Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Lord Plumb Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Plumb (Con) (Valedictory Speech)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lindsay for raising this issue and putting forward this important Motion. It is equally important that we debate the issue a little more often than we have done in the past. It is good for us to know where our food comes from, who produces it and how and where it might come from if we do not produce it here.

As I move towards retirement, after 30 years and a rewarding and enjoyable education among so many distinguished colleagues, I thank the clerks and the staff for their tolerance and understanding in recent times. I thank in particular my Whip, my noble friend Lord Sherbourne, and the Chief Whip, my noble friend Lord Taylor.

As I look back over a long life and career, I recognise that agriculture has been at the very core of it, in both practice and political interest. My formal education was cut short in March 1940, when my father and headmaster both agreed that the war could not last more than six months and so I could return to my studies in the autumn. Therefore, I had to leave and go back to work on the farm. That suited me fine as I was not too happy at school, but I was in at the deep end and well into hard work and a lot of responsibility, with bombs falling round us on land between Coventry and Birmingham. But then the land girls came to the rescue as farm workers.

You could say that my politics started through the Young Farmers’ Movement, an organisation able to advise and provide mentorship for young entrepreneurs in agriculture and rural business. My CV reads as if I was a collector of presidencies. My father used to say that anyone can become a president. Well, I have proved him right. I moved from the Young Farmers’ Movement to the presidency of the National Farmers’ Union in 1971, as noble Lords have heard. My path then took me from the presidency of the Society of Ploughmen to Chancellor of Coventry University, and from non-executive roles in finance and business to a fellowship at Ohio University, where the agricultural faculty was created in 1860 by Professor Charles Plumb. The Plumbs get around everywhere in interesting times.

Among other organisations, I was best known through the NFU. I remember a farmer once complaining, “If you’re joining this old common market, don’t hold it on a Wednesday because that buggers up ours”. Negotiations on our entry, changing from one policy to another, required six steps in five years to change to the common agricultural policy. I ask the Minister: will this happen in reverse? I was an enthusiast for our membership and the opportunity it presented for co-operation and competition for the food market of 500 million people. However, with a £22 billion deficit with European countries on food and farming products alone, our exit will not be successful without government assistance and encouragement, and changes in the method of support.

Retiring from the NFU presidency came at a time when it was agreed that we should hold direct elections to the European Parliament. Discussing this with my son, who had just come back from Argentina, I said that I would welcome his advice. “If I come home instead of going elsewhere, where do I start?”, I asked. His reply was short and sharp. “You can start by sweeping the yard because you always complain that it is untidy when you get home”. So I decided to stand for membership of the European Parliament. It was a pleasure to represent the people of the Cotswolds over the 20 years I was there. It was a great experience.

In Parliament I had no particular ambition to get too involved, but I found myself as the first chairman of the 50-strong agriculture committee, with Barbara Castle as a member. I then became leader of the Conservative Group for Europe, which also included members from Northern Ireland, Spain and Denmark. In 1987 I was elected President of the whole Parliament, as your Lordships have heard, and I can now say that I was—and, presumably, will be—the only Brit to have been elected to that position. I was a bit surprised when I received a very complimentary letter from Mrs Thatcher inviting me to become a working Peer. It did not happen at once but it certainly happened later—and I have enjoyed my 30 years.

Even our friends in New Zealand and Australia, after some years of heavy criticism, accepted that by joining Europe we had helped at least to widen the world market for their products. We had of course helped to shield them when we joined Europe by obtaining import quotas for their products—quotas on which in later years they were no longer dependent.

Whenever agriculture is debated, in this House or elsewhere, there is always a tendency to underestimate its importance in the life and the economy of the nation. Some 0.7% of GDP does not sound like a lot, but let us not forget the sector’s massive input into the food and drink industry, which employs some 14% of the workforce and generates £96 billion-worth of business. It is a major part of our economy. Therefore, we must not think of agriculture purely in terms of its product; as we have already heard, we must remember its jobs and its contribution to our GDP. It is a major factor in determining the success or otherwise of our national environmental policies.

My noble friend Lord Ridley, who unfortunately is not with us today, is right to predict that we can all reap rewards from robotised farms—what he means by that is for your Lordships to imagine—drawing on existing technical and scientific advice. Developments have taken and are taking place. However, I enter the two caveats that matter as regards development. First, we have to ensure that the rural environment is not negatively industrialised. The character of our countryside is something rightly precious to all of us, wherever we live. Furthermore, as we face the challenge of increasing agricultural production, whatever happens we must keep a weather eye on the land available for that purpose—farming. For example, the HS2 rail project alone is estimated to require 100,000 acres of agricultural land and, of course, the need to increase housebuilding will make further significant demands. I do not say that that is wrong, but it is a fact as we see it at the moment.

With a food trade gap of over £22 billion, we need to increase production and it is not obvious that all the countries which are supposed to be queuing up to do a deal with the UK are motivated by sentiment; the US, Canada, China, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the like all have their own interests. We are also in danger of losing benefits from joint research and development with our European friends.

In today’s debate many have not taken on board that agricultural support post Brexit is not something over which the UK will have an entirely free hand. The fact is that whatever the UK will do must fall within the framework of rules set by the WTO. The reason why the cap changed so radically over the years was not principally because EU politicians saw the light about the need for reform; it was much more because world trade agreements made the reform inevitable.

We have to admit that it is difficult to imagine precisely what the world, the EU and the UK will look like on the other side of our withdrawal. At the end of what we hope will be a successful negotiation, we will pass across the yet-to-be-designed bridge of an implementation stage. The media are currently focusing the national gaze on that period of five years or so as our “future”. As I look back on almost five decades of the European project, I also look far beyond those mere five years.

The UK is moving on—but in ways not yet agreed upon in detail, because inevitably the EU will also move on. It will be for another generation altogether, both here and there, to determine whether the respective directions of travel will tend to diverge or converge. My instinct tells me that the future generations in Britain and Europe will favour a reconvergence.

I hope to spend some time in the future with many young people, encouraging them to develop their skills in rural affairs, business and enterprise, and always to remind them that they make a living by what they do but make a life by what they give. I am sure that agriculture will provide many of them with many opportunities to do just that and still be proud to be British.