Agriculture Bill (Tenth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be back in Committee this afternoon. I look forward to hearing the hon. Member for North Dorset’s account of his lunch; he is not here—he is probably finishing his cheese and biscuits.

When you adjourned the Committee this morning at 25 minutes past 11, Sir Roger, I was about to speak to amendment 122. To give colleagues their bearings, we are on page 12 of the Bill and dealing with clause 17. The amendment would insert just a few words about exceptional market conditions. What we are asking for is difficult to explain without reading out a whole subsection of the clause, so please bear with me. Clause 17(2) states:

“In this Part ‘exceptional market conditions’ exist where—

there is a severe disturbance in agricultural markets or a serious threat of a severe disturbance in agricultural markets, and

the disturbance or threatened disturbance has, or is likely to have, a significant adverse effect on agricultural producers in England in terms of the prices achievable for one or more agricultural products.”

All we want to do is to include, in addition to the reference to an impact on the prices achievable, a reference to the costs incurred in the production of such products, because the issue is obviously not just the prices that can be obtained for them, but how much the costs of producing them may be affected.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

When the hon. Lady talks about events that may have a severe impact on British agriculture, could she by any chance be referring to the points made by the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday, when he talked about the collective ownership of land? Surely that is a policy that, when enacted by Stalin, killed millions of people in the Soviet Union.

[Jenny Chapman]

I think that if that were the policy, it would indeed count as an exceptional market condition, and I expect that the Government might want to intervene in some way.

Let me move on. As drafted, the power to act applies only if there is an impact on prices, but obviously there could be a situation in the sector that resulted in excessive additional costs for farmers but did not necessarily have an impact on the price of the product. Examples would be the costs of taking emergency action, such as cleansing and disinfecting, or input costs such as those for fodder. If the clause included our wording, that would enable the Secretary of State to act, or would just make it clearer that he could act when there was an effect on not only the prices achievable but the costs incurred.

Widening the scope, subtly but importantly, beyond just the impact on agricultural product prices would make the measure more flexible and reflective of the nature of exceptional conditions. In an enabling Bill, it is better to have powers with the full scope to deal with the unexpected. For now, that concludes my remarks on this group of amendments.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The EU introduced a law in 2004 that required eggs and egg packs to be labelled as to farming methods. That was the result of consumer demand. It did not ban anything, but it gave consumers the information they needed to shop in the way that they wanted to shop. It led to a substantial shift away from cage eggs and 50% of UK egg production is now free range, but in other respects information on method of production is not available. Unless food is organic, it is quite difficult for higher welfare farmers to get the information across, so that shoppers will be prepared to pay a premium. There are some voluntary and assurance schemes, but it is all a bit of a muddle.

[Mr Goodwill]

Of course we are all keen to ensure that animal welfare standards are maintained and indeed improved. On eggs, the public easily understand the difference between a caged bird and a bird that has had access to the outside, but it is much more difficult for milk production. Can the hon. Lady explain how, for example, cows that are housed in winter for good welfare reasons would be characterised in her way of describing type of production?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I have spoken to dairy farmers and organisations such as the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association about the number of days animals would have to be outside grazing to meet the criteria. Nobody is suggesting that they would have to be outdoors year round, round the clock, no matter the weather. That is something that could be addressed in the guidance. The problem with milk is that, at the moment, most milk is pooled together, so it is impossible in most cases to distinguish the source of the milk when it comes to be marketed, so consumers are in the dark—unless it is organic of course.

[Mr Goodwill]

I understand the point the hon. Lady is trying to make, but would this provision not just hand the market on a plate to the New Zealanders, who can keep their cows outside for very long periods, and in that way freeze out British farmers who, because of the weather we have in winter, have to house their livestock for the best of reasons?

[Kerry McCarthy]

That depends on the criteria set. I have heard 120 days mentioned as a possible benchmark.

The problem is not just that the information is not being made available; one of the main reasons I tabled the amendment is that there is quite a lot of misleading marketing that gives consumers the impression that goods are higher welfare when they are not. A pork product from a factory-farmed pig may carry a label that says something like “farm fresh” or “all natural”. Packaging can carry images of green fields or woodlands. I was praising Tesco this morning for its work on food waste and modern slavery, but there was an issue, either earlier this year or last year, where Tesco meat and fresh produce had been labelled with the names of British-sounding farms, such as Boswell Farms beef steaks and Woodside Farms sausages, and it transpired that not only did those farms not exist, but in some cases the produce had been imported. That is certainly misleading the public, and I might use stronger language to describe that behaviour.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

If people want to choose to buy organic, they can do so. They can do that at the moment. There is not going to be any judgment as to whether organic is better; it is a personal choice. I thought the Conservatives were all in favour of personal choice.

On the non-meat varieties of bacon and sausages, we do not object to the taste of things; we object to the fact that animals are killed to make them. If they are made from plant-based sources, all well and good and we can all have a nice bacon sandwich without worrying about the little pigs and other creatures. I hope that explains to the hon. Gentleman why we might want to have a veggie-burger occasionally, if he struggles with the concept.

[Mr Goodwill]

On that point, does the hon. Lady think we should follow the lead of France, which, following an initiative by French MP Jean-Baptiste Moreau, has banned misleading words such as “sausage” and “steak” unless they are attached to produce actually containing meat?

[Kerry McCarthy]

No, I do not. I am aware of that move, but I do not think that people are remotely misled. Nobody is going to buy a vegetarian sausage thinking that it has pork in it. It is the same with soya milk and almond milk—everyone knows perfectly well that they have nothing to do with dairy cows. We are underestimating the intelligence of the British consumer if we think that they are going to be misled by things like that.

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[Deidre Brock]

I still consider the lack of focus on food production a fundamental flaw of the Bill. It is a serious omission at a time when food security has become a major concern. Farmers already have a very clear interest in protecting the environment, and the sensible approach to supporting those endeavours would surely be along the lines of the work that the Soil Association is already doing in Scotland with the support of the Scottish Government: education and exampling to encourage more productive but environmentally friendly farming. I urge hon. Members to look at Future Farming Scotland, Farming with Nature and the Rural Innovation Support Service—three excellent programmes from the Soil Association to improve farming in Scotland that are far more effective than asking farmers to fill in more forms to show environmental progress.

It would be easier for larger enterprises to do that form-filling and comply with the rules for gaining that cash than it would be for small farms, and potentially easier for grouse moors and stalking estates to access funding than for small family-run farms producing foods for local markets. That offsets any possible benefits of so-called public goods. As food miles grow, the environmental benefits surely diminish, and, similarly, as the air miles and road miles of shooting enthusiasts grow, any environmental benefit from proper management of shooting estates and grouse moors vanishes, and perhaps even turns negative.

[Mr Goodwill]

I represent a very large moorland area on the north Yorkshire moors. Does the hon. Lady not agree that the management by keepers and shooting estates maintains the delicate environment for the benefit not only of the sheep and grouse that graze, but of the people who enjoy those areas?

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[The Chair]

That is a very fair point, and I have been struggling with that as well, trying to decide how far we allow the debate to go down that road. I ask colleagues to exercise a degree of restraint, because there will be an opportunity to discuss the extent of the Bill later, on clause 34.

[Mr Goodwill]

During the comments by hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith at the start of this short debate, the point was quite rightly made that nobody here is representing Northern Ireland, so I rise to speak as a member of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. She asked if there were cases of protected geographical status in Northern Ireland, which indeed there are: Lough Neagh eels, Irish whisky, Comber early potatoes and Armagh Bramley apples. Indeed, there is also an all-Ireland protected status—there is no reason why that should not continue after we have left the European Union—for salmon.

My point is that, although we have no Government active in Northern Ireland, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs—DAERA, Northern Ireland’s equivalent of DEFRA—is engaged in a consultation on these issues. It is grappling with the challenges that need to be faced, whereas the Scottish Government seem to be pretending that this will not happen and are not engaging with it at the level they should be.

[Martin Whitfield]

Aware of your earlier comments, Sir Roger, I shall be relatively brief. I rise merely by way of seeking an indication, or an answer to my question, from the Minister, or indeed the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, who moved the amendment, if they find chance to do so. I reiterate what NFU Scotland asked for, which is that the Governments on both sides of the border should sit down, discuss this and sort it out. That is what should happen. It is not a case for politicking. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington said, stuck in the middle is a very important industry in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The agricultural industry is desperate for certainty and understanding, and needs it sooner rather than later.

On the amendments, will the Minister confirm the evidence that he gave to the Scottish Affairs Committee? Some elements clearly affect the devolved settlement. With the greatest respect, more attention should have been paid to the consequences of that earlier.

I am concerned about the question of recognised producer organisations that cross the borders of the four nations. Yes, the amendment takes account of that, but there is the question of what happens if there is an argument about certification. If one side says yes and the other says no, who will take precedence?

The other point I want to make is about Government amendment 10. What sort of legal entity does the Minister envisage? Is it, or might it be, a collection of simple individuals? In that case, the Government might it challenging to find a legal entity to pass down those rights.

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[George Eustice]

The only way that a processor could do that would be if they literally became a farmer. Setting up a sham subsidiary company that buys from the farmer and sells to a middle man would still be caught by these provisions, because the vehicle company would still be required to abide by the terms that are set out through these regulations. We thought about this hard and our conclusion was that if the challenge is the fact that farmers are too often price takers, are too fragmented and do not have sufficient clout in the supply chain, let us have a very targeted, focused approach to ensuring that we address that unfairness.

The problem with broadening the provision to anyone in the supply chain, so it could be a haulage company transporting lettuces or someone who has bought something and sold it on, is that it is broadened to many more relationships. Then it becomes difficult to justify all the requirements and purposes set out, because they are very much designed for farm businesses.

[Mr Goodwill]

We have heard about the case where milk crosses the Irish border on a number of occasions—it was almost like trying to hit a moving target. That is why these amendments are not really practical.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We should remain focused on the challenge we are trying to address: why do farmers not get a fair price for the food they produce? Why do they end up too often being price takers and why do they need public support and subsidies in order to break even? The answer is often in the way the supply chain works to their disadvantage. Let us tackle the causes of that disadvantage and have an Agriculture Bill that is specifically targeted at agriculture.

Agriculture Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 14th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Welcome back to the Chair, Sir Roger. I hope that this will be the final session of our deliberations, but anything is possible with this Government. We have already lost one Committee sitting, so let me plough on with new clauses 19 and 27.

The whole point of new clause 19 is that farmers and landowners are being asked to make a dramatic shift in how they perform their duties. I hope that all farmers are to some extent environmentalists—that is why they are on the land and why they care for it—but unless they are among the small minority in stewardship, they have principally been paid for being what they are: farmers or landowners. We are now going to pay them to do environmental things.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise the many environmental schemes that are in place? Farmers are already doing quite a lot of this stuff.

[Dr Drew]

I agree that there have been schemes such as Blue Flag, but the point is that that was not what farmers were principally paid for. Under the Bill, they will principally be paid to look after the environment in whatever way is deemed fit, and they will need an enormous amount of advice. New clause 19 would implement a mechanism for that.

The Committee has already discussed the areas in which farmers might need support. We have certainly discussed the idea of people advising on land management contracts, whether they come in from local government or whether farmers and landowners bring them in and pay for their advice. The difficulty is that this is all rather fluid and open-ended, so the new clause would give it some substance.

As the Minister says, the advice will be given on a one-to-one basis, but who is going to give it? At the moment there are not many people who can give such advice, and they are very expensive. One might have thought that land agents would be interested, but at a recent event I spoke to land agents who made it very clear that rural is not really where the money or—dare I say it?—the interest is, because they have moved much more into the urban sphere. That will no doubt cause some difficulties.

The new clause covers a range of areas in which there is a need for advice. We do not want to talk in an alarmist way, but this is really important. We are asking people to completely change their business organisation over a very short period. How they operate and, in a sense, their whole reason for being on the land will have to change. I am not implying that it will change completely for everyone, but for some people the change will be dramatic.

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[Dr Drew]

I do not know enough about Scotland, so I will take the hon. Gentleman’s judgment on that. One of the arguments about the Bill and the changes it implies, is that rents will possibly fall. I do not necessarily agree with that, but it has been put to me by more than one person. That is due to the removal of the area payment, which has pushed up rents because people have more value in the land that they possess. We will have to see; it might become apparent only some years down the line.

At the moment, I am clear that we should go back to the Agriculture Act 1970, which put an obligation on local authorities that had land to protect that land and make it available for those who wished to farm or do other things appropriate to the land that would be within the environmental catch-all we are pushing for in the Bill.

[Mr Goodwill]

Will the hon. Gentleman give an indication of the size of unit he believes would be viable? Currently, some of the very small smallholdings are not viable businesses.

[Dr Drew]

That is a problem. Traditionally, the Gloucestershire smallholdings were about 100 acres. I accept that would be very difficult because a great many of them were dairy farms, although we also had some horticulture. That is probably too small. To counterweight that, the Landworkers Alliance argue that they can make a living out of much smaller pieces of land, farmed in a slightly different way, through agroecology and so on, and maybe they would not do that full time. No one is implying that being a farmer has to be a full-time occupation. It is something that people want to do as part of their portfolio of operating.

We need to protect these bits of land initially. I would love to grow them and see local authorities encourage them. That is important, not just for opportunities for people on the land. It is about strategic ownership and the fact that we should always think ahead. If the state is not prepared to put in some effort, where is the direction coming from?

The good thing about county farms estates, as most of them are known, is that they provided education and opportunities for people to look at the front end of farming and see ways in which to do things differently, by collaboration among the tenants and so on. We will come later to tenancy reform but this is all bound up in it. A third of our farmers are tenant farmers and many of them are on land not just owned by local authorities but by charities. In my area there is the Henry Smith charity, which owns considerable areas of land and has been very good. The Church is an important landowner in the way it encourages agriculture.

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[Dr Drew]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

This is an important juncture in our consideration of the Bill, and it is probably going to be the most popular part, as we are giving the opportunity to those who wish to be consulted to get rid of the Rural Payments Agency.

It does not have to be that way. We could have a revitalised and reinvigorated payments agency, but a new agency this will have to be, because it will be doing fundamentally different things, and sadly the legacy that the RPA leaves is not necessarily a satisfactory one. That is nothing to do with this Government; previous Governments are responsible too. In my previous incarnation, we spent a lot of time on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee trying to sort out how the hell we got into such a mess over the area payments scheme involving Accenture and the computer system that was brought in. It was an unmitigated disaster, because it cost millions more and never did what it was supposed to do. We had to drag the chief executive, Johnston McNeill, back from Belfast, where he had managed to hide for a period of time, to get some clarity on why the agency got itself into such a mess. That is history. My dear late lamented friend David Taylor did an enormous amount of work on the computer system, and we were indebted to him for that work on the Select Committee. I just make the point that we are asking the new agency to do fundamentally different work.

[Mr Goodwill]

When it comes to who was to blame, the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) might have had something to do with it, given that she chose such a complex way of enacting it under the previous Labour Government.

[Dr Drew]

I do not disagree that we were foolhardy. There should always be a de minimis and a de maximus in terms of how the payment system operated. As always, when the delightful EU Ministers came together they looked around the room for who was going to pilot this scheme, and somebody maybe put their hand up at the wrong time and said, “We’ll have a go at it.” It was not even a UK-driven scheme; it was England-driven. The other territorial Administrations went at their own pace, adding to the complexity and confusion.

I am merely making the point that we are asking for a consultation on the most appropriate agency to take forward this brand new scheme. It does not have to be rushed; it could be done over a period of time. It does not have to be just with farmers; it can be with the green groups, obviously, but also landowners, to get some clarity on what all those different parties expect from a payments agency. The Minister says that the way public moneys will be paid out will be more straightforward. We will only be able to tell that in due course.

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[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Gentleman intend it to be an offence for individuals to purchase the product while on holiday or does he merely mean the commercial importation of this product?

[Dr Drew]

Again, there are going to be commercial obligations, because the fact is that we are looking for a ban. As far as I know, both parties have talked about this quite openly. Certainly representatives of the parties have talked about it. We looked at it as regards the withdrawal agreement. From memory, and we will come on to live exports later, it is one of the things that certain people prayed in aid of the advantage of leaving the EU—that is, that we could bring about some of these animal welfare changes. It was a crucial argument. It was not quite as big an argument as the £350 million a week for the NHS, but it was nevertheless an argument.

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[Dr Drew]

My wife would say I was never romantic, although I do not want to disillusion the Minister too much. This is not about going back. There would have to be a new body, but it would perhaps take account of sectoral organisations—that was what was probably wrong with the old Agricultural Wages Board. The NFU always saw it as a one-size-fits-all.

A modern Agricultural Wages Board must take account of the different sectors and regions. Its whole point is that it underpins wages and conditions. We feel very strongly about that. We talked to Unite, the main representative body that came out of the old National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers. Historically, Unite has always been linked to the Labour party, although it has not always agreed with it. Although we look back in this sense, we also recognise the modern world.

[Mr Goodwill]

On the more highly paid work in appointment grades one and two, would that not in some way create a cartel for the farmers? They would not be able to outbid each other for the more skilled staff because they would say they were paying the going rate. That would not mean that the more skilled people could do better.

[Dr Drew]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. There is always a danger with some form of proportionality—how different groups would be paid. Those groups would not necessarily be encompassed by the Agricultural Wages Board anyway, because it is looking at a minimum structure. That is something that a modern, forward-looking wage board will have to take account of.

We have no magic answer: the NFU asks us what form things would take and hopefully we can have sensible and serious discussion with it. We are making the point that the industry is completely short of labour—yet again this year, sadly, the fruit and veg was ploughed back into the ground. There is something wrong when what has been produced cannot be brought to market because there is no one to pick it. From talking to my dairy farmers, I know that there is always a problem in getting milkers. That transcends any dairy-producing region; it is a real issue. All we continue to argue for is one way in which that can be recognised.

I will press this amendment to a vote; we hope the Government will gradually recognise that they must put a structure in place that transcends the normal minimum wage standards or the living wage. This industry is different, and that must be recognised.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Dr Drew]

We really are getting away from the issue. I am making the point that the United Kingdom has a clear policy on allowing live exports. So long as that stays the case, it has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. We are talking about trade between the United Kingdom and other parts—principally Europe, of course, although livestock could be exported to various different parts of the world. We choose not to, because it would be very cruel and also probably economically illiterate to do so.

We are moving the new clause to allow the debate to take place for those who believe that the ban is going to happen as a matter of course when and if we leave the European Union, when we have the opportunity to do it under WTO rules. There is some debate about whether it is going to be that easy, but we will have to face up to that in due course.

The reality is that unless we have some legislation to enable us to implement the ban, we will never do it anyway. This is our opportunity to have a debate and to see whether this legislation can stand the test of time. Without the new clause or something like it, the ban will never happen. We can have as many Adjournment debates as we could possibly want: it will never take place until and unless we are able to put it into legislation.

[Mr Goodwill]

The fact is that this will not happen if we do not get the agreement voted through in the meaningful vote in Parliament. Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear that anyone who votes against the agreement is voting against our opportunity to ban live exports—and foie gras, for that matter?

[Dr Drew]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that. We are now back—

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[Dr Drew]

I hear what the Minister says. The problem with this is the issue of how many bits of legislation will come around that can be includable in terms of this ban, or can be amended to allow this to carry through. I know this is complicated, and it is sad when newborn male calves are shot. Genetic modification might provide ways of dealing with the number of male calves at source. We would want to see improvements in many aspects of the dairy industry. This new clause is not a magical answer but live exports is a very political issue, and the general public felt—rightly or wrongly—that on our exit from the European Union, the UK would have much greater discretion on what it wanted to do with regard to live exports.

[Mr Goodwill]

I hear exactly what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but what he is saying in the amendment does not stack up with the second of the six Labour tests for the agreement, which asks:

“Does it deliver the ‘exact same benefits’ as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?”

The hon. Gentleman is saying one thing here, but unfortunately the policy of the Labour party is to stay in the customs union and the single market, which would mean that we could not ban live exports.

[Dr Drew]

rose—

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[George Eustice]

I hope I will be able to persuade the shadow Minister that he does not need to press the new clause to a Division. We rehearsed in an earlier discussion on clause 1 the fact that the Government are actively looking at holistic schemes to support and incentivise what could be called integrated pest management. We are considering whether we can reduce our reliance on synthetic chemistry by using more natural predators and different agronomic approaches and being willing for the first time to incentivise farmers financially to do that.

One of the things we are looking at is an incentivised integrated pest management scheme to advance this policy agenda. We also set out in our 25-year environment plan the idea of moving forward and embracing integrated pest management more than we have done previously. The new clause deals with publishing reports and measuring impacts—I have said previously that DEFRA needs no encouragement to produce reports through statutory requirements; we love reports. As I explained, I regularly have to read and sign off reports and I sometimes question whether anyone else is reading them. For some reason, many reports seems to congregate around June, so during that month my box is weighed down with annual reports of one sort or another.

I will share with the hon. Gentleman some of the reports that we have received. I have a lot of reading here that he can take away as a memento of this Committee. The UK Expert Committee on Pesticides—the ECP—which gives us advice on emergency authorisations and on some of the tricky chemical issues. It is a standing advisory committee to the Chemicals Regulation Directorate. I have with me its annual report for 2017, all 22 pages of it. The Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food produces a separate annual report, on top of the one by the Expert Committee on Pesticides, so we have two expert committees in the pesticides space, one on residues and one on broader environmental impacts, both of which produce a report. The report on pesticide residues lists all the findings and surveillance on residues on a wide range of imported products and products produced domestically. It runs to 48 pages and is an annual report.

If that is not enough for the hon. Gentleman, the pesticide usage survey report, is produced by the National Statistics Office and focuses on all sorts of different icrops. I have with me the 2016 report for arable crops, all 92 pages of it, with lots of tables demonstrating exactly what is produced. That key survey already monitors the use of pesticide-active substances on each crop.

[Mr Goodwill]

In addition to that, does my hon. Friend the Minister recognise that farm assurance schemes carry out detailed scrutiny of the records kept by farmers on the pesticides that they use within the rules?

[George Eustice]

My right hon. Friend is correct: schemes such as the red tractor assurance scheme have additional checks and enforcement to ensure that there is nothing out of order, and on top of that they generally require MOTs, for instance, for sprayer equipment.

The pesticide usage survey covers the frequency of application, which picks up the measures in subsection (1)(c) of the new clause, and the area treated, which covers subsection (2)(d), as well as the weight of active substance. It also includes figures on some of the alternatives to chemicals, such as the use of viruses that can target insect pests. In addition, the National Poisons Information Service collects and considers reports of possible harm to people, which covers subsection (2)(b). Results are not published, but they are reported to DEFRA and other interested Departments, as well as to the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides.

Finally, the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme looks at reported incidents of possible harm to wildlife, which I think is what subsection (2)(a) of the new clause is trying to get at. Results of the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme are published on the Health and Safety Executive website, and the Environment Agency also monitors levels of pesticides in water.

I understand that there are very good intentions behind the new clause, but I hope that I can reassure the hon. Member for Stroud that we have a plethora of reports that cover pesticide use and pesticide issues in great detail. I hope he will withdraw his new clause at this stage, take some time to read the reports, which I would be happy to leave with him, and consider whether he still feels the measure is necessary on Report.