Exiting the European Union (Agriculture)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

No, I do not. Having worked in DEFRA for five and a half years, I have tremendous admiration and respect for all those people. Although they work very hard through the night, somebody will mark and check their work the next day. That is how our civil service works, and it has made a sterling effort to make sure we have all these regulations in order.

As a general rule, almost every regulation of these two statutory instruments substitutes “Secretary of State” for “European Commission”. These regulations are not complicated but rather straightforward. We often hear a lot about so-called Henry VIII powers in such debates, and there is a suspicion that, through the use of statutory instruments, we might be making changes to primary legislation that should not be made.

In truth, the most pernicious use of a Henry VIII power in modern times has been section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, which has run rampant through whole pieces of primary legislation, even important flagship Acts that predate our membership of the European Union. We are in a rather odd situation in debating on the Floor of the House whether it is okay to change “European Commission” to “Secretary of State”, as the original powers implied by these statutory instruments were imposed by the European Union without any debate in this House, typically through either an implementing Act or a delegated Act, and therefore with little or no scrutiny by the European Parliament and often with little or no scrutiny by the European Council. The role of this Parliament, if it was lucky, was to receive an explanatory memorandum but, by and large, only ever to receive letters to the European Scrutiny Committee advising on what the European Union had done to us.

Nevertheless, this is what taking back control means. It means that our Parliament, for once, is starting to take an interest in these matters, rather than leaving them to the European Union.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I pay enormous tribute to my hon. Friend. I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary when he was an Agriculture Minister, and I went through a great amount of this important work with him. On organic standards, is it not the case that we very much see ourselves as setting the bar not just nationally but across Europe and across the world, that we have influenced Europe on these standards and that we ought to keep these standards as high, if not higher, in leaving?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, that is exactly what the regulations are about. We have had some influence on the organics regulations. Indeed, when I first became Agriculture Minister, something called the organics dossier was going through the European Parliament, and it concluded that journey only around six or nine months ago. Along with the smarter rules for safer food dossier, it became something of an internal joke about an interminable debate taking place in the European Union. In the end, we managed to get that agreement into something that was satisfactory to us, although it meant that not much had changed.

Finally, let me recognise something in the statutory instrument related to the control of imports. As the shadow Minister said, we are indeed ready to replace the EU trade control and expert system with a new UK system that has been in development in DEFRA for at least the past nine months. There has been a prototype version for several months and it will be ready to replace TRACES from the point at which we leave the European Union. I welcome the Minister’s point about the recognition of existing EU logos and standards for a 21-month period. Of course, we all hope that the European Union will do the honourable and sensible thing and reciprocate.

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[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I am delighted to take part in this debate.

The organic sector in this country prides itself on its high standards. We set a very high bar and are renowned for expertise in this area. Indeed, we have been leaders in the field globally. I therefore welcome these regulations ensuring that our organic standards will remain exactly as they are when we leave the EU. We will embrace the current regulations but I am led to believe that, as and when the EU, after we have exited, decides that it might change its regulations, we will consider the regulations and decide, on their merits, whether they are right for us and whether to adopt them. This is one of the benefits of leaving, in that we can start to plan much more freely for ourselves.

Crucially, we have to keep these high standards. That is very important because we currently have 6,000 organic producers in this country who will be wanting certainty so that they can continue business as usual. We have many such businesses in the south-west.

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

rose—

[Rebecca Pow]

I will of course give way to a fellow Member from the south-west.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She raises exactly the right point. It is good to see so many south-west constituencies represented across the House today. It is a very important region for producers in the organic sector. The crucial point is that many of them are very small businesses. They are often not large farms or large producers but small farmhouse-table businesses. These small producers with narrow margins have to know where they stand and get certainty. That is why this statutory instrument, and all the work that was done under the previous Minister and is being done under the current Ministers, is vital.

[Rebecca Pow]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend—I could not agree more. He is right about the south-west. I was going to name just some of the businesses in the area. We have Riverford Organic Farmers, which has franchises all over the region; there may be some in his constituency. We have Merricks Organic Farm in Langport and Stream Farm in the Quantocks. They often do a whole range of products—beef, chicken, lamb, and even trout and strawberries. They are holistic but often small businesses that are absolutely dependent on keeping the purity of the standards for organic produce.

[Bill Wiggin]

What I find most important is that the consumer has confidence, when they see what the label says, that that is actually what they are going to buy. That is not always true of pasture-fed produce, but it needs to be. The support that the organic sector has had from the legislation and the Government has been tremendous. I would like us to spread this much further and encourage more businesses like those my hon. Friend mentioned. I hope she agrees.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I thoroughly agree. I know that his own beef animals are pasture-fed—an excellent system in its own right that is really good for sequestering carbon in the grass. He is so right about the labelling. The consumer needs to know what they are buying. That is why these regulations are really important. If people are buying organic, they need to know that it is organic and up to our high standards, not some watered-down standards from somewhere else.

We have quite a large number of organic milk farms, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) mentioned. In Somerset, we have Coombe Farm Organic—milk producers who have three main farms and 1,000 cows. It is imperative for companies such as that that we know that their produce is organic, why it has been classed as organic and that it has been checked. Often, it has been checked by the Soil Association, which is the main organisation in this country that certifies organic produce. It has 27,000 members and is very much valued. It developed the world’s first organic certification system, way back in 1967. The standards have been widened since that time, so they encompass agriculture, aquaculture, ethical trade—I have a company in my constituency, Hambleden Herbs, that imports lots of spices and herbs, all organic—food processing, forestry and horticulture. It is really important that we maintain this system of standards so that these businesses can carry on operating from day one on leaving the EU and we can know that they are doing the right thing. It is important that we keep our high standards.

The organic sector is valuable, as we have heard—it brings £2.2 billion per annum to the UK economy, and our exports are worth £200 million, so that is also significant. The sector is growing because there is now a lot more emphasis on what we might call environmental farming or eco-farming. That is all referenced in the Agriculture Bill, the new environmental land management schemes, the 25-year environment plan and the forthcoming environment Bill. I believe that the organic system will grow, which is why it is even more important that we maintain our standards.

Just today, as luck would have it, I hosted an event on soil in Westminster, which was attended by more than 200 people. We talked about the degradation of our soils and the cost to the economy, which is a staggering £1.2 billion a year. I am pleased to say that there is a great deal of talk about soil going on through the Bills that are being introduced. The way to prevent soil degradation is to introduce policies that ensure healthy soils and biodiversity, with all the things that soil brings to us, including carbon capture, which will help with our climate change targets and mitigation—I see the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth sitting on the Front Bench—as well as flood resilience and providing healthy food.

Inevitably this soil health agenda will drive us towards management systems that are along more environmentally friendly farming lines and, for purists, along more organic lines. The standards will remain very necessary, as they will if we work towards improving biodiversity in this country, which is equally important. For example, there has been a desperate crash in insect numbers here and globally, with flying insect populations globally down by two thirds. Insects are the workforces of agriculture—they pollinate our crops, and we rely on them. The sustainability of the planet depends on redressing these crashes in biodiversity across the board for all sorts of species. That inevitably means that we will use less pesticides and adopt more environmentally friendly methods of farming through land management systems, and if we head towards organic, the standards that we will maintain through the regulations will be more important than ever. The regulations apply to imports and exports; that is very important. We must ensure that they cover vegetative material for propagation in the horticultural industry and others and seeds for cultivation.

One of the most exciting and interesting television series I ever presented back in the day was called “Loads More Muck and Magic”. It was an organic gardening series—I think it was the only one ever on television—on Channel 4. It was filmed in conjunction with the Henry Doubleday Research Association, which was the expert in organic growing at the time and is now called Garden Organic. That series instilled in me a great knowledge; I learned a great deal. I will never profess to be an expert, but I realised what purists organic farmers are and how valuable they are to the environment. They remain so, and I believe they will have more influence. The regulations will ensure that those standards are maintained, and I fully support them.