English Wine Industry

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing it. I am particularly pleased to be speaking in it because my constituency, which I am proud to represent, has more wine producers than any other. We have 17 producers that I am aware of, including award-winning producers such as Stopham, whose wine was served on the Queen’s barge in the diamond jubilee celebrations; Wiston; Nutbourne; and, perhaps most notably—arguably it is the finest English wine—Nyetimber, which is a premium brand that is increasingly exported globally.

First, I want to add to what my hon. Friend said about the importance of the Government getting behind this industry. It would be relatively easy for them to do that. It seems to me absolutely obvious that the Government should showcase English sparkling wine at its major events. I am glad that Downing Street is serving English sparkling wine. I hope that the Foreign Office is also doing so at appropriate events, and I hope our embassies will be encouraged to do the same. I recognise that English sparkling wine is relatively more expensive, but it says something about our country and this emerging industry if we can serve the wines. It would be a talking point.

I make a plea to the Minister to look at the normal procurement rules and to perhaps give a say and an opportunity to the variety of English sparkling wines that are produced. The Government should not just land on one or two, which I understand is the case in Downing Street at the moment. These are all emerging brands, and there are some particularly fine ones among them that win blind tastings. I understand that Clarence House adopts a slightly different approach in how it serves English wine. It has blind tastings and has arrived at serving rather more English wines as a consequence. The opportunity should be shared around more, and the Government should approach the issue in that way so that other areas of the country and other wines can benefit. Indeed, the Government may need to do that if they are to serve such wines more, which seems to me to be a relatively cheap way in which they could help the industry.

Secondly, I endorse what my hon. Friend said about wine duty. At the moment, wine duty applies across the board because we are in the European Union. It is not clear whether that would continue in the future, but there is a case anyway for reducing wine duty in the same way as has happened for beer duty. It has been shown that that has a beneficial impact, and wine has rather lost out in the argument in recent years. Wine duty was frozen at one point, but generally it has increased, and that has a negative effect that could be addressed. I hope that the Minister will join us in making representations to the Chancellor to support the industry by lowering wine duty.

Thirdly, I endorse what my hon. Friend may have said—I am not sure whether he did, but I will say it anyway—on the Government’s producing a welcome roundtable. The then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, now Lord Chancellor, held a roundtable on how English wine is promoted, bringing together the various interests in the country. It would be welcome if the Government continued with that initiative and held another roundtable. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about that.

English wine is a potential success story. It is no longer a joke. People are talking about it. It is a potential source of alternative rural employment and a good, environmentally friendly land use. It seems to me far better to grow vines than to grow ugly things on agricultural land that might have been farmed in other ways in the past. It is a great opportunity for the country. At a time when many of us may be utterly miserable due to global events, I can think of no better way to drown one’s sorrows than for those who drink—sadly, I am no longer one of them—to raise a glass of English wine and toast its success.

I do not hold with those who say that we need Brexit for English wine to be a success story. Nor is it necessarily the case that tariff-free access for wine will be an answer in itself, because tariff-free access would imply a reciprocal arrangement and tariff-free access for wine that we import. As so often, the glib solutions are not necessarily the most straightforward. There are ways that the Government can get behind the industry, and I hope that they will, because it is an important and exciting one for this country.

Driven Grouse Shooting

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double]

I agree very much with both my hon. Friend’s points.

Red grouse are not found anywhere in the UK but uplands. They live in heather moorland and heather forms the staple part of their diet. Seventy-five per cent of global heather moorland is located in the UK, so in global terms heather moorland is rarer than the rain forest. Heather moorland comprises about 7% of the UK’s land mass, or some 6,500 square miles.

Grouse shooting comes in two forms: walked-up shooting, which involves groups of shooters who walk around a predetermined area and drive the grouse from the ground, and driven grouse shooting, which involves a group of beaters who scare the grouse from the ground towards a line of shooters. One of the petitions calls for a ban on driven grouse shooting, but as my hon. Friend said, it seems slightly illogical to wish to ban only one form of grouse shooting.

Clearly there are informed and strongly held views that grouse shooting is detrimental to our environment and wildlife. Concerns have been expressed about how the way in which the moors are managed contributes to flooding and is responsible for the destruction of other wildlife, including some of our national birds of prey in particular. I am aware that many other hon. Members wish to participate in the debate, so I will be unable to go into all the detail of the issues raised in the time available to me in opening, but I hope others will pick up on the other points. I will deal with what I see as the main issues.

One of the biggest questions, as I see it, is whether the management of grouse moors is good or bad for our environment. First, we have to look at moorland management and whether the moors must necessarily be managed. Moorland looks wild, but in fact it is a carefully managed environment. It is thanks to grouse shooting that over the past 30 years grouse moor managers in England have been responsible for the regeneration of more than 217,000 acres of heather moorland. The petition to ban mentions that such moorland is an important part of the ecosystem and local habitats, so one of the big questions to be asked is, if we were to ban grouse shooting, how would that important habitat otherwise be managed?

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend. Does he agree that the question is not just how this moorland would be managed were grouse shooting to be banned, but whether it would exist at all or instead be given over to belts of conifers or grazed farmland? Surely the existence of the moorland is a reflection of grouse moor management over generations.

[Steve Double]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, which I will develop later in my speech, and I agree with him completely.

The management of the moorland for grouse provides the manpower to tackle invasive plants such as bracken and ragwort, along with saplings and shrubs of other species, and keeps the heather moorland clear. That level of intervention would not be viable without the grouse shooting industry. In England, grouse moor owners spend approximately £50 million every year on moorland management; in Scotland, the figure is more than £30 million. If grouse shooting were banned, where would the funds to manage the land come from?

Another concern expressed by those who wish to ban grouse shooting is that it causes flooding. I understand the logic of their argument: grouse moor management can increase the risk of flooding, because burning reduces the ability of the moor to absorb rainfall and run-off must therefore increase, leading to flooding further downstream. I suggest, however, that that is too simple a conclusion and that the issue is far more complex. Indeed, peatland restoration is known to help to slow the rate of water run-off. Ending moorland management as a result of banning grouse shooting might actually make flooding worse and more likely to happen. I am particularly interested in hearing the Minister’s views on that when she responds to the debate, because the issue is of great concern to those who live near such moors.

Another point worth making is that many areas of heather moorland are protected in their current state by their status as SSSIs—sites of special scientific interest. If the tens of millions of pounds of income from grouse shooting were to be lost, how would those protected landscapes be maintained in their current state without the cost falling on the taxpayer, something I simply could not support?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are certainly looking at the issue that the hon. Gentleman identifies. We are determined to fulfil our environmental obligations, and we will be bringing the whole of the UK into compliance.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to promote wine production in England.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)]

English sparkling wine is a growing industry worth almost £100 million. I note that two sparkling wines—including Nyetimber, which is produced in my right hon. Friend’s constituency—recently beat champagne in a wine critics’ blind tasting competition. We are promoting the industry through the Great British Food campaign.

[Nick Herbert]

There has been a remarkable increase in wine production in my constituency in West Sussex, and I believe that I now have more wine producers than any other constituency. Is this not the time for a co-ordinated strategy to promote these excellent wines, which beat others from around the world in wine tastings? Will my right hon. Friend also ensure that English sparkling wine is served at Government events, and that prosecco, cava, champagne and other inferior brands are consigned to the cellars?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his sparkling point. I will be holding a round-table in the new year with representatives of the sparkling wine industry to talk about how we can encourage the industry to grow. I recently held an event in Shanghai, China, with English sparkling wine producers, and I am encouraging all my colleagues right across Government to use English sparkling wine as their drink of choice.