Import and Sale of Fur

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Giles Watling]

I am glad the hon. Lady mentioned the fur cap. I think it takes one bear to produce one cap. A lot of the caps are ancient and historic, but we now have alternative products that are very effective and hard wearing. There is no reason why we cannot move to that. We will need to talk to the Ministry of Defence about that and take it further. It is something I would be glad to pick up, and I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention.

Let me return to the condition of animals on fur farms, including foxes, raccoon dogs, mink and chinchillas, which are kept in wire battery cages that typically are no larger than 1 square metre, according to the industry’s own literature. They spend their short lives—typically around eight to nine months—in such cages. They are never permitted to run, dig, swim or hunt, or to engage in any of the other behaviours known to be vital to their physical and mental welfare.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing such an important debate. He is making extremely powerful comments, but what does he make of the comments of Mike Moser, the former chief executive officer of the British Fur Trade Association and former director of standards at the International Fur Federation? Mike Moser spent 10 years defending the fur trade, but he now dedicates his life to being an anti-fur campaigner, and he confessed that

“neither welfare regulations nor any industry certification scheme, would ever change the reality of these animals being stuck in tiny wire cages for their entire lives.”

Do not those comments add to the argument that there is no such thing as humane fur farming?

[Giles Watling]

I could not agree more. In fact, I shall use that very quote later in my speech. The hon. Member will find that we agree wholeheartedly on the issue.

Specifically in the case of mink, of which an estimated 20 million a year are farmed in tiny wire cages, veterinarians and welfare experts point out that as they are naturally solitary and wide-ranging animals in the wild, being kept row upon row, just centimetres from their equally unfortunate neighbours, is doubtless very stressful for them. Such an environment, and such cramped and barren conditions, comprehensively fail all scientific measures used to ensure that animals are kept in conditions that meet their welfare needs, such as the five freedoms of animal welfare and the five domains. Unsurprisingly, such conditions lead to physical and psychological suffering. The suffering in those cages is ubiquitous, and the fur industry builds into its so-called welfare assurance schemes an ambition to keep the percentage of animals suffering from diarrhoea, purulent discharge from the eyes, obvious skin lesions, and severe gum or tooth infections to less than 10%.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Trudy Harrison)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria. It has been less of a pleasure, in many ways, to listen to colleagues’ accounts, but I thank all Members for raising awareness, which is absolutely necessary, about some of the ways animals have been kept and treated in the production of fur.

I would particularly like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) for his evidence-based, exceptionally well-written and powerful speech, and to ensure that the record remembers his work for decades on the subject of animal welfare, in this place and well before coming to this place. I thank all colleagues for bringing to our attention accounts that are deeply awful but necessary to face. I do feel that ignorance—simply not knowing about the conditions in which some fur-farmed animals are kept and the way they have been so cruelly treated and killed—would lead to the purchase of these products. Of course, this debate has expanded well beyond animal welfare to include biosecurity and environmental impacts.

As I think every speaker said, we are a nation of animal lovers. Animal welfare has been a really significant priority for the Government since 2010. Already, our standards of animal welfare are world-leading: according to the World Animal Protection International animal protection index, they are not just the best in the G7, but the best in the world. I was pleased to hear such a focus by colleagues across the House on this area today.

Since 2010, we have raised animal welfare standards for farm animals, companion animals and wild animals. The most notable legislative measures already taken include the banning of traditional battery cages for laying hens and the raising of standards for chickens to be consumed for meat. We have implemented and upgraded welfare standards at slaughterhouses and introduced CCTV. Further steps include the revamped local authority licensing regime for commercial pet services including selling, dog breeding, boarding and animal displays. We banned third party puppy and kitten sales through Lucy’s law. We introduced protections for service animals through Finn’s law. We introduced offences for horse fly-grazing and abandonment. We also banned wild animals in travelling circuses.

Our manifesto commitments demonstrate the ambition to go further on animal welfare. In 2018, we committed to bringing in new laws on animal sentience; introducing tougher sentences for animal cruelty; implementing the Ivory Act 2018 and extending it to other species; ensuring that animal welfare standards are not compromised in trade deals; cracking down on the illegal smuggling of dogs and puppies; bringing forward cat microchipping; banning the keeping of primates as pets; and banning imports of hunting trophies from endangered species.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) referred to the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). It is making sterling progress through the House, as are other private Members’ Bills—there is the work that the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) is doing on the banning of shark fins, and the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) is doing through her Bill to improve animal welfare abroad in relation to advertisements.

[Nadia Whittome]

It is clear from the Minister’s words that she understands the importance of animal welfare and the impact that fur farming has, not just on animal welfare but on the environment and public health. Given that, can she tell us a date by which the Government will introduce an import ban on fur?

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. If she can be patient for just a couple more minutes, I will go into more detail about the response to the call for evidence—30,000 people responded—and the next steps in this process, but I would like to continue to explain the Government’s progress so far. We have also banned the cruel shipment of live animals, or rather there has been no shipment of live animals for fattening and slaughtering since 2020. We want this to continue, and that is absolutely why we will be bringing forward legislation in the very near future—certainly before the end of this Parliament—to ensure that it continues. We also want to ensure that, in return for funding, farmers safeguard high standards of animal welfare.

We have already delivered many of the manifesto commitments. The Government have increased penalties for those convicted of animal cruelty. We passed the Animal Welfare Sentience Act 2022 and launched a dedicated Animal Sentience Committee. We made microchipping compulsory for cats as well as dogs. We also announced an extension to the Ivory Act 2018, which came into force last year, covering five more endangered species: hippopotamus, narwhal, killer whale, sperm whale and walrus.

On top of our manifesto commitments, in 2021 we published our ambitious and comprehensive action plan for animal welfare. The plan includes about 40 different actions—steady progress is being made on the vast majority—and sets out the work we are focused on pursuing throughout this parliamentary term and beyond. Our action plan covers farmed animals, wild animals, pets and sporting animals, and it includes legislative and non-legislative reforms relating to activities in this country and abroad. Most recently, the Government supported a private Member’s Bill that paves the way for penalty notices to be applied to animal welfare offences, and we are consulting on how we should do that. We have also banned glue traps and given the police additional powers to tackle hare coursing.

As well as legislating, we have launched the pioneering animal health and welfare pathway, which sets out the way forward for improving farm animal welfare for years to come, building on the work that we have already done to improve conditions for sheep, cattle and chickens. With the pathway, we are working in partnership with industry to transform farm animal welfare, through annual health and welfare reviews with a vet of choice, supported by financial grants.

The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) invited me to provide updates and reassurance on the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill. The reason that I went through our impressive track record on animal welfare was to convey confidence to Members across this House that what we set out in our 2019 manifesto will be delivered. It will not be delivered through a single Bill, because we have encountered numerous difficulties in trying to achieve that. As I said last week, the important thing is that we deliver our commitments successfully and swiftly, so we have announced that measures in the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill will be taken forward individually during the remainder of this term.

The hon. Gentleman will understand that the King’s Speech later this year will be followed by a ballot. Private Members’ Bills will then be supported by officials in DEFRA, along with other single-issue Bills, statutory instruments, legislative programmes, secondary legislation, regulation and reforms with industry.

Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I know that we are short of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so thank you for fitting me in.

The cost of living crisis has been years in the making, and the blame lies at the door of successive Conservative Governments. Communities like mine have been devastated by a decade of austerity. The number of people using food banks has increased every single year that the Conservatives have been in government since 2010. Now, in the fifth largest economy in the world, there are more food banks than there are branches of McDonalds. Almost 1 million people are on zero-hours contracts and hundreds of key workers earn less than the real minimum wage. These jobs are simply failing to put enough food on the table.

Nottingham already has about 15,000 children eligible for free school meals. To make matters worse, last year this Government implemented the biggest overnight cut in social security since the founding of the modern welfare state when they ended the universal credit uplift. Some 14,250 households in Nottingham East have lost £20 a week. The national insurance hike in April will mean that workers lose an additional 1.25% of their income. This is a flat tax, of course, which will hit the lowest paid workers the hardest.

The cost of food and bills is soaring. Rising inflation has a disproportionate impact on people in poorer households. Food writer and activist Jack Monroe has exposed how the prices of cheaper food products have soared as availability has fallen. For example, the cheapest pasta in their supermarket has gone from 29p to 70p—a 141% price increase. When I visited Himmah, a food bank in Nottingham East, in November last year, I was told it was already seeing a steep rise in the number of people relying on its services. I dread to think of the demand from April, as tax hikes and energy bill increases kick in.

The cost of living crisis was created by the political decisions of a Government who have chosen to protect the interests of the wealthy and huge corporations, not those of working people. Amazon paid only 7.5% of the value of its income in the UK in tax in 2020, despite sales increasing by almost £2 billion, and the wealth of British billionaires increased by £107 billion during the pandemic. To end the cost of living crisis we should be raising taxes on those who profited from the pandemic at the expense of those who got us through it. Ministers must increase the minimum wage, end zero-hours contracts, and abolish all anti-trade union laws to give workers power to negotiate better pay and conditions.

COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I want you to imagine the world in 2050. If our emissions plateau and we do not reduce them any further, our lives will feel very different. In many places in the world, the air will be clogged with pollution. Respiratory problems will be more widespread. Coastal cities will continue to suffer ever more destructive flooding in which many people will die, either from the flooding itself or from waterborne diseases. Vast regions will be affected by drought, some areas will even be deserts and 2 billion people in the hottest parts of the world will regularly experience temperatures of more than 60°C. There will also be a refugee crisis on an unimaginable scale as people are forced to leave their homes and seek safety in other places.

What I have described is the worst-case scenario spelled out by two of the architects of the Paris agreement. COP26 is our last chance to get our house in order so that we can reach net zero and limit the global temperature rise to 1°C. The IPCC’s special report is clear that we need

“rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land…infrastructure …and industrial systems”.

That means stopping investment in fossil fuels and it means a just transition to 100% renewable energy, instead of investing in 16 new North sea oil and gas projects. Frankly, it means the Government abandoning their ideology and obsession with the free market; putting mass investment on a post-war scale into millions of green jobs that are well-paid and unionised; and building the homes we need.

Will the Government support the green new deal Bill, which would transform our society’s infrastructure at the scale and pace demanded by the science and fix our rigged economic model, which fails the majority of people as well as our planet? Will they support the climate and ecological emergency Bill, which would substantially strengthen our environmental commitments and force the UK to take responsibility for the carbon emissions that it generates, not only within our borders but abroad?

Those least responsible for bringing about the climate emergency will suffer its worst consequences while Governments allow transnational polluters to get away with impunity. Developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100 billion in climate finance per year; as other hon. Members have said, that must be in grants, not loans. We need international financial institutions to step up and work towards unleashing the trillions in private and public sector finance required to secure global net zero.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Our future policy will be about incentivising, encouraging and supporting sustainable agriculture so that we have sustainable food production but also environment improvement.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

The Chancellor did not pledge a single extra penny yesterday towards a green economic recovery, while wasting tens of billions on polluting new roads. Will the Secretary of State explain how that fits with the Government’s so-called green industrial revolution and net zero strategy?

[George Eustice]

Last week the Prime Minister announced a new round for the green recovery challenge fund—an additional £40 million—and the Chancellor yesterday confirmed the spending that we intend to put through the nature for climate fund as well.

Local Clean Air Targets

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I am grateful to you for fitting me back into the call list and for allowing me to go and tend to my migraine. I promise I will not take any longer than two minutes— I do not think my head would allow it anyway. It is important for me to speak in the debate, because poor air quality is a silent public health crisis that is harming the lives of my constituents. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) for securing the debate.

Public Health England figures show that over 6% of adult deaths in Nottingham are attributable to manmade air pollution. That is more deaths than from alcohol and road traffic accidents combined. More than 400 people in my city die prematurely every year because of the quality of the air that they breathe. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) mentioned, the figure rises to 40,000 across the country. This year, the number could have been even higher, because there is growing evidence that exposure to polluted air increases someone’s risk of dying from covid-19. That risk is not borne equitably; we know that it is the poorest people, and disproportionally people of colour, who are suffering the most.

It is no surprise that cities and towns across the country are taking matters into their own hands. I am extremely proud that Nottingham City Council has done that, leading the way in tackling the problem with policies such as a ban on motorists leaving their engines running in stationary vehicles, investing in a large fleet of electric and biogas buses, and retrofitting older diesel buses.

My plea to the Minister today is that local action is not enough. We in Nottingham, and cities and towns across the country, need national action too. If we can afford to spend £28.8 billion on roads, as the Government have pledged, we can invest in green and affordable transport too. We can decarbonise and give the support that our private-hire and taxi drivers need to join the fight in decarbonising our country and our planet. The right to breathe clean air should not be a radical demand.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Mr Brown has been very generous with his offer of five minutes. Thank you, Mr Brown, for allowing other speakers to get in.

Agriculture Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 5th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause would ban the import of foie gras in the UK. As I am sure many here will be aware, foie gras is a product made from the livers of ducks or geese that have been repeatedly force-fed, by having a metal tube inserted down their throats several times a day, when they are just 12 weeks old. It is effectively produced by rendering the animal diseased.

While the production of this so-called delicacy has been banned in Britain since 2000, the fact that imports to the UK are allowed is an effective green light to the continued suffering and mistreatment of these animals. Shockingly, the UK imports around 200 tonnes of foie gras each year from mainland Europe. Today we have an opportunity to put a stop to that once and for all.

Some members of this Bill Committee may recall that the Labour DEFRA team tabled an amendment banning foie gras imports during the Committee stage of the Agriculture Bill in 2018. It was extremely disappointing and embarrassing that the then Government chose not to accept that reasonable and common-sense amendment. I sincerely hope that they will not choose to repeat the mistake today in voting against new clause 10.

We know that the Secretary of State has spoken favourably of a ban. He is on record saying:

“When we leave the European Union, we do indeed have an opportunity to look at restrictions on sales”.—[Official Report, 13 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 1052.]

That opportunity is today, and the time is now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

While allowed under EU law, the Government have made clear that the production of foie gras from ducks or geese using force-feeding raises serious welfare concerns, as the hon. Member for Nottingham East outlined. The production of foie gras by force-feeding is banned in the UK, as it is incompatible with our domestic legislation. After the transition period, there will be an opportunity to consider whether the UK can adopt a different approach to foie gras imports and sales in this country. I am afraid the time is not quite now; the time is after the transition period.

I understand the strength of feeling on the issue, but this Bill is not about making provisions prohibiting imports. I reassure hon. Members that the Government will use the opportunities provided through future free trade agreements and, of course, our wider international engagements to promote high animal welfare standards among our international trading partners. I am afraid the time is not yet, and I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

[Nadia Whittome]

I must say I am disappointed in the Minister’s response. What she says on animal welfare is at odds with what is in the Bill. Therefore, I will move this new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadia Whittome]

The Government’s much-delayed response to the Godfray report, published this morning, finally concedes to implement more effective methods of containing bovine TB, such as cattle and badger vaccinations. Of course, scientists, activists and politicians have been saying that for years. Can the Minister explain why it has taken the culling of an estimated 130,000 badgers for the Government to come to the same conclusion that most of us came to years ago? Will she provide an estimate of the number of badgers that will be killed before the switch to vaccinations and other non-lethal preventive measures?

The Government’s U-turn on the badger cull is welcome. I would like to think that it is because the Prime Minister knew that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and I were going to speak to the issue, but I suspect there is someone else he listens to more. It is simply inexcusable, however, that further inhumane killing of this iconic species will continue for several years, especially as the Government have conceded that that is not the most effective strategy for containing bovine TB.

The former Government adviser Professor Ranald Munro recently said that a large number of badgers are likely to have suffered “immense pain” during culls. It is evident that the correct thing for the Government to do would be to bring forward the ban and start implementing non-lethal alternatives without delay.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is the hon. Lady not aware that we do not yet have a vaccine that allows us to identify the difference between a vaccinated animal and an infected animal? Until we have that type of vaccine, it will not be possible to make the switch.

[Nadia Whittome]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but the state of the science does not prevent the new clause from being made. New clause 21 provides the Government with an opportunity, on the day that they released their long-awaited response to the Godfray review, to urgently put an end to the inhumane and ineffective badger cull, rather than allowing it to continue for another five years.

[Victoria Prentis]

Bovine TB is one of our most difficult animal health challenges. It costs the Government about £100 million a year and industry around £50 million a year. Tackling it is important. It imposes a tremendous pressure on the wellbeing of our cattle farmers and their families. Many Committee members, including me, represent constituencies that are exposed to the misery of bovine TB on a daily basis. Left unchecked, bovine TB also poses a threat to public health although that is, to a large extent, mitigated today by milk pasteurisation. My grandfather died of tuberculosis, so I have always taken a close personal interest in the subject. It is a peculiar and complicated disease that it is important for us to take seriously.

No single measure will achieve eradication by our target date of 2038, which is why we are committed to pursuing a wide range of interventions, including culling and vaccination, to deal with the risk from wildlife. Of course culling is a controversial policy, but we have scientific evidence to show that, to a certain extent, it is working. The new review is clear that the evidence indicates that the presence of infected badgers poses a threat to local cattle herds. The review considers that moving from lethal to non-lethal control of disease in badgers is desirable. Of course, we would all go along with that. We have reached a point where intensive culling will soon have been enabled in most of the areas where it has served the greatest impact. As announced in the Government response today, we will be able to develop measures to make badger vaccination, combined with biosecurity, the focus of addressing risks from wildlife as an exit strategy from intensive culling. Our aim is to allow future badger culls only where the epidemiological evidence points to a reservoir of disease in badgers.

Nobody wants to cull badgers inappropriately, but nor can we allow our farmers, their families and our wider dairy and beef industries to continue to suffer the misery and costs caused by the disease. That is why it is right that we take strong and decisive action to tackle the problem effectively, while always looking to evolve towards non-lethal options in future. I therefore do not think the new clause is appropriate.

Agriculture Bill (Ninth sitting)

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 9th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Public Bill Committees

This amendment would not only mean that we have the data and a clearer understanding of the problem, but enable the Government, when they make the report to Parliament, to set out the actions they would take to relieve food insecurity in the areas where it is highest. It is the whole package of measures. I will conclude by saying that the amendment is supported by Feeding Britain, the Food Foundation—established by a former Conservative MP, Laura Sandys, who has done great work there—Sustain, the Independent Food Aid Network and the Food Ethics Council.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I would like to speak in favour of amendment 62, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields . I commend her tireless work on food poverty and insecurity, and her considerable knowledge and expertise in the area.

In February last year, the Government agreed to measure household food insecurity and to report on it by March 2021. I welcome the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions has included food insecurity measurement questions in the family resources survey, but this breakthrough, and the duty to report on the survey results, must be enshrined in law. We have an opportunity to do just that, so that the measurement happens routinely.

As it stands, the Government’s commitment fails to ensure that the measurement will continue for future years, or that the results of the survey will be laid before Parliament for scrutiny. Amendment 62 would also serve to make the Government’s pledge more comprehensive, by expanding the definition of food insecurity to consider whether everyone in the UK can get access to or afford the food available.

The definition of food security in the Bill currently covers only global food availability, where food comes from, the resilience of the supply chain and data on household food expenditure, food safety and consumer confidence. It does not include any measure of food poverty or household food insecurity, contrary to an internationally agreed definition of food security. Year after year, charitable food banks have provided evidence of the gigantic increase in the number of our constituents running out of money for food. Teachers tell us of children in their classes struggling because they are going hungry. Local authorities are cancelling meals on wheels services due to unprecedented cuts in their budgets.

For too long, the problem of food insecurity, which affects children and adults in all corners of the UK, has been overlooked. It leaves lifelong scars on health and wellbeing. Food banks and other food aid providers cannot be left to continue to pick up the pieces and distribute increasing numbers of emergency food supplies. We need the Government to commit to regular food insecurity measurements and to the resulting data being scrutinised.

[Victoria Prentis]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady, and I welcome her to her place. I thank the hon. Member for Bristol East for the amendment, and I recognise the commitment of the hon. Member for South Shields in her important work around food insecurity and in ensuring engagement with the devolved Administrations on the amendment.

We are planning to include a theme on household food security, which is clearly set out in subsection (2)(d). As part of that theme, we will be considering the key indicators that help us take a view on food insecurity and why it happens. I hope that the hon. Member for Bristol East will understand that we do not intend to list in the Bill all the data sources we will use in the report, as it would make the Bill unhelpfully unwieldy.

As I said on a previous amendment, our purpose in producing the report is to set out our analysis of the widest relevant sets of statistics relating to food security in the UK, ranging from global UN data to UK national statistics. Many of those data sets are only published at UK level, so breakdown to the devolved Administration area or regional level will not be available in all instances. We will not commit at this stage to the precise data we will use, but all available relevant data will be considered, including breakdown by devolved Administration area if appropriate.

It is our intention that the report will inform discussion and debate about UK food security, both across Government and with wider stakeholders—that is why we are doing it. I assure the hon. Lady that we will of course consider the themes covered in the report, and the analysis, evidence and trends within it, with all sorts of stakeholders, including the devolved Administrations. We have well-established forums for discussion of that nature. Introducing a more formal requirement for a consultation for Ministers with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before the report is even laid is therefore unnecessary.

I hope that clarifies the intention of the clause and provides the hon. Lady with sufficient assurance. I ask her to withdraw the amendment.

Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

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

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

Q I apologise, perhaps Mr Zeichner planned to ask this, as he is an east of England MP, but I found your description of the east of England as an arable desert slightly confusing, having grown up there. It is better known as Britain’s breadbasket, so I wonder how you came to that conclusion.

George Monbiot: It can be both. It can be highly productive in producing a handful of crop species and deserted in terms of wildlife. There are large areas of arable land, particularly in East Anglia, where there is little wildlife. We see a lot of nitrate pollution, soil erosion and water pollution. It is not in a good ecological state, even though, thanks to lashings of NPK and lots of pesticides, we are producing a lot of food there.

We must recognise that what is great on one metric is not so great on another. The attempt to pretend that they are one and the same—that agriculture is good for ecosystems and that the more we have, the better it will be for ecosystems—clouds this whole debate. There is an inherent conflict between an extractive economy, which simplifies ecosystems, and the complex, rich ecosystems, with food webs that are both wide and deep, which an ecologist like me wants to see.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Q George, Parliament has declared a climate emergency since the last agriculture Bill. What changes can you see in this Bill that deliver the urgent action needed?

George Monbiot: I am afraid I have not seen changes commensurate with the declaration of a climate emergency. This should be front and centre. An emergency is an emergency. We should be maximising mitigation and absorption of carbon from the atmosphere. The Paris agreement asks us for the greatest possible ambition; we do not see that in the Agriculture Bill.

[Nadia Whittome]

Q I have a quick supplementary question. How far does this Bill go in doing that?

George Monbiot: The public goods agenda is something useful that we can build on. It is a massive improvement on the common agricultural policy, but it must be much more explicit about what public goods are. Carbon storage, as a metric, must run throughout it like a stick of rock, but also ecological restoration—we do not want to make it just about carbon. We want to maximise the recovery of wildlife and ecosystems, which are in such a dire state in this country.

It must be recognised that the ecological difference between farming and not farming, particularly in the uplands, is far greater than the ecological difference between, say, BPS sheep farming and HLS sheep farming, which is very small in ecological terms. Having a cessation of farming in those areas, bringing back many of the missing species and having an ecosystem dominated by trees and other thick vegetation would be massively better, in terms of both carbon and ecology, than a modification of farming in those places.

[The Chair]

A very brief question from Theo Clarke.

Agriculture Bill (First sitting)

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

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

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

Q I represent a rural constituency with a lot of dairy and arable, and some of the biggest fruit producers in the west midlands. Quite a lot of farmers have said to me that they are currently enrolled in things like countryside stewardship schemes, and they are going to transition over. Caroline, you mentioned the ELMS scheme. Does this Bill do enough to help them transition over to the new schemes? Are we doing enough to support farmers in the longer term? For example, I have people signing county farm tenancy agreements, which are for 10 years, but we have guaranteed payment for only five years over this parliamentary term. Are we doing enough to support them in the longer term?

Martin Lines: We need guaranteed long-term funding or the ambition to deliver it. On a five-year rolling plan, I am planning eight or 10-year rotations in farm planning. If you are taking on tenancies for longer than that, the business risk is huge. It is about that long-term development. In the transition that we are going to have from one system to the other, we need to be clear and transparent about how that will fit and how we can move. It has become clearer that if we can enter into a stewardship agreement now, we will be able to move into the ELMS when it becomes available, before the end of the period. It is about how we are flexible within those schemes. The current system has been delayed payments, with a nightmare bureaucracy. It has over-measured and over-regulated, and there has been no trust in the farmer to deliver. We need to build that into the new scheme, and build trust with farmers to work to that system.

ffinlo Costain: Countryside stewardship has been very input-focused. Often farmers have done something because there is a box to tick—because they are getting paid for x, rather than because it necessarily delivers the outcome. I think that is what Martin was alluding to. It is not the most successful scheme. There is this five-year transition, where the basic payments are going out. In that time, it is for farmers to step up and understand how to deliver these outcomes, and to develop, either individually or across landscapes, proposals that deliver those public goods. So long as we are focused on outcomes rather than inputs, we will make progress. Farmers should be absolutely at the forefront of that.

Caroline Drummond: A little bit more security and clarity in the timescale is really important. Obviously, farmers do not make decisions today for tomorrow; many decisions are made three or four years in advance. Many crops are grown for nine or 10 months—for livestock, it is a longer time span—before you get any level of return. That timescale is at the moment not 100% clear, because decisions could be made at the very last minute. That is a big concern.

We must not forget that although a lot of the stewardship has not been ideal, for every pound that farmers get from support mechanisms they are delivering so much more from an environmental perspective, because it is good for their business and because, obviously, they fundamentally believe it. We do need to build confidence that the system will work, and that farmers really want to adopt it. We are involved in some of the trials for the ELMS project, and it is really encouraging to see farmers very much embracing it and saying, “Yeah, we want to be involved.”

ffinlo Costain: I said earlier that land use—the way we farm—is the golden ticket for getting us out of the challenges we face and continuing to support food production. I want to give you a couple of statistics. Funding for agriculture is £3.1 billion, but that is tiny in terms of Government expenditure. For every citizen in Britain, we are paying less than £1 per week to farmers for all the good work they do, which we have been talking about. Compare that with £42 per citizen per week for the NHS. Just administrating central Government is £3.57 a week per citizen, so farming is getting very little.

In terms of managing the transition and making sure that farmers can deliver, somebody has to say it: farmers should be getting more because they are doing such a good job. In the future we will be expecting so much more, and I would like the budget to increase.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Q I want to come back to the point about bringing sustainable food production closer to people’s lives. What measures could be added to the Bill to encourage local community schemes to reduce food poverty and improve good nutrition?

Jack Ward: I think the two are largely unrelated. One is an income issue, and there is a separate farming issue. Conflating the two is a problem because the food we produce is often not leaving the farm at a sustainable price, and the opportunity to drive that price down is very limited.

Martin Lines: We need clear transparency within the supply chains, and parts of the Bill address that. Who is getting the benefit out of the produce? Farmers are selling at a gate price that is way lower than the retail price, so who benefits? How can we join up the supply chains to shorten them and give farmers the opportunity to market more directly? There will be lots of exciting technologies and systems that may be able to do that, but it is about incentivising that opportunity.

ffinlo Costain: I think you have highlighted a real challenge, and I am not quite sure how we address it within the Bill. We do not want to see farmers in Britain uniformly producing high-quality produce that just fuels middle-class meals and those of affluent people. We need to recognise that an awful lot of people live in poverty or relatively close to poverty, and we need to be able to feed those people as well. But I do not think that we do that just by continuing with the model that we currently have, which involves ever more intensive volume production and low-nutrition food. We need good food. That is about the supply chain. As Martin said, it is about how we connect people who are living in more disadvantaged areas, with food. Often, if you are buying directly—if you are buying food and making meals yourself—it is a hell of a lot cheaper than living on Pot Noodle or whatever else.

Caroline Drummond: One of the scary facts is that 50.8% of the food we eat in this country is ultra-processed; in France, it is 14%. We do not know about the sustainability of highly processed food, and we often do not know its country of origin. This is where the national food strategy is such a core part of trying to understand what our ambition is for the health and the connection of what we grow. It is out of kilter at the moment and in a very difficult place.

Going back to Jack’s comment, the Bill is about trying to drive the ambition for a highly productive, responsible and sustainable farming system. We need to be very careful. There is often confusion. Poverty is a social issue, rather than necessarily an issue that farmers can respond to, and we need to be very careful that, as an industry, we are not subsidising the social challenge of poverty.

[Nadia Whittome]

Q Perhaps I was being confusing by mentioning two things in my question. What can the Bill do to encourage local community food schemes to tackle food poverty and improve good nutrition?

ffinlo Costain: Funding of infrastructure, which is partly in the Bill. It is perhaps about broadening the definition of “infrastructure”. In the same way that people ought to be able to apply for funding to put up the local abattoir that will make a big difference to the farmers, the land that they are presenting, the prices that they are getting and their ability to sell directly to the public locally, you are perhaps right to say that there needs to be support for those sorts of schemes as well.

Caroline Drummond: Interestingly, food productivity is mentioned in here. One would hope that that is going to be the link in terms of trying to define what the national food strategy looks like, because—

[The Chair]

Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of this session, but on behalf of the Committee, many thanks to our witnesses. You gave us invaluable information. Thank you very much indeed.

Examination of Witnesses

Thomas Lancaster, John Cross, Simon Hall, Christopher Price and David Bowles gave evidence.

Agriculture Bill

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Apart from Stonebridge City Farm, there are no farms in my constituency. However, like all the other Members in the Chamber, I represent people who need food to eat and a healthy planet on which to live, and a deregulated, race-to-the-bottom Brexit will put both at risk.

We have less than a decade in which to save the planet from climate breakdown. To do that we need post-war scale investment in infrastructure, and we need to decarbonise our economy by 20% every year in every industry, yet there are no targets in the Bill for the agriculture sector to reach net zero. Will the Minister explain why, despite the clear will of organisations such as the National Farmers Union, the Bill contains no targets for net-zero emissions in farming? In fact, while providing many powers, it provides very few duties for the Secretary of State to do anything.

I welcome the principle of a farming payments system that provides public money for public goods, but why are environmental public goods only possibilities for the Secretary of State, rather than requirements? Why does a Bill about agriculture not recognise sustainable food production as a public good? This Bill is a huge missed opportunity for the UK to take a lead on agroecology. It fails to prioritise sustainable food production, despite experts’ warnings about our future food security. It could have given us a chance to enshrine in law the “right to food” that Labour has promised, promoting the local growing and distribution of food to bring people closer to food production.

I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the Government have chosen to ignore the crisis in food poverty. More than a million people are being forced to use food banks as a result of their calamitous work and pensions policies. How can we rely on the Secretary of State’s good will to end that crisis when her own colleague, the Foreign Secretary, has dismissed people who are forced to turn to food banks as merely having a temporary cashflow problem? In Nottingham, more than 26,000 people, including nearly 11,000 children, have used food banks for emergency supplies in the last year, and, shamefully, there are more food banks than branches of McDonald’s in this country. While we subsidise food in Westminster, outside this building there are children going to school and to bed hungry. In the sixth richest country in the world, this is a political choice. It is also a political choice to remain silent on this issue in the Bill before us today. We know that many Conservative Members—like the one sniggering over there—fantasise about a deregulated post-Brexit world where laws and regulations on food and the environment are weakened, but the fact is that my constituents and those in constituencies up and down the country do not want chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef.

[Mr Steve Baker]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nadia Whittome]

No, I will not.

Why has the Secretary of State ignored the sincere requests from Labour Members, from the NFU and from the DEFRA Committee to enshrine in law a guarantee that British farmers will not be undercut through the importing of substandard produce as part of new trade deals?

The Bill needs to say much more about access to healthy, sustainable food. It needs to say more about cutting emissions, and it needs a guarantee that British farming and food standards will not be undercut. I support the reasoned amendment today because the Bill fails on food standards, it fails on food production and, most of all, it fails to tackle food poverty.

[Several hon. Members rose—]