Food Prices (Planning Policy)

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Karen Bradley.)

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I am delighted to have secured this debate on the effect of domestic land use on food prices.

First, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As a farmer in Nottinghamshire, I am of course affected by many of the issues around land use and the price of food.

I hope that Members will forgive me if I start by setting the scene about food prices, because the price of food is a complicated issue that crosses many Departments. I am quite aware that the Minister has responsibility for domestic planning and land use policy, but the issues that I will raise today cover a large number of other Departments. I shall try to keep my speech as focused as I can on the Minister’s responsibilities.

It is fair to say that past food prices have been stable in the recent past. I suppose that we have been fortunate as a nation to have been well fed for a number of years. Since the second world war, we have had a sustained period of level and quite acceptable food prices, but that has started to change over the more recent past. There have been a number of blips recently. In fact, in 2008, we actually saw a period when food prices came down again. We need to make our minds up really about whether this is a sustained issue or something that is just a blip in the pattern of things. In my opinion, we are facing something quite enormous in the challenges before us and the way that food prices will rise. There are a number of reasons for that, not least the price of oil, which is driving the cost for some farmers in their production methods. Anyone who is familiar with agricultural practice will of course recognise that the price of nitrogen fertilisers is based on the cost of oil and that, as their price goes up, the cost to farmers of producing food rises exponentially.

More importantly, what is really driving this process are issues around the world such as climate change, population growth and of course the change in diet for many people in other parts of the globe. Those three challenges are bringing this perfect storm together, which is a real challenge for us in the UK.

Let us look at some of those things. Whether people think climate change is carbon-driven or just something that is in the cycle does not really matter, frankly, because climate change is here to stay and is having an enormous impact on our ability to produce food; it is driving those production challenges.

Population growth, not only in the UK but around the world, is also having a big impact, which will get even worse as people on the other side of the world change to a more western diet. There have always been hungry people on earth, but all of a sudden we have hungry wealthy people who are able to pull food away from the European Union.

I think that we now recognise that an enormous challenge faces us, and the question now is how we in the UK deal with it, because the amount of domestic land that we have available is a flat figure. Without being flippant, we have stopped making land: the amount of land that we have is the amount that we have within the UK. It is imperative that, within the UK, we ensure that we use that land in the most effective way, to make sure that we are well fed and are kept warm. That is where some of the challenges on land use start to be felt.

What are the future threats? Clearly, the debate about biofuels is an interesting one. The use of land for the production of energy is not a new concept. Going back to the 1940s, my grandfather was farming and a third of his land was used for the production of hay to feed the horses that pulled his ploughs. That was, in effect, energy production at its most basic. As we have moved forward, however, farmers have found new opportunities, and as they have found themselves under pressure to increase their incomes, they have certainly looked to energy production to sustain themselves.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some farmers have found that they get less objection from planners when they submit applications for renewable energy projects than they do for projects that might relate to their own ability to produce food?

[Mr Spencer]

I do, and that is an issue. However, I actually welcome the opportunity for farmers to diversify their businesses, so that they can make them viable, but of course we need to be mindful of the impact. The example of anaerobic digestion is a good one. I welcome anaerobic digestion, as long as it makes use of waste streams that actually are waste streams, because we get something for nothing out of that process. However, what tends to happen, of course, is that farmers build anaerobic digesters but those digesters run much more efficiently when forage maize is put through them rather than a waste stream made up either of slurry, food waste or some other product. If Members were to drive down the middle of Nottinghamshire, they would see that the landscape there today is very different from what it was five years ago.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about an issue that has a major effect on dairy farmers. For many years, farmers have rented land to grow their maize. Suddenly, they find that they can no longer buy maize, because it is now being taken into biofuel plants. That will inevitably have a huge impact on the production of dairy products.

[Mr Spencer]

I am conscious of the fact that I said that I would try to focus on the matters that are relevant to the Minister, and we are in danger of straying into Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs territory, dare I say? However, it is difficult not to do so because these are cross-Government issues, and biofuels are one such issue.

The Minister is in control of planning policy. If we look at other renewable schemes, such as the siting of wind turbines, we might think that they do not have a large effect, but I am told that the current demand means that we will have to build 5,000 wind turbines. European targets will mean that we must more than double the amount of energy from onshore wind during the next 10 years and that we will have to build at least another 5,000 turbines onshore. Guidance for farmers provided by Wind Prospect advises that less than one acre of land is required for each turbine, including the access track, the tower itself and hard standing for the crane; the remaining land can be utilised as it was previously. However, 5,000 turbines equates to 5,000 acres, and 5,000 acres of productive arable land goes a long way to producing quite a lot of food.

We need to think about where we site some of these wind turbines. There are a number of examples of how we can put wind turbines on former industrial land, former collieries, old pit-tips and places like that, where they would not impact on the use of agricultural land. That is something that we should look at much more closely.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and I declare an interest in the agri-food sector.

Most commentators would say that the era of cheap food has gone, certainly for the medium term, and that the world has become a much smaller place, so that reactions in prices happen fairly quickly. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is imperative that we look at something radical to encourage the primary producer of food, because if things continue as they are they will result in more imports from other countries and the loss of jobs? We need to look at something radical to encourage farmers to grow more crops.

[Mr Spencer]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have achieved that before, with Government-led campaigns to improve domestic food production, and there are examples from the recent past, when the previous Government encouraged farmers to diversify and to consider adding value to their products, to get more from their production. That, however, brings with it anomalies.

I will draw on my own experience as a farmer on the urban fringe. We considered diversifying into farm retail, so that we could sell not only our own farm products but those of our neighbours, but I was told by my local planning authority that, because of the legislation in place to protect the green belt from out-of-town development, it was not possible to retail where we wanted to. Companies such as Halfords and B and Q want to build large retail units in the urban fringe, and a farm shop is, in effect, retail. I was told that most of my produce had to be sold through the farm shop and most of the shop’s produce had to come from the farm—I understand the logic of that—but if I asked my neighbours who live close to the farm, “Would you rather my farm shop retail the pork of one of my near neighbours, so that I could support both their business and the retail business, or would you rather I put 1,000 pig arks behind your houses and produce my own pork?” they would reply, “I would rather you sold another farmer’s pork than have an impact on the green belt with all those pig arks.” That is just one anomaly; there is a clear difference between agricultural diversification and major retail companies putting large warehouses in the green belt.

What can we take from the current state of food prices? We have a problem, frankly, because food prices have been rising for some time and we can no longer regard the increases as an anomaly. Whether we pin the hikes on oil prices, climate change, population increases, bad harvests or other developing industries in the green belt, it is clear that the rises are here to stay. We remain a nation dependent on imports, increasingly from all over the world, and we leave ourselves vulnerable to the storm that is raging outside our borders. We need, therefore, to protect ourselves, just like we did in the 1940s. We need to look at domestic production and ensure that we are making the most efficient use of our domestic land.

The percentage of agricultural land dropped from 39% to 25% between 1989 and 2009—a stark decrease. England has 14 green belts around its major cities, covering nearly 13% of the country, and 72% of the Nottingham and Derby green belt—1 million hectares—is in agricultural use. Overall, 66% of the green belt is used for agricultural purposes. The conclusion that I draw is that the green belt is fundamental to our ability to produce food ourselves. In Nottinghamshire, the green belt is under enormous pressure from local authorities, as they consider sites for residential developments, and it causes me enormous frustration that some of those authorities are choosing green-belt development over using the available brownfield sites.

This debate comes down to one thing, and my one request of the Minister is that he assure us that his inspectors—these things undoubtedly end up in front of an inspector—will be completely rigorous in their scrutiny of local plans. One of my local authorities, Gedling borough, has available to it the possibility of developing a former colliery site, but has chosen, for whatever reason, to develop the green belt in the villages of Linby and Papplewick, and around Hucknall, instead. That causes me enormous frustration, because most people in the borough recognise that the Gedling colliery site should be developed. There is some debate about whether an access road would allow for more housing, but clearly there is the opportunity to put between 600 and 700 houses closer to the urban fringe, rather than to tear up the green belt in Nottinghamshire.

Another example is that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has spent a lot of money on flood defences at a site called Teal close in Netherfield. I am led to believe that the site, which is close to the urban fringe and not within the green belt, is now protected from flooding, but it is not being developed, for whatever reason, and we are, again, pushing houses out into the rural areas. We need to look long and hard at that issue.

I cannot say often enough that brownfield before green-belt development is absolutely essential. I hope that that message seeps through and that at some point in the future, when we are all feeling much hungrier and cannot afford to import food, these things will come together. We will then wonder what on earth we were doing back in the early part of this century. We cannot go back. Once we have developed land and it has been taken out of agricultural production, it very rarely goes back. Probably the only examples of such land being returned to agricultural use are those involving open-cast sites that have had their topsoil removed and later put back, but even then it is very low-grade agricultural land that is probably used for grazing sheep rather than for arable production.

There are, nevertheless, some good examples of where we can get it right. Cemetery provision is a fairly contention issue, of course, because people do not really want cemeteries to be set up in the green belt, but natural cemeteries have been developed. There are no headstones and people are buried in a more natural state in a wicker coffin, so the cemetery can be used for grazing sheep and for livestock. That is a good example of things working together, and I encourage that sort of diversification.

One of my final points is that we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater—if Members will forgive the cliché. Farmers need to be able to diversify, to consider other ways to support their income.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has tempted me into the debate by ranging widely from anaerobic digestion to burials—no connection, of course, between the two. There is a role for Government intervention and planning controls, but farmers make commercial choices about land use, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does. They choose between biofuels, food production and development of other sorts. What does he think is the right balance between Government intervention, or Government control and regulation, and the freedom of the individual farmer—landowner—to make their own choices?

[Mr Spencer]

I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman. He is very clever in his thinking. It is a difficult tightrope that he has put there for me, and I almost hesitate to tiptoe down it. It is easy to come across as a hypocrite. Farmers clearly want to make the largest possible profit, and as a member of the Conservative party, I believe that the Government should not be interventionist and poke their nose into people’s private business.

The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is to look at the carrot and not the stick. Within the Government’s delivery of subsidies and support for different sectors, farmers are adept at finding the schemes that work for them. We need to tempt farmers back into food production, but Government support will be needed because there are commercial decisions to be made between producing energy, which is fairly heavily subsidised through the EU, or food, which has also been subsidised in the past. The Government could consider the way in which farmers retail that food and support them in getting more value from it, and there are currently plans for a grocery ombudsman to protect farmers.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent case, and I apologise for missing his opening remarks. Further to the previous intervention, does he not accept that the planning system is, after all, fuelled by greed, rather than by need? If a farmer sees the capacity to convert his land from food production to something that is akin to £1 million an acre, what could be more profitable? Is that not the issue? He says he will not consider sticks, rather than carrots, but does not that incentive for going down the route of development, rather than food production, need to be addressed, too?

[Mr Spencer]

That is exactly where the ball lands in the Minister’s lap, frankly. There is a big difference between considering controls on developing land for residential or industrial use and considering variants of crops that may be produced on that land, because whatever crop is grown, the land can be reused for another crop. Of course, once land is converted to bungalows or industrial units, it can never go back. The Government, at whatever level, have a role to play in ensuring that we get those choices right. Again, that is the thrust of the debate. I do not hesitate to repeat myself: we have to develop brownfield sites before we start tearing up the green belt, which can never return. A number of colleagues wish to speak, so I shall leave it there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) on securing this timely debate. As anybody who has canvassed recently will know, cost of living is the big issue on the doorstep. Whether it involves fuel prices or food prices, someone at every door has a view and a proper concern about the direction of travel of the cost of living.

Unlike everybody else, I cannot declare an interest. I used to have one; that is as good as I can get. In a former life—when I had a proper job, as my mum would say—I used to wholesale fruit and veg for a living in New Covent Garden market. I worked nights for 11 years and dealt with farmers daily. They were a joy and a pleasure. Never could there be a nicer group of people to do business with. At the other end of the equation, because it was a pure market—supply, demand and information—I dealt with buyers from very big companies as well as high-street grocers. I know how the demands of ordinary punters can change the market for farmers. They can grow one type of lettuce one year and lose a ton of money, and then grow a different type of lettuce the next year and make a ton of money. I understand the supply and demand issues of food, or at least I did when I worked in the business.

The Minister will be pleased to know that the business was set up by four Lincolnshire farmers in the late 1970s, and thrived through the days of the supermarket boom. The four farmers who helped set up that family business all diversified; in fact, in my lifetime, I have never known a farmer not to diversify. One went into transport. Two went into building things: one built homes, the other built offices that he rented out to local businesses. One ended up building a karting track, and people now hurtle on go-karts around fields that used to produce good-quality cauliflowers. It is difficult to find a farmer who has not diversified due to the market over the past three or four decades. Although food prices are now high, that cannot be said of food prices in our short-term history, which is why we started subsidising farming in the first place. We needed food, but there was not enough return on the goods being produced, so the Government started to subsidise it so that we would have enough.

Anyone considering a planning policy to encourage the production of good-quality food on a large enough scale to feed the nation would not start from where we are now, and I do not think we should try. We should support farmers a bit, but our planning policy should be much broader than simply worrying about food production. We live in a world market. If we want to encourage farmers in Africa to trade themselves out of poverty, they need a market to supply. I am not overly concerned about some of the issues raised, but we should paint the picture in historical terms.

[Mr Spencer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; I am conscious that I have had more than my say. Does he recognise that although the market will flow when there is enough product, the product may cease? For example, on the wheat market, Russia basically said a year ago, “That’s it, we’re not going to export another grain of wheat.” It does not matter how much money we have; we cannot buy something that is not for sale. That is when there starts to be an impact on the UK.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I completely recognise that, but we still produce a decent amount of wheat. Five years ago, lots of the farmers who grow wheat were diversifying into an energy crop, miscanthus. There was simply not enough value in the market for them, so they decided there would be better value in growing miscanthus, which is pelleted for biofuels, trucked up to Drax and chucked into the coal-fired plant up there. Again, the market responded. Now fewer people in the United Kingdom are growing miscanthus, or seeking to grow it, than five years ago, because the market price of wheat is rising, not exponentially but rapidly, and there seems to be no basis for it to fall. However, that is not necessarily a planning policy issue; it is a different policy issue affecting the use of land. Ultimately, it is an energy subsidy, which is different.

As far as the Minister is concerned, though, we have a dilemma. We are an island nation with roads, homes and businesses, and we need to supply energy and food for them, but we have traditionally had a broad-based food production economy. We were very good at providing for ourselves until 30 or 40 years ago. The Minister must consider his portfolio in the broadest possible sense. There are legitimate concerns about food security, which have been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). People worry, properly, that if foreign supply of a particular good dries up, we will be priced out of the market, but we are fortunate in being a relatively rich western country, and we will almost always be able to buy the goods that we require. However, that diverts goods away from developing countries. There is a concern, but I am not convinced that it is the concern highlighted at the start of the debate.

The Minister must consider some areas that are within his remit. It is significant that one part of his Department incentivises farmers not to produce food through a policy enabling renewable energy production that is way more financially beneficial to farmers than the hard graft that goes into producing a decent arable or livestock crop annually. In my last couple of minutes, I want to bang on about something that I regularly bang on about, namely the delights of onshore wind energy, how it fits within the Minister’s portfolio and how it directly affects food prices, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood said. Any farmer who has not considered diversifying into renewable energy is slightly mad. The gains from doing so are phenomenal. Even the £1 million investment for a small 325-MW turbine, which is about 40 m high, might well be paid back in three or three and a half years, and subsidy is guaranteed for 25 years. A farmer who wants to put their kids through school and ensure that they can go to university will find a field—they do not care which one it is—and stick turbines on it.

The Minister will know because numerous local planning authorities have written to him—including at least one that I represent—as well as from his own experience of policy in Lincolnshire that local planning authorities are hugely concerned. They feel slightly under the cosh having to allow turbines and other renewable energy projects even when they know that the projects are not suitable for the land, whether for food production reasons or because of their proximity to dwellings. Will he help planning authorities around the country by advising us, them and the Planning Inspectorate how he intends to deal with the conundrum of super-subsidised energy production replacing less subsidised food production in areas where few people want it? Even where the parish council, local residents, the district council and maybe the local MP and MEP all object for good, solid planning reasons, a decision can be foisted on them, even though the energy production unit might be close to dwellings and so on.

Finally, I want to tell the Minister that the Planning Inspectorate that he directly controls, even though it is an arm’s length body with delegated powers, needs direction on this issue, which is causing great upset across the countryside. There is only one man who is made for the job of sorting it out, and I would like to think that it is my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—the Minister himself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I was about to come to. Some hon. Members have suggested a solution. Part of the solution has to be a national, strategic plan to set out clearly where the priority areas are for farming and food production, and how we are going to manage the need for renewable energy in future. I do not think it is acceptable for us simply to stand up and say we do not want to have wind farms in a particular area. We need to say where and how we will meet the nation’s energy needs.

I had another few anxious moments when I thought the hon. Member for Sherwood was simply going to make a case against having new housing or growth in rural areas. That anxiety was again unfounded, because he did not say that. However, I know he has in the past argued against development in former mining communities in his area, saying that large five-bedroom houses are not appropriate. I am unclear why that is the case. I do not think it fits the Prime Minister’s aspiration nation to say that because currently there are no three or four-bedroom houses in those areas, there should be none in future.

[Mr Spencer]

Fundamentally it comes down to believing passionately in localism. We believe in those decisions being taken locally. There is enormous frustration. My constituents tell me, “These are our opinions. This is what we want to see. We want houses developed in our area that suit our community, that match our community.” For whatever reason, whether it is a National Assembly, county council or district council, they are not taking on board the views of our constituents. I ask the Minister to help by having his planning inspector step in and make local authorities deliver localism, as my constituents want.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. However, it is an argument in support of localism, not an argument in favour of not having any growth locally. The point of neighbourhood planning is to encourage local communities to think about where they want growth.

I digress a little, so I want to get back to the issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Lady is quite wrong; I never praised the previous Government for what they did to protect the green belt. They only ended up doing so by completely failing to build any houses and failing to meet the nation’s housing need, thus landing the Government with the difficult task of maintaining protections for the green belt and precious open land, while also increasing the rate of house building. As in so many other areas, we are trying to clear up the mess that Labour created.

[Mr Spencer]

I share the Minister’s experience, certainly with regards to Nottinghamshire. The regional spatial strategy, which was the flagship for development under the previous Government, put enormous pressure on the Nottinghamshire green belt. All the heartache I am experiencing now is caused by some of the sites that were brought forward under that strategy. Only the localism agenda and freeing up the planning process have given us a chink of light to defend some of those green-belt areas and to try to force local authorities to develop brownfield sites first.

[Nick Boles]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s description of the effect of the previous Government’s policies on the green belt and elsewhere.

To return to the difficult planning balance to be struck on renewable energy, I hope that hon. Members and others are encouraged by the call for evidence from the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. When I visit the Planning Inspectorate for the first time next week, I will be happy to ensure that it is aware of the call for evidence, and that the result of that call is taken into account in the inspectorate’s judgments on how the impacts on communities are being managed, and whether those impacts have been managed satisfactorily before granting planning permission.

On the other hand, I do not want to be disingenuous. I do not believe that the Government can move to a position where wind farms are built with no objections from people who live nearby. I have a lot of sympathy for the attempts by Lincolnshire and others to define acceptable boundaries. It is right that things are dealt with case by case, because sometimes the distance can be more disturbing in a flat area of the country, as Lincolnshire largely is, than it would be in a hilly area. Although the wind farm might be close, there might well be a hill in between. It is not right for the Government to have blanket policies on such subjects, but the impacts should be properly assessed and accounted for in the decision making of planning authorities and the Planning Inspectorate.

I move on to the contribution made by the hon. Member for City of Durham. Mr Streeter, you may have heard, as I did, the Prime Minister’s excellent speech to the Conservative party conference, in which he talked of the “party of one notion”—that is, the hon. Lady’s party—and that notion was of course, borrowing. The Prime Minister is right to say that borrowing is the ready stand-by of the Labour party in response to any issue.

In planning, borrowing has a slightly smaller role to play, but a couple of other notions are the ready stand-bys of a Labour Government and Labour Ministers when confronted with any planning question. The hon. Lady is no exception; she calls for more guidance, more targets, and more direction of local communities, so that they know what is good for them. Well, I am delighted to say that Lord Taylor, the Member of the House of Lords whom the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) congratulated on work for the previous Government, is conducting a review of planning guidance. The aim is to reduce the guidance for local authorities from 6,000 pages, which the hon. Lady clearly feels is insufficient, to something more manageable. I look forward to receiving the results of that work.

In conclusion, my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood spoke of the importance of diversification in the agricultural sector, and of farmers being left to make their own decisions, while not being skewed excessively by the interventions and subsidies provided by Government and other branches. He left us with a particularly appealing image of natural, green cemeteries where people can be buried and which support a flock of sheep. As a son of a sheep farmer, I cannot think of any better way of ending my physical existence than as nutrition for high-quality grazing for sheep.