Trade: Standards

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, with her committed remarks, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for obtaining the debate. In another place, over a considerable number of years, I heard her voice raised always for her own homeland and for those matters that she raised so persuasively in her remarks this afternoon in Grand Committee. I found the epithets with regard to the noble Baroness very persistent and strong. Ministers always found it necessary to hear what she said.

Our Library has told us that an estimated £261 billion of England’s total economy in terms of gross value added came from rural areas, and in 2018 the Welsh Government estimated that 78% of land in Wales was used for agriculture. In support of the experienced views of my noble friend Lord Whitty and the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I wish to emphasise the need, bearing in mind the challenges, for hill farmers. I have in mind the Borders, the Pennines, Cumbria and, in my own case, Wales.

The hill farmer and the sheepmeat industry must survive and prosper and have more, not less support. The hill farmer and the sheepmeat industry face the challenge of climate and contour. We do not sufficiently value the input of the shepherd—be it he, she or they. The shepherd fights that climate and has to cope with the contours and then has to look at the challenges of welfare, transportation, regulation and competition—and they triumph. They do very well, but the nation may be in danger of overlooking this important sector of the economy and of our population and culture.

I am thinking of the far-flung townships and villages on those hilltops and in the neighbouring valleys. I am thinking of the way of life and of these special challenges —climate, particularly, and contour. They should be given more help from Governments of the day. In the case of my own homeland, there is also the cultural value of the language. It is required of Her Majesty’s Ministers to be able to say that the hill farmer and the sheepmeat industry will get the fair deal that the principal speaker adumbrated