Agriculture Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very clear introduction. An advisory speaking time of four minutes is not long to tackle the far-reaching provisions of this Bill, but I want to use a few of my precious seconds to protest to the Whip on duty about how the Bill is being handled. It is not just the four-minute limit; more importantly, a good number of our fellow Peers from all parties have been scrubbed from speaking at all. Things have reached a pretty pass when Members of your Lordships’ House are prevented from speaking at Second Reading of a Bill of this magnitude. Please do not play the pandemic card in reply. It will be perfectly possible to extend this debate by another half day to enable all who wish to speak to do so. Our fellow Peers deserve no less.

In my remaining time, I will focus on Clause 17 and food security. I remind the House that I am a controlling shareholder in a company that owns a modest amount of farmland. On 14 May, there was a very interesting debate in your Lordships’ House on food security, ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and equally ably replied to by the Minister. However, given the scale of the challenges we face to our future food security, through a combination of 40% increase in the world population—some 4 billion people—the impact of climate change and risks to the ability to move food around the world, Clause 17 is far too bland and unsecure. We need not expressions of hope but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said, duties on the Government.

I will give three quick examples. First, there needs to be a stated government policy on what level of food security is sought. Currently, it is about 50%. Is that the right level? Should it be higher or lower? The public are entitled to know.

Secondly, the clause says nothing about water. The Environment Agency tells us that we will run short of water within 20 years, and that we are entering, in the words of the chairman of the Environment Agency, “the jaws of death”. Significantly for our food security, the shortage of water will be most acute in the south-east of England, where some of our most productive farmland is located.

Finally, the clause makes no reference to the number of mouths that will have to be fed 20 years or so from now. What will the population of the United Kingdom be? Those numbers are stark. The ONS mid projection suggests that the population of the UK 25 years from now will be 72 million people, an increase of about 6 million, equivalent to two and a half cities the size of Manchester today. To provide the necessary homes, offices and other space for those people is likely to require us to tarmac over an area the size of Bedfordshire.

One of the challenges faced by all Governments is the inevitable public bias towards the present at the expense of the future. People find it hard to give proper weight to problems that lie 20 years away and are, unsurprisingly, inclined to focus on the short-term challenges they face, but if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that an absence of strategic thought and planning can carry a heavy cost, so I shall end with that great Jewish saying, “Start worrying. Details to follow.”