Agriculture Bill (First sitting)

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We are now halfway through the evidence session. I have lots of colleagues who want to ask questions and I want to ensure that they are all called.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Q I refer Members to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for my interest as a very small farmer. I have a question for Mr Lines. You mentioned that tenants should get the payment. Can I ask you two things? Are you advocating a change in business farm tenancy arrangements and land tenure? Or are you really saying that money from the Government should go to the person who physically farms, rather than the landowner, or a mixture of both? Would you please clarify?

Martin Lines: It would be a mixture of both. Many of the tenancies that are currently written are too short, with many of three to five years, because of the uncertainty ahead. They would be rewritten and reframed. The person doing the job— the work, the delivery of those public goods—should receive the income.

If it is about land, natural capital and something infrastructure-wise of trees, the landowner may get some of that. If it is about the delivery of habitat and flood mitigation, so that you are losing crop yield or change of land use, the tenant can manage some of that. It will be a redefining, but I think the industry will cope with it. We just need the timeframe for how we deliver it.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q I would like to return to the vexed issue of imports to potentially lower standards. ffinlo, you mentioned some of the potential impacts. I would like everyone to comment on the potential environmental impact, given that people are so positive about the potential here. If we do find ourselves being undercut by lower-standard imports, what would be the effect on the environmental aims in the Bill?

Caroline Drummond: I think potentially farmers will walk away from supporting them ultimately, if the marketplace is not delivering against the requirements expected of the imported produce and farmers are increasingly required to deliver against goods that are costing them from a business perspective. That is one of the big dangers. A bigger issue is offshoring, and the fact that we have nine years to deliver against the sustainable development goals. We have the Paris agreements. We have a fantastic opportunity with the conference of the parties talks on climate change being held in this country later this year to herald our ambitions for delivering and demonstrating leadership in environmental delivery and in climate change mitigation delivery.

We might think we can compete on a global level in terms of a huge productivity market, but actually we are just small producers on a global scale. Our real opportunity lies in being the best at what we do. We already have such a good background: despite all the criticism that farmers get for delivering or not delivering against the environment, they have been hugely committed since 2001, after foot and mouth, through entry level stewardship and higher level stewardship agreements, to deliver vast changes and improvements, with strong ownership in how farmers are farming in this country. It would be a real shame to lose that. The Bill is an opportunity to build on that backbone and to place our farmers in a position whereby we continue to be world leading, but with more focused ambition and strong clarity on what we deliver from an environmental perspective.

Jack Ward: In terms of delivering environmental outcomes, we are looking at a balance between a farmer or grower’s own investment and public money. If you start to cut away at the farmer’s ability to invest as an individual, you lose an important part of the funding that will deliver the overall environmental improvements that you are looking for.

ffinlo Costain: I think the future for UK farmers has to be in quality. Volume production will increasingly become a mug’s game. I would not advise farmers to go into it. It should be about environmental excellence, animal welfare excellence and sustainability excellence. The danger is that if it comes into the country, some customers—perhaps quite a lot of customers—will buy it. That is where the undermining happens: it undermines our ability to develop that comprehensive basis for environmental excellence, and it will challenge emerging supply chains in particular. Part of our big challenge over the next 10 years is to shorten supply chains and to make sure that farmers are better able to claim decent farm-gate prices by selling direct or through many fewer cogs before they reach the customer. I worry about those smaller and emerging supply chains being undermined.

Agriculture Bill (Second sitting)

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Jones]

Q Mr Self, in the agri-food supply chain, how well does the Bill move the power base away from the major retailers towards the farmer?

Richard Self: I am probably not qualified to say how well the Bill does in that sense, but I believe that if we can have a policy with an almost horizontal theme of collaboration and co-operation that runs through the environmental or production side of it, or anything else, it would be good to improve that. In particular, that strengthens up the position of the primary producer working in a co-operative, in terms of balancing out.

Some processors and suppliers are worried about this, if farmers get together. In some situations, they have—how should we say?—been proactively discouraging it, and we need to avoid that happening. It is to the benefit of the whole supply chain if it works with that co-operative—they can get economies of scale, help manage supply and demand, and use the branding of the co-operative, if you like, to get to the end consumer to show the traceability, the welfare and the quality of the product when working with a co-operative. There are win-win situations for both co-operatives and businesses up and down the supply chain if it is looked at the right way. They can see it as a threat to their profitability.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Q What single change would you advocate if you had to prioritise a single change to the Bill, as currently drafted?

Richard Self: I think the only thing I would change is to make sure that the exemptions are firmed up and protected over the next few years. We are worried about that, in terms of suddenly making it more risky for our co-operatives to develop.

[Miss Dines]

Q How long would that extension be?

Richard Self: There is a two-year period on this. It could be managed more flexibly, so it would be good if that could be extended for two years.

[Miss Dines]

Q What would your choice be? Would it be five years, or four years?

Richard Self: Five years would seem like a good period, but I do not have significant knowledge on that front.

[Theo Clarke]

Q I just want to pick up on the issue of transparency and fairness in supply chains. Would the fair dealing obligations in the Bill currently work with the existing groceries supply code of practice? I want to make sure that we have a consistent approach to fair dealing across the whole supply chain.

Richard Self: I’m sorry; what would that be?

--- Later in debate ---

[Fay Jones]

Q Clause 13 provides the power to opt out of direct payments in favour of a lump sum, and therefore opt out of agri-environment schemes. Do you see that as a risk of losing a skillset within the agricultural sector or an opportunity for new entrants and new ideas?

Jake Fiennes: If I am brutally honest, I do not think the Treasury would sign up to that. If we all opted out, we couldn’t afford it. I am intrigued that that is still on the table.

Earlier you referred to land values. How to devalue very quickly? Everyone opts out and land values plummet —in an industry that is generally reliant on that support in the way it currently manages land.

Graeme Willis: When I heard about this in the original Agriculture Bill, I was concerned that no constraints were placed on that money. I was not clear about the rationale for that. If the rationale is for new entrants, there is an issue if that is only done through land prices falling. I am not convinced that we can guarantee that when a farm is sold, a new entrant will get that farm. There is no control over that, so it seems too broadbrush. It also seems somewhat a hostage to fortune because large amounts of public money being paid out for what is not a clear set of purposes could play very badly with the public; other people have raised that concern. If that were tied to some investment into the farm, there is an element of advantage there to having a lump sum to invest that could meet the other purposes to improve the farm’s environmental performance and productivity. Also, it could be good if it were tied in some shape or form to supporting new entrants.

Earlier, there was a mention of share farming—some form of succession where there is no son or daughter to pass the farm on to, some mechanism where that was locked in to ensure that a new entrant could get on to a farmstead and actually learn. You mentioned skills: they could learn from the skills of the farmer on that farm and not lose the knowledge of the land, the aspect, the farming and the culture of that farm, and pass that on to a new, younger or older person with a different set of skills. That would be really interesting.

I see it as too broadbrush and not clear at the moment, and I have concerns. I understand that that will be consulted on, but I am not sure whether that is clear from the Bill as it stands, or whether that can be clarified.

[Miss Dines]

Q This question is for Mr Egan. I represent Derbyshire Dales, which is a very large constituency. As well as many large estates, there are many small farms. I was interested in your answer to the Minister about the point that you made in your written statement, that funding should be available for professional advice to ensure that we maximise the environmental benefits. How could that realistically be achieved for my small farmers, who, historically, have been reluctant to take advice due to independence, or simply could not afford to? There are a lot of young farmers—between 20 and 30—in my constituency. How could that be achieved, however admirable it is? What is your advice?

Jim Egan: I think it can be achieved. The current example of facilitation funds in cluster groups is an absolute classic for that type of farming. I think that there is a facilitation fund in your constituency; there is certainly one not far away. Those farmers could come together. I am not a believer in “one farm, one advice”. If there are six people who farm together with smaller farming units who want to go into a scheme, and will achieve better environmental outputs if they all work together, we can give one set of advice to all of them.

We need to think really differently about where we are going now. It is not just about one-to-one advice; it is about one-to-six advice. It is about, when you put the scheme together, providing the training to those six to implement the measures. I think that it is completely affordable, and it works. We just need to think differently about how we put these things together.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Since the previous Agriculture Bill started, obviously the world has changed in some ways. There is a greater understanding of the climate crisis that we are facing. More work has been done by the Government’s Committee on Climate Change, including very detailed suggestions for land-use management released only a few weeks ago. Would you expect to see some of those proposals begin to make their way into a Bill such as this, and are you surprised, as I am, that there is no aspiration within the Bill to hit a net-zero target at some point?

Graeme Willis: On where those targets are expressed, we know that the Environment Bill has been laid before Parliament. The relationship between the Agriculture Bill, the Environment Bill and all the other policy instruments is very interesting, and remains to be resolved. If you had gone in the right order, it might have been that you had the Environment Bill, then the 25-year environment plan, and then the Agriculture Bill, because the main funding mechanism seems to be environmental land management, which would deliver on the kind of targets that you set through the 25-year plan. That can be established through the legislation in the Environment Bill.

I am not sure whether it is right to put a target in this Bill at the moment—it may be a commitment by the Minister—but I think there is a possibility of introducing further regulation that might address that. Obviously, there is the Environment Bill. One of the complicated issues is whether the Agriculture Bill could reference the Environment Bill, because it has not received Royal Assent. There is a question about how we address targets, and whether that is set out through the Office for Environmental Protection, for example. It is a complicated relationship.

I think that the situation has changed, and therefore what the Agriculture Bill is able to do, and the amount of funding that comes forward to deliver on those targets, is critical. Clarity about the long-term funding arrangements is therefore very important, as well as how those would seek to address the climate change issue.

Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Q As you know, clause 1 provides financial assistance for protecting and improving the quality of soil and, as you mentioned earlier, soil is highly variable and it is difficult to set the standards equally across all the farmers. You mentioned something about tools for farmers—being given specifically, I guess, for the 25 years that you mentioned. Are there any specific measures that you would like to see mentioned in relation to soil health?

Gareth Morgan: At the end of the day, there will have to be some sort of whole-farm planning process. I am sure the Minister has thoughts about this: there is an aspiration to reduce our transaction costs, around the amount of advice and so on that schemes involve. I think there is a limit to how far that can go, so at the end of the day I suspect that any farmer who is receiving substantial public good payments will need to have some kind of system of working with an adviser around a whole-farm plan, which will enable them to put the measures into place, particularly for something like soil.

There are general measures that are great for wildlife and the environment, like having flower margins around fields, having rough grass margins and the rest of it; they will be useful anywhere. With something like soil, I cannot really see how that can be done without the support of an agronomist, or a specialist, or someone helping the farmer and working on the nature of the soil on that particular farm. That need not be done by Government advisers; it could be done by certifiers, or private suppliers and so on. But without that level of support being built into the system, it is quite hard to see how farmers will be able to make the transition that they might want to make on their farm to things like sustainable soil management practices.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Q Mr Morgan, in your written submissions you criticised the Bill as it is currently drafted for not having clear targets for soil health. I represent the Derbyshire Dales area, which has a massive variation of soil qualities from the flats to the higher land. How can you possibly fairly have targets, and how would you measure them, to make sure that those of my farmers who put a lot of effort in to improve the soil, but who will get a lesser result because of the nature of the soil they have, can be fairly rewarded for providing a public good improvement?

Gareth Morgan: I am quite pragmatic about where those targets should lie and if it is not in the Agriculture Bill, there are other places; I have already alluded to the potential for both the Environment Bill and the 25-year plan to be the place where those targets and metrics could reside. It is disappointing that at the moment the Environment Bill does not have a soil chapter, because it would seem to me logical for that to be the place where, say, a target for increasing organic matter in soils at a national level would reside.

Regarding the targets for an individual farm, clearly it would not be sensible for those to be iterated in this Bill, because they might have to be done farm by farm. However, some provision for making sure that farmers are clear what they are working to on the soils on their farm over a particular period will be vital. I do not know whether some provision can be made in the Bill for there to be that level of assessment before public good payments are made on a particular farm, for example, because you are right: unless the farmer is clear about their current resource or what the expectation is about where they will be going, it is going to be quite—and this may be one of the reasons why soils were not previously itemised in the Bill, because of this precise problem about that geographical specificity.

[Miss Dines]

Q That would be a huge piece of work, would it not—like a national survey of each individual farm. If you want to set targets as you suggest, are you saying that that is realistically what the Government have to look at? Can there be a more pragmatic approach?

Gareth Morgan: I think a soil organic matter target nationally is realistic. I think there is a fair consensus that increasing organic matter in soil ticks so many boxes that that is something that would be useful. That does not necessarily help the individual farmer to know what needs to be done on their farm. There is a good national soil survey, so there is good spatial information about soils that we could be using as part of this process, so it does not all have to be done from a base of no knowledge.

[George Eustice]

Q I just wanted to come in on this point about targets. I know they are the tool that people often reach for—they say we should just have some statutory target—but you said yourself at the beginning that it varies considerably from soil to soil, it is hard to measure these things, and an enormous amount of research is needed. I have sometimes been told it will probably take eight years to do that sort of research.

Given the complexity of the issue, is there not a danger that if you are waiting to try to identify the target, you end up effectively delaying action—the worst of all worlds? Does it perhaps matter less that there is some sort of prescribed target, and more that you encourage and incentivise good soil husbandry from year one as best you can with the knowledge that you have? You can measure trends. You can get a sense of whether the trends that matter are moving in the right direction from the interventions you are doing. Is not that perhaps a better way to approach these things than some kind of prescriptive target?

Gareth Morgan: I think you are right, in the sense that the best must not be the enemy of the good, and there is plenty that can be done on soils tomorrow. I do not think I agree that the absence of a target is something that we should be content with in the long term, particularly at the Government level. Targets have been useful in focusing the attention of policy makers on results. The farmland bird recovery target, although the bane of many people’s life, was useful in terms of focusing attention on what could be done to reverse the decline of farmland birds.

I think national targets around soils would be helpful in terms of focusing and attracting funding. Ultimately the Treasury is going to come and say, “I can see you are doing lots of interesting things on your farms; what, actually, are you benefiting, in terms of the natural capital account for the country?” Unless we can go back to the Treasury and say, “This investment of £2 billion or £3 billion has achieved the following things over this period,” I suspect the money will dry up pretty quickly.

Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q Could we talk about peatlands? You have been very involved in trying to make the case for the restoration of peatlands and their role as a natural climate solution. Do you think more can be done in the Bill to encourage their being left alone?

George Monbiot: I do not know whether this would fit in the remit of the Bill, but I would certainly favour banning driven grouse shooting, which is a major cause of peatland erosion. I would look at the strongest possible measures we could introduce for the restoration of blanket bogs. I would, at the very least, commission new research into the impact of agriculture on peatlands, and whether we are better off without agriculture on peatlands in terms of the carbon budget.

There is a paper in Food Policy by Durk Nijdam that points out the extraordinary levels of carbon opportunity cost on Welsh farms with high organic soils. He talks in some cases of 640 kg of carbon per kilogram of lamb protein, as a result of the lost opportunity to protect those organic soils, which is a result of farming continuing there. It would be far better in carbon terms not to farm soils, if his research is replicable.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Q I am interested in your view that we should be looking at reducing farming land usage. As we leave our present farming relationships due to Brexit, is this not a time of national need when we must preserve our acreage to feed our growing population? I am asking whether you have a political slant that is not directed at feeding the nation and securing the interests of our home farmers and workers. Is it not fanciful to think that we should give up a large amount of our acreage? Do we not need it to save us against the trials and tribulations of the post-Brexit world?

George Monbiot: There are a lot of things we need to save ourselves from at the moment, and the most urgent is climate breakdown and ecological breakdown. Huge tracts of this land are scarcely feeding us at all. There are very large areas of land where you have one sheep per hectare, per 2 hectares or, in some places, per 5 hectares. That is not producing food in any appreciable amount, yet that land could be used to draw down large amounts of carbon, to stop the sixth great extinction in its tracks, for the restoration of wildlife and ecosystems, or to prevent flooding. There is a whole load of ecological goods—public goods—that that land could be delivering, but it is not currently delivering them, because it is producing tiny amounts of food instead. We are probably all against urban sprawl and believe it is a bad thing because it takes up huge amounts of land while delivering not many services for the people who live in a sprawling city. We should be equally concerned about agricultural sprawl, which takes up far more land.

[Miss Dines]

Q With respect, what do I say to my farmers in the Derbyshire dales, where, by necessity, the land is good only for sheep in some areas? Do I tell them they should not be able to earn a living and feed the country? It is a bit fanciful to think we can give up huge tracts of land. Is it not the case that we will get the best outcome if farmers work in conjunction with places such as the Peak park authority?

George Monbiot: I would characterise the Peak park as an ecological disaster area. It is remarkable how little wildlife there is. You can walk all day and see just a handful of birds; I will see more in a suburban garden. We need a completely different approach to managing land like that.

What you can tell the farmers is, “Let’s pay you to do something completely different, such as restoration, rewilding, bringing back the missing species or bringing back the trees.” Where are the trees above around 200 metres in the Peak district and, indeed, most of the uplands of Britain? They simply are not there. This is a disaster. Anyone who visits from another country—someone from Brazil or Indonesia, my friends, tropical forest ecologists—says, “What’s happened here?” They see these places we call our national parks and say, “How can you call that a national park? It’s a sheep ranch.”

By all means let us keep people on the land, but let us use public money to pay them to do something completely different. Let us face it: there would not be any hill farming in this country without public money. It is a loss-making exercise. If we, the public, are going to pay for it, I think we, the public, have a right to determine what we are paying for. We should be paying for public goods, not public harms.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Q Hi George. There has been a lot of publicity about the carbon footprints of different types of food. For example, 1 kg of vegetables produces approximately 2 kg of carbon dioxide, whereas 1 kg of beef produces about 27 kg of carbon dioxide. Do you think the Bill should go a step further and focus on those who produce foodstuffs with low carbon footprints rather than those who produce foodstuffs with higher carbon footprints?

George Monbiot: I think this should be the perspective through which we start to see everything. This is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced: the breakdown of our life-support systems. The Governments that will be judged favourably by future generations are those that put that issue front and centre. Other things are subsidiary to our survival. It is imperative that we should start favouring a low-carbon diet and use public policy to disfavour a high-carbon diet. Whether through farm subsidies—I think that does play a role—or meat taxes, which I think could also play a role, we should find all the instruments possible to steer and encourage people to reduce the environmental impacts of their diets.

The most important metric here is what scientists call carbon opportunity costs, which is basically, “What could you be doing on that land if you weren’t doing this?” If, for instance, you are producing beef or lamb on this piece of land, what is the carbon opportunity cost of that? What would be the carbon storage if, instead, trees and wild habitats were allowed to return? There has been some new research just published, or a new compilation of research, on Our World in Data showing that when you look at the carbon opportunity costs, those of beef and lamb are massively greater than those of anything else we eat. It is really, really huge. Even when you take food miles into account, they are tiny by comparison to those carbon costs, and that is what we should focus on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

That is what I would like to have your opinion on, because obviously five years is a long time. Do you have any thoughts on the timescale? Would you make a recommendation?

Professor Keevil: I would like to see it reported much more frequently, every year or every two years.

[Miss Dines]

Q Professor Keevil, you make quite a bold statement in your briefing note about the 14.7% of the USA population getting food-borne illnesses every year, compared with only 1.5% in the UK. I want to ask you about your reference for that, because there is not a reference for the source of that information. That brings me on to a general question. It is quite clear that there could be a variety of other reasons for that: it could be bad storage, bad travel or bad food preparation or cooking. How reliable is this sort of statistic in a climate where we are facing going into new agreements with other countries? How reliable is that sort of information?

Professor Keevil: That is a good question, because you will get different metrics if you go to different sources. What we tried to do with those numbers was look at the annual reporting by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. You will find the information on their website. A lot of the agencies say, “Well, these are the numbers of actual reports that we have received,” for example, through people going to hospital, to their GP and so forth, and then they apply a multiplication factor for the numbers who could have been affected but for whom the signs of disease are much less—people who do not report that they have had any disease. A lot of the information is based on those types of numbers—for example, 14% of Americans do not report to a doctor to say they have had food poisoning—but they are extrapolated. As I say, you will get different metrics depending on your source. It could be that the figure in the UK is more than 1.5%, but I do not think it is anywhere near what the Americans have extrapolated.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q We mentioned clause 17 on food security, which is new to this edition of the Bill. Do you think there is scope for an extra provision? It talks about looking at global food availability, supply sources and resilience of the supply chain. In terms of your speciality, there is a lot of concern about endocrine disrupters in food, nitrates in meat, and the overuse of antibiotics, which affects human health, through the food chain. Do you think there should be reports to Parliament on food security? It is not really about food poisoning, but about the wider health concerns about what is getting into our food supply.

Professor Keevil: As I said at the start, the issue is very complex because food security is not just about supply; it is about whether it is nutritious, wholesome and safe. You cannot separate one from the other, so we have to be aware of the microbiological safety of the food that is being produced and consumed. The work that we and others have done shows us that our current methods of assessing safety are not adequate. That has to be recognised. As a scientist, I would always say we need more research done; I sincerely believe we do in this particular case. Knowledge improves standards, and we have to adopt and enforce the highest standards. We need better research and continual reassessment of what we are being challenged with, and perhaps the Bill can reflect that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Q The Food Standards Agency looks into the standards in food production. Are there elements of that that you think should be incorporated into the Bill to embellish it?

Sue Davies: Including provisions that enable financial assistance for food safety and public health measures, such as the reduced use of antibiotics, feeds through into the things the Food Standards Agency is trying to achieve. That then allows sufficient flexibility.

I mentioned the example of campylobacter because that has been a big priority. It is the main type of food poisoning in the UK. Most of it comes from chickens. We have been struggling to reduce its level for years. We have made progress in recent years by taking the farm-to-fork approach. We need to recognise that a lot of things that manifest at the end of the food chain originate in production. Giving the flexibility to be able to provide financial assistance and incentivise those kinds of measures is really important. The Food Standards Agency will then need to work with DEFRA and others in defining what those might be and what sort of indicators you might want to include, in terms of the monitoring that is set out in the Bill.

[Miss Dines]

Q Ms Davies, your organisation, Which?, has historically been a champion for consumer choice. I want to ask you what your position is. From your written statement, it seems like you are proposing a form of protectionism against certain imports based on standards, but with a lack of clarity, I would suggest. Does that not deny the consumer a choice and potentially make food a lot more expensive for the consumer?

Sue Davies: We are certainly not protectionist and we are certainly in favour of consumer choice. However, it is about enabling people to make meaningful choices and the types of choices that we want. We also base what we say and what we call for on consumer research—talking to people and understanding their perspectives. Over the last couple of decades, we have been talking to people about food a lot, but in the last three years we have had a regular tracker and have been asking a lot about food standards.

We are just in the process of doing some more research, for which we are going to do a series of public dialogues around the country, particularly focused on trade deals and what some of the opportunities of those could be, as well as some of the issues over which people might have concerns. It will look at food standards, but also at things like digital services and opportunities for a wide range of cheaper products. We know from the research we have done to date that people feel very strongly about food production methods and would have concerns if food was allowed to come in with reduced, cheaper standards that undermined the standards and choices we have at the moment.

I do not think it is about reducing people’s choice. It is about enabling people to have an informed choice, and about enabling everybody to have a choice. At the moment, we have regulation and standards that underpin everything that everybody buys, whatever their income level. If it suddenly becomes the case that only those who can afford it can have the type of standards we have at the moment, and other people have to have lower standards, that would certainly be a completely retrograde step.

We are starting from a point where we have good standards, and we are about to start negotiating trade deals, so we need to be really clear in those objectives about where food fits. We need to look at the opportunities for food and other things that we might gain in those trade deals, but also to be really clear about where we will not compromise. Things such as food safety and quality and animal welfare come out from our research as things that people do not think we should compromise on.

[Ruth Jones]

Q I am sure you are aware that the national food strategy will be published shortly. How do you think that will complement the Bill? The strategy is coming out after the Bill has been published. Will the two marry up? We obviously do not know yet what it will contain.

Sue Davies: We are really pleased that the national food strategy is being developed. In a way, it is incredible that we have not really got a clear vision for food and how it should be produced, so we think that is really valuable. The way it is being conducted, with public dialogues and citizens’ assemblies, is a really inclusive process, and will hopefully look at the breadth of issues and the many different interests involved in food policy.

As you say, ideally you would have your food policy, and you would then have your agriculture policy, your trade policy and your environment policy; they should all be complementary. Obviously things are working to different timescales, so we need to make sure that the Bill allows for the breadth of issues that agriculture can be impacted by. That is why, as part of that national food strategy, we think it is important that food delivers for consumers and that we tackle some of the challenges in the food system, whether that is climate change, dealing with obesity or food security issues.

We realise that there is limited scope within the Bill, compared with the strategy, but we should take every opportunity to make sure that we put the right incentives in the Bill to deliver on those wider things that matter to people.

Agriculture Bill

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

Farmers across the country in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland will recognise that their Parliament has united around the common aims of upholding the standards for which they have worked so hard over the years, and we can continue to trade in a positive way not just in the United Kingdom, but around the world. The products that our farmers produce will continue to be world-beating and world-leading.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

As a relatively new MP, I have been astonished by the commitment of this Government, the ministerial team and the Parliamentary Private Secretary to put the rights of farmers and this great nation at the front of this outstanding Bill.

On my election, I became forged to representing the interests of farmers and the farming industry in my constituency. Farming comes up on a daily basis, and I would like to speak personally about that, rather than about the international scene. The farmers of Derbyshire Dales are of hardy stock. They are wedded to the rugged land and the livestock they raise. They are farmers such as Simon Frost, who picks me up in his Land Rover and takes me around the land that his family has farmed for centuries, and his wife, Suzanne, who has spent her working life in science and animal welfare. They are custodians of land, such as Sir Richard FitzHerbert at Tissington, who showed me around the dales that he and others love so much.

I am also grateful to the agricultural team at Bakewell, and to Alastair Sneddon, auctioneer, who goes out of his way patiently to brief me on the ins and outs of what is happening. Because of those constituents I stand here today to support this outstanding Bill. My constituents have also been well served by the National Farmers’ Union, represented by Andrew Critchlow in Matlock, by Jane Bassett from Hartington, and by Andrew Broadley from Derbyshire Dales.

Derbyshire farmers were understandably wary of newcomers, and I was one of them. Although I had small landowners and tenant farmers in my family, it took them a while to accept me, and to understand that I had their interests at heart. Once elected, I made it my mission to badger the poor ministerial team—they know what I mean—and I sat on the Bill Committee, and worked jolly hard for my constituents whenever I could. I know and am confident that this Government have the interests of farmers and the rest of the population at their heart, and that includes local issues in constituencies such as mine. I think about Hartington Stilton, Dovedale blue cheese, Peakland White, and Peakland Blue, and I know that Ministers have the backs of my constituents who work in those small businesses, and who possibly wish to go global.

We were elected on a manifesto of commitment and of not compromising our standards, and we will not do so—the passage of the Bill has proved that. We have maintained existing protections in law through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and the Bill contains many safety and reviewing features. I am so proud of what we have achieved. This is a listening Government. The jewel in the crown has to be the Trade and Agriculture Commission, and I am delighted by the expertise of those who contribute to that. I therefore support the Bill.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I shall keep my remarks brief, out of courtesy for those further down the call list, but also because there is little left to say about the Bill and the Government’s ambitions therein. I support amendment 16B and its provisions on equivalence for agrifood standards in relation to future trade. The amendment places a benign requirement on the Government to have, as a negotiating objective in trade deal negotiations, the ambition of achieving equivalence of standards. While noting that, I would point out the Secretary of State’s insistence that proponents of protecting food standards, environmental protections and animal welfare standards are seeking to mandate precisely the same standards as we produce here in the UK. That is a tendentious misrepresentation of the pursuit of equivalence, encompassing as it does the same or higher standards.

Amendment 16B does not tie the Government’s hands when negotiating or bind them to any requirements and outcomes, meaning that the Government would still be free to prioritise other negotiating objectives above the duty to seek appropriate equivalence thereby representing the wateriest of all provisions, which if the Government oppose it—as they will—should leave us all very concerned.

I have to say that the Minister has been very generous with her time in discussing these matters with me and listening to my deeply held concerns about the Bill. She debates in such a conciliatory and kind way that I come away believing that she has agreed with me when in fact she has done no such thing in any given instance. [Laughter.]

If this is the last thing I say on this subject, I will observe that I believe the Government have wilfully lost sight of the fundamental importance of the material we are legislating for. We are transacting frameworks for the import of production domestically, not of timber or textiles or televisions, but of the foods that we will eat, and that is what is at risk when the Bill passes unamended, as it inevitably will. The food we prepare and feed to our children has not received the protection it deserves, and nor has its intrinsic worth been recognised—a theme which is manifest in the Agriculture Bill, but also in the Government’s Trade Bill and, of course, the detestable smash-and-grab United Kingdom Internal Market Bill. Everything I have done and said in the passage of this Bill has been in the interests of those working in farming and food production in Angus, in Scotland and across the whole of the UK. The people of these islands deserve better than this, whichever nation they call home. Scotland will have better than this, as the dawning of independence supports.