House of Commons - Agriculture

Select Committee on Agriculture First Report

MAFF/INTERVENTION BOARD DEPARTMENTAL REPORT 1997

Introduction

1. In the 1992-97 Parliament it was the regular practice of the Agriculture Committee to take evidence from MAFF and the Intervention Board on their annual Departmental Report. With the exception of 1992, because of the delay in establishing select committees after the general election that year, the Committee took evidence and produced brief Reports on each of the Departmental Reports. In their final such Report, on the 1996 Departmental Report, the Committee concluded with an assessment of the value of the exercise. They pointed to their role in "prompting a steady and progressive improvement in the usefulness of the information contained in the Reports and in the way in which that information has been presented"[1], and said that their annual examination of Departmental Reports had been extremely valuable in permitting them to "consider aspects of the Ministry's expenditure, administration and policy"[2] which fell outside their main programme of inquiries. Finally, they recommended that their successor Committee should "continue to inquire each year into the MAFF/IB Departmental Report"[3]. We have readily accepted that recommendation.

2. The 1997 Departmental Report (henceforth Cm. 3604) was drawn up under the previous Government, and published in March. We assumed, for the purposes of our inquiry, that the new Government would not necessarily wish to associate itself with Cm. 3604. However Cm. 3604 is not primarily political in content, and contains an abundance of factual information about MAFF's wide range of responsibilities. It also presents the Ministry's expenditure plans for the three-year period 1997-98 to 1999-2000, and, as is well known, the current Government is committed to observing the previously-established expenditure limits for the first two of those years. Much of Cm. 3604 therefore remains highly relevant. At the same time, we do not discount the new Government's wish to establish its own policy objectives and priorities for agriculture, fisheries and food.

3. These considerations, combined with our need, as a Committee with a relatively inexperienced membership, to gain a rapid understanding of MAFF's functions, strongly influenced the nature of our inquiry. We held two informal briefing sessions at the Ministry, the first with the Minister himself, Rt. Hon. Dr John Cunningham MP, and his Minister of State, Mr Jeff Rooker MP, and the second with a team of senior MAFF officials led by the Permanent Secretary, Mr Richard Packer. During the parliamentary summer recess we also visited the headquarters of the Meat Hygiene Service (MHS) in York. As part of this visit, we observed MHS staff carrying out their duties in a cattle abattoir. Our visit raised a number of issues relating to the Agency's operations which we will pursue in the context of our inquiries into food safety and the beef industry.

4. In addition to our informal activities in connection with this inquiry, we took formal oral evidence on 4 November from Dr Cunningham, Mr Packer, and the Chief Executive of the Intervention Board, Mr George Trevelyan. The transcript of this session, together with a supplementary memorandum submitted by MAFF covering points arising from it, is published with this Report. We also publish four other memoranda from MAFF, one of which was submitted to the previous Agriculture Committee and referred to us by the House on 29th July. We are most grateful to MAFF, the Intervention Board and the Meat Hygiene Service for their assistance with this inquiry.

The previous Agriculture Committee's practices

5. For the avoidance of doubt, we think it would be helpful if we set out those areas in which we would wish to maintain practices observed by MAFF and the previous Agriculture Committee in their mutual dealings:

(a) when presenting Supplementary Estimates MAFF agreed to supply the Committee with memoranda explaining in detail the reasons for such Estimates [

We would welcome MAFF's confirmation that these undertakings, given to the previous Committee, remain in force.

6. In addition to these general undertakings, the previous Committee, in its successive inquiries into MAFF's Departmental Reports, made a considerable number of recommendations relating to the form and content of the Reports, most of which were accepted and adopted by MAFF. Beyond observing that Cm. 3604 appears to be structured in a logical way and presents a great deal of useful information on expenditure and other matters, we do not propose to work our way through a check-list of recommendations from the previous Committee. We would prefer to reserve our judgement on many of these presentational matters until we come to consider the 1998 Departmental Report.

MAFF's priorities

7. In oral evidence to us, Dr Cunningham took the opportunity to spell out the Government's strategic priorities for MAFF, distinguishing them from what he saw as the previous Government's priorities. He said that the efforts of the Ministry were being re-focused "to take forward key Government commitments, including food safety, progress on BSE, reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, our commitments on animal welfare, organic farming and biodiversity"[7]. Consumers would have a much higher profile in MAFF's activities[8], and MAFF would be made "more open and accessible" [9]. Ministers were determined "to reinvigorate and redirect the Ministry of Agriculture, both in terms of its approach to people and issues and policies too"[10]. As part of this process, the Ministry is examining its Aims and Sub-aims, and is drawing up plans for a mission statement, a new name and a new logo[11]. Dr Cunningham hoped that work on this would be completed by early 1998 at the latest[12].

8. In the future, the scope of MAFF's activities will undergo radical revision with the establishment of the Food Standards Agency, which is one of the central issues in a separate inquiry which we are undertaking into food safety. In the shorter term, the Ministry's objectives will be influenced by the outcome of the comprehensive spending reviews (CSRs) with which MAFF is involved. As well as its own CSR, MAFF is reviewing countryside and rural policy expenditure jointly with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), and it is reviewing the arrangements for administering the UK's CAP obligations together with the Intervention Board and the other Agriculture Departments[13].

9. We believe it to be premature for MAFF to fashion a new identity for itself before its future role and functions are clearly established. When MAFF loses the bulk of its food safety responsibilities, it must be questionable whether a truncated "MAF" (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) can continue as a viable independent Government Department. Some would argue that, given the dominance of EU policy over agriculture and fisheries, through the CAP and the CFP respectively, the Ministry would simply become a domestic conduit for European policy and funding - in effect, a glorified Intervention Board, with its policy role largely restricted to negotiating in Brussels on behalf of the UK. We assume that this is one of the reasons behind the new direction proposed for the Ministry, spelt out by Dr Cunningham, of refocusing effort "away from production support into investment in rural economies and rural enterprise"[14].

10. In discussions with the DETR, in the context of the countryside and rural policy CSR and otherwise, we consider that MAFF should forcefully be making the case for it to assume the principal Government responsibility for rural affairs in general. A single champion of rural communities within the Government would be the most appropriate means of ensuring that in England there could be a synthesis of policy on agriculture, the environment and rural development issues to achieve a fully integrated rural policy. In their 1995 White Paper on Rural England, the previous Government stated that:

We agree with this statement, and assume that the present Government would also agree with it. A reformed MAFF, capable of representing opinion and formulating policy on a range of rural issues, while remaining responsible for agricultural policy as a crucial component of wider rural policy, would be the most logical institutional means of ensuring that rural affairs are kept at the heart of the Government. We recommend that MAFF be re-incarnated as a Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Fisheries.

11. Such a reorganization of Government responsibilities would have the following important advantages:

- it would comply with the stated aims and objectives of the new Government in relation to rural affairs, as set out by Dr Cunningham;

- it would ensure that the Ministry did not become even more producer-focused once it lost its food safety responsibilities, and that it kept consumer and environmental concerns high on its list of priorities;

- it would accord with developments within the European Union to transform the Common Agricultural Policy into an integrated rural policy;

- it would strengthen the relationship between the farming community and the countryside, recognizing in particular the stewardship role fulfilled by farmers in terms of the management and appearance of the rural landscape.

- It will be important that such changes must be accompanied by a change of culture within MAFF if it is to regain public confidence following the debacles in the past over BSE and other food safety issues.

12. If our recommendation is accepted in principle, there will need to be clarification of the respective responsibilities of the new Ministry and of the DETR. We recognize that such restructuring would also have consequences for the functions and roles of the countryside agencies, including the Countryside Commission and English Nature. The Government's plans to establish regional development agencies (RDAs) in England, which are the subject of an inquiry by the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, will also have important implications for rural areas. The Government's White Paper Building Partnerships for Prosperity: sustainable growth, competitiveness and employment in the English Regions, published on 3 December, proposes that RDAs take over the administration of rural regeneration programmes from the Rural Development Commission (RDC), and further states that the Government "is giving urgent consideration to the future of the national advisory role of the RDC and its other countrywide programmes, as part of the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review"[16]. We recommend that, if the Government decides that these national functions should remain the responsibility of the Rural Development Commission, the Commission, working within a reformed MAFF, should be given primary responsibility for ensuring that the needs of rural areas are taken fully into account in all Government policy-making, at national and regional levels. We also consider that the Countryside Commission and English Nature should become part of the new Ministry.

13. We are eager to see the results of the re-packaging of MAFF, complete with mission statement and new logo. We would caution the Ministry, however, that in our task of scrutinizing its activities over the coming Parliament we shall concentrate on issues of substance, not style. In politics, noble aims have a tendency to collide with day-to-day realities. We consider it important that the Ministry's mission statement should be closely reflected in its structure of Aims, Sub-aims and objectives, and that, wherever feasible, output and performance measurements should be constructed to provide evidence of the Ministry's success in meeting its objectives over the coming years.

14. That said, we welcome the new direction for MAFF which is already being pursued by the Government, and we are heartened by the steps which have been taken so far to improve the provision of information to the public on food and agricultural issues, and to increase public and consumer representation on departmental bodies and committees. We are also encouraged by the initiatives which the Government is pursuing on animal welfare, and by the detailed consideration which it is giving to two recommendations from the previous Agriculture Committee, on reform of the quarantine system and reviewing the rates of aid payable under the Organic Aid Scheme. The remainder of this Report, however, concentrates, quite naturally, on matters which are of concern to us.

1 HC 103, 1996-97, p xii, para 19 Back

2 ibid Back

3 ibid Back

4 Government Reply to the Second Report from the Agriculture Committee, Session 1994-95, on MAFF/Intervention Board Departmental Report 1995 (HC 478), HC 776, Session 1994-95, p iii Back

5 ibid Back

6 ibid p iv Back

7 Q 1 Back

8 Qq 1, 8 Back

9 Q 1 Back

10 ibid Back

11 Qq 1 to 5 Back

12 Q 2 Back