Agriculture Bill (Second sitting)

Theo Clarke Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Q I will be quick. You mentioned that you are waiting for DEFRA to give you further information. Have you highlighted to them which of your recommendations you want them to take forward?

Nick von Westenholz: Yes. We have good communication with DEFRA officials and conversations are ongoing. Given the immediacy of some of the changes coming in, we are looking for assurance that schemes are going to be developed and deployable quickly. There are concerns over that.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

Q Does the Bill include the right measures to give tenant farmers certainty over succession, tenancy length and security of tenure?

Nick von Westenholz: As far as they go, we are pleased with the inclusion of the tenancy clauses in the Bill. They are quite technical and we are looking to develop some amendments to strengthen them, which we will be happy to share with members of the Committee. In particular, we want to bring in more of the recommendations of the tenancy reform industry group, which has been up and running and working for some years now, so that those are properly reflected in the Bill. We will suggest some improvements, but we generally welcome the clauses that have been introduced in this Bill that were not in the last one.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q This is probably a question specifically for David Goodwin. What role do you see county farms playing, given that the Government and the Minister have in the past expressed support for reversing the decline in county farms? Is that something your members would be interested in?

David Goodwin: Yes, very much so. County farms have been a shining light for getting younger people into holdings. In the counties where it works well, it works very well. Obviously, there are counties where there are challenges and more pressures on estates. Unfortunately, we see those in the news regularly at the moment. There are some good examples. The number of county estate farms is very small, compared with the number of people who are perhaps looking for opportunities. Some of those individual holdings are very small and do not always offer the stepping stone that is needed. Going on from there, there is still a lack, particularly with tenanted farms, of progressional farms to go on to from a county starter farm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Dines]

Q What would your choice be? Would it be five years, or four years?

Richard Self: Five years would seem like a good period, but I do not have significant knowledge on that front.

[Theo Clarke]

Q I just want to pick up on the issue of transparency and fairness in supply chains. Would the fair dealing obligations in the Bill currently work with the existing groceries supply code of practice? I want to make sure that we have a consistent approach to fair dealing across the whole supply chain.

Richard Self: I’m sorry; what would that be?

[Theo Clarke]

Q How do we ensure that the existing groceries supply code of practice is consistent, so that we have fair dealing across the whole supply chain?

Richard Self: I probably do not know enough about that. The code does a good job in helping the process. Co-operatives are my area of expertise. It would be good if that included co-operation and collaboration as it would help redress some of the balance of fairness within the supply chain, but would be for the benefit of the whole supply chain if handled the right way.

[George Eustice]

Q I wanted to return to the issue of dairy contracts, and whether there should be a continuation of the special exemption for dairy co-operatives. What is the remedy for a farmer who finds himself trapped in a long-term contract in Arla, a huge pan-European co-operative, where he is not happy with the price he is getting or the way the organisation is being managed, but is unable to change either of them despite nominally having a share or stake in it? Should there be some rights for that individual member as well? Do the articles of association in co-operatives generally provide sufficient protection?

Richard Self: Obviously, there is a democratic process within the co-operatives in which you can vote people on who have a particular stance. The idea is to help control your own co-operative in doing what the membership wants. A co-operative should have a process in place whereby that can be fed into the co-operative to get the criteria right for that membership. The process of democracy within the co-operative should allow for that. I cannot comment on an individual case, but it is up to the members how they run their business. They should be able to set it up the way they want it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Oh, please don’t call it that!

George Dunn: More widely, we think the taxation system needs to be looked at to incentivise longer-term tenancies and penalise shorter-term ones through the taxation system. Ireland has done some good things on the income tax side, which the Treasury could look at, but that is not something that would be put in the Bill.

Judicaelle Hammond: You will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree with that. I do not see that there is a market failure. There might be things in the market that are happening at the moment, because of the way that the system works, that may be unsustainable. We will see what happens when the BPS ends. If you look at some of the reforms that have been made, not in Ireland but in Scotland, it all but killed the rental market. That would not be good for my members or for George’s. We need to be extremely cautious about putting things in legislation and rushing them through without proper consideration of the consequences for both parties. That could lead to a market that is even more nervous than it is now and, as a result, becomes ossified. I do not think that would be good.

George Dunn: We certainly need to learn the lessons of what happened—what is happening—north of the border, but that should not be an excuse to do nothing south of the border.

[Theo Clarke]

Q Mr Dunn, I was struck by your comment about tenancies being too short and the fact that people are just staying 2.9 years and not longer. In my constituency I have a lot of county farms, but I also have a real problem with the lack of a new generation coming through. One thing farmers have raised with me is that because the subsidies will not necessarily continue beyond this Parliament, they can plan for five years, but not for 10 years. Is there anything specific we can add into the Bill to address that specific problem? I totally agree that this longer-term issue is the problem. If I am a county farmer in Stafford, I cannot submit a 10-year business plan because the Government are only guaranteeing it for the first Parliament term. Is there anything specific we can do to address that?

George Dunn: All businesses operate within a sphere of uncertainty about the future for their market and how they intend to run their businesses in the long term. Anybody who thinks they can do a 10-year business plan and stick to it after year five is thinking wishfully. The idea of having multi-annual plans is really good, but they need to highlight how much money will be spent and how it will be spent through those plans, rather than just vague indications of the way in which the financial systems powers will be played. If farmers had a reasonable five-year horizon to work through, that is as much as I think they would be looking for.

Judicaelle Hammond: I totally agree with the TFA that the more certainty in the future, the better. Part of the problem we have at the moment is that we do not have certainty past next year. Although there have been commitments to maintaining the current level of funding, so far they are, unfortunately, just commitments. We would welcome a quantification as part of the multi-annual financial assistance frameworks.

[Theo Clarke]

Q Is the delegated power included in this Bill, which allows the Government to extend the transition period, a good enough safety net if things did go wrong in the future?

Judicaelle Hammond: I am sure it could be improved.

[Theo Clarke]

Q In what way?

Judicaelle Hammond: I think that my lawyers would probably have my guts for garters if I tried to answer that question on the spot.

George Dunn: I think it is good that there is the facility to pause or extend. One would hope that there would be close consultation with the stakeholders to consider that. There is a doubt as to whether we can reverse, which might be possible. There is also the issue, which I know other witnesses have raised, that if you are taking money out of the BPS, and, for whatever reason, we are not ready to spend that through the new public payments for public goods or productivity schemes, that money needs to be paid back to the recipients from whom it has been removed, until such time as the Government are ready to commit to that expenditure.

[Mr Goodwill]

Q Chapter 2, clause 8 deals with the possible extension of the period. I may not understand it particularly well, but it does not make it clear whether, if there is an extension to the seven-year period, that would pause the transition from BPS to ELMS, or whether that would just continue, but at the end of the seven years there would be an extra year or two under the full ELMS system. If there was an extension, at the same time, could that be coupled with a freeze in the transition for a number of reasons, including that the ELMS was not being taken up as quickly?

George Dunn: Yes, and I think that is what the Bill intends. My reading of the Bill would suggest that that is what would happen under those circumstances. To go back to the previous question, if money was taken out of the system that was not able to be spent through the new arrangements, that would have to be paid back, in our view.