Direct Payments Ceilings Regulations 2020

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support these regulations. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister not only on the manner in which he has introduced them—in his usual calm, considered and clear way—but also on how he undertook the consultations with the devolved nations to bring the regulations to the House in their current form.

I offer my sincere congratulations to all our farmers, who have been very much key workers on the front line during this Covid crisis. They work in difficult conditions, often to extraordinarily tight margins, and truly they bring home the food so that we can all eat. We have some of the finest produce in the world, including Worcestershire pears, Herefordshire apples, Gloucester pork, Aberdeen Angus beef and Norfolk turkeys—I could go on. I love it all, but I have to do so much training because otherwise I would be the size of a barn. Not only do we have some of the best-produced crops and livestock, our farmers work to some of the highest standards in the world. The care they show for their crops and livestock is matched only by the care they take of the land on which they are produced. All this is done against a backdrop of some of the most difficult conditions, both financial and beyond. I mention the BSE crisis, foot and mouth disease and, as we have heard, the plight of hill farmers, who already work in difficult conditions but were particularly affected by the fallout from Chernobyl.

I ask my noble friend whether there will be a more equitable consideration of farmers’ concerns across the piece, given that we have this opportunity as we come out of Europe. Some of the EU’s policies in this area, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, put it so eloquently, probably did not mark its finest hour. I echo the words of the Minister when he introduced the regulations: they bring certainty and continuity. At the time we are currently in, that surely has to be a thoroughly good thing.