Agriculture Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group.

Amendments 178 and 181 suggest an additional scope for the power to get information. We should look at activities which affect the UK and not just at those that take place in the UK. A lot of these food supply chains are international and many of their activities and decisions take place outside the UK—indeed, all that may happen in the UK is that some goods turn up and are dropped off at someone’s warehouse, with all the information about where they have come from, what they are and what the resilience of the food chain is being held outside the UK. So it seems to me that we should have the wording “activities affecting the UK” rather than “activities in the UK”.

These amendments also extend the power to get information to Clause 17, which is on food security. We say that we will do a lot of things with information there, but I cannot see that we have given ourselves the power to get the information we need, which again is likely to be held outside the UK in many cases.

Amendment 185 argues for a wider definition of persons “closely connected” with the food chain and lists a number of activities that are fundamental to a food chain but are not presently listed in the Bill.

Amendment 183 comes back to the plants and fungi of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. It is not clear to me that the present wording in Clause 22(2)(c),

“any creature or other thing taken from the wild”,

includes plants. Clearly there is a substantial trade in plants and fungi taken from the wild, which ought to be comprehended in this Bill. I entirely sympathise with the irritation of the noble Baroness at fungi being subsumed into “plants”—but in a House where male embraces the female, perhaps this is a fault that we are used to.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Devon [V]]

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Rock. I will speak to Amendments 131 and 133 in my name. I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on Amendment 131.

This turns again to the transition period—or transition chasm, as I described it earlier. Farmers are used to dealing with bad weather, but the thick fog that lies over the chasm is very foreboding. As I suggested earlier, the uncertainty is a major drag on investment and productivity in farming. Certainty and clarity are needed. My amendments seek merely to improve the clarity and certainty under the very welcome multiannual financial assistance plans.

Amendment 131 seeks more certainty by requiring plans to last seven years instead of five, permitting a greater length of commitment and avoiding the unfortunate coincidence with the election cycle. Agriculture and politics do not mix. To use a term popular in this Bill, we need to de-link them. I also note that seven years seems to be okay for the first multiannual financial assistance plan. Can the Minister state why it is not okay for the rest?

Amendment 133 merely seeks some clarity. At present a multiannual financial assistance plan is due to be laid before Parliament by 31 December of this year and will come into force the following day. That makes no sense—I do not wish to spend New Year’s Eve poring over a multiannual financial assistance plan. Parliament should have at least two months in which to review it. I suspect that farmers may want a bit more advance notice as well.

[Lord Lucas [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 132 in my name. These plans are the fundamental basis for planning farming in this country. It is really not acceptable that the Government should be allowed to let a plan almost expire and then introduce a new one. How does that allow farmers to plan properly? I know that they will not get it under these circumstances, in the first iteration, but thereafter they deserve two years’ notice of changes that will be made between one plan and the next.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, I associate the Green group with the very useful amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about transparency and accountability, and Amendments 131 and 133 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. He displayed a touching faith in the regularity of the electoral cycle in his comments, but none the less a seven-year timeframe is much more realistic.

I will speak primarily to Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, to which I was pleased to add my name. This is a simple and practical amendment which says that financial assistance should be rolled over if it is not spent in one year. The noble Lord referred to the risk of funding going down if it is not spent. There is the other risk—as I am sure Members of your Lordships’ House will know, having spent much time over their lives on committees—of the rush that often happens at the end of the year to spend money before it runs out or disappears. That is something we do not want to see happening and do not want to encourage. Thinking particularly about farming and growing, dependence on the weather will mean that sometimes things simply cannot be done in a particular year.

I was also pleased to add my name to Amendment 227, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. She has not yet had an opportunity to speak to that amendment, which is also backed by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I briefly reflect that this calls for a land use strategy for England and focuses on the two key issues of carbon storage and biodiversity. I am sure that most Members of your Lordships’ House would agree, for example, with the phrase “the right tree in the right place”. To get towards that goal we need a strategy to head in that direction.

I also suggest to your Lordships that any land use strategy would have to consider whether there are some existing land uses in England that cannot be allowed to continue because of the environmental damage they are doing all round. I refer particularly to driven grouse shooting, which has real issues as regards carbon storage and flooding, and which is spatially very closely associated with illegal persecution of raptors, which we saw this morning with the police releasing horrific information about the killing of a goshawk.

I was pleased to add my name to Amendment 228, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. This refers to supporting landowners to make land available particularly to new growers, new farmers—new entrants into the industry. We are seeing some exciting developments. I know that in Suffolk there is discussion of the concept of jigsaw farming, whereby a farmer or landowner might be able to welcome on to their land a large number of different growers occupying small parcels and developing their businesses. We have seen how organisations such as the Biodynamic Land Trust and the Kindling Trust have had to work very hard to find land to make it available to people who want to enter the industry, and we have had reference to county farms.

Of course, we have a huge problem in England with the massive concentration of land ownership. Your Lordships have heard me refer before, and will again, to land reform. We need to come back to that, but for landowners who wish to make their land available to others, it is important that the Bill includes provision to make sure that that happens, and financial assistance where that would be useful.

Briefly, I support Amendments 127 and 134, which are backed by my noble friend. Again, they look at strategic priorities and multiannual plans, creating certainty for farmers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Earl that assurance at this juncture.

[Lord Lucas [V]]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister if I did not hear her answer correctly, but I did not detect an answer to my Amendment 132. Surely it is not acceptable for the Government to publish a new five-year plan on the last day of the old one. That would cause enormous disruption to agriculture. People would be unable to plan until the new plan was there and then it would then take them a year or so to put their new plans into place. We would get a year when nothing was happening. Surely there must be a decent overlap.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

As I think I said in my speech, we have built flexibility in to the planning stage, although it does not need to be five years, and in all cases there will be no gap between one plan and another.