Support for British Farming

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Thank you, Sir Gary; I will ensure that trend is kept to. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on securing a thoughtful and fascinating debate. The conclusion of all this is that British farmers still need support, and what they have received thus far is not sufficient to ensure that we have good farming practice.

I feel like a veteran at some of these debates. I have only been doing this job for the past few weeks, but the same themes seem to come up. Quite rightly, there is a tension between food production and biodiversity, and there are issues about the costs of supermarkets and concerns about food security and poor mental health among the farming community.

There were a couple of things that did not come up. One that I want to mention, which only the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) brought up, is the concerns about ELMS payments. I thought that would be a focus of much of today’s debate, but until the hon. Member rose, there was no mention of it all. I am sure the Minister is more than aware of the some of the concerns and anxieties about ELMS. Farmers are saying clearly that they need to know what will happen, so that they can plan their businesses and know whether they will have a viable future, so I was quite surprised that that was not brought up.

I am absolutely not surprised at all that the other huge issue that did not come up—the one that probably has the most impact on agriculture and farming across the whole of Britain and UK—was Brexit. I am not surprised that Conservative Members do not bring it up, because they would have to acknowledge that the past few years have not been their greatest. Brexit has had such a negative impact on everything to do with agriculture, food security, the wellbeing of rural communities and exports—with everything to do with food and drink. We know that things are bad. We only need to listen to the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), when he lamented the poor deal that was struck with Australia and said—this was testament to his powers of understatement—that it was “not…very good”.

That deal was more than not very good; it was a disaster for sheep and cattle producers, and for beef and lamb exports. The one-sided nature of the deal struck with Australia has allowed cheap imports to come flooding into this country and given nothing in return for the hard work of British farmers up and down the countryside. I am not surprised that Conservative Members do not mention Brexit, because if I was them, I would stay well away from it too, because it has been a singular disaster for our friends.

We heard a lot about animals, which quite surprised me. I always like a debate about animals. My constituency in Perthshire was one of the first to secure the introduction of beavers. I know that there is some despondency and negativity around this—I hear a lot of that from farmers, who are impacted quite severely—but there are also benefits to attractions. I represent the biggest river tributary system in the whole of the UK, in the Tay river and its tributaries, and some of the positive environmental outcomes of beavers are there to be seen. There is almost a small tourist industry set up around them, so that people can walk round and see some of the work of the beavers, so while there are issues and management is of course necessary, it is not all doom and gloom.

I heard the profound words of the hon. Member for East Devon —“You can’t eat trees”—but tell that to the beavers, the bears, the giraffes and the many insects that feast upon our woodlands on a daily basis, if not every minute of the day. Let us not be so negative and despondent about some of the reintroductions of wildlife, because this will be ongoing. There are proposals and plans for further introductions. The sea eagle in Scotland has been a great reintroduction. I know that there are issues—it all comes down to the tension between the introduction of wildlife and the management of land—but we have seen positive impacts, particularly through tourism and people coming to watch this magnificent bird flying the skies once again over Scotland, so let us not have all this doom and gloom when it comes to reintroductions.

I listened to the message from the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) about eggs, and he is right. The crisis in egg production did not start with avian flu; it has been ongoing for years, although it is most definitely exacerbated by avian flu. I know that we will have a debate next week, when we will probably all be back together again, including the Minister—I always enjoy our little get-togethers—and discussing this more at length, but avian flu has had a massive impact, and not just on the turkey and farmed poultry sector, but on eggs. I think it is the NFU that is now calling—and it is right to do so—for an urgent investigation into making an exceptional market conditions declaration under the Agriculture Act 2020, given the severe disruption to egg production that UK consumers are experiencing. I hope that is listened to very carefully.

But I will say one thing: we are different in Scotland. We are not run by DEFRA—for which we can give perhaps something of a sigh of a relief when it comes to these things. We are responsible for all the rural decisions that we make. We are responsible for Scottish agriculture, and it us who will make those decisions, which will be the right ones for the farmers and agriculture communities that we represent. Scotland has taken a different approach. We have not taken the three-pronged ELMS approach, which has been a feature of the Agriculture Act.

As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said, we are currently consulting on our new piece of agricultural legislation. One thing, among a couple of others, to come out of that consultation so far is a decision to continue with a single payment that will match EU funding up to at least 2025. We have looked at the three prongs of the Agriculture Act and we feel that it is not the way to go. Indeed, we find that there are difficulties associated with much of that. We will do that differently. We will have food production at the core of how we take this forward. NFU Scotland came to the Scottish Parliament last week to tell us very clearly that this is what it wants to see when we design the new legislation. We listened very carefully, and I hope we will be able to satisfy NFU Scotland that a commitment to food production will be at the very heart of the legislation that we bring forward.

We have our own system of grants and support that we are putting forward in Scotland, and we are able to do that. I hope that will be recognised as we go forward.

[Dr Hudson]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I do not have time, I am sorry.

The last theme I want to mention comes up very often in these debates and that is the shortage of labour. I am sorry to Conservative colleagues, but this is another consequence of their Brexit. I think they know that. They are not prepared to accept it and say that this is a difficult issue because of it, but ending freedom of movement with Brexit has probably been the biggest single disaster that we have visited on rural communities.

I represent a huge rural constituency. I have got strath, fantastic agriculture farming, hill farming and many hospitality businesses. Every single one of them has told me that they cannot get the labour they require because we have ended freedom of movement. What has happened is that people they had who were stalwarts of their sector and businesses have left, and there is nothing there to replace it. In the Scottish Parliament, we want to establish a new rural immigration pilot.

One of the discussions we have had today is about the independence of Scotland. We cannot do this pilot, and we are so frustrated we cannot do this because we are bound by decisions taken in the Home Office, which we have very little influence over. We need to do something. The seasonal agricultural workers scheme has helped, but it is insufficient. We need more people to come across here. It is not just the seasonal staff, it is the permanent staff we have in the agriculture business, such as vets and people who work in abattoirs. All of them are suffering because they cannot get the appropriate labour. I am pleased that we are only partly impacted by decisions that are taken by DEFRA, but we are heavily impacted by decisions taken by the Home Office and some of the arrangements that were put forward around Brexit.

We will continue to work on our agriculture Bill, and maybe when we come back to discuss these issues in the future we will be able to detail more about how we are approaching this, the difference we are hoping to make and how we are hoping to serve Scottish farmers.