Back British Farming Day

Debate between Theo Clarke and Kerry McCarthy

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Theo Clarke]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I was about to say that we are an island nation, so it is extremely important that we are self-sufficient as a country. That is why British fruit and vegetables are so important.

Let me take two examples, of apples and pears, which are two traditional fruit trees that have been found in our country for centuries. In domestic production, total apple demand accounts for only about 38% and the figure is 18% for pears. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs data shows that there has been a significant fall over the last 30 years, so I urge the Minister to work with farmers to reverse this declining trend.

On the other hand, strawberry production is a very positive story. Last Friday, I was lucky to visit Littywood Farm in Staffordshire, where they grow thousands of strawberries, raspberries and cherries every year. I was very interested to hear that they are using modern farming techniques to significantly increase their yield of soft fruit and that they have invested in state-of-the-art polytunnels to make the harvesting process more efficient. That means they have been able to extend the strawberry season from two months to seven months this year, so this is a fantastic, positive story that is being replicated across the country, and I note that since 2010, figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show that domestic strawberry production has grown by almost 50%. In 2019, UK production reached a new record of 143,500 tonnes; Members will be pleased to know that that is about 350 million punnets of strawberries, so we will definitely have enough to feed the crowds at Wimbledon and our tennis matches next year, and more. This is a very good example of a model for fresh fruit produce items, which shows that it requires people and real investment.

I will now talk about some of the challenges that farming has faced. We are all aware of the role that weather and mother nature have in determining a crop’s success year on year. Does it rain at the right time? Is the sun shining when wheat is being harvested? Of course, this is very much out of our farmers’ hands, but so much of farming does fall within the Government’s remit, and I hope the Minister will agree that it is very important that decisions made in Westminster have a positive impact in our constituencies in the countryside. I would like to share a story that I heard last week from one of my Staffordshire strawberry growers, which is really quite devastating. They told me that 3,000 tonnes of strawberries were thrown away this year due to not having enough labour to pick the fruit. That equates to approximately £1 million of turnover loss by this farm in just one year. I know we all talk about statistics, but let us remind ourselves that this is fresh food that could have been eaten on British dinner tables this year, but is being thrown away and wasted. Those are not just destroyed strawberries: that represents lost jobs for fruit pickers, and lost income for our farmers.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I was vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for fruit and vegetable farmers for quite some time, and we had the then Farming Minister, who is now Secretary of State, come along to us some years ago. He was warned quite firmly by the fruit farmers there that this crisis was coming. Does the hon. Lady not agree that it should have been foreseen, and that steps should have been in place to make sure there was an adequate supply of agriculture workers so that we do not have food rotting in the fields?

[Theo Clarke]

The Government have taken steps to ensure there are seasonal workers, and if I make progress in my speech, I will come on to that topic shortly.

I was interested to read an industry-funded report last year that revealed that during the pandemic alone, labour costs have increased by 15%, which follows a 34% increase in wages over the past five years. I have heard from my farmers in Staffordshire that they are very concerned about the cost for growers: they have been told that they may have to pay for workers’ visas, travel, and covid tests in future. To put that in context, one of my local farmers told me that this could cost his business an extra £1,000 per seasonal worker, and on the basis that a farmer might employ 200 or 300 workers on their farm, that is hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional investment. A lot of my constituents will be asking, “Should fruit and vegetable farming remain? Is it economically viable?” That is why I urge the Minister to look into this issue.

It is very clear from the conversations I have had with local growers and businesses that it has been very difficult to recruit domestically. Very admirably, they worked hard to try to recruit domestic workers, but I was told that unfortunately, the manpower just is not there. I will give the Minister a particular example from my constituency, which I heard about at my meeting last week. One farm received 7,500 applications to be a seasonal worker. One hundred and fifty people were shortlisted, and 85 were offered jobs, of whom only 48 turned up. Thirty-two of those left after one week, 24 after two weeks and five after three weeks, so we can see that that farm put a huge amount of effort into recruiting workers, but the labour was simply not there.

Environment Bill

Debate between Theo Clarke and Kerry McCarthy

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes, well, perhaps the hon. Gentleman can come back for the next debate and make an intervention to show that he supports that amendment. [Interruption.] He can intervene on me, of course.

I would like to speak primarily in favour of amendments 26 and 27, tabled by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish); I believe that birthday congratulations are in order today. Deforestation, which destroys vital carbon stores and natural habitats, is both one of the central drivers of the climate emergency and a driver of the devastating decline in biodiversity. As we have heard, it also plays a role in displacing people from their land and leads to modern slavery and exploitative working practices. It is clear that we need a no-tolerance approach to any deforestation in our supply chains, legal or illegal.

The Bill comes before us in a slightly better state than its many previous incarnations due to the Government’s new proposals on due diligence in deforestation, but unfortunately they fall far short of what is needed. The primary issue is that they act only to eliminate illegal deforestation. That ignores the fact that some nations, most notably Bolsonaro’s Brazil, are chipping away at legal protections on deforestation and enforcement mechanisms to identify and prevent it. For instance, the Brazilian Parliament is set to approve new legislation dubbed “the destruction package” that will accelerate deforestation in the Amazon by providing an amnesty to land grabbers and allowing deforestation on indigenous lands for major construction projects. Preliminary WWF research shows that 2 million hectares of forest and natural ecosystems could be legally deforested in the Brazilian territories that supply soya to the UK.

This Bill is a unique opportunity to send a message to those states that fail to act to protect our planet. That is why I urge the Government to think again and to strengthen their proposals to include legal deforestation to show true climate leadership ahead of COP26. I am sure that, if we do not accept these amendments today, the noble peers in the other place will have strong words to say about that, and I hope they will send the Bill back to us suitably amended.

Amendment 27 would prevent financial services from working with firms linked to illegal forest-risk commodities. We cannot claim to be tough on deforestation if we allow British financial institutions to support firms linked to it. These damaging investments are deeply embedded in our economy and sometimes even in our own personal finances. Shocking analysis from Feedback published today shows that even the parliamentary pension fund has investments in companies such as JBS Investments that have been repeatedly linked to deforestation. It is not good that we are being drawn into complicity in this situation through our parliamentary pension fund. I therefore hope the Government will accept these amendments and begin to show global leadership.

I very much support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends on the Labour Front Bench, including new clause 25 calling on the Government to prepare a tree strategy for England. We are trying to do this in Bristol in terms of doubling the tree canopy and with our One City ecological emergency strategy, which I encourage other cities and towns to emulate. I also support amendment 22, which would embed the net gain of habitats in perpetuity. I urge colleagues across the House to accept these amendments. If we fail to do that today, as I said, I am sure that the noble Lords in the other place will take up these causes with their customary vigour.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this landmark Bill, which aims to ensure that the environment is at the heart of Government policy. I am pleased that it intends to better conserve our environment, tackle biodiversity loss and regenerate parts of our great countryside.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for his tireless efforts on environmental issues, including his work on food labelling and environmental sustainability. I was very proud, in the previous Parliament, to co-sponsor his Bill on that matter, much of the contents of which are set to come back to this House later today. This, along with new clause 4, demonstrates that so much more can be done to strengthen our commitments to the environment by protecting vulnerable species. I welcome the Minister’s statements today and her commitment to review ways that we can reverse the decline in hedgehog numbers.

I think we can also help the population to make informed choices. Recently, I visited Rodbaston College in my Stafford constituency. I was delighted to tour the animal zone, where a number of my young constituents are learning to work with a variety of animals, learning how to protect our native species such as the otter and learning to train for careers in conservation. New clause 4, which aims to insert hedgehogs into the Bill as a protected species, is an important reminder of how interconnected nature is, and the important need to retain and to protect species such as the hedgehog.

It may surprise some people to know that a key factor in the reduction of the number of hedgehogs is in fact keeping gardens too tidy and the lack of wildlife corridors in fenced-in gardens. Last week, I was pleased to re-form the all-party parliamentary group for fruit, vegetables and horticulture, which I co-chair, and I led a conversation with Alan Titchmarsh, in which we discussed how gardeners can work with nature to improve habitats for other wildlife, including hedgehogs. New clause 21 aims to protect habitats better. I think we can all do our bit by providing wildlife corridors and creating hedgehog homes, as I have in my own garden. No Mow May is an initiative that is very popular with my constituents: people do absolutely nothing to their lawn in May, which can significantly improve the ecosystem of their garden. The wonderful thing about nature is that it wants to recover. We just need to give it the opportunity to do so.

I believe that the measures in this Bill lay the groundwork to significantly improve our environment. The Bill, particularly new clause 21, clearly demonstrates our Government’s commitment to protecting the unique and diverse habitats that we have in Britain. I was pleased recently to visit the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s Wolseley Centre to see at first hand its project to replicate a wide variety of habitats in Staffordshire, including woodlands, ponds, and wet and hay meadows. These habitats are providing homes for a range of flora and fauna. The measures in the Bill ensure that we can protect these for generations to come.

One of the reasons these steps are so effective and increase biodiversity is that we are helping other species in the ecosystem to thrive, which in turn leads to a richer and more resilient environment. That is why I believe it is so vital that we reverse the biodiversity loss we have already suffered in the UK, and that is why I welcome the focus in the Bill. I welcome the Bill along with the new clause I have discussed due to their aim to conserve our environment and increase biodiversity. We need to protect and improve our precious environment for generations to come.

Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Theo Clarke and Kerry McCarthy

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Theo Clarke]

Q I am pleased that the Secretary of State now has direct responsibility for the nation’s food security, but I wonder whether it should be a national priority to support domestic agriculture. What is your view on the frequency of reporting? I know at the moment it is being suggested it should be every five years, but we have heard differing views today. What do the panel think about that?

Vicki Hird: I think it is welcome to have that in there. There is a case for making it more frequent, given that we are facing a climate and nature emergency that will threaten our supplies and production here and overseas. We should be building that into the review, in terms of anticipating how that will affect land use both here and overseas. That is currently not in the Bill, and it would be a welcome addition to recognise the sustainability factors that will increasingly come into play before the next five years are up. We already know that flooding is more frequent, and drought is affecting many parts of Africa, which supplies us with a lot of fruit and veg.

There is a case for more frequent reporting; it is a welcome element in the Bill, but as the previous speaker mentioned, we already do much of this food security assessment already, so it is a question of building on that and making it an integral part of the sustainability of our food system. [Applause.] May I congratulate George Eustice, our new Secretary of State? I will end there, on food security.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q I am trying to tease this out, because we have heard previous witnesses say that there is concern about the lack of baseline regulation in the Bill and the fact that we no longer have the cross-compliance checks. There are concerns that people will drop below the minimum standards. How does that work? Clearly, you do not want to use public money for public goods just to reward people for keeping to the standards required of them by law, because there is no additionality to that; they ought to be doing it anyway. We could reward farmers for doing the higher welfare stuff, but at the same time, we really ought to have an ambition to say, “If they can do it, why can’t all farmers treat their animals that way?” Will we end up always having to keep raising what counts as higher welfare for farmers to get money? Do you see what I am saying? You could almost end up not raising standards, because the farmers would not get paid for the higher welfare standards.

Dr Palmer: Yes, I see the problem. As in other areas of public subsidy, we have to start from where we are. Because we have the range of quality that I mentioned in response to the previous question, there are a lot of farmers who would genuinely like to raise their standards, but need assistance in doing so. I accept that there is an element of moral hazard in that, if someone already has superb standards, they may feel a bit irritated that someone else is being given money to come up to them.

Agriculture Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Theo Clarke and Kerry McCarthy

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

[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.