Agriculture Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his point of order. As he is an experienced Member of the House, he knows that when Mr Speaker and the Public Bill Office look at these amendments, they do so very thoroughly. Although they do not have to give a reason why an amendment is allowed or not allowed, the statement that I have just made is quite rare in the 28 years that I have been a Member—and I think Mr Speaker has done rather well, to be honest.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is not really Mr Speaker I wish to challenge. I just want to say that it was not beyond the wit of Ministers to table a money resolution so that we could have dealt with amendment 18. This has put Mr Speaker in a very difficult position.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am sure that I speak on behalf of Mr Speaker when I say how grateful he is for the hon. Gentleman’s point of order and the way in which he has made it. Those on the Treasury Bench have heard his point.

Clause 4

Multi-annual financial assistance plans

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[Victoria Prentis]

My right hon. Friend will be very pleased, when I come on to that section of my speech, to hear the reassurances that I hope I will be able to give him.

Back to amendment 9, and I think the report we have promised within six months of Henry Dimbleby’s report will in fact come sooner than is set out in this amendment.

The response to the pandemic has demonstrated again and again the resilience of our UK food supply chain, and I am really pleased with how well Government and industry have worked together. I would like to thank everyone in the food industry—from our farmers to those in retail and everybody in between—for responding so quickly and efficiently to some very challenging conditions.

It was a real privilege to chair the cross-Whitehall ministerial taskforce, which tried to ensure that food and other essential supplies reached the vulnerable. We worked with industry to smooth the way wherever possible, including relaxing competition laws and drivers’ hours. We have also worked with retailers to massively increase the number of online delivery slots. We are all too aware that many find themselves in food poverty for the first time. As the taskforce, we were able to secure £16 million, which we gave to frontline charities that are directly helping get food to those in need, and we allocated £63 million to local authorities so that they can provide direct support to people who cannot afford food.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recently did a covid report, and the £63 million and the £16 million were really important in getting food out to those in society who need it most. May I have an assurance that if it is needed again, we will move very quickly to get it there? Unfortunately, after covid there will be a higher number of unemployed and great pressure on food and food security.

[Victoria Prentis]

I met the Trussell Trust and the Children’s Society last week to discuss how effective that local authority grant was. I know that my hon. Friend, who has done so much work in this space, has also taken evidence to that effect. I cannot give him the assurance that he seeks right now, but I assure him that I will make sure that those comments are fed through and, if the need is there, that that is seen as one of the options available and a very direct way of getting money to those who are in food poverty. The Trussell Trust is itself preparing a report on how effective that grant has been.

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[Victoria Prentis]

I must politely disagree. I do not think that there needs to be any amendment to the Bill in order to continue the great work that the Trade and Agriculture Commission is undertaking. It was set up without the benefit of legislation; it does not need that. I have just set out why it was set up in a time-limited way, in order to produce a report that will be debated in the House this term, which is useful, as it will feed into the negotiations. It was set up with that timescale in mind. Whether we want to set it up for future trade agreements is something to discuss another day, but I do not agree that it has anything at all to do with the Bill.

[Neil Parish]

I accept that the Trade and Agriculture Commission is not my hon. Friend’s responsibility. However, on amendments 12 and 16, if the Government could come forward with a proposal to extend its life or to set up a smaller commission to deal with individual trade deals, they would see off any possible rebellions tonight.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Neil Parish.

[Neil Parish]

It is great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and to speak in this debate. I say clearly that I shall be supporting amendments 2, 12 and 16 tonight and I will explain why.

This Agriculture Bill goes exactly in the right direction. As we have left the common agricultural policy, we can now move in a more environmental direction. We can bring in much more rotation of crops and go back to traditional types of farming. We can reduce nitrates and pesticides, plant more trees, capture carbon in more grassland, have more grass-fed beef and lamb, and produce poultry and pigs to very high standards. We are reducing all the time the amount of antibiotics used, and we are creating a much greater and better product. Animal welfare is at the centre of our production.

I welcome the fact that our farmers have produced such excellent food throughout this pandemic, and I pay tribute to the food processing industry, which is worth £120 billion to this country. It is the largest manufacturing industry in this country and 60% of the food that is processed is produced in this country under very high standards. So the whole direction of the Bill is right, it has to be the case and I very much support it and the way that we go. It gives us the independence and sovereignty to do it. Likewise, we now have the sovereignty to develop, argue for and produce our own trade deals. So why are we not a great beacon of animal welfare and the environment as we negotiate these trade deals? We have in our manifesto a commitment both on animal welfare and the environment. Would it not be right for the Secretary of State for International Trade to have the armour of Parliament’s backing to say, “I can’t negotiate away that particular part of the deal with you because it is written down in law”?

[Richard Fuller]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me on the frustration that hon. Members feel that, when it comes to trade deals, we are told at one time, “Well, it can be in that Bill,” and at another time, “It needs to be in that Bill”? Would it not have been helpful if the Department for International Trade had been here today?

[Neil Parish]

It would indeed. My hon. Friend is right. If we try to amend the Trade Bill, we get told, “That is not the place to put it.” If the Agriculture Bill is not the place to put it either, where is the place to put it? The place to put it is in this Parliament. I will very much support this, as do my hon. Friend and many Conservative Members. We want to negotiate very good trade deals, and not only with Australia, New Zealand and America. Do not forget that this is about not today and tomorrow, but probably several years down the road. What about when we start to do trade deals with Brazil? Brazil has burned down 2.5 million acres of rainforest this year and what do they do? They grow sugar beet and soya, they produce poultry intensively and they destroy the rainforest. When they have destroyed 2.5 million acres of rainforest every year, they will move on to another bit of land. They have destroyed the fertility of that land. They do not even farm the land in the right way. They destroy the environment and the land for farming and if we are not careful, that is exactly where we are going to take it.

Instead of that, we—the British—believe in animal welfare. We believe in the environment. All the signatories to the NFU petition agree on the way forward. So do the Government. I have every respect for the Government and the Minister. But, for goodness’ sake, get the backing of Parliament. Yes, we will get a certain amount of scrutiny of the trade deals when they are done, but the deal will be signed and then presented before Parliament. There will then be the option of objecting to it, or voting it through.

That is why the work has to be done. We do not need the whole Trade and Agriculture Commission; we could have a slimmed down version that could consider every individual deal over the years, as we sign it, to ensure that we do not trade away those standards, and that we improve standards across the world—that we raise the standards of animal welfare and the environment. Surely that is laudable. All of us can support that, irrespective of our political party. I urge the Government: instead of saying, “We’ve got the power. We can vote it down and stop those rebels whatever happens”, we want something really positive from the Government. I support the Minister very much in what she is doing, but let us get this measure in, so that we can actually support trade and trade deals in the future.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who made a passionate speech.

I rise principally to speak in support of amendment 16, although I will have a few words to say about the missing amendment 18. Amendments such as Lords amendments 9 on a national food strategy, and 11 on pesticides, are clearly devolved matters and properly decided by our Government in Scotland. However, in solidarity with our friends in England, I wish to express disappointment that this Government have chosen simply to strike all the amendments down, rather than to amend them and use them to improve the Bill. I cannot understand why they have not taken that opportunity. Regrettably, however, I think I am right in saying that very few—if any—Opposition amendments or new clauses were accepted by the Government throughout the course of the Bill, so perhaps I should not be so surprised.

I welcome Government amendments 10 to 15 and 20 to 29, which mean that the UK Government will have to gain the consent of the devolved authorities in further areas such as organics, but once again I contrast that approach with the bulldozing of devolved competences in the internal market Bill. I wonder if one hand of the Government is aware of what the other hand is up to.

There remains plenty to be worried about in the Bill, and the dismantling of England’s farm support system, to be replaced by some amorphous idea of payments for public goods, must rate high on that list. The issue that causes the most concern to food producers in Scotland, and to Scottish consumers, is that of food standards. The extra scrutiny measures that the Minister has announced are of course useful, but I look in vain for something with real teeth that can quell the very real concerns that we hear from all corners of the House.

One provision that has been inserted into the Bill will do something to address that gap and place the issue of food standards in the Bill, and we should keep that provision. Lords amendment 16 relates to clause 42 of the Bill, as it was bounced back here from over there, and it should be kept in the Bill. It is not perfect but it is serviceable and it offers some protection against what are sometimes appallingly poor standards of food production in other countries.

Shoppers have some idea of the quality of what they buy in the shops because of the regulations in place to ensure the quality of food from farm to shelf. Those regulations—those safeguards—will be dumped if this Government get their way. We know that because there have been plenty of opportunities to put protections and guarantees into legislation. This Bill, the Trade Bill, the withdrawal Bill and the internal market Bill have all been passed up by the Government, denied, done down and refused.

This Government sometimes seem hell-bent on reducing the quality of our food supplies and, frankly, it is not entirely clear why. Some have suggested that it is to secure a trade deal here or there, but that seems too high a price to pay. I am left considering only the possibility that they simply have not thought this through because the alternative explanation is that they intend to drive down food standards and consumer protections. Some say that that is because they have the wealth to ensure sufficient high-quality food for themselves and so give not a jot for the health and wellbeing of others. That, frankly, would seem a strange attitude for elected representatives to have. However, I see few other explanations for the refusal at least to replicate our existing food protections. The former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, promised us several times that UK food standards would not be undermined by future trade deals. Here is the best and very possibly the last opportunity for this DEFRA Secretary and his Minister to do something about it.

I must say a few words about the rather hamfisted use of parliamentary tactics by the Government to prevent debate and a vote on Lords amendment 18, which would require the Trade and Agriculture Commission to make a report on recommendations for policies to protect food standards, domestic production, the environment and animal welfare, and the Secretary of State to lay the report before Parliament. It has long been suspected that the Trade and Agriculture Commission was created so that the Government might evade the wrath of their Back Benchers and a likely defeat in this Chamber. Here was an opportunity to create a Trade and Agriculture Commission with some real purpose and strength, instead of leaving us with the weak sop to the Government’s MPs that it is currently. Instead of creating a commission that had the ability to overturn any decisions made by Governments that might threaten the viability of our farming and food and drink sectors, we have a body that is frankly nothing more than a poodle of the International Trade Department. It looks like yet another internal battle between the Department for International Trade and DEFRA has been comprehensively won, or lost, once again.

We in the SNP have repeatedly expressed concern about the body over its lack of any real teeth and the lack of regard for the devolved authorities. These proposals do not go far enough, or did not go far enough, as reports do not provide concrete protections or requirements for the Government to act, but they also do not reflect the reality of devolved competences, and we insist that the devolution settlement be considered and respected in any reports so produced. With all that said, the Tory Government are offering nothing more than empty words as a protection for food standards and a report by the Trade and Agriculture Commission would at least do more than that to protect food standards. However, as we see tonight, even that wee bit of protection has been blocked by the Government.

All Scottish MPs received a letter signed by dozens of farming, health, environmental and social justice organisations recently pleading with us to support higher food standards through these amendments—from the National Farmers Union Scotland, to Citizens Advice Scotland, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, the Leith Community Crops in Pots, Unite Scotland, Unison Scotland, the Trussell Trust and many, many more. The question for me is: will the Scottish Tories ignore them all?

I note from the most recent survey of Which? on the subject that some 95% of the respondents from Scotland who voted for the Conservatives in 2019 called for food standards to be maintained, with around three quarters of them saying that they were uneasy, first, because the UK Government had not entirely ruled out for good lifting the bans on chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef; and, secondly, because such bans could be lifted with a vote in Parliament. Again, I call on the Scottish Tories to do the right thing by all their constituents—to give them the protection that our citizens look to their elected representatives to provide and vote for this amendment to stay within the Bill. We challenged Scotland’s supine six to do the right thing by their constituents and by the people of Scotland at the time of the Trade Bill debates, but they meekly followed their Westminster leader through the Lobbies once again. Will they finally, this time, do their jobs and represent the interests of the people who elected them to this place?

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[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

Farming and the future of the agriculture industry are subjects that I am incredibly passionate about. Before entering this place, I had been involved for my whole life in the farming sector, and I use this opportunity to draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It is my view that for far too long our agriculture industry and the entrepreneurial spirit that the sector undoubtedly encompasses have been restrained and stifled by the workings of the common agricultural policy. Through the CAP, our agriculture industry has become less competitive through ill-thought-through subsidy schemes that have impeded productivity, stifled innovation and failed to protect the environment as much as we could have. Let me be clear: this is the fault not of the farmer, but of the system they have been constrained by. A change is required and this Bill goes a long way to shaking up the system and achieving that, which is great news.

I will use my time to talk about Lords amendment 16. This has rightly received much attention and I have given it immense thought as I want to ensure that our agriculture industry thrives and is truly sustainable long into the future. However, as we look to adopt new legislation, it is vital that we scrutinise the detail and the anticipated consequences.

Let us be clear about the current position: the Bill does not lower food safety standards. Of course, the amendment goes much further and obligates that any agri-environmental food import must be produced and processed under standards that are equivalent to the UK for animal health, plant health and environmental protection. We must ask ourselves: while the intentions are entirely laudable, in reality, what will the consequences be for the supply of food that we wish to import, such as the vast amounts of tea imported from Kenya, bananas from the Dominican Republic or coffee from Vietnam?

Let us take environmental standards, for example. If Vietnam and other developing countries, such as Ghana and Indonesia, that export coffee beans to the UK were expected to provide evidence that they meet UK carbon emissions targets, I can see that that would have a dramatic impact on the UK retail and hospitality sector, as I suspect that countries would not be able to meet such requirements. Equally, it would not make sense for the UK to require trading partners with certain climates and environmental conditions, which are very different from those here in the UK, to meet our specifications, such as the UK’s requirement for nitrate vulnerable zones, which are specifically adopted to UK conditions. It is vital that that level of detail must be explored and considered at this stage, to see whether it is practical to try to enforce this amendment to a domestic piece of legislation abroad and to see whether it is workable in law. I want to see a thriving agricultural sector.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend’s argument is that we must not put in a standard because we will stop imports from certain countries, so is he suggesting that we just go to a lower and lower common denominator to allow food in from anywhere? When we do a trade deal, we can write this into law. We could actually write this into law with all the least developed countries to give them preference in trade with us, rather than throwing out our trade to Brazil and Malaysia.

[Robbie Moore]

I believe that a totally protectionist approach is the wrong one for the success of our agricultural industry in the long term. We have a huge opportunity available to us. This amendment would constrain our agricultural food sector’s ability to grow, expand and meet the new export opportunities that will come from our country setting out on the world stage and negotiating new trade deals, which we should be bold and optimistic about for our UK farming sector—for example, expanding whisky exports to Canada, potato exports to Egypt and milk exports to Algeria. I am proud to say that British beef is back on US menus for the first time in more than 20 years, and that market opportunity needs to be explored.

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[Bill Wiggin]

Rightly or wrongly, it would become illegal, if we follow these rules, to bring anything from the EU that did not allow that into this country. My hon. Friend is right to raise that; it is wrong. Food labelling is the solution, and to have a grass-fed label that allows 49% of the feed to be grain is just not right.

We need to be an outwardly global, free trade-friendly but sensible country. These amendments are much more to do with stopping subsistence African farmers rather than Texan ranchers. It might surprise some of the supporters of these amendments to learn that we are already importing illegally produced food through the EU. Supermarkets sell Danish bacon—with English-sounding farm names, to fool customers—from pigs whose mothers are kept in sow stalls, which were banned in the UK in 1999, on the grounds of cruelty.

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend also accept that when we banned those sow stalls and tethers, Europe did not, and it decimated our pig industry in the meantime? Therefore, if we do not get the trade considerations right, we will trade away all our food production, like we have already.

[Bill Wiggin]

I do not get any extra minutes for that intervention. I ask Members also to think about our stocking density for chickens, which is 39 kg per square metre, as opposed to 42kg in the EU. German hop growers use chemicals that would not be allowed in this country, and apparently the French will give a derogation for neonicotinoids so that their farmers can produce oilseed rape. That is outrageous. Where are the objections to buying Danish bacon? Where are the people kicking off to protect our pig farmers? My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) is absolutely right: when we did the right thing, we were decimated.

I want us to achieve everything that my hon. Friend the Minister talked about. We should have proper food standards and better labelling. The people we should be putting our faith in are the consumers. They do not want hormone beef; they want to know that what they are buying is good, clean and proper, and they are grown up enough to make their own decisions.

There is room for everybody. We produce 61% of food eaten in this country and 75% of that which we are able to grow here. The remainder—more than £47 billion-worth—is all imported. We have the capacity to pay our farmers more, import from international markets without substitution for lower standards, and ensure that we produce the best and healthiest food at a cost-effective price.

The Prime Minister has called on us to find the inner, or thinner, hero inside us and shed those pounds. That is spot on. If we can lower the price of healthy food in this country, we could not only see our nation lose weight but address the need for food banks. With better food prices, innovation can progress in the agricultural sector, and we can have what we always wanted: farmers receiving public money for public goods.

I want the Minister to commit to ensuring that farm incomes grow on the back of the environmental land management scheme, and not be diminished. I want the Bill to allow us to protect the environment and produce food, while ensuring that our food producers’ incomes rise, consumers buy healthier food and the need for food banks goes. These amendments will not achieve those goals or what our great farmers, consumers, constituents and future trading partners want: prosperity and a better diet.