Agriculture Bill

Lord McLoughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care makes an absolutely important point. I have had the opportunity to talk to Dame Sally Davies, who has written a brilliant short book about the vital importance of dealing with antimicrobial resistance. I should also pay tribute to Lord O’Neill, who led work under Prime Minister David Cameron on this. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the Bill contains provisions to provide support and payments to farmers who take the appropriate animal health and welfare measures to ensure that we can fight the overuse of antibiotics, which is both a threat to human and animal health, and an environmental danger.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

May I go back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) about schedule 3, which gives specific powers to Wales? Is the Secretary of State telling the House that those specific powers are available to England as well?

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[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. May I begin by endorsing what the Secretary of State said about my hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who is widely respected and has overseen this subject during our five years in government? I realise that for him and for the Secretary of State, withdrawal from the European community will give them the power so importantly contained in the Bill, which frees us from the common agricultural policy. Although I personally thought that we should remain in the European Union, I well understand the desire in the agricultural industry to put the Bill on the statute book and to see how the future will be laid out.

It is worth bearing in mind the reason why our countryside is so attractive and visited by many people, particularly in my constituency and the Peak district: it has been farmed and looked after by our farmers for generations. I hope that the Minister of State can speak in his winding-up speech about the importance that we place on food production. Some of the less favoured areas in my constituency cannot be easily farmed without some form of support. That is very important indeed, and I wonder why we have not copied what is available in schedule 3 to Wales so that it is available to England.

Replacing the current system, which pays farmers according to the total land farmed, rather than a specific public benefit, is very important indeed. At the present moment in time, the top 10% of recipients receive almost 50% of payments, while the bottom 20% receive just 2%, which does not reflect the farming or agricultural good provided by many smallholdings and small farms in the uplands. I very much want that to be encouraged.

A lot has changed in agriculture over the past few years. I remember thinking that the foot-and-mouth crisis would be a big problem for me, as I had a large agricultural constituency. In fact, it was the tourism industry, which is important in the Derbyshire dales, that suffered the most. A third of total farm business comes from farm diversification. Rural tourism provides £90 billion a year to the UK economy. There are opportunities, and we need to support our farms.

The Bill has been welcomed by a number of organisations, but I hope that we do not somehow replace a Brussels bureaucracy with a bureaucracy that is even more constraining for farmers and the way they farm. I am pretty sure that the Secretary of State would not want that. However, I fear that some of the bodies that he works with and some of the Government bodies responsible for countryside issues may take a different view, so I look forward to his ensuring that there is an iron rod to tackle how regulations are imposed on agriculture, so that we let British farmers get on with farming.

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[Colin Clark]

There is the contrast: the Welsh Administration are trying to work for their farmers and the Scottish Government are politicising the deal.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin]

Does my hon. Friend think that, once the Bill has gone through its parliamentary stages, the Scottish Government will complain that they do not have the powers they need?

[Colin Clark]

I truly hope that if SNP MPs are listening to the industry, they will introduce a schedule to the Bill as it progresses.

The north-east of Scotland is a traditional area of agriculture, with high organic matter. Leaving the EU is a massive change, but it is also a huge opportunity. I welcome the fact that the Bill addresses retiring farmers, something I am not planning to do for a long time. It is disappointing that the Scottish Government’s right to buy has undermined the rented market in Scotland and young entrants are not getting in because there is no access. Yet again, the Scottish Government are neglecting the farming community. I hope that the Bill will encourage new entrants. I applaud my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who is no longer in his place, for his recognition of young farmers.

I would like to highlight the 2016 ADAS consultation on public money for public goods. It raised a few issues of which we have to be very conscious. It recognised that Brexit is an opportunity to address these issues. It defined public goods as consumed by society as a whole, not necessarily by individual consumers. It draws a contrast between food and energy as private goods. If we create a differential, an environmental or standards cost, ADAS recognised that this could risk the competitiveness of UK producers. I would therefore like clarity from the Minister on who compensates or buys the public good when we set higher standards. It is not that I want to drop standards; I just want to understand who compensates farmers.

ADAS was very clear that moving to public money for public goods would be radical and would need testing. I welcome the fact that there is a transition period, because we have to check its efficacy during adoption. Modern productive agriculture does not have to undermine the environment; it goes hand-in-hand with the environment. Many Members have reminded us that every acre of this island and this Union has been created and shaped by agriculture in some way.

The good farmers of Gordon stand ready, with the opportunity of Brexit when we negotiate our free trade deals, to grow more malting barley for export to the rest of the world. The Bill must accommodate productive farming. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). We need access to labour for our factories, our abattoirs, our fish processing factories and our food factories. That is very important. I want to see the back of one-size-fits-all EU interference. I want to see the UK internal market protected. Most of all, I want to see a Scottish schedule in the Bill.