Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

I associate myself with the hon. Lady’s comments about the holocaust.

Consistent collections, ensuring we can collect the seven strands of waste, will allow all households in this country to make sure they are recycling. Coupled with the deposit return scheme and other measures in the Environment Act 2021, they will ensure that everybody in England can recycle easily and consistently.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Minister mentions the deposit return scheme, because including cartons in the scheme is one extra step the Government could take to tackle fly-tipping. Please will she meet Tetra Pak, based in my constituency, to discuss the feasibility of the onward processing of cartons, which I believe would make that inclusion a practical possibility?

[Jo Churchill]

As my hon. Friend knows, we will announce more information on the deposit return scheme shortly. I would, of course, be happy to meet his constituent for further discussions. I do not think we should rule anything out, but nor am I making any promises.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

The hon. Member for City of Chester, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

If the Commission will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a system for voter registration requiring a person to (a) indicate their principal residence allowing them to vote in parliamentary elections and (b) register a secondary address which would allow for voting in local elections only.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester)]

Following the 2017 UK general election, the commission recommended that the UK Government should consider making just such a change to the registration system. It is possible for somebody to be lawfully registered to vote in more than one place. At local elections, such people are able to vote in each place in different elections. However, it is an offence to vote twice in a single election, such as in a parliamentary general election. The commission report in 2017 highlighted that requiring such voters to choose which area they will vote in at a UK parliamentary election could reduce the risk of electors voting twice. One practical issue is that we do not have one single national register, but lots of local registers held by individual registration officers.

[Mr Baker]

I am very grateful for that answer. Of course, this is a problem we have seen in Wycombe. I have seen evidence of it, which is why I raise it. On the point about a single national database, the House will remember that we had this conversation in relation to the NHS track and trace app. As a software engineer, may I, through the hon. Member, encourage the Electoral Commission to take the advice of expert software engineers on how such uniqueness could be assured on registrations without having a single national database?

[Christian Matheson]

I am very grateful for that and I think the House is aware of the hon. Gentleman’s professional experience in this area. If he has solutions to suggest to the Commission, I could ask it to meet him to discuss what is possible.

Agriculture Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

And industrious too, no doubt—industrious in particular.

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in that I am a farmer and receive income from farming.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham reminded us, this is the first debate that we have had since we left the European Union—and we have well and truly left the common agricultural policy, so we now have the opportunity to design a new domestic agricultural policy that will recognise the unique characteristics and needs of the UK farming industry as opposed to 27 European countries.

The Government, in the shape of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), originally said that they would negotiate

“a comprehensive customs agreement that will deliver the exact same benefits as we have”.—[Official Report, 24 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 169.]

However, more recently, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said in the Financial Times of 17 January that farms have had three years to prepare for a new trading relationship. But to prepare for what—a free trade agreement with full benefits or a no-deal situation where beef and sheep exports face 50% to 60% adverse tariffs? The future of agriculture is very uncertain at the moment. However, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in her excellent speech, this landmark legislation could not only boost productivity but give some of the highest environmental protection in the world, setting an example to others.

This is an industry that employs 474,000 people, with a net annual contribution to the UK economy of some £8 billion. Last summer, the National Audit Office produced a report with some frontline statistics, which it is very good at doing, saying that there were 85,000 recipients of CAP payments in England in 2017. It went on to say that of those, 82,500 would participate in the new environmental land management scheme by 2028. That seems a very high and optimistic target, I say to my hon. Friend the Minister, and it will be achieved only if the scheme has properly defined objectives, is relatively simple to apply for and operate, and, above all, has an absolute commitment from the Government to pay on time for the work done, in line with their commitment to other small businesses. As I said, this is a highly ambitious target. I remind the Government that only 20,000 farms, as opposed to 82,500, had enrolled in the countryside stewardship scheme after 42 years of operation.

The NAO report goes on to tell us that without direct payment, 42% of farms would have made a loss, assuming that everything else had remained the same. The Government are committed to making payments at the same level this year, thereafter moving to a system of public goods for public money. However, having tabled amendments to the previous Bill, which fell due to the general election, to ensure that food production is at the heart of this legislation, I find it somewhat disappointing to see that public goods do not secure more of our food supply. For farmers, it will be difficult to compete in the same market as those who either have a one-sided subsidy such as the CAP or regulations that discriminate against our farmers. I understand that this year, 95,000 tonnes of rapeseed was imported into this country from Ukraine—a country that is allowed to use neonicotinoids, which are banned in this country. So we are simply exporting environmental risk to other countries by doing this.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is perfectly legitimate to defend our producers against anti-competitive distortions being introduced into our market?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That is precisely what I am trying to get at—our farmers can compete with any farmers in the world, provided they have a level playing field.

It is not only regulation that could be an obstacle to them. There could be a tariff schedule that broadly supports European farmers and disadvantages British farmers. For example, lamb producers in the Cotswolds, who work in a very important farming sector, could be undercut by New Zealand lamb being brought into this country with zero tariffs, while they face an adverse European tariff that prevents them from continuing their lucrative export to Europe.

The new ELMS and productivity scheme needs to be implemented on time, to see how it works in practice and to play an important role in achieving net zero goals. If it is not introduced on time in 2024, there will be a gap in funding. Many experts believe that introducing it on time will be extremely difficult, and that it is more likely to slip from 2024 to 2028, which will produce a gap in funding. We have an opportunity, post Brexit, to create a progressive, carbon-neutral model of farming in the UK, with the NFU committed to an ambitious target of the sector being carbon-neutral by 2040.

The Bill prepares our farming industry for the future, so that it can meet the needs of this country, and with that comes consideration of the younger generation of farmers. The lump sum payment provisions should be more geared towards encouraging young people into farming. As they stand, the provisions could well lead to some areas of the country simply not being farmed, because there will be land without the ability to get any subsidy whatsoever.

Farming has experienced a huge technological transformation in the past 10 years, with better IT, better animal husbandry, better use of GPS, improved agricultural chemicals and soil sampling, and a host of other technological improvements. Those advances in the agricultural industry will no doubt continue at pace. Younger generations can quickly adapt to new technology, as I am finding with my son, who has just moved to my farm. We must support them, so that they can play a bigger part in British agricultural production, considerably increasing productivity and environmental and animal welfare standards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Apart from Stonebridge City Farm, there are no farms in my constituency. However, like all the other Members in the Chamber, I represent people who need food to eat and a healthy planet on which to live, and a deregulated, race-to-the-bottom Brexit will put both at risk.

We have less than a decade in which to save the planet from climate breakdown. To do that we need post-war scale investment in infrastructure, and we need to decarbonise our economy by 20% every year in every industry, yet there are no targets in the Bill for the agriculture sector to reach net zero. Will the Minister explain why, despite the clear will of organisations such as the National Farmers Union, the Bill contains no targets for net-zero emissions in farming? In fact, while providing many powers, it provides very few duties for the Secretary of State to do anything.

I welcome the principle of a farming payments system that provides public money for public goods, but why are environmental public goods only possibilities for the Secretary of State, rather than requirements? Why does a Bill about agriculture not recognise sustainable food production as a public good? This Bill is a huge missed opportunity for the UK to take a lead on agroecology. It fails to prioritise sustainable food production, despite experts’ warnings about our future food security. It could have given us a chance to enshrine in law the “right to food” that Labour has promised, promoting the local growing and distribution of food to bring people closer to food production.

I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the Government have chosen to ignore the crisis in food poverty. More than a million people are being forced to use food banks as a result of their calamitous work and pensions policies. How can we rely on the Secretary of State’s good will to end that crisis when her own colleague, the Foreign Secretary, has dismissed people who are forced to turn to food banks as merely having a temporary cashflow problem? In Nottingham, more than 26,000 people, including nearly 11,000 children, have used food banks for emergency supplies in the last year, and, shamefully, there are more food banks than branches of McDonald’s in this country. While we subsidise food in Westminster, outside this building there are children going to school and to bed hungry. In the sixth richest country in the world, this is a political choice. It is also a political choice to remain silent on this issue in the Bill before us today. We know that many Conservative Members—like the one sniggering over there—fantasise about a deregulated post-Brexit world where laws and regulations on food and the environment are weakened, but the fact is that my constituents and those in constituencies up and down the country do not want chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef.

[Mr Steve Baker]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nadia Whittome]

No, I will not.

Why has the Secretary of State ignored the sincere requests from Labour Members, from the NFU and from the DEFRA Committee to enshrine in law a guarantee that British farmers will not be undercut through the importing of substandard produce as part of new trade deals?

The Bill needs to say much more about access to healthy, sustainable food. It needs to say more about cutting emissions, and it needs a guarantee that British farming and food standards will not be undercut. I support the reasoned amendment today because the Bill fails on food standards, it fails on food production and, most of all, it fails to tackle food poverty.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Committee: 1st sitting
Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the Minister for his contributions, but I was saddened that he chose not to answer any of my questions, so I will just put them on the record once again.

I was certainly waiting for an answer to my question about convergence moneys. Convergence money was supposed to level up—that being the phrase du jour—our support for farmers and crofters across the UK, paid as it was for the extent of less-favoured areas in which they are largely located. Ensuring that Northern Irish and English farmers retain their uplift means that the whole purpose of convergence moneys being awarded has been effectively ignored. I would love to hear what the Government will be doing to address that.

May I ask again what compensation for currency fluctuations farmers and crofters can expect? When can we see the details of multi-annual financial frameworks, the future basic payments, and, very importantly for Scottish farmers and crofters, the settlement that the devolved Administrations will receive?

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I listened carefully to what the hon. Lady said and have taken a moment to digest it. She mentioned compensating farmers and crofters for currency movements. Does the SNP propose to compensate all international traders for currency movements? Could she tell us a bit more about what she proposes?

[Deidre Brock]

We are talking specifically about the payments that are being made at the moment, so I am not really sure why the hon. Gentleman wants to drag in a completely separate subject.

Given the currency fluctuations that are occurring and have of course occurred since the EU referendum and the plummeting of the pound, most farmers would expect that some sort of compensation should be at least contemplated by the Government going forward. That is the extent of my contributions for now, but I hope that at some stage, perhaps during the passage of the Agriculture Bill, some of the questions that I have raised can be addressed by the Minister.

UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Steve Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Clearly time is short, so I do not plan to take any interventions unless someone objects to anything important I have to say.

May I start by telling my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) how much I appreciate the time and service he gave? It is a great pity that he is no longer in post, for reasons he has made clear.

I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade, who is sitting on the Front Bench, that I clearly cannot support the idea of taking no deal off the table, because I have always believed that ultimately that is not up to us, unless, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has said, we are prepared somehow to revoke. If we are not prepared to revoke, we will put ourselves in the hands of the EU, which may decide that it does not want us to extend. Where would that leave us? It would leave us having to leave without the withdrawal agreement. The idea of no deal is a bit of a misnomer, because in actual fact a whole series of things are taking place right now in the EU and even here that amount to deals, arrangements and agreements. I will not go through the list, because time is very short.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I was not planning to give way, because others want to speak, but I will give way briefly to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Baker]

During the course of the debate I have received a message from David Campbell Bannerman MEP, who says that the European Parliament in Strasbourg has today voted through no-deal measures on social security, road freight connectivity, basic air connectivity, the fishing fund, fishing vessels authorisation, railway safety and connectivity, and, on road haulage cabotage, the right for UK hauliers to operate within certain territory—and on it goes. Is it not the case that the Malthouse compromise—plan B—is emerging through the fact that both sides are taking sensible contingencies in their mutual interests?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. That is my point on the concept of no deal versus managed exit. That is how I would refer to the process: we do it either by a completely upfront withdrawal agreement, or by a series of agreements. My point is that it is about managing the process of leaving.

That is why I put my name to amendment (f), which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green). I fully agree that it is not perfect but it seeks to find a way in which hon. Members with completely different views can come together, recognising that the people voted to leave and that our job is to deliver that. Is there a way to deliver it if there is not the chance of an agreement?

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We absolutely have given powers to all cities that want to implement a clean air zone. They are fully able to do that. We will also assist with funding for the five cities projected to be above the WHO limit of 40 mg of nitrogen oxide. We are working with those local authorities at the moment. We need to ensure the zones are in the right place so that the problem does not get moved from one part of the city to another. The resources will be available for those local authorities to put that in place.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

4. What assessment she has made of the potential contribution of data and technology to increasing the productivity and competitiveness of British farming.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

Data and technology have a central role to play in increasing the productivity and competitiveness of British farming. Last October, I launched the first of our agri-tech centres of excellence, the agrimetric centre at Rothamsted. They will develop new software models to improve our ability to understand and utilise the huge volume of data that exist. In addition, we are on track to open up 8,000 data sets to the public, which can help food and farming to achieve its potential.

[Mr Baker]

As a software engineer, I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s response. Does he agree that the implementation burden of vast changes, such as this year’s common agricultural policy, make it difficult to realise all these benefits? Does he agree that there is a simple solution, which is to vote to leave the EU?

[George Eustice]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Government’s position is that we should remain in the European Union. He will be aware, however, that I have exercised the option granted by the Prime Minister to disagree with the Government on this particular issue. From a personal perspective, I simply say that the vast majority of problems farmers complain to me about are the consequence of dysfunctional EU legislation.

Animal Welfare (Non-stun Slaughter)

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. The wording of the e-petition refers to stunning versus non-stunning, but we cannot have a complete debate about this subject unless we tackle the religious dimension because that is the elephant in the room. I have been led down that path in the first few minutes of the debate because that is the understandable concern of Muslim and Jewish communities. He is correct that the wording of the e-petition and the purpose of the debate is about stunned versus non-stunned, but we soon come on to other issues.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Muslim constituents in Wycombe will want to buy halal meat and they should be able to do that. One of my Muslim constituents wants to buy halal meat because of not only the religious justification, but welfare. For him, halal slaughter is a method with a higher standard of welfare than other methods that were common, such as strangulation. Could an element of the debate be that animal welfare standards have advanced with technology, and that in many cases we can find common ground for animals to be both stunned and halal slaughtered?

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend has demonstrated once again how he frequently speaks up in a most thoughtful way in this House on behalf of his constituents. His constituent and many others elsewhere who are Muslim might well take that view of halal slaughter, but he will be aware that that is not the majority opinion. Eight out of 10 people want to see an end to non-stunned slaughter and I suggest that the Muslim and Jewish communities have a lot of persuading to do if they want their point of view to win the day.

Water Industry

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

Clearly, the billing system needs to be fair.

The issue about debt is that water companies are often leveraged to 100% and then say that they cannot fund infrastructure improvements. Many colleagues have concerns about the Thames tideway tunnel and how that is financed. I am sure that will be explored in due course.

We also need more appropriate investment. If real investment falls, where is the justification to increase bills? We need to ensure that real investment does not fall, that we maintain the investment we need and that it is funded in an appropriate way.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the tideway tunnel, because my constituents in Wycombe want to avoid having to pay for it, particularly given that Wycombe faces its own problems with its sewerage systems. I hope my hon. Friend will explain how he sees choice and competition liberating people from having to pay for inadequate services.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Time denies me the opportunity to go into the issue in great detail, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon has been looking at it with considerable concern, because his constituency, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), is in the Thames sewerage area.

We need to look at how we can beef up Ofwat and give it greater powers in the Water Bill to say, “There’s been a favourable adjustment, so we can adjust and revisit the settlement on an ongoing basis.” If it had those powers, it would be able to have a stronger conversation with the water industry. That is worth considering. It would also be worth looking at allowing Ofwat to give guidance to the water industry on appropriate and responsible corporate governance.