Agriculture Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

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

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, this is major legislation and I am sure that the goal of having a better set of arrangements for agriculture than we had under the common agricultural policy, including better environmental land management, has wide support on all sides of this House. However, it is easier to state these goals than to work out how you will make them work. The question just asked by the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, about how public benefit will be measured, regulated and rewarded is very relevant.

Within this policy are two big unresolved tensions. On the one hand, the Government want something better than the common agricultural policy and when Michael Gove was Secretary of State, he set out ambitious objectives for something better. On the other hand is the Government’s ambition for global Britain and their determination to use the new freedoms of an independent trade policy as a result of Brexit to make up for the loss of access, or more constrained access, which there will undoubtedly be, to the EU single market.

The Government tell us that there will be no detriment to the EU standards that are now incorporated in UK law. We have the letter before us from the two Secretaries of State. I am not trying to argue that they are in some way misleading us; in fact, I have great personal respect for the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, who has become the Trade Minister in this place. But our Ministers are rather naive about trade negotiations and will find that in the force majeure of trade—particularly if we get a bad deal from the EU, which I think we will—they will be under enormous political pressure to demonstrate that they can do deals elsewhere. Those deals will generally be bad deals for British agriculture. They will involve either some sacrifice of standards or increased quotas—for example, for Brazilian beef, US beef and that sort of thing—which will cause a lot of competitive pressure in certain parts of the industry.

That brings me to the second tension—that between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. Environmental land management strikes me as a matter that should ideally be devolved, but the UK will control the trade negotiations, which will determine a lot of the standards to be applied. My forecast, which I am afraid is pessimistic, is that what happens in the trade negotiations on agriculture will be a cause of huge tension with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It will set off political consequences that could threaten the unity of the United Kingdom. I am sorry to be so pessimistic but, while this is a good Bill, it is fatally flawed.