Agriculture

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I am grateful to have the chance to discuss the motion. The environmental land management scheme was meant to be the centrepiece of the Government’s farming policy—a new dawn for British agriculture post Brexit. Approving each annual transition should have been run of the mill, as farmers were eased into a new and better system. Labour agrees that we need a fairer system of payments based on the principle of public support for public goods. That is why we have not opposed the agricultural transition plan and will not oppose this instrument to set out the level of delinked payments. However, it is vital, as we discuss the regulations, that we look at the context in which they sit for farmers and the wider industry.

The truth is that, because of this Government, our farming communities are in crisis: 6,000 agricultural businesses have collapsed since 2017; tragically, farming now has the highest suicide rate of any sector in the UK economy; and, as we have heard, last week’s NFU survey showed that farmers’ confidence has hit record lows. Farming is a difficult business and times are hard—the recent flooding has caused real distress, destroyed crops and threatened livestock. But farming has been made much harder by a Government who do not value or back our farmers.

Under the Conservatives’ disastrous withdrawal deal, farmers have faced a mountain of red tape and higher costs at our borders, blocking the export of high-quality British produce. The Government’s failure to invest in home-grown clean energy has left farmers crippled by skyrocketing energy prices. They have sold farmers’ interests down the river with dodgy trade deals, opening the door to low-welfare, low-standard imports that undercut higher-quality British producers—a point made by a previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice). Even though we know how devastating flooding can be for rural businesses, this Conservative Government have left communities unprotected. This is a dereliction of duty by the Secretary of State.

That brings us to today’s motion. This Government have botched the implementation of the environmental land management schemes, threatening the basic financial support that has long been a lifeline for so many family farms. The transition from the common agricultural policy to ELMS has been shambolic, with hard-pressed farmers left to pick up the pieces. It has left many unable to plan properly and facing mounting bureaucracy and red tape. Some farmers, particularly those in uplands and those with smallholdings, have been abandoned to fend for themselves.

Such is the incompetence of this Government that they have failed to spend hundreds of millions of pounds of the support that was intended for farmers—money that would make a difference to struggling farmers today; funds that should be in farmers’ pockets now, not sitting in Government spreadsheets. Why are the Government not using that money—over £220 million of underspend—to offer help right now to farmers, who have been the people most affected by this dreadful flooding during the wettest 18 months since 1836? Belated plans for spending that money were announced with great fanfare by the Secretary of State in February, yet many months later it is still locked away in the Government’s coffers. Will the Minister agree to publish this week a plan for how he intends to distribute those funds urgently to farmers who desperately need that support right now?

The NFU is calling on the Government to pause the roll-out of ELMS so that they can distribute the underspend under the basic payment arrangements. I completely understand and sympathise with the NFU’s frustration, but it is not in anyone’s interests to delay ELMS; we should instead be looking to make it work better, and the Government should be going much faster to get that underspend out to the farmers who need it so desperately. To make ELMS work better, we need to understand how it is currently operating, yet the Government still refuse to publish their impact assessment of the scheme. I wonder whether the Secretary of State and the Ministers are afraid of the public reaction if they did publish it, because the scheme is failing. It is frankly astonishing that we are being asked today to wave through substantial changes with no data or proper assessment. Since the Minister has that information, can he please explain why he will not publish it?

Labour recognises that food security is national security, and unlike the Government, we value the critical role that our farmers play in the security of this nation. We also value the role that farmers play in protecting our great British countryside. This year’s wet weather is a further reminder of the importance of tackling climate change for the sake of our long-term security. Farmers want to play that vital role, but they need better backing from the Government: they need certainty, they need clarity, and they need to be able to plan.

The principles behind ELMS make sense, but the way the Government have run the scheme has been chaotic, and we can only assume that their refusal to publish the impact data is because they do not like what it says. It would be wrong to scrap or delay ELMS, which is why we will not oppose today’s motion, but it needs to be made to work far better, and farmers need the underspend today that the Secretary of State promised months ago but still has not delivered.

The Government cannot continue to sit by and do nothing as our farmers face this crisis. The Government risk trashing not only our countryside and our food security, but thousands more livelihoods up and down the country. The Government need to get the support they promised out of the door, come clean on ELMS impact data, and get the scheme back on track. Farmers and our countryside deserve much better, but they have been sorely let down by this Government.