Flood Response
Luke Pollard Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. I join her in sending our condolences to the family of the man who died in Hampshire.
On behalf of the Opposition, I thank the emergency services, the Environment Agency, local councils, volunteers and communities who have worked tirelessly to protect homes and businesses, and to rescue people and animals from rising waters, fallen trees and debris, as well as all those who have worked to reinforce flood defences, not forgetting the RNLI and our coastguard too.
The reality of the climate crisis is that more extreme weather will happen more often and with more severe consequences, especially for those who live and work in areas of high flood risk. As the climate breakdown escalates, we are seeing an increase in the frequency and intensity of deadly weather patterns. Much more needs to be done to prevent flooding, to alleviate carbon emissions through habitat restoration, and to return flood plains to a natural state. Building homes on flood plains must stop.
The Government need to ask themselves: since Parliament declared a climate emergency, what are they doing differently on flooding—on protecting our communities? Austerity has had a devastating impact on our environment. There have been unprecedented cuts to our local authorities across the country, including the councils that have been most affected by the increased flooding and increased risk of flooding. The Environment Agency has seen its staffing levels fall by 20% since the Government came to power. I want Ministers to look afresh at what can be done now that Parliament has declared a climate emergency. A new plan for flooding should recognise the realities of the climate crisis, reverse the cuts to our frontline services, invest in comprehensive flood prevention, promote land use change, encourage habitat restoration, and acknowledge in the funding settlements for councils the higher risk in areas that face flooding so often.
I recognise that some new flood schemes have been delivered, but the list that the Secretary of State gave out is of what she has done, not what she will do, in response to this flooding. Will she accept that a comprehensive plan for flooding is now needed? Is it now time for Ministers to recognise that requiring match funding for some flood schemes means that poorer communities lose out compared with richer areas? The Environment Agency said only last year that it needs £1 billion a year to protect our communities, and a new approach on flooding. When will Ministers listen to their own Government agency and fund flood protection properly?
Does the Secretary of State have a date for the much-trailed flood summit that the Prime Minister promised last year? Will the trials of the new environmental land management scheme be targeted at the areas where flooding has been most severe this time? What action is she taking to ensure that homes and businesses that have been denied insurance and are still outside the current Flood Re scheme get the affordable protection that they so deserve?
Water is incredibly destructive and can destroy homes, businesses and livelihoods. Many of those flooded this time have been flooded before. Can the Secretary of State give them an assurance that the warm words and Government press releases this time will result in more action than they saw the last time they were flooded?
Theresa Villiers
Where those on the two Front Benches completely agree is on the urgent need to tackle the climate crisis, because inevitably our changing climate leads to more extreme weather. This Government have the most ambitious programme in the world to decarbonise our economy. We are decarbonising faster than any other G7 economy, and we were the first major developed economy to make the legal commitment to net zero. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that habitat restoration, nature-based solutions, peatland restoration and tree planting are all a crucial part of our programme to tackle climate change, but they can also play a critical role in mitigating the impact of flooding. We are determined to deliver on those programmes, which is demonstrated by the revolutionary Environment Bill we have put forward.
I agree that the planning system must take into account flood risk, and there are important principles in the planning system to ensure that it does so. In relation to council funding, I reiterate that the Bellwin scheme was opened this morning by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I encourage local authorities to submit their applications as soon as possible.
With regard to Environment Agency funding, we are absolutely committed to investing in ensuring that our flood defences are as strong as they can be and that we become more resilient to flooding. That is why our manifesto commits a further £4 billion over five years. We do have a comprehensive plan for flooding, and those investments will be made over the coming years.
The shadow Secretary of State is concerned about match funding, but one of the successes of the funding programme is that we have managed to draw in sources of funding for other areas, to maximise the impact we can have on flood defences. He makes a valid point in relation to environmental land management. We certainly would want to involve a range of locations in our tests and trials, and I very much hope that some of the areas affected by flooding today can be part of that.
Finally, Flood Re has significantly improved access to insurance, and it has kept the costs much lower than they would otherwise be. Virtually 100% of people now have the option of quotes from at least two companies when choosing insurance, but we recognise that there was concern in South Yorkshire after the November flooding incident, so we are reviewing the scheme independently to ensure that it is working as effectively as possible to help people insure in these circumstances.
Oral Answers to Questions
Luke Pollard Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Theresa Villiers
I can assure the hon. Member that we will not trade away our high standards of environmental protection, animal welfare or food safety. We will make sure that our trade negotiations work for our whole country, including the farmers she mentioned. I met farmers in Northumberland only a few days ago and had those very conversations.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
On Monday, the Secretary of State heard from both Opposition MPs and MPs on her own Benches that she had to put our high environmental standards into law to prevent US agriculture from undercutting them in any trade negotiations. Now that a few days have passed since that debate, has she reflected on the fact that there is cross-party support for putting those promises into law and will she do the right thing and put them in the Agriculture Bill?
Theresa Villiers
I reiterate what we said in a debate last week: our high environmental, animal welfare and food safety standards are already in law, including legislating to prevent the importation of chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef, and our manifesto commits us to continuing to defend robustly those standards in future trade negotiations.
Luke Pollard
I am afraid that is not a good enough answer from the Environment Secretary, because unless there is a specific clause in the Agriculture Bill that guarantees that there will be no undercutting of British farmers by imported US agriculture in particular—produce grown to lower animal welfare and environmental standards—no one will believe a word that the Environment Secretary has to say. The Trade Secretary is today publishing a document that will apparently lock those standards into law, so if it is good enough for the Trade Secretary, why is it not good enough for the Environment Secretary to put the same commitment into law?
Theresa Villiers
As I have said, those commitments are already in law, and the Government will defend them in our trade negotiations. There is a cross-party consensus in this House that we value our high standards. We will continue with those high standards; we will not compromise them in trade negotiations.
Agriculture Bill
Luke Pollard ExcerptsMonday 3rd February 2020
(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House, whilst recognising that on leaving the EU the UK needs to shift agricultural support from land-based payments to the delivery of environmental and other public benefits, declines to give a Second Reading to the Agriculture Bill because it fails to provide controls on imported agricultural goods, such as chlorinated chicken or hormone treated beef, and does not guarantee the environmental, animal welfare and food safety standards which will apply.
The amendment, which stands in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and others, would deny the Bill a Second Reading because it fails comprehensively to guarantee environmental protections and animal welfare standards in any post-Brexit trade deals. The United Kingdom’s history and identity are connected and integral to our countryside, to our farming and to our connection to the natural world. We are rightly proud of our high farm animal standards and our high standards of animal welfare and food hygiene. Today, I will ask some difficult questions about where the Bill takes us, voice serious concerns about the Bill and set out Labour’s genuine, heartfelt and reasonable concerns about a Bill that is silent on food imports produced to lower standards that risk undercutting the great British farmer.
What kind of country do we want to be? In which direction will Britain face in the future? Will our nation rise to the challenge of the climate emergency? Will we crash out of the transition period without a deal? Will we sell our values short for trade deals, especially with the United States? I have looked in ministerial statements for certainty and found plenty of words, but no answers—at least none that I genuinely believe. The Bill sets out a path to a wholly new system of agricultural support, and Labour backs many of its provisions, but as I will explain, legal protections to guarantee animal welfare, food hygiene rules, agricultural workers’ rights and environmental protections on the food we import are deliberately omitted from the Bill.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Gentleman knows I have a lot of sympathy with what he wants to end up with on those issues, but does he not agree that denying this important Bill a Second Reading when farmers want to know the direction of travel and have some certainty would be absolutely the wrong step? Those issues are quite properly addressed in Committee and on Report, and we should get moving forward quickly.
Luke Pollard
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about giving certainty to our farmers, and I will come to that matter later in my speech, but Labour Members cannot accept a Bill that opens the door to chlorinated chicken being sold in Britain. We simply will not do it.
On the day when people are looking for certainty about where we are going as a country, this Bill does not provide that certainty—the key challenge that the hon. Gentleman mentioned and that I just spoke about. The United Kingdom has exceptionally high environmental and food standards, and an internationally recognised approach to animal welfare, which is a good thing.
Geraint Davies
Is my hon. Friend aware of the research in the United States about hormone-impregnated meat—beef in particular—giving rise to premature pubescence in children; premature breast growth and so on? Does he know that there was an attempt to pursue that, but the officials in charge were sacked by Donald Trump when he became the President?
Luke Pollard
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. There are valid questions about some of the farming methods used by some of our key trading partners and the reasons why they are used.
I do not want the legacy of high standards to be ripped apart by the introduction of cheap, low-quality foods following our exit from the European Union. Britain has a brilliant diversity of growers, farmers and producers. Our rural communities define what it is to be British. Our rural landscapes are beautiful, but they are not frozen; they are working environments. Our rural areas are an inheritance that we pass to our children, and that is why the rules that govern our stewardship of farms, fields, rivers and hills and valleys are so important.
Before I embark on my main argument, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I again declare an interest? My little sister is a sheep farmer in Cornwall, and I have been asked by my old man to add that he keeps a few chickens. I overlook the Pollard chicken coop at my peril.
There is much in the Bill that Labour supports. Public money for public goods is a philosophy that Labour backs. I am no fan of the common agricultural policy—it is probably one of the few areas where the Secretary of State and I agree. Incentivising farmers to protect wildlife, enhance biodiversity and restore habitats is a good thing, which my party supports. At what pace and by what mix of payments is still to be determined in detail. How this move will help smaller farmers as well as large producers is still uncertain, but the direction of travel is one that I welcome. Farmers have been looking after the land for generations, and it is not if they should do so but how that matters, especially as we scrutinise the Bill further.
As my hon. Friends the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) and for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) have said, the Bill is silent regarding the big promises the Prime Minister has made on standards. Indeed, this very morning, in his speech in Greenwich, the Prime Minister promised the British people that
“we will not accept any diminution in food hygiene or animal welfare standards”,
but the Bill contains no legal guarantee to put those words into law. So many of the Prime Minister’s promises have been broken, words twisted and responsibilities shrugged off. For any of those promises to be believed, they must be enshrined in law. For the British public, for our farmers and for anyone we do trade deals with in the future to see clearly, there must be no regression on standards—no undercutting of British farmers with food grown to poorer standards, poorer animal welfare, more damaging environmental impacts or poorer protections for workers.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is, as always, making a well-informed speech. The concerns he is voicing are not just those of the official Opposition or of other parties in this House. They are shared by organisations such as the NFU and other farmers associations—organisations that naturally support attempts to change agriculture in this country. It is not just us asking these questions. The Government need to listen to the NFU and the Farmers’ Union of Wales, which have genuine concerns and fears about the Government reneging on the commitments they made in their December 2019 manifesto.
Luke Pollard
I agree entirely. Sometimes there is a temptation to believe that, just because a dodgy socialist at a Dispatch Box said it, it must be untrue, but apparently there are an awful lot of dodgy socialists out there now.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
I do not for one second suggest that the hon. Gentleman is in any way dodgy, but does he not realise that while the points the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) made are valid to him and would be perfectly reasonable to make the subject of amendments, by choosing to oppose Second Reading of the Bill, he would make amendments impossible? Will he withdraw his opposition to the Bill so that he can make the amendments that he purports to want?
Luke Pollard
Perhaps the Government’s whipping arrangements are somewhat flawed tonight, but with a majority of 80 the Bill will proceed, unless the hon. Gentleman would like to join me in the Lobby. If he is so worried about the future of the Bill, he is welcome to join me in expressing the serious and heartfelt concerns not just of Opposition Members, but of organisations that work day in, day out with our agricultural communities, which are worried that while they are improving standards in the UK, we will leave the door open to their being undermined. That is not something I can accept.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he accept that the farmers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have a commitment to deliver high-quality products that they can sell all over the world, and they have no intention of changing the regulations that ensure that those products continue to be delivered? Does he accept the Secretary of State’s assurance on the need for the devolved Administrations to be part of that? They accept that being part of the regulations is the way forward.
Luke Pollard
The hon. Gentleman is right. British farmers do not want lower standards; they are proud of the standards they uphold and we are proud of what they grow and how they grow it. What worries us is the risk that, despite those high standards, the door could be opened to lower-cost, poorly produced food imports. That concern is shared by farmers. That is why the importance of putting legal protections in the Bill is so clear. Why is the Secretary of State not proposing legal protections so that chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef will not be on sale in our shops, restaurants and takeaways? Why is she not insisting that our farmers’ best practice is not undercut by US mega-agriculture? Why does she not made upholding Britain’s example on animal welfare her red line that she refuses to cross?
Speaking frankly, few in this House believe that the Secretary of State will last long in her job with the reshuffle coming up, so she had nothing to lose in making the case to support our British farmers to stop them being undercut. If she had done so, she would have been the farmers’ hero—a protector of the environment, an upholder of promises to the electorate, someone we could all be very proud of—but her silence on the issue of leaving out legal guarantees from the Bill points to one inevitable conclusion: the promises made by the Prime Minister to uphold the standards are disposable. They are liable to be rejected and replaced at will to secure a bargain-basement trade deal with Donald Trump and usher in a potential for chlorinated chicken, hormone-treated beef and more besides to be sold. If the Government say that that is not happening, why is it not in the Bill? Why will that point not be put into law?
Sir John Hayes
I agree with the hon. Gentleman about food imports: I want to see less food imports and more of the food that we consume grown here to assure traceability and guarantee food security. To get him off the hook, it would be much better for the Opposition’s credibility if they backed the Bill and made these arguments later. Not to back the Bill is to fail our farmers by not giving them the support that they need as we leave the European Union—surely he must know that.
Luke Pollard
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman: it is important to back British. Indeed, if he had been present, as many of us were, during debates on the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020, he would have heard my call for us to buy British, buy local, and especially buy food from the south-west, a region that I and the Farming Minister—the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—can be very proud of. Look for the red tractor, because it supports our local businesses and our country.
This issue is fundamental for the future. This is not just a minor amendment that can be put in place; it is fundamental to the direction that we are going in as a country and whether we leave the door open to cheap imported food that undermines our standards. That is why we have tabled this reasoned amendment. That is why it matters and why I am making this case today.
Another fellow west country MP—the recently re-elected Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish)—put it very succinctly:
“Imports produced to lower standards than ours pose a very real threat to UK agriculture. Without sufficient safeguards we could see British farmers significantly undermined while turning a blind eye to environmental degradation and poor animal welfare standards abroad.”
He proposed a very good amendment in the previous Parliament that won cross-party support, although sadly, not the support of his Front Benchers. He said:
“Our suggested amendment calls for agricultural goods to be imported into the UK only if the standards to which those goods were produced are as high as, or higher than, current UK standards.”
We could all get behind that.
Ian Paisley
I want to try to get my head around this: is the Opposition’s opposition to chlorinated chicken about chlorinating all foodstuffs? Every single lettuce grown in the United Kingdom is dipped in chlorine, so do they have a principled objection to using chlorine in foodstuffs, or is it just about Trump-bashing? [Interruption.]
Luke Pollard
A Member on the ministerial Bench says, “Tell us about the vegetables.” The important thing is to tell us about the standards and the produce. The hon. Gentleman raises a good point: some people in the House might not be familiar with all the agricultural practices that go into producing our food each day. The issue with chlorine-washed chicken is not the chlorine that washes the chicken—he is right that we chlorine-wash some of our vegetables in the UK that are on sale in supermarkets—but the reason why it needs to be chlorine-washed in the first place. That is because it frequently compensates for poor hygiene standards, such as dirty or crowded abattoirs, cages packed with birds, which would be unlawful in the UK, diseases and infections. The reason why the chicken is chlorine-washed, rather than the chlorine, is what is most concerning.
We cannot wash away poor animal welfare standards with swimming pool water. The realities of how the chicken was reared remain. Refusing to set out legal protections against that in the Bill leaves the door open to allowing such food into our food chains in future trade deals. Here is my challenge to the Secretary of State. She has heard, effectively, from both sides of the House—
Luke Pollard
I am only a shadow Minister just yet, but I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman favours my ambition.
Mr Paterson
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s arguments. The Americans use peroxyacetic acid, not chlorine. Will he comment on the fact that Americans eat about twice the volume of chicken as Europeans but have significantly fewer cases of campylobacter and salmonella? He makes the correct case that they have different animal husbandry standards from ours, but what metric would he use? If he goes on the outcomes of the food, based on the medical evidence, American food is safer or as safe as ours. What will the Labour party do in considering food that is produced under a different regime? How will it be judged, what data will be used, and how will he stop this, or propose that it is stopped?
Luke Pollard
The right hon. Gentleman is right that acetic acid is used in many cases instead of chlorine. Whether the infection is killed by acetic acid, chlorine, or any other process, the concern is that there is an infection there in the first place through poor animal husbandry. I invite him to look at that and at the work produced by the EFRA Committee under his colleague, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton. It goes into detail to make sure that the standards of any imported food are as least as high as those we have in the UK.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
This goes to the heart of why Labour is supporting the reasoned amendment and does not want to allow Second Reading to go through. In the last Parliament, we supported the Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill. I sat on the Bill Committee. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton tabled new clause 4 and I tabled new clause 1 to the Bill. The Government were terrified that they were going to lose, because we had such cross-party consensus on this—from the NFU to environmental groups, to farmers and to greener people—so they suddenly shelved the Bill. We have not seen anything of it since December 2018. We cannot trust the Government this time and allow Second Reading to go through without trying to raise this point now.
Luke Pollard
I thank my hon. Friend for that very good point. Farmers will be watching this discussion tonight who are unfamiliar with parliamentary process. For them, the idea of letting the Bill pass Second Reading without making a case for this might seem appealing, but unless the Government and the Secretary of State, in particular, will accept an amendment or propose one that sets the promises in law, it is important that we make the case now. I say to all the farmers who do not want their standards undercut, who are genuinely worried about this, that they have an opportunity to ask their Member of Parliament, whichever side of the House they sit on, to make that case, because that challenge about putting this into law is important. Every day that passes when it is not proposed, including in the Bill, we have to ask why.
We do not need to look too far back to find a precedent that would help the Secretary of State. Last week, the Government whipped their MPs to vote for the NHS Funding Bill to set into law their commitment to spend more on the NHS. Why do the Government need a law to implement promises on the NHS but not a law to implement promises on animal welfare and environmental concerns? Let us look at what the Health Secretary said about that Bill:
“The crucial thing in this Bill is the certainty: the Bill provides everyone in the NHS with the certainty to work better together to make long-term decisions, get the best possible value for money”—[Official Report, 27 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 566.]
Indeed, certainty is a good thing. The certainty that British farmers will not be undercut by cheap imported US produce grown at a lower cost with lower standards would help them as well. Why is legal certainty good for one election promise but not for another? We know the reason: one they intend to deliver, and one they do not. That fact has been pointed to by leaks from DEFRA officials that were unearthed by Unearthed. A report published in October said:
“Weakening our SPS regime to accommodate one trade partner could irreparably damage our ability to maintain UK animal, plant and public health, and reduce trust in our exports”.
That is why this matters.
I am proud of British farmers—not just the ones who are in my family, but all of them. Because the Bill fails to uphold animal welfare and environmental standards in law, Labour cannot support it. We need a legal commitment not to allow imports of food produced to lower standards or lower animal welfare standards. We need advice and support to help smaller farms transition to more nature-friendly farming methods that tackle the climate crisis, and we need the Government to set out a clear direction of travel for future agricultural regulation. Food grown to lower standards, some with abusive practices, must never be imported to undercut British farmers.
I have no doubt that Tory MPs will dutifully vote for the Bill tonight, but each and every one of them must know that my argument has merit. They might be wise to ask themselves why the NFU, the RSPCA and Greenpeace are saying the same thing as that Labour chap at the Dispatch Box. Why did the re-elected Chair of the EFRA Committee present a similar argument in the last Parliament? Could it be that collectively we are on to something? If we are—spoiler alert: we are—I encourage Members to make a beeline to the Secretary of State to encourage her to propose an amendment to the Bill as swiftly as possible to set in train the promises made at the general election, not only by the Prime Minister but, I believe, by nearly every Tory MP here.
I and my colleagues on the Opposition Benches will be voting for the reasoned amendment to deny the Bill a Second Reading because it omits the legal protections to prevent our British farmers from being undercut. I hope that the Bill can be improved—and swiftly—because in proposing a greener and better future it will also allow for that future to be undermined by imported food grown more cheaply and to lower standards. Who will eat that food? It will be the poorest in society. Who will be able to afford food grown to higher standards? The better-off. It will lead to deregulatory pressure to ensure that Britain’s farmers can compete with US industrial agriculture, which is the opposite of the spirit of the Bill and of what the Secretary of State said at the Dispatch Box, and it is the reason we need legal protection to ensure that no food is imported that has been produced to lower standards than we have today. The Secretary of State has the opportunity to do that. Every day that she lets that opportunity slip by is an indication that they intend to renege on their promise.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill
Luke Pollard ExcerptsTuesday 28th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 28th January 2020 - (28 Jan 2020)
Luke Pollard
I thank the Minister for repeating what he said in Committee of the whole House. There is cross-party support for the Bill but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said, that does not mean that there are not some issues worth highlighting. As I said on Second Reading, I declare an interest in that I am a proud brother of a sheep farmer in Cornwall who farms rare breed sheep and is married to a beef farmer; in fact, they are both based just up the road from the Minister’s constituency.
We will not be opposing the Bill, but I need to add the climate crisis to the context that the Minister set out, because listening to the remarks of Government Members there seems to be a slight disconnect between what is in this Bill and the forthcoming Agriculture Bill, and what is in the notes that they are being given to read out. It is really important that we get this right. The Government are proposing moving from a system of supporting farmers via the land they own to a system of supporting farmers based on environmental land management and other environmental public goods. This will be a good scheme if delivered correctly. It is not a subsidy for productivity or food production. After listening to some of the speeches on Second Reading and today, I am concerned that not all Government Members have quite understood this, so I encourage colleagues to consult the recently re-elected Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to whom I pass on my congratulations; it is always good to see Members from Devon in places of authority.
It is important that we get this right because if we are fighting on the wrong pitch, we cannot do a decent job of scrutinising the biggest fundamental changes to our agricultural system since the Labour Government’s introduction of the Agriculture Act of 1947. That is why we need to make sure that this is done properly.
The Minister could address elements raised by his hon. Friends and, indeed, by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, about the future of the Rural Payments Agency. The hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) raised some valid concerns about the culture of the RPA. I commend the work of the officials there who have been working under immense pressure not only because of the potential changes how the CAP has worked but because their budget has gone down from £237.6 million when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 to just £95 million in 2017-18. If we are to change our agricultural system, the culture of the organisations that work in agriculture will also need to change, and that will need to be properly scrutinised and given time to bed in. It would be worth the Minister reconsidering our amendments that would have given Ministers slightly more leeway to look at that.
This Bill needs to be seen in concert with the Agriculture Bill. I appreciate that the Minister said that time is of the essence, and indeed it is, but time has not been of the essence over the past 14 months as Ministers sat on the Agriculture Bill, the Fisheries Bill and the Environment Bill. They have been taking it very easy, with a laid-back and pedestrian attitude. It is therefore somewhat cheeky but appropriate for the Minister to say in this context that parliamentary scrutiny cannot be delivered now because we have taken so long to get to this point. That excuse needs a bit more work, because we need to guarantee that Henry VIII powers are not being used disproportionately. I fear that in this setting they should have been used in a slightly different manner. We do need to get this right.
There are also elements of how we can support rare breeds, and other items that were discussed on Second Reading but were not mentioned in Committee and are still issues of concern for our rural communities—not only for hill farming, which I mentioned before, but for crofters, as raised by colleagues in the Scottish National party. We need to make sure that those specific types of farming are supported in any extension or new form of agricultural support. The Minister has a timeline whereby he wishes to reform agricultural support in the next few years or so, but by loading all the changes towards the end of that process, and not the start, we are giving our farmers notice that there will be considerable changes but not enough time to get it right.
The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) spoke about the importance of the ELM schemes and getting those right. This is a technical detail that I am not sure that everyone has been following. If we are to get this right, it is really important that the ELM schemes are properly scrutinised and given time so that we can not only see what the consequences are but improve them before there is a large-scale roll-out. The farming sector is willing to work with Ministers on this to get it right. We know that the “public money for public goods” approach is a philosophy that is supported by many in the farming communities, but we cannot have a new philosophy, a new approach and a new funding system implemented too fast without the proper time to bed it in and improve it to make sure that it all works. The Minister is speeding through this Bill when we could have the option of looking at whether the system needs to be extended for a further year in due course.
Jim Shannon
On the point about the importance of this transfer, does the hon. Gentleman feel that it is very important in terms our sheep markets, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said? The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) referred to the 95% of lamb produce that goes out of Wales. In Northern Ireland the figure is 97%. With the changes coming in, it is very important that we hold on to the markets where we can sell that stuff in the meantime.
Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. This goes to the heart of some of the debates that might transition into our discussions on the Agriculture Bill.
I want us to have a farming system that reflects the climate crisis, taking due cognisance of food miles and the carbon intensity of importing food from one side of the planet to another when our home-grown local produce is of exceptional quality and something that we can be very proud of. Speaking as a west country MP—indeed, the Minister is another—I think we need to recognise that the south-west creates some of the most fantastic foodstuffs in the country. Representatives from right around the country have their own produce that they can be very proud of. British produce is something that we should be very proud of. I encourage all Members to support buying goods with the red tractor logo to make sure that we take steps to encourage consumer behaviour in buying local.
That is really important, because in any future trade arrangements discussed in other legislative vehicles, we need to ensure that our UK farmers are not undercut. It is important that we set out what that means, because chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef are of concern to many people. This does not mean that UK farmers will be treating their chickens with chlorine or using antibiotics on an industrial scale as US agriculture does; it means that we will be allowing access to our market for food produced in that way. It is not the chlorine or the antibiotics that are the main concern—it is the fact that they are used in the first place because the animal welfare standards for those animals are so low. We will need to rehearse and repeat this argument as we get closer to Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill.
It is also important to set out that we need a fairer form of farm support that makes sure that our farmers get their payments on time. Improvements have been made but there is still more progress to be made. We need to support our farmers in decarbonising agriculture, partly by allowing our natural habitats to thrive. We must ensure that farm run-off does not pollute our watercourses, as we heard earlier. We must create a system where we are moving effectively and efficiently towards public money for public goods, not a form of farm subsidy.
This Bill completes a technical amendment that the Minister could, should and probably would have made a year ago, if he had been allowed to by the Whips. I am glad it has been done now. However, as we lead up to the Agriculture Bill, we must make sure that we have a system of farm support, and a debate, that is worthy of the importance of the high-quality, nutritious, locally produced, decarbonising food production that all our farmers and, indeed, our voters want to see.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill
Luke Pollard ExcerptsTuesday 21st January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I feel immensely honoured and privileged to speak at the Dispatch Box in my first outing as the shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I would like to begin by paying tribute to my predecessor, Sue Hayman, and my former shadow DEFRA team colleagues Dr David Drew, Jenny Chapman, Dani Rowley and Sandy Martin. Each was formidable in their own right and worked tirelessly to scrutinise the Government and get the very best for our farmers, our wildlife and our environment. I was proud to work with Sue when we first proposed that Parliament should declare a climate emergency, and myself, my party and the planet will be grateful for her work.
Mr Speaker, you would expect me to have a link to our incredible countryside, as a proud west country lad, and I do. I declare an interest, because I am very proud to be the brother of a sheep farmer and of someone who works in wool marketing, one of whom receives CAP payments.
There is an irony that the first piece of legislation we are considering now that the Government’s Brexit Bill has nearly passed is one that extends the EU’s farm payments system for a further 12 months. Labour will not oppose this Bill, because we think it is important that our farmers are paid, but there are still issues that I would like to raise with the Secretary of State. These are just the first rumblings of a stampede of Bills to come out of DEFRA. We still have the Agriculture Bill, the fisheries Bill and the environment Bill to follow.
I am pleased that the Government have accepted that Labour was right to argue repeatedly during our previous debate on the Agriculture Bill that we need long-term funding for direct payments, which has now materialised in the Bills that have been published. These Bills form the legislative framework for fishing, farming and the environment for the next 30 years. They come as our planet is on fire and our nation is plunging deeper into climate crisis. Every one of these Bills is an opportunity to protect our planet for the future, to cut carbon in bolder and faster ways, and to ensure that climate justice walks hand in hand with social justice, so that no one is left behind, whether in towns and cities or coastal and rural communities—and every one of these Bills falls short.
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend is making a good speech, and I join him in paying tribute to colleagues who are no longer in this place but have done so much work in this area, including Sue Hayman and others. Does he agree that it is incredibly important, as we debate these Bills, to ensure that there is an assessment of when the UK agricultural sector will achieve net zero?
Luke Pollard
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. I was proud that our party went into the general election with a commitment to have a path to net zero by 2030, and thanks to some of the amazing work being done by farmers up and down the country, the National Farmers Union has a plan to get to net zero by 2040. But 2040 is too late. I want to send a message loudly and clearly to the Secretary of State that we need bolder and swifter action. The Bills that she is proposing fall short in ambition, planning and detail, and I hope that she will take our criticism as a friendly gesture to try to improve these Bills, because they need to be improved if we are to tackle the climate emergency fully.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman think that people need to change their diets? How can we have more British-grown food?
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. We need to talk about food miles much more. We need to be buying local. That does not only mean buying from the region we live in, buying British and looking out for the Red Tractor symbol on the food we buy. It also means calculating the food miles of the trade deals that will be done in the future. It is a nonsense to have trade deals that will encourage consumers to buy food from the other side of the planet, at huge carbon cost, when there is perfectly good, nutritious, healthy food grown and reared to a high standard in our own country. I will return to that point time and again in this Parliament.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
There are some excellent agricultural community groups in my constituency. I have visited one called Cae Tan, and I am so impressed. We talk about farm to fork, which is key. What can we do to encourage these brilliant organisations that are working so hard to make sure that we can eat local?
Luke Pollard
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Perhaps the Minister who winds up the debate will make some remarks on what the Government could do. We need to lead by example. It is fine sampling delicacies from around the world, but we need to understand that the seasonality of our food is important. Britain produces some of the finest seasonal food all year round, but sometimes it is produced at carbon costs that should not be absorbed into our carbon budgets in the future. Let us celebrate the food we grow in the seasons when we grow it, and let us encourage all our constituents to eat local and lead by example.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his shadow Front-Bench position. Does he agree that we could do a lot more to encourage people to buy and eat British by improving food labelling?
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning that. At the weekend, I was talking about the fish that goes into pet food. As the Secretary of State will have seen from her press cuttings, I am concerned that there is not enough labelling on tins at the moment for people to understand what is in them, including the risk that there could be vulnerable and endangered species of fish in pet food. I hope she will take that seriously. Whether it is being fed to our children or our pets, we need to ensure that what is in the tin is what is on the tin, and that is not always the case at the moment.
I will make some progress before taking further interventions. The Bills presented by DEFRA reflect a new form of managerialism that has permeated the Department ever since the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), left. I disagreed with him on a great many things, but there is no doubt that under him, DEFRA was at the heart of government and at the forefront of media attention, with consultations aplenty and a whirlwind of ambition, cunning, drive and the cold wind of change. That contrasts unfavourably with where we are now.
Brexit should mean that DEFRA is at the beating heart of a new vision for governance after we leave the EU. With so much change expected for farming, fishing, food and environmental standards, every journalist in town and every Government Back Bencher should be beating a path to the Secretary of State’s door. But they are not, and this is a challenge for the Secretary of State to show the bold leadership and the courage of her predecessor. These Bills do not do enough to cut carbon, and they do not do enough to protect vulnerable habitats. There is an opportunity in the process of revision to look on a cross-party basis at how we can do more, because our planet needs us to, and I hope that that opportunity will not be missed.
The Bill that we are considering today should be unnecessary. If the Government had made progress with the Agriculture Bill in the last Parliament, we would not need it now. The last Committee sitting of the Agriculture Bill was in November 2018. Instead of bringing the Bill back to the House of Commons to be reviewed and passed, the Government sat on their hands. That Bill would already be on the statute book, and we would already be moving on with “public money for public goods”, if the Government had not been so cautious and timid about bringing it forward. We need bold vision in agriculture, similar to the vision in the Agriculture Act 1947 introduced by the groundbreaking Labour Government. Ministers need to show a greater degree of courage.
Labour supports the public money for public goods approach, with the addition of food as a public good. It was omitted from the last Agriculture Bill, and I am glad that Ministers have rectified that between the two drafts being published. If that Bill had been passed instead of the Government long-grassing it, there would be no need to extend the CAP for 12 months, because we could have moved on to a new system by this point.
The Bill also implements the recommendations of the Bew review, which set out the right steps to correct the historical wrongs for farmers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That is long overdue. I would like the Minister of State, in his concluding remarks, to place on record a statement to confirm that this will not be paid for by English farmers. I believe that is what the Secretary of State hinted at in her opening remarks, but there is concern among farmers that extra money for farming is something that rarely appears from Governments, and I would like the Minister to make it clear that this is extra money and that English farmers will not have their funding cut to correct that historical injustice. I think that is what the Secretary of State was saying, but I would be grateful if that could be set out.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) for mentioning the Rural Payments Agency, because in a Bill about direct payments to farmers, the omission of the Government agency that is responsible for them seems to be an oversight. Improvements in the past year have helped to speed up payments, but there is nothing in the Bill that guarantees a better service for farmers from the Rural Payments Agency. There are no service commitments or guarantees of swift payments during a period of payment turbulence, and there is no certainty of support in the future. There is nothing in the Bill that provides adequate resources for the civil servants in the Rural Payments Agency, which has seen its budget cut from £237 million in 2010 to just £95 million in 2018. That is showing in the service that many farmers have received, including delayed payments. When we are subject to so much potential change in the payment system, it is important that the civil servants in that agency have the resources they need. In DEFRA questions over many years, I have heard hon. Members across the House raise legitimate concerns about the speed of payments and about ensuring that delays in payment do not adversely affect the sometimes fragile financial situations of our farmers. I think that is worth picking up on.
With this Bill, it looks as though Ministers are legislating for a new cliff edge. It provides for only another 12 months of certainty for farmers before the Agriculture Bill comes in. Introducing such a complex scheme as public money for public goods—for which we have seen no consultations or further details—means that it could be necessary for the Government to extend these provisions for another 12 months afterwards, but there is nothing in the Bill that allows them to do that. I know that the Prime Minister is no fan of extensions, but when it comes the details of this proposal, I do not want to see the Secretary of State back here in six months’ time needing to pass another piece of legislation because the systems are not in place as she intends today. Labour will table amendments to enable the Government to extend systems such as this with an affirmative vote of the House, to ensure that our farmers have the certainty they need. After the long-grassing of the Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill, I am sure that the Minister will forgive us for not having confidence that Ministers will precisely deliver what they have set out in grand speeches. Labour does not stand in the way of a new system for payments, it is just that the Government’s record in sitting on those Bills does not inspire confidence.
At the heart of what we are talking about today in fishing and farming is the climate emergency and the necessity to decarbonise everything that we do. The Conservative ambition to see net zero by 2050 is a long way away. I will be 70 in 2050, and as far as I am concerned, that is my entire lifetime away. That target is simply not ambitious enough. We need to be hitting net zero by 2030 to make any meaningful contribution to tackling the climate crisis. Minette Batters and the leadership of the NFU have provided a direction that shows that reducing carbon—to net zero by 2040 in their case, but earlier for some sectors in our agricultural sector—is not only possible but preferable. That can be done through supporting the livelihoods of small farmers in particular.
One area that was missing from the Agriculture Bill and is missing from this Bill is the protection of hill farmers and those who rear rare breeds. Those are two areas that we know will be under direct assault from the Government’s proposed changes to the farm funding system. Hill farming and rare breed farming do not get a huge amount of airtime in this place, but they need to. Hill farming in particular has created the landscape of many of our rural areas over many generations, and it needs to be protected.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
The shadow Minister was talking about the public good. Given the beautiful countryside that we have, thanks to the many farmers in this country, and the millions of people who come here to enjoy it, I can think of no better cause than that the money should go to the hill farmers who make this country look so stunning.
Luke Pollard
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think that that was a remark directed more at his Front Benchers than mine, because there is an absence of such a provision in the Bill.
Lurking in the shadows of the Bill is the prospect of lower standards, lower environmental protections and lower animal welfare standards with a post-Brexit trade deal. There are many grand sentences and lofty ambitions, but the reality of a trade deal with Donald Trump’s America is that farm standards would be lower, and there is a risk that our farmers would be undercut by farming methods that do not have the same animal welfare or the same focus on quality as UK farmers have at the moment. Conservative Members may shake their heads, but this issue is being raised by the NFU and farmers’ groups right across the country. It is a valid and real concern in our rural communities, and this Bill and others still do nothing about it. Trade deals must not be allowed to lower standards. We do not want to be left with Donald Trump’s rat hair paprika, hormone-treated beef or chlorinated chicken. The show of hands at the Oxford farming conference about the confidence farmers have in the Secretary of State and the ability to protect farmers in trade deals showed that there is still work to be done by Ministers to win the confidence of farmers in that respect.
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman is making a vital point. During the Secretary of State’s initial remarks, she had high praise for the Chancellor, but over the weekend the Chancellor said that the strategy of the British Government would be to disalign from Europe in all standard areas. We know that 90% of Welsh exports go into the single market. The British Government are about to cut the throats of Welsh farmers.
Luke Pollard
I am not really interested in Brexit soundbites, but I am interested in Brexit detail. It might be easy for the Chancellor to give a quote about divergence in the media, but divergence on farm standards means the potential for disruption at the border, difficulty in exporting our products and lower standards. It is important that Ministers come out and explain what divergence means in the context of agriculture, because divergence from high standards often means lower standards, and no matter what assurances are given, until it is written into a Bill that our standards will be protected and that there will be no divergence and no lowering of standards, there is every chance that people will doubt the motives of those who offer lofty soundbites but take different actions.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
We talk about welfare standards and the standards of the food we are producing, but who decides those standards? Ultimately it is our farmers. It strikes me as slightly concerning when the Opposition continue to say that we are going to have lower standards after Brexit, because it is ultimately our farmers who decide what standards we have. I have full confidence that they want to continue to have the high welfare standards that we have at the moment. Our farmers have no interest in lowering standards. Does the hon. Member agree that this ultimately comes down to the farmers, and that they are not going to lower standards in any way?
Luke Pollard
I think the hon. Lady is agreeing with me, but from a different angle. I agree that our farmers want high standards. They pride themselves on the high standards of the food they produce and the animals they rear. The risk with a trade deal is that there will be access to the UK market for farmers producing food at lower standards and thus undercutting our markets. That is the concern of the NFU, and I would encourage her to speak to her local farmers about this, because I think there is a genuine risk of that happening.
Richard Drax
The shadow Minister talks about chlorinated chicken—we hear a lot about that—but would he like to comment on the chlorinated water that we all drink in this country?
Luke Pollard
The hon. Gentleman invites me down a cul-de-sac about water policy that I am not quite sure is worth going down, but I would advise him not to drink too much swimming pool water when he is next having a little dip.
The important thing here is that we want to maintain the high standards of British farming, as do British farmers, and we need to ensure that we have a farm support system that gives them certainty, so that they can invest and employ people to pick the crops and rear the animals. We know that up and down the country crops are rotting in the fields because there are not enough people working in the area. We also know that the seasonal agricultural workers scheme is not delivering the number of places that we need to support our industry and that the Agriculture Bill, although lofty in its ambitions, is light on any detail that would enable farmers to invest. There is an opportunity here for Ministers to clarify and build on this.
Ministers have set out that public goods money will come in over a seven-year period, but they have also said that there will be no changes to the funding period over the next four years. That means that they will be loading in massive change over the final three years of the period, which come, interestingly, just after the next general election. We agree that public money for public goods is the right approach, but farmers will quite legitimately be asking, “How is that going to affect us? What is the financial formula that will affect our region? What will it incentivise us to invest in, and what will it disincentivise us to invest in, and how can we plan?” How do we ensure that types of farming that are sometimes less profitable, such as the rare breeds and hill farming that was mentioned earlier, are protected and encouraged, and how are we recognising the potential disruption that Brexit could bring to the communities affected?
There are some real opportunities to get this system right in the next three months with these Bills, but there is also a real risk that we will be creating framework legislation that does not deliver for our rural and coastal communities. On behalf of the Opposition, I make the Secretary of State an offer that we will work with the Minister and her Department to make sure that we are reflecting the concerns of farmers and fishers—those people who want high standards—and to make sure that we can support the legislation. We will not be opposing this Bill today, but I invite the Secretary of State to look again at the ambition and the drive of her Department, because if we are truly to tackle the climate emergency, we will need better than what she has achieved so far.