Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Sandy Martin and Deidre Brock

Thursday 25th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Q This is a skeleton Bill, and I am getting a very strong impression that an awful lot of people are reading into the Bill what they would like to see, without it actually being there. You have talked a lot about the sustainable production of healthy food; however, the most operable parts of the Bill are subsections (1) and (2) of clause 1, and there is no mention at all of the production of food in either. Because this is an enabling Bill, it says:

“The Secretary of State may give financial assistance”,

so we do not know whether he will decide to give financial assistance to any or all of these things, but we do know that it does not say that he may give any financial assistance to the production of healthy food in a sustainable way. Is that something that you would like to see in the Bill?

Professor Marsden: That is why I tabled my amendment for a longer first clause that integrates those things so that it interlocks them. The point is not that it is the environment over and above agriculture, farming or food, but all three. This Agriculture Bill should be projecting the integration of those three priorities because they are all priorities and they are all interlinked—you cannot really have one without the other. That is the critical point, from which the rest of the Bill could be much more specified in duties and so on. It is the principal thing that needs to be right at the start. I think that it is important that the Bill gives the vision.

This is a 1947 moment; I was not around then—not many of us were— but we have all read about what happened. This is a clean sheet in terms of taking back control and delivering a much more self-sufficient, sustainable food system for the UK as a whole. So take the opportunity—that is my advice.

Professor Millstone: I certainly agree that the Bill addresses certain aspects of farming, but clearly the National Farmers Union thinks that there are rather important aspects that are not mentioned. As my colleague Professor Marsden says, it is almost completely in abstraction from food, which there is nothing about.

May I please briefly go back to David Drew’s question about institutions and pick up on Vicki’s point about education and training and Terry’s about the need for transformation? Previously, we had the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service, which performed two important functions. First, it disseminated information and knowledge about innovations and new products and processes to farmers. But it also performed a second function, which was gathering information from farmers about the problems to which they would like solutions that the research and development on innovations could provide. When ADAS was abolished, it was essentially replaced by a commercial marketing and sales system, and that second function disappeared in the UK. It remains present in Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria and many other countries, which accounts for why their agriculture is both more productive and more sustainable than UK agriculture. There is scope for important institutional development in that regard.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Q It has been suggested to me that the switch from support for food production to support for public goods might make subsidies easier to claim for landowners who manage things such as grouse moors and shooting estates, rather than for farmers with small plots of land. Would you consider that an environmental gain, and, in that case, would the reductions in food production be worth it?

Vicki Hird: We do not have a position on that—it would be hard for me to say whether we would advocate for grouse moors. I understand that clauses on active farmers, food producers and those gaining financial reward from production of goods from the land are being mooted. I think that would restrict the Bill somewhat and make it very inflexible in supporting systems that can do both in a very extensive way. I am not necessarily talking about grouse moors here; I suppose I am thinking more about extensive livestock in a system that has other huge benefits in carbon capture or tourism. If land is producing not a huge amount of food but a bit of food, and the Bill restricts that, that would not necessarily be a good thing.

The important distinction is that we would not be advocating payments purely for being a farmer on an acre basis. In answer to Sandy’s question as well as yours, we do not think that that would be a good outcome for farmers, the taxpayer or the environment. What is in the Bill is a skeleton, which needs to be built on, and we certainly think that there needs to be an extra clause relating to agri-ecological systems such as organic, to make sure that we can cover them and very small producers. You mentioned small producers. It is really important to get rid of the cut-off, because there are some very small, very productive producers who should benefit from any possible public good payment. I will leave it there.

Professor Marsden: We clearly have a big issue here in what we are saying about the uplands. They are never going to be agriculturally productive in this sense, and they will need support for landscape purposes, amenity and so on. This is a very important element and one of the reasons why I stress this whole issue of the rural economy.

The economy in the uplands is governed not by agriculture but by all sorts of other activities, not least the public sector, which is very significant in rural areas. I think we have to look at upland agricultural systems in a completely new light. We have to look at ways in which we can support them in delivering for the rural economy, as well as for the environment.

Over the last few years we have done some research in Wales which has shown that, okay, there may be some scare stories about cuts in subsidies for hill farmers, but if you look at the amount of household income, not farm business income, many hill farmers are generating a lot of income from non-agricultural activities. They are reliant on non-agricultural income for their household income. There is a lot of cost transfer from different members of the household into upland farm households. That is something we should be encouraging. We should encourage more multifunctional farms in upland areas, which can attract visitors and fulfil more amenity purposes. Again, the Bill provides a real opportunity, not a threat, to our extensive upland areas across the UK.

David Baldock: I think the public goods record of some grouse moors is highly controversial; some of the management practices of grouse moors would not score very high in the public goods test. It is more likely, as Terry has been saying, that money will go into mixtures of agriculture and forestry—agri-forestry—and different patterns in the uplands, producing more return for farmers and land managers, rather than be switched out of the land environment. I do not think that is likely to happen on a significant scale, no.