Farming

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I start by congratulating Tom Bradshaw on his election as president of the National Farmers Union. I am sure he will do a fantastic job, and I wish him all the best as he starts his new role standing up for our British farmers. He has big wellington boots to fill, of course, after the outstanding job done by Minette Batters over the past decade—I am sure the whole House wishes her the very best in her future endeavours.

Recent years have been very challenging for farmers: the covid pandemic; the Government’s botched EU withdrawal deal; Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine; and now war in the middle east. Each of these shocks has underscored how vulnerable our food supply chain really is, and how dependent we are on our great British farmers. Food security is national security. In recent years, British consumers have seen empty shelves in local supermarkets, while food prices rocketed by 19% at their peak last year. We need to get resilience back into the system, and at the heart of that must be a commitment to back our British farmers.

I had the pleasure of attending the NFU conference in Birmingham last month and the Oxford farming conference in January. Speaker after speaker made it clear that British farming is in crisis, and that farmers feel abandoned by this Government. Over 6,000 British producers have gone bust since 2017, and the agricultural workforce became a third smaller over the same period. Labour shortages mean that valuable crops have been left in the ground to rot.

The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, the farming mental health charity, alarmingly reports that suicide rates among farmers are the highest of any sector in the UK economy, thanks to the huge pressures that farmers are now under. This is heartbreaking, and it should concern every one of us. The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, the right hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer), is unable to be here today, but I am glad that he is focusing on working with stakeholders on an issue of such importance and magnitude.

Flooding was among the top issues raised at the NFU conference. Farmers have faced one of the wettest six-month periods on record, with many winter crops still not planted and others washed away or under water. Farmers need better flood defences. It is astonishing that so much of the allocated funding has not been spent over the past two years. I visited Retford in Nottinghamshire and was astonished to learn that, of the £11.7 million allocated for flood defences over the past two years, less than 0.5% of it has been spent.

There is a severe failure of co-ordination between central Government and the agencies responsible for getting spades in the ground to dig out the drainage systems, to build the flood barriers and to plant trees upstream to help the land hold more water.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

The shadow Minister is making some interesting points. I have probably had more flooding on the levels than anyone in this House. One of the biggest challenges we face is the intransigence of the Environment Agency and Natural England, which are quite impossible. The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point, but one of the reasons we are finding it difficult to build up the defences, to clear out the rhynes and ditches, and to maintain the clyses and dams is that the Environment Agency and Natural England will not give way on making every single thing impossible.

I have been waiting for a barrage in Bridgwater since 2014. We really must break this logjam. I gently say to the shadow Minister that we are all on his side if he can help to do it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he makes an important point about the experience of flooding in his part of the country, which, sadly, is reflected in others as well. The Government, whoever might be leading them, need to get a grip of these agencies and work more closely with them. That is why Labour has proposed that if we are elected, we will introduce a flood resilience taskforce to bring together national and local government, and the frontline agencies that he referred to, to make sure that once funding is allocated it is actually spent to protect our farmland and rural communities from the devastating impact of flooding.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Would it not be a better idea to scrap these agencies all together and hand responsibility back to Ministers, where it originally was, because the agencies that are now employed to do this are often doing things completely against Government policy and, in particular, against farmers?

[Steve Reed]

The answer, which is quicker than playing around with the architecture of agencies and national Government, is for the Government to get a grip. These agencies are responsible to national Government and I would like to see much stronger command from national Government to make sure that they do what they were set up and funded to do. They are clearly not doing it to anything like the extent or with the quality that Members from all parts of this House expect of them.

A second point I wish to raise is that Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has sent energy prices rocketing. That exposed the Government’s failure to transition to cheaper, home-grown energy. As a result, soaring energy bills have clobbered British farmers and producers. Labour’s approach would be very different. We will switch on GB Energy to cut bills for farmers, households and businesses. That publicly owned company will direct public and private investment to harness the power of wind, wave, solar and nuclear energy, to cut bills, create jobs and secure energy supply chains inside our own country, freeing us from dependence on foreign dictators like Putin. We can also help farmers who want to generate clean energy on their own land. Under this Government, it can take up to 10 years to get planning permission to connect this desperately needed energy into the national grid. Labour will reform our planning laws and cut that wait from years to just months.

The Government’s bungled transition from European Union farming payments has been another source of financial misery for farmers. Far too many have seen incomes plummet as the basic payment scheme is phased out. Tenant farmers, in particular, feel that the new scheme does not work for them. The principles behind environmental land management schemes make sense, but the implementation has been chaotic and bureaucratic. Instead of tackling the weaknesses in ELMS, the Government have instead shuffled their feet and tried to claim the credit for reallocating a £220 million underspend. That money should have been given to farmers in the first place and not returned to the Treasury, but at the core the Government’s failure is to have never developed a clear strategy for land use, including food production.

Our land management scheme should support moves towards regenerative farming and nature recovery, alongside food production. Instead of doing that, the Conservatives are increasingly positioning themselves against nature. Their attempt to trash environmental standards to legalise the further pollution of already polluted rivers and waterways was shocking. We have a limited amount of land for the size of our population in this country. We need a land use framework to make sure that the many competing demands on our land can work in balance. This Government have failed to produce one. In government, Labour will introduce one.

The Conservative Government stubbornly refuse to publish interim data showing what impact ELMS are having. The Guardian has used a freedom of information request to expose how the Government buried an analysis of the dire financial prospects for upland farmers after they realised it was almost entirely bad news. We need to know what is going wrong with ELMS so that we can make them work more effectively. If this Government will not publish that information, an incoming Labour Government will, if we win the next general election. We have to make sure that policy works for food production, as hon. Members have already said, as well as for nature, which means being open and transparent about what is really going on.

Farmers are furious about the Conservative Government’s post-Brexit trade deals. [Interruption.] I see the Minister is shaking her head. The outgoing president of the National Farmers Union—not a Member or supporter of the Labour party—called the Government’s approach “morally bankrupt”. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg), until recently a senior member of the Cabinet, has called for the import of hormone-injected beef and chlorine-washed chicken. That is not just alarming for British consumers; it would be catastrophic for British farmers. We cannot demand high welfare and environmental standards from our British producers if the Government then undercut them with lower quality imports, yet that is the approach this Conservative Government have taken.

The Government’s own assessments say the Australia and New Zealand trade deal will result in the loss of £48 million from British agriculture and fisheries, so no wonder the former Environment Secretary, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), attacked the deal as

“not actually a very good deal for the UK”,

because, as he rightly said, it

“gave away far too much for far too little in return”—[Official Report, 14 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 424.]

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I am indeed very critical of what was done with the Australia trade deal, but since he is raising this issue, will he at least give credit to the current Government and Prime Minister for the steadfast approach they have taken on deals with Canada and the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership? [Interruption.]

[Steve Reed]

It does seem a bit late, doesn’t it—the Government having done a deal of the nature the right hon. Gentleman attacks? It seems to depend which of the five families happens to be in charge of the Conservative party at any one time as to what they are going to do on agricultural, trade or any other policy. They are a rudderless Government, but it always seems to be British farmers and producers on the losing end of whatever deals they come up with.

The Government’s broken promises on trade go back much further than the deal the right hon. Gentleman criticised. The Government promised farmers they would keep full access to the European markets for their high-quality British produce after Brexit, but then they threw up trade barriers that blocked them from exporting. Labour’s way forward is to seek a renegotiated veterinary agreement with the EU. We must cut through Tory red tape at our borders to get British food exports moving again.

Our country spends over £1 billion a year buying food for hospitals and prisons. Labour will make sure that at least half of that food is locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards, putting money straight into the pockets of British farmers and producers at a time when so many are struggling just to stay in business. We will devolve more decision making to the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. That will give them more control over skills and training to increase and upskill the farming workforce, and more control over infrastructure investment so that we can extend broadband in rural areas and the use of new technology in farming to boost productivity.

Labour is offering a new deal for farmers: lower bills from harnessing the power of clean energy, generated in our own country; more money in farmers’ pockets through the prioritisation of locally grown and sustainable food for public procurement, and ensuring ELMS work effectively; seeking a veterinary agreement with the EU to tear down the Tory barriers to trade; a flood resilience taskforce to protect farmland from devastating floods; and planning reform to help farmers diversify and plug their clean energy into the national grid.

Farmers do an extraordinary job as producers of our food and stewards of our land, yet they have been betrayed by this Conservative Government. British farmers deserve better. They deserve our thanks, respect and support. We are proud of our farmers—proud of the work they do to feed our nation and steward our beautiful countryside—but they need a Government who are on their side to help them in that vital work. After 14 years of Conservative failure, only Labour can give farmers their future back.