Farming

Debate between Steve Reed and Ian Liddell-Grainger

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.

Water Companies: Executive Bonuses

Debate between Steve Reed and Ian Liddell-Grainger

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point very eloquently. She is a tireless campaigner on these issues and I am sure that many people who care about the state of our rivers will be grateful to her for leading on that work.

I am sure all Members will be concerned about this point as well. Despite some of the highest levels of illegal sewage discharges in history, water bosses awarded themselves nearly £14 million in bonuses between 2021-22. At the same time, they were planning to increase average household bills by £156. All that was signed off by a broken regulator and Conservative Ministers. That is an absolute abuse of consumers and Labour will stop it. Labour will give the water regulator the power to ban bonuses for water bosses until they have cleaned up their toxic filth.

The Conservative dogma that regulation is anti-business is economically illiterate. Fair regulation applied across a sector is pro-business and pro-growth, as well as being pro-nature in this instance. Businesses want certainty and predictability. If they are left to compete against others who undercut regulation and get away with it, we end up with a race to the bottom. Good businesses and investors need and deserve a level playing field, but this Conservative Government have distorted that. A regulator that is too weak to regulate leads to weak self-monitoring, cover-ups, financial corruption, and our waterways awash with stinking sewage.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

I have been here for quite a long time, and the situation has been the same for the 23 years for which I have been a Member. I accept that things have got worse. What I suspect we need to do is take the main board of each water company and hold them accountable. South West Water, for instance, which serves Devon and Cornwall and the edge of the Minister’s constituency of Taunton Deane, covers up by using a sub-board which runs the company. It is the main board with which we should deal, and the same goes for Wessex Water and every other company that we need to go after. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that action must be taken, although the situation including bonuses has been the same for the past 23 years.

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s recognition that the situation is indeed getting worse. That should stimulate all of us to find ways of taking action to protect water quality for all our constituents, who really do deserve better.

I was talking about uncertainty in the regulatory field. The current level of uncertainty does not attract much-needed investment in our water industry; on the contrary, it deters it.