Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Lord Naseby

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on this amendment. It is encouraging that in the briefing note the Minister gave all of us there is a paragraph on the Government’s agriculture bounce-back plan, arising out of the impact of Covid-19. I am conscious that the Government are onside, but the question is whether this should be in the Bill, as the noble Lord described.

I share that I am closely involved with Sri Lanka, as many noble Lords will know. I remember seeing the devastation there on Boxing Day 2004. My wife and I went out there a few days later to help. If you happened to be in the spice trade, it was totally wiped out by two waves. These things do happen.

I also declare an interest in the Cayman Islands. I have family there. Those islands were almost wiped out some 20-odd years ago. In the last season Hurricane Irma did horrendous damage. These are part climate change, part other events.

I add to that list that I worked in India, in Calcutta, for the Reckitt & Colman group when the Indians invaded the tea estates. That hit the tea market something rotten that year—from memory it was 1962. These strange events do happen.

We are used to financial crashes and I think that seed health and other sorts of areas are covered. Nevertheless, today, in the world we are in now, I believe we need to have something in the Bill. It does not proscribe the Government too much. It is just a very sensible precaution relating to climate change and all the other challenges we face.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests, which I declared on previous occasions. I will make one small flanking point to those made already.

As I explained to the House on Tuesday, you can see from farming accounts that the vast bulk of a farm business’s income is from traditional agriculture. They are businesses that have a relatively high turnover and low margins. Against that background, we have been talking a lot about various environmental changes that we want to see in the country, which in turn will be paid for by the public money for public goods formula.

However, against the whole-farm income of the vast majority of farms in this country, that amount of money will still almost certainly be relatively small. If a farm business faces a complete crash in its market—I speak as someone who has an animal livestock business that was wiped out in the foot and mouth outbreak—it faces an existential threat. When faced with an existential threat, you simply do everything you can to save that business. In reality, that means that, whatever the rules about how public money is paid for carrying out environment changes of one sort or another, it will simply be stopped and it will have to be sorted out later.

Rather the same problem faces Lake District farmers, where I am chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, with the Covid outbreak, which has killed off much of the tourist trade, although it is picking up now. It had a pretty devastating effect on farm incomes in a form of agriculture where the margins from traditional husbandry are very low and the farm business’s survival depends on generating tourist revenues.

I argue that the effect of market disruption, quite apart from the impact it might have on any particular farm business, poses a very serious threat to a lot of the entirely good propositions for environmental change and improvement inherent in the debate we are having on the Bill. Therefore, the environmental aspects of what we are discussing are a genuine potential candidate for collateral damage from market collapse. As such, for the reasons the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and others have given, it is appropriate that these provisions should be in the Bill.