We agree with all that, and we might add some more things. As well as Defra, what is the role of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in achieving these aims? A lot of them will require a lot of investment and changes in the working practices of the companies involved in all this work, most of which are in the private sector. How will this be achieved and what is the role of that department?

To increase the recycling rate there is a key role for local authorities in both collection and disposal. Yet they are all, without exception, suffering from fewer resources, less funding—it is being slashed year by year—which inevitably impacts on recycling. This morning the Prime Minister said that we will “lead the world”. That was a bold thing to say, and we will all try to hold her to it. However, in the short term, if the processes cannot make money, they could just stop. If there is nowhere to store the stuff, it could just stop. If councils cannot sell on the recyclates they have collected, what will they do then? To quote Simon Ellin again:

“It could be chaos, it really could”.


How did it come to this? We have short-term solutions based on short-term financial benefits, setting aside longer-term environmental damage and paying no attention to risks, including the ability of China to take massive short-term decisions. It is a product of global neoliberal economics and a classic case of its fundamental flaws. There seemed to be good reasons at the time. To quote Brutus yet again:

“Good reasons must, of force, give place to better”.


We now have an opportunity for a better system in a whole range of environmental areas, including recycling. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Japanese Knotweed

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute yet again to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, for her persistence in this matter. I am very sorry she cannot be here today and, if she is poorly, I hope she gets better as quickly as possible. The Minister referred to a two-pronged approach but over the years the Government have put too much hope on the prospect of armies of jumping psyllids crossing the land, chewing the knotweed in their path and getting rid of it. That will not be the answer, not for a long time at least. Is not the answer in the short run the work of local action groups, local authorities and others, to which the Minister referred? Is it not the case that the Government ought to be giving a lot more strong advice to local authorities to get on with it, because this stuff can and ought to be removed?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

There are good examples of where local action groups have worked effectively and eradicated Japanese knotweed. In Defra we have an official who is co-ordinating the work of the local action groups. I very much endorse their work and think it is the way forward. However, research shows that we should be looking for a more robust psyllid. We have released in 16 sites this year 120,000 psyllids and I hope we will see some progress in that regard.

Brexit: Non-chemical Farming Methods

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, on the issue of yields, the use of pesticides is precisely to protect crops and grassland. Obviously, we need to use them carefully and have them well regulated. Without pesticides, undoubtedly yields would be reduced. The most important thing is that there is active co-operation on this now: 4.4 million hectares of land are involved in the voluntary initiative and the integrated pest management situation. All of that is strong news.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, the comprehensive codes of practice issued by the department and Natural England include advice on how to deal with rights of way and other areas for public access in places that are treated with pesticides. Do the Government have any hard evidence on how effective those codes of guidance are in relation to recreational users of the countryside?

Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I was thinking about the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, and I realised that in all the time I have been here—which is not as long as he has been here, but seems a long time—he has, if he does not mind me using the analogy, seemed like part of the furniture. Without him, your Lordships’ House will feel a little bit emptier.

I will speak briefly about the rural economy, particularly the contribution of outdoor recreation, which is an important part of it. Various noble Lords hinted at what is too often an apparent conflict between landowners and farmers, and people using the countryside for recreation, education and so on. An important part of any new system that will come in is to work actively and deliberately towards reconciliation and people working together, because the countryside belongs to everyone in the country, not just the people who own and farm it. Both sides need to understand that. It is a national resource, but at the same time it is there to allow farmers to undertake their livelihood and produce food for us. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said in his very sensible speech that any policy must include agriculture, the environment and local communities, but it has to be done in a way that brings together the outsiders who use the countryside and the people who live there. This is important because of the contribution to local economies made by visitors, particularly people engaging in outdoor education.

Walkers are Welcome is an organisation that is now 10 years old. It was formed in Hebden Bridge, where a lot of good things used to happen. It has just produced a 10-year national survey of all the work it does to promote local walking in conjunction with local businesses. A very interesting report this year from Manchester Metropolitan University on behalf of the Sport and Recreation Alliance called Reconomics Plus sets out a large number of the benefits of people visiting the countryside. What the noble Earl just said about the need to educate the overwhelming number of people and children growing up in urban areas is vital. We all know the stories about people who, when asked where milk comes from, say it is from the supermarket.

One of the important things groups such as Walkers are Welcome are doing is spreading the load, because no doubt there are problems in some places that are honeypots, where the number of visitors is great. As the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, will remember when we did the marine Bill, I am a great supporter of coastal access and the coastal path. I went to Dorset last year to Lulworth Cove and saw the wonderful, newly built coastal path there. The queue of people walking up it was like an old-fashioned queue outside a cinema or a football ground. It was quite extraordinary. I thought, “Is this really what we want?”. Of course it is not. We want to spread the load and spread the visitors around.

A very interesting submission has just been made by an alliance of the British Horse Society, the Byways and Bridleways Trust, the Open Spaces Society—I declare an interest as a vice-president—and the Ramblers on how public access can be improved post Brexit. If and when Brexit occurs—even if it does not—this is vital work. These proposals suggest that an opportunity is here for,

“model funding schemes for agriculture to ensure that public money achieves maximum public benefit and promotes public wellbeing”.

It is talking about people walking on footpaths and on access land. It says:

“Public benefit should include public access, whether by paths or open access to land (freedom to roam), because such assets support local economies, and improve people’s health, wellbeing and safety”.


They are also one of the very important ways in which diversification of local businesses and farming businesses can be brought about. There needs to be a great deal more work to bring people together, rather than trying to keep them apart.

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

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, there were a lot of wise words there from the noble Earl. This is a really good report and I congratulate my noble friend and his committee on producing it, and I associate myself with a lot of what has been said today, particularly the excellent speeches by noble friend Lady Miller and the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Whitty.

The report is amazingly topical. That it is topical five months after it has been produced is a sign that nothing very much has happened. After the initial speech by my noble friend Lord Teverson, we heard an interesting speech from the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, with whose conclusions I agree. However, in the course of it, he attacked the repeal of the corn laws and I thought, “Only in your Lordships’ House could the repeal of the corn laws still be an issue for debate and discussion”. As the noble Lord said, it was wrong then and wrong now to remove the tariffs; I would say that it was right then and wrong now. It was right then because Britain controlled farming policy not only in this country but in all parts of the British Empire, which were the great wheat-growing lands, and it controlled much of world trade. The world has changed since then.

Many noble Lords have pointed out defects in the common agricultural policy—indeed, there are many—but the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, reminded us of the way in which the underlying purposes of the CAP have evolved over a period of time. When it was set up so many years ago, its purpose was essentially food security: to make sure that the then six members of the Common Market had security over their own basic food supplies—this was just after the war, when there was great insecurity around. In that, there is no doubt that it has been outstandingly successful. As the years have gone by, many of the other things that it has evolved and the ways in which it has supported agriculture have changed, from tariffs and intervention payments to maintain prices, through to direct payments, through to the present system of area payments—where basically farms are paid for being a farm and for being a certain size, whatever they do on that farm—together with Pillar 2, which has not used as much money as Pillar 1 by any means, but has evolved in ways which have enhanced local environments and rural development. I do not believe that without the CAP those policies would have been introduced into this country.

What do the Government want? In this week’s Farmers Guardian I came across a statement by a Defra spokesman. I will read it out because it includes all the contradictions and the lack of clarity which underlie the present position. It says:

“Outside the EU and free from the bureaucracy of the Common Agricultural Policy our farmers will be able to focus on growing, selling and exporting more fantastic produce. We are determined to get the best deal, one that allows us to continue to have tariff-free, frictionless access to the EU market and we will strike new trade deals around the world to help farmers take advantage of the growing appetite for great British food”;


in other words, every possible advantage of every possible system and every possible circumstance. The fact is that completely frictionless access to the EU market, which we have now because we are in the customs union as part of the single market, is incompatible with regulation-free operations. The European Union is simply not going to agree—whether or not the talks get that far—to frictionless access to the market unless this country accepts most of the rules and regulations that operate within the existing CAP and single market. We will have to obey the rules and will have no say in what they are. That is a fact that this Government do not seem to understand.

I just want to say something about food security and the very learned comments made by the Transport Secretary on television on Sunday that all we have to do is grow more food in this country. I do not think we need to grow more food. We might need to grow better food and different food but what we need to do is stop wasting so much food. About half the food grown in this country is not eaten. It is ploughed back because the market has failed; it is rejected by the supermarkets because it is not the right shape and colour; it is left unsold in supermarkets and thrown away; and huge amounts of it are bought and thrown away. If only people would really tackle that problem, it would transform the food market and answer a lot of the problems.

Ask farmers what they think about government policy at the moment and they will say, “They do not know what they want, they do not know what they are doing and they do not know where they are going”. A decision has to be made. The Government have to decide: do they want full, frictionless access to European markets and to remain a member of the biggest free trading area on the planet, with all the advantages of that, or are they going to throw all that away and go for the unknown?