Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. Quite a lot of Members want to ask questions and we do not have a great deal of time, so I ask for brevity both on the part of questioners and in answers, please.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Q Mr Cross, in addition to having traceability of foods produced in this country, would you agree that it is important to have traceability of the foods that we shall be importing, in order to maintain some sort of level playing field? If we are going to do that, do you think that the traceability should include measures to protect the workforce for imported food, as well as measures relating to food safety and livestock welfare?

John Cross: I think everyone in our industry would advocate that food and food products procured outside the country should adhere to, and be produced to, the same standards that would be expected of the domestic industry. Indeed, I think everyone’s aspiration would be for workers to be treated in exactly the same way in those other countries. It is beyond my skillset to know what influence we can have on that, but yes, I think that consumers, producers and the whole supply chain in this country would expect imported food to adhere to the same standards and to be of the same production standards as ours.

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[Colin Clark]

Q Just to follow up on that point, with the likes of Amazon and eBay, or maybe even some internet or app-based system we cannot see yet—I remember suggesting it years ago to supermarkets, and they were furious, because they owned retail sites and did not want to hear about it—you could actually just about bypass normal retail chains completely. Mr Ward, you spoke about the Asda-Sainsbury’s tie-up. That is inevitable, because they think there is a much bigger competitor coming down the road, is there not?

Jack Ward: Yes. I think the fear from a grower point of view is that it just drives the price even lower. The real concern, if they are going to compete ultimately on price, is what that will do to the pressures in terms of trying to produce food in a sensible, balanced and economic kind of way. It does open up new opportunities, undoubtedly, but the big issue is whether it just moves even more of the grocery market into the discount sector. I think that is the real concern.

Helen Browning: The problem with the discount sector is not that it pays less to farmers, but that they are taking less margin themselves, and therefore the mainstream supermarkets feel they need to match those prices, and they squeeze harder. I actually think that a lot of the discount sector can be very helpful for farmers. Ocado and Amazon can work well for smaller-scale producers. As a producer myself, I sell a lot of stuff through Ocado, because it is very straightforward. They will list stuff very easily and they can have more Stock Keeping Units. Therefore they can offer a much wider range of produce than your mainstream supermarket can, so there are opportunities there. The threat is in the competitive pressure that is exerted on those big four supermarkets, which are still where the majority of food is sold.

[Sandy Martin]

Q Going back to what Kerry McCarthy was asking, do you believe that the production of a comprehensive food strategy could help inform any future regulations that will give effect to the Bill, in order to enable or encourage the production of sustainable and healthy food?

Helen Browning: I would like to think so because that is the other bit of the jigsaw. We are looking here at the production end and particularly at the support elements for farmers. We are not looking at the trade environment, which is going to impact hugely on this, and we are not looking at what is going to happen at the market end or at what will happen through the rest of the supply chain.

In an ideal world, we will be looking at all these bits of the jigsaw together and seeing how they fit together. It is very hard to get this bit of it right with only that base camp in terms of how we will affect farmers’ support into the future. We have no idea of the levels of support that there will be, and that is obviously a factor. The need for it will be influenced by what happens to the trade environment and the market more widely.

It is kind of tricky to do this. What I would ask, given that we do not have that clarity, is that we give broad powers and start to think about the targets. Introducing targets into the Bill would actually give us some destination point and allow the powers to be used in the right way, depending on what else comes through over the next year or so.

Jack Ward: One of the criticisms I have picked up from talking to producers is the lack of reference to food and the promotion of food in the Bill. I think that the food strategy gives the Government the opportunity to redress that issue and spell out a vision for the food industry in the UK. It is our largest food-manufacturing sector; there are opportunities there—there are economic opportunities—and we seem to be at a really good point to take advantage and capitalise on them. I think the food strategy could be hugely influential and send a really important message of confidence throughout the industry.

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[Mr Goodwill]

Q How self-sufficient are we in organic foodstuffs? I know there are some things we cannot produce in the UK.

Helen Browning: We are really struggling in some areas in particular. Arable crops and protein crops for feed, in particular, are in very short supply in the UK. We could triple or quadruple the amount we produce—probably more than that—and still not meet the market demand here; so there is a big opportunity.

It does require some structural changes for those big arable farms that are currently probably not thinking about it. They need to be thinking about reintroducing, probably, livestock to their farms. It would be a jolly good thing in a lot of those farms in the east of England. So there are some structural issues, but I think a real focus on encouraging more farmers in, where there is a clear market, would be really helpful. You have got to make sure it is market-led, clearly, but in some areas the market is massively under-supplied. There are great export opportunities too. I think it would be a key part of a vibrant future for the countryside if we were to get behind organic farming more thoroughly —and agroforestry, as I mentioned earlier.

[Sandy Martin]

Q As you said earlier, the devil is in the detail. There is very little detail in the Bill at all. Most of what will come out of the Bill will be in regulations, and there is very little written into it about consultation. Would you feel more comfortable about having more consultation written into the Bill so that you will know that, when the regulations are coming up, your concerns and those of other people involved in the industry will be taken into account?

Helen Browning: I think it would be helpful because we are in a situation where we do not know so much of what is going to transpire over the next year or two. I think that there will be a huge amount more policy making to do, and this is just the starting point. What we must make sure of, with this Bill, is that it does not close off avenues that we may need open to us, depending on what happens to trade and the Brexit deal itself. It is base camp, and as everything else starts to become a little clearer, I think more consultation, as we start to look at the regulatory framework, would be really helpful.

Jack Ward: From our point of view, I think there is a case for saying that the lack of detail is not a bad thing, given the timescale we are working on and the need for this Bill to be in place before the end of March. The worst thing would be to rush forward with schemes and solutions that had not been properly thought through. We work very closely with DEFRA on the development of schemes, and in our experience it is really important that those who are going to operate them at ground level are part and parcel of the development process, because we have seen just how difficult it is to implement some of the EU schemes. God forbid that we go around the buoy of producing schemes that are inoperable, having designed them ourselves. I think there is an onus on all of us to work together to make sure these things work for the benefit of everybody involved, from taxpayer to grower, through to consumer.

[Mr Dunne]

Q Mr Ward, you have touched on public procurement, and you gave some examples of procurement in other existing EU countries. As we come out of the EU, do you think there is scope for this Bill to make provision for us to be much freer as to public bodies procuring locally? Should that be specified in the Bill?

Jack Ward: Yes, I think public procurement would be really helpful; but we have to recognise that we only produce a percentage of the total requirement. Inevitably, there are periods of the year, or there are crops, where it is not that easy to get locally grown produce, simply because it does not exist. We need to factor that in to our thinking. It is all very well to say, at a design level, “Yes, wouldn’t it be great if you specified that it had to be British?”, but eight out of 10 tomatoes are imported, so, by definition, they will not be local.