Food and Farming: Devon and Cornwall

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), from whom I learnt so much in my days as his Parliamentary Private Secretary, on securing this really important and wide-ranging debate. I cannot pretend to be a Devon or Cornwall farmer, but I should declare my farming interests, which included, until 15 years ago—for the whole of my life before that—a very fine herd of pedigree South Devon cattle, of which we are inordinately proud in our house, so I feel I have at least some skin in this debate.

Too many points have been raised for me to cover them adequately here. I have ripped up the speech that I prepared and will do my best to address the points raised. I encourage Members from across the House to bring groups of farmers—by Zoom or in real life—to meet me or representatives of the RPA to talk through their concerns more fully. This is a period of change in agriculture, and change is difficult. We have to keep the lines of communication open. I will do my best to allay concerns now, but I am very keen to do that on a one-to-one basis at any point.

As the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) put it, producing food environmentally is at the heart of what we do as farmers. Many Members mentioned the importance of food security; the Government completely shares that concern. We have not previously had the opportunity to have this discussion in the context of what is happening in Ukraine, but I reassure Members that the food strategy White Paper will be published next month. Food and its production in the UK will be at the heart of that. I was gratified to hear what my hon. Friends the Members for East Devon (Simon Jupp) and for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) said about eating local, sustainable food. We can all do that as a small way of supporting British farming—so optimism, yes, but definitely not blind.

The impact assessments will be published in March. The pot of money available to farmers is the same. It will, however, be more targeted and used to support public goods. We have ambitious environmental goals, which are generally supported across the House. Farmers and fishermen want to help us to achieve those and we want to reward them for doing so. The sustainable farming incentive is piloted this year. We have seen the soil standard; that is going down quite well on the ground—ha, ha—with farmers.

The schemes are designed to be stacked, so the moorland standard is merely an assessment tool at the moment and it will be stacked with other schemes to ensure that farmers are adequately rewarded. That is part of a seven-year agricultural transition. We are one year in. This is new iterative policy making. Genuinely, things will change, and it is right that they do. We are working with about 4,000 farmers at the moment, who are testing our new policies in real life on real farms to see if they work. Where they do not work, we will change them.

I completely understand the angst expressed by Members from all part of the House, in greater or lesser measure, this morning. Farmers are dealing with this period of change and transition by voting with their application forms: 52% of farmers, including myself recently, are now in a countryside stewardship scheme. In those schemes, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon said, we have uplifted the payments significantly, by about 30%. They are well-rewarded, and the aim is that that group of farmers, who will probably be joined by many more this year, will go straight into the mid-tier of our new policies. That is not a complete solution but the interim solution while we get these policies absolutely right.

On tenant farmers, I hope the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) will be pleased to know that about a month ago we started a six-month working group—which is working hard already under the chairmanship of Baroness Rock, a well-known and vociferous tenant farmer—to make sure the policies work for them. We have been able to ensure that the SFI works well with three-year tenancies, which are the average, but we need to do further work to ensure that the higher-tier schemes are accessible and attractive to tenant farmers. I hope that Members across the House will take heart from what the Secretary of State said yesterday about how tier 3, the upper tier, may be particularly suitable for upland and moorland farmers.

It is a very difficult time for the pig industry. There is a complex problem, which I will not have time to go through, but I will talk about some of the solutions that we came up with at the pigs summit that we held the week before last. We had farmers, processors and retailers in one room. At times, the conversation was difficult, but it was frank and productive. What we as consumers can do is to interrogate continually where the pork we are eating comes from. Some 40% of the pork consumed in this country, much of it out of home, is not British; so please, I ask that when people go and have their pork pie for lunch, they ask where it comes from. We have a long-term problem with the pig supply chain. I have asked for that work to be done and regulatory changes to be worked up if necessary. If necessary, we will refer the whole issue to the Competition and Markets Authority. That careful fact-gathering work is going on at the moment.

We also need to work hard on the immediate problem in the pig sector. We have issued 800 butchers visas, for which there is no English language requirement. We are also encouraging producers very hard to use the skilled butcher route, which has been open to them since January 2021. I am pleased to say that in recent weeks 250 applications have been made by Cranswick and 100 by Karro under that route.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Prentis]

I had better make progress; I am so sorry.

Real progress has been made in that space. The slaughter incentive payment and private storage aid schemes, which we put in place at the end of last year at the request of the industry, have been improved, also at the request of the industry, with whom we work closely—I am leaving after this debate to talk to a big pig farmer.

Those schemes are now much more flexible, allowing the removal of the expensive parts of the pig—the bits that make the farmer money—with the rest of the carcase either frozen or destroyed. That is really helpful. We are doing granular work to clear the backlog. I met agri-banking leads this week, and we are trying to help where we can, including with farmers’ mental health, as this is a very stressful situation. On farming rules for water, we are working with the Environment Agency, the NFU, tenant farmers and the Country Land and Business Association. We will issue statutory guidance to the EA in March, when there should also be news on urea.

There is cause for optimism. We have been able in recent weeks to talk about three new, exciting schemes open to farmers. The animal health and welfare pathway was set out yesterday by the Secretary of State at the NFU conference. The farming resilience fund has already seen 1,000 farmers in Devon and Cornwall having one-to-one conversations over the kitchen table about how their businesses can adapt. The farming investment fund has received 695 applications from Devon and Cornwall. We listened and increased the fund from £17 million to £48 million, because farmers wanted to apply. Farmers are voting with their application forms; they want to be part of these new policies.

Many Members raised visas. We have had a seasonal agricultural workers scheme since the second world war. Last December we gave the sector clarity with an extension of that seasonal workers route: 30,000 visas available this year, with a potential 10,000 extra if we need them. Crucially, for some of the constituencies represented here, we were able to extend that to ornamental horticulture. Members will be pleased to know that 85% of DEFRA staff work outside London.

We should be lining up to buy British at home and abroad, and we are doing that with agrifood attachés and the new export council. I am thrilled that there will be pitchforks behind us as we make this agricultural transition, backing us all the way. I encourage hon. Members to enjoy Cornish pasties, clotted cream, Cornish Yarg, west country beef, Tarquin’s gin and turkey from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon, and to get with the programme.