Agriculture Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 101 seeks to improve the Bill’s current definition of a producer. It broadens that definition, so that instead it reads

“starting, or improving the productivity of, an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity”.

This would make clearer which relevant parties stand to benefit from financial assistance.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I now call the noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale. There is a problem with connecting to the noble Lord. We move on to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I think we have all been slightly caught out there. For all the amendments on which I may speak today, I declare my interest as in the register.

I am sorry to disagree with my noble friend Lord Lucas. While I am in complete agreement about the need to improve agricultural technology, robotics and genetics, I just do not think his amendment is necessary, since my reading of subsection (2) is that it does just that. It says that the Secretary of State may give financial assistance to

“starting, or improving the productivity of, an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity”.

To me, that seems to cover what my noble friend has suggested in his amendment.

I agree entirely with him that we need a huge leap forward in technology, especially in the horticultural sector. I have read that one side-effect of President Trump’s curtailment of cheap Mexican and Latin American labour has been a big increase in robotics and technology in the United States to plant and harvest crops. We need to do exactly the same here. Exciting robotic machines are now being developed in the UK. In swotting up for this amendment, I looked at a recent video showing a machine operating in a vegetable-growing area; it had what I would call very fine fingers or tines knocking out the weeds between the plants but leaving the lettuces completely intact. Technology is the solution, not cheap eastern European temporary workers.

I also look forward to changes in the rules when we leave the EU so that we can do gene editing—not genetic modification, just gene editing. It is terribly important that we move to do that as quickly as we can when we leave the EU. We do not need anything in this Bill to give us the powers to do so.

I cannot support Amendments 43 and 54. These small local community farms do a good job, and they may currently qualify for support under ELMS, but they cannot feed the nation. I do not accept that they can supply up to 80% of the food this country needs. Huge changes are coming to mainstream farm production. I want all Defra’s efforts to be concentrated on the big picture of delivering ELMS and not diverted on to something nice but at the moment irrelevant to feeding the nation. It is quite possible that many of these local enterprises may qualify under the ELM schemes when they are fully developed. We should leave it at that.

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[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to join the House for the discussions on Tuesday. There was an IT hitch and I was virtually silenced. Like so many of your Lordships, I do so hate virtual. However, it has been a pleasure to follow the debate and to listen to so many expert ideas and views. I was particularly struck by the debate that was just recently led by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I was delighted to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, that my old hometown of Bridport is flourishing.

This is a terrifyingly long list of amendments to get through, so I shall try to be brief. I remind noble Lords that the devil lies in the details of many of these amendments, of course but also in their sheer weight. When the list of amendments is almost as long as the Bill itself, I fear there is a real danger of ending up with a piece of legislation so cumbersome that it simply gets bogged down in the mud.

In that spirit, I am happy to speak in favour of Amendment 26 in the name of my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and others. Replacing “or” with “and” seems such a small change—I am not sure I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Trees, although we have to consider very carefully the points that he has just made—and I thought my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury spoke very clearly and eloquently.

The amendment helps emphasise that health and welfare, if not exactly the same, are certainly two sides of the same coin, which leads to better outcomes for not only livestock but consumers. Without repeating any Second Reading discussions, consumers are the key to so many of the issues raised by so many of the amendments. Consumers want better food and wider choice at affordable prices. They have no interest in a race to the bottom. That is why I suspect most of us would be delighted to see more livestock raised outdoors, as the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Dundee suggests. I appreciated the wise and learned comments of the noble—and newly restored—Lord, Lord Rooker.

However, I feel much less sanguine, I am afraid, about some of the other amendments, such as Amendment 68, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others. The experience of the cousin of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in Australia notwithstanding, these amendments would add all sorts of unnecessary chains and handcuffs to the legislation and perhaps make it worse. Amendment 68 and other amendments like it—Amendment 77, for instance—would change the tone of the Bill and add to its complexity and would help make British farmers less competitive.

There has to be some consistency in all this. If we worry about imports of substandard chickens, for instance, it is counterproductive to make chicken less competitive, placing even more reliance on imported chicken by raising barriers for British chicken farmers. If all we are doing is to permit or enable imports of more chickens from the other side of the world, we are simply shifting the problem elsewhere. We must try to find a balance if we are to provide effective legislation.

So much in Amendments 77 and 125 is very worthy and I have no objection to the principles and values, but we have to concentrate on one prime objective, which is delivering a piece of legislation which is practicable and workable and enables British farming to flourish. In my view, the last three amendments I have mentioned are likely to undermine that objective of balance and practicability so, despite their fine objectives, I hope that they will not be pursued.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, to complete what she was unable to finish earlier.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger [V]]

I hope that the technology is working better now. I am not sure how much your Lordships heard before, but I am speaking to Amendment 26 in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Shrewsbury.

Many points have been put forward powerfully already and I do not wish to repeat them. However, I do think that health and welfare are intrinsically linked. Sometimes health needs to be protected because there are farming systems that are less welfare-friendly and may cause health issues and thus need more health interventions. I am thinking particularly of indoor intensively farmed poultry and pigs.

I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Trees, had to say. I have enormous respect for him and I know that he has vastly more experience than I do. But bad welfare, although it does not always cause immediate health issues, causes animals stress. To be anthropomorphic, in people that would be called mental health issues. That can lead to health issues in the long term. I just make that point.

I hope that we can replace “or” with “and” to ensure the highest welfare for poultry and livestock.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 29. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the Clerk during the debate. Anyone wishing to press this or any other amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in debate.

Amendment 29

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