Agriculture Bill

Neil Parish 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

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

I will try be quick as there are maiden speeches to be made.

I welcome the Bill, and I urge the Opposition to vote for Second Reading and then to try to amend it in Committee and on Report, because the amendments I tabled in the last Parliament, which the shadow Secretary of State mentioned, I might well reintroduce at a later stage. Now is the time to let the Bill through, which I welcome as an historic moment.

We want long-term certainty, as we move forward, so I am pleased that the Bill now includes a reference to multi-annual financial assistance plans, but while the Government lay out clearly how they are to phase out direct payments, which is wonderful, they are not so clear about how the ELMS and other payments will kick in. I look forward to some proper pilots. I know that some have been done, but they were started and then stopped and delayed by the problems in the last Parliament. We must have practical schemes in place as we replace the basic farm payment, and if we have trouble rolling out the ELMS quickly enough, we should reconsider the level of basic farm payment paid in the interim, because we must make sure that the money gets to farmers and the agriculture community.

The EFRA Committee looked at the role of the Rural Payments Agency in overseeing and enforcing fair deal obligations for businesses and purchasers of agricultural produce. I am keen to see how the RPA will work with the Groceries Code Adjudicator and hold processors to account—for instance, in the beef or lamb sector, if a processor is not paying the right price for the carcase, will we be able to hold them to account? Will the RPA be able to fine them? If we are to make them change their practices, we have to get in there and make it work. As I have said, I am keen to hear how the RPA and the Groceries Code Adjudicator will work together.

On food standards, the point has been made across the House that we produce some of the best—if not the best—food in the world to high environmental and animal welfare standards. We cannot allow in food that does not meet those high standards, so I look forward to things coming forward in Committee and on Report. As we design our new policy for enhancing our environment—planting trees, stopping flooding, and so on—we must also seek to enhance the way we grow our food. Agritech will be important in helping to reduce our use of sprays and fertilizers while also producing a great deal of food.

There are more than 7 billion people in the world today and there will probably be some 8.6 billion by 2030. Seeking to enhance our environment and manage our land differently is very moral from an environmental point of view, but feeding the population of the world is also a moral issue, so as we import food let us be careful that we are not importing the water to grow it and taking food from those who can least afford it. Also, if, as we enhance our environment and plant more trees, we reduce our food production, where will much of that food come from? It will come from Brazil. I have been to Brazil, as have many others, and seen them ploughing up the savannah and driving their cattle towards the rain forest. They are destroying much of their environment in order to produce food. I am sure that hon. Members can see my point. Let us be careful to keep that production in this country.

Furthermore, we rightly make much of holding carbon in the soil and planting more trees, but we sometimes lose sight of the importance of the carbon that is locked in our permanent pasture, in the grassland and in the hills. We must maintain the level of production in this country, especially from grazing livestock, in part because it is produced to high welfare and environmental standards.

[Sir John Hayes]

We should be proud of the efficiency and productivity of our farmers. In this debate about the environment, much of which I respect and agree with, we must not lose sight of the effectiveness and efficiency that has made our farmers leaders across the world.

[Neil Parish]

My right hon. Friend is right, and I am looking forward to seeing that in the Bill. As we leave the CAP and develop our own agriculture policy, we will have an opportunity not only to enhance the environment, increase biodiversity, plant more trees, and so on, but to look at the efficiency of our production and livestock breeding—for example, by introducing native breeds and cross breeding in order to deliver that very high quality. On crop production, let us use genome technology and everything that is there so that we can produce lots of food.

It is also important, as we look to managing our landscape in the future, that we seek to enhance our hedgerows and field margins, but we must ensure good production where we have very good fertile land. One thing that worries me about our policies going forward is that it is very much at the high end of food production, and that is great, but much of the population also like to enjoy good-quality chicken meat that is produced intensively but is also very reasonably priced. We produce intensively reared chicken in this country according to very high standards, and I do not want us to phase out production in this country and then import that type of meat from other countries where it is produced much more intensively. Likewise with cereals: we must make sure that the types of crop protection used to produce cereals that we import are also available to our farmers. If we do not, all we will do is export our livestock and our poultry and pig production.

This is an important Bill, and it contains much that is to be recommended. However, we must be careful to ensure that as we enhance the environment and our biodiversity we also increase production. We have an opportunity now to produce more food in this country and to be more self-sufficient.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

I am not looking for one just yet.

[Anthony Browne]

My hon. Friend will be very welcome to come.

The Government are planning a new children’s hospital and a cancer hospital. It is proof of our Government’s commitment to the NHS. We are the life science capital not just of the UK, but of the world. Even tiny villages boast their own science parks. Take Hinxton, which now has the Wellcome Sanger Institute, leading the world on gene sequencing. It is now decoding the genes of 500,000 people, starting a revolution in personalised medicine.

The traditional heart of my constituency is rural. Farmers are some of the most affected by EU membership. Many get subsidies from the EU and many export to it, but the overwhelming majority of farmers I met were pro Brexit. There is a good reason for that: the common agricultural policy is not fit for purpose. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are given to people basically for owning land, and with great subsidies come great rules—600 pages of them. There are 15 pages alone defining when a hedge is not a hedge. Farmers have to employ administrators just to help them survive the red tape.

I know that Brexit has its challenges. I spent five years as the chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, which included negotiating Brexit with the EU institutions—the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. But on CAP, we can all agree. The left-wing columnist in The Guardian, George Monbiot— not often quoted by Conservative MPs—wrote recently:

“I’m a remainer, but there’s one result of Brexit I can’t wait to see: leaving the EU’s common agricultural policy.”

As we heard earlier this evening, Labour has long opposed the CAP. I remember meeting the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) 20 years ago when she was the Environment Secretary railing against the CAP.

As Europe correspondent of The Times, I covered the European summit where Tony Blair gave up a portion of the British rebate, which had been so hard fought for by Margaret Thatcher—hooray. He gave it up in return for a promise from Jacques Chirac that France would think about reforming the CAP. I can tell Members that the French President did not think very hard.

I am a former environment correspondent of The Observer and of The Times, and I now chair the all-party group on the environment. Green issues are close to my heart. Most environment groups, most farmers and all major political parties have long wanted to scrap the CAP, but there was nothing that we could do about it. I found it an affront to democracy, so nothing gives me greater pleasure than voting for this Bill. It uses public money for public goods, such as improving the environment and animal welfare.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has shown what can be achieved at its Hope Farm in my constituency, where environmentally friendly farming has led to a 1,500% increase in overwintering birds. This Bill has very wide support from farmers’ groups and from environmental groups. Certainly, there are questions to ask. It is good to have a seven-year transition from one scheme to the other, but what is the profile of that transition? Should there be a food security review every five years or every year to start with? The great thing is that we can now debate this and decide this. Voters can make their views heard and we will listen. It is part of the renaissance of British democracy.

Farming still faces challenges. It is essential that, when farmers export, they do so with a level playing field. They must not be undermined by competitors who cut costs by cutting environmental or animal welfare standards. The Bill does mean that many farmers will have to change the way that they do things, but the farmers I have spoken to are up for the challenge. They welcome being paid to protect the environment. Many are already diversifying what they do. Last week, I met a farmer who had started producing crisps and is now exporting them by the container load to America. Other farmers are improving productivity by automating. One company in my constituency, Dogtooth, is leading the world in producing artificially intelligent strawberry- picking robots. It is one of many agritech companies in South Cambridgeshire that are unleashing a new agricultural revolution.

Yes, there are challenges ahead that need managing, but we must have confidence in ourselves as a country. One millennial said to me recently that we could not possibly survive outside the EU, and I was left thinking, “How have we come to think so little of ourselves?” There are roughly 200 countries in the world, and only 27 are part of an international government that makes laws for each other. No one else has followed the EU, so there are roughly 170 countries that fully make their own laws and of those we are the fourth biggest economically—in the top 2%. If we cannot survive, what about the 98% of fully independent countries that are economically smaller than us? That includes such successes as Canada, Australia, Singapore and South Korea.

I am half Norwegian, part Irish, part French and married to a Canadian. I have lived overseas and worked and travelled in more than 70 countries. Often I see Britain as others see us—an extraordinary country capable of extraordinary things. But how has such a great country lost so much of his mojo?

We have left the EU. The new political divide is no longer between Brexiteers and remainers; it is between optimists and pessimists. Whatever side of the argument you are on, we must now come together and work together to embrace the opportunities. It starts here with this agricultural policy. I commend this Bill to the House.