Agriculture Bill (Seventh sitting)

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Public Bill Committees

We seek to achieve something altogether more tailored and more local, where local knowledge can be brought to bear to help design these schemes. That is a far cry from what we have now, where it is all about clunky mapping, digital maps and onerous application forms sent into some office somewhere, with people then having to sift through information and enter it all on to a computer system, with all the problems inherent to that. If we want to get much more local knowledge and much more tailored schemes, we should engage partners locally, where they are able to benefit. That is what we intend to achieve through subsection (5).

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

On a point of clarity, and more to put it on the record than anything else: there is no intention for any of the delegation to go beyond England and affect any of the devolved nations, is there?

[George Eustice]

No, this is a power for England only, and it will be for each of the devolved Administrations to decide how they want to design their enforcement and management process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Whitfield]

A similar power is contained in the Northern Ireland schedule. What is the position with regard to Scotland for the chains crossing the border?

[George Eustice]

Scotland has no plan for its future agricultural policy. It will be for Scotland to ask us to add a schedule on its behalf or to bring forward its own legislation. A point was raised on Tuesday in a discussion on clause 1 whether we will make available details of how much money had been spent on delivering certain purposes. The answer is that, as well as publishing the recipients of support, this power would also enable us to publish the purposes and the broad intention of what we are delivering with that power.