Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 57)
WEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2002
DR PETER
SANGUINETTI, MR
MICHAEL PASKE,
MR JOHN
KINNAIRD MR
JOHN BEST
AND SIR
HENRY AUBREY-FLETCHER
40. That is in respect of the quality assurance
scheme?
(Mr Kinnaird) That is in respect of quality assurance.
(Mr Paske) But it is much the same for the assurance
schemes in England and Wales as well.
41. The current indicators are consistent with
those schemes, is that right?
(Mr Kinnaird) Some go beyond it and that is where
we have our Scottish implementation group, which will be meeting
fairly soon. For example, SFQC look after all the quality assurance
schemes in Scotland and will be sitting on that implementation
group, so they are a part of it. As an implementation group we
could not possibly go to SFQC and say, "This is what you
must do." They have to be part of it. It is all about partnership.
(Mr Paske) I am sorry to interrupt but it is not quite
the same in England and Wales because we have different types
of assurance schemes for different types of commodities. Some
of them are at least up to and above the Scottish level but some,
unfortunately, at this stage are behind but they are doing something
about that; they are addressing the issue. Of course one of the
things we are trying to do as the National Farmers Union is to
bring those schemes up to a sort of common standard (if I can
put it that way).
(Mr Best) Northern Ireland has a similar system to
Scotland. We also have an implementation group with all the bodies
on it who have the say and it has made a lot of progress since
the outset.
42. How did you collect together the baseline
information from which to start on all of this from all the different
sources? We have got a lot of organisations which are represented
here.
(Dr Sanguinetti) That was the first step in the whole
process, doing the survey, and that is what we published, I think
it was in June this year. That had not been done before, it was
unique, and that was an important fact-gathering initiative. That
was the first step.
43. Are you satisfied that the indicators you
have now got are going to be good enough for you to satisfactorily
measure progress?
(Dr Sanguinetti) Yes.
(Mr Paske) Yes, absolutely.
(Mr Kinnaird) I think the other important thing is
there is a thing called the Water Framework Directive, Mr Chairman,
which will be around, I think it is from 2004, and will have a
serious impact on how Government addresses the Water Framework
Directive. I believe that this Voluntary Initiative goes a long
way towards highlighting that UK agriculture is in place and is
willing to do something to try and meet Government targets.
David Wright
44. I would like to turn, if I could, to some
questions about resources and costs collectively from you all.
The VI was due to cost the industry, I understand, something in
the region of £11.9 million over five years and Professor
Dent's report to ministers suggests that £2.3 million has
been spent in the first year. I am interested in issues around
scale. What does this represent in relation to the overall turnover
of the agri-chemicals industry in the UK?
(Dr Sanguinetti) The total turnover of the agri-chemical
industry was just under £500 million last year.
45. So not a lot really, is it?
(Dr Sanguinetti) That is turnover, not profit.
46. But it is small beer, is it not, when you
look at the overall figures for the agri-chemical industry? Looking
at the £2.3 million, what percentage of that is real and
what percentage results from apportioning staff time?
(Dr Sanguinetti) Sorry, can you—
47. How much of that £2.3 million expenditure
would be related to staff time, labour input?
(Dr Sanguinetti) A very significant amount. For example,
the CPA, we worked out something like 44 or 45 per cent of our
time over the last year has been dedicated to this, which is a
cost. It is people; you have to pay them. So people are an important
resource in this area. We were actually able to split up that
figure; round about half that £2.3 million comes from farmers
and farmers' unions at this stage. I can give you a bigger split
if you like. But that is only part of it because we are now moving
into the next stage where we are moving towards a much bigger
expenditure from the farming community, which is estimated to
go up to £11 million per annum. So we are moving now. When
we have done our homework these costs will go up. We have done
our homework, done our preparation, done our plans; the next step
is to make it work and that is when the costs go up.
48. Go on, convince me.
(Mr Paske) Let me give you a personal example. I have
budgeted the costs of the Voluntary Initiative in my own small
horticultural business as being about £1,200 next year. The
reason for that is because that is made up largely of training,
of complying with the various things which are laid down under
the Voluntary Initiative. As I say, that is quite a small operation.
It will vary according to the size of the organisation but £1,200
on my turnover is a lot of money.
49. Do you think if the Voluntary Initiative
had not been in place we would have seen a significant amount
of resources devoted to this area of work anyway?
(Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher) I think the threat of
the tax has got us all here and I think we all accept that. It
has raised the whole thing up the agenda so it has been successful,
it has done its job. It will now be negative if we go on about
the threat of the tax on a continuing basis all the way through
the next five years because what it will do is send out a message
to farmers, "Whatever you do, whatever the Voluntary Initiative
is trying to achieve, the tax is going to come anyway so what
is the point of doing all of this?" That is the one thing
we want to avoid. We want the message going out to farmers saying,
"This is something positive. This is going to improve the
way you farm. It is going to be good for the environment",
all the things that actually farmers want to do but they do not
know how to do it necessarily. Everything that is coming out of
this that I have seen so far is terrific in terms of better practice
and better use of materials.
(Dr Sanguinetti) Making the effort is terribly important
because the Deloitte Touche study which was in several newspapers
today is very, very illuminating. The farming economic situation
is very bad and they are losing £8 an acre on farming according
to that study. So putting the effort in is terribly important.
50. Have any of these signatory organisations
recruited any extra staff apart from the biodiversity officer
to provide extra resources for the Voluntary Initiative?[1]
(Mr Paske) Well, we have not recruited
additional staff but we have had to recruit a heck of a lot of
additional members to support what we are doing. The classic one
that John was mentioning to you earlier, the catchment area management
schemes, in terms of farmers' involvement in those we have had
to find very significant numbers of farmers who are prepared to
get involved in that and not only get involved in it from just
partaking in it but particularly also for helping to administrate
those particular schemes. I do not know what yours was in Scotland,
John, but I know that in one of the ones in England it was necessary
to find an extra 50 farmers in one particular catchment to be
able to do that work and ask one of those farmers to coordinate
the effort of all of those 50. So it is a lot of extra additional
work for them.
51. How much understanding has there been at
grass roots level? Has there been an upward pressure from farmers
on this?
(Mr Paske) No, absolutely not.
(Mr Kinnaird) I think we have got to
be perfectly honest and say no, not at this stage but part of
that is—
(Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher) We had to
get back to the name. We could not start talking to the farmers
until we had the name and that delayed the process. Once we got
the name we could start to talk to them about the Voluntary Initiative.
(Mr Kinnaird) But I think what is very
important is that the CPA has set up a web site, the Voluntary
Initiative web site, which has clear links from all our separate
organisations and that is one of the quickest ways of getting
the message over. We currently do a monthly newsletter and every
newsletter since the Voluntary Initiative was established we have
always put something in, so we are raising the awareness.
52. I think this is about culture change.
(Mr Paske) Very much so.
53. That is unfortunately what it is about.
(Dr Sanguinetti) Gentlemen, I have actually
an example. I will leave it with the Committee. This is a new
one which is coming out on Friday. We have 10,000 of those and
that costs quite an amount of money. Insecticides—the best
practice to minimise their environmental impact on arable crops.
So that is coming up. I will leave this for the Committee, and
a great wad of propaganda material, if you like, advertising material,
persuasive material. I will leave that for you to peruse, which
gives you some idea what is happening with the money.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr Thomas.
Mr Thomas
54. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I just want to ask
you one question. Before I do I just want to make a statement,
which is just that I have heard about the implementation groups
in Ulster, Northern Ireland and Scotland so I hope there will
be one on the way for Wales, obviously. The question I wanted
to ask you is what consideration the Voluntary Initiative is paying
to GM crops. If you are heading for four, five years, the next
four years really, the very possible reality of the commercial
growing of GM crops in this country in that period, what discussions
are you having within the Initiative and amongst the stakeholders
about the impact of GM crops on the aim, which is of course to
minimise the environmental impact of pesticides, which some people
would argue GM crops do?
(Dr Sanguinetti) I am actually meeting for the first
time my opposite number in an organisation called ABC, who do
the same sort of job as we do for GM. We are running parallel
with that so I will be in a better position to tell you more when
I have had those discussions tomorrow.
55. So you have not had those discussions as
the Initiative yet?
(Dr Sanguinetti) Well, I have to warn you I have only
been in this job for three weeks. If you give me a little time
I will get connected.
56. But there are others as well. I do not know
if there are other views on it.
(Mr Kinnaird) We have not discussed this as a separate
issue. There are things that we will have to take into consideration
obviously in the overall picture, but I think we are quite a bit
away from the position GM crops are going to have in UK agriculture.
I think we will have to take it into consideration but not look
at it in isolation.
57. So it would be fair to say that whatever
you achieve in your next four years you are not relying on GM
crops to achieve that?
(Mr Kinnaird) No.
(Mr Paske) Oh, no.
(Mr Kinnaird) Not at all. It is current practice we
are looking at.
(Mr Paske) Absolutely.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen.
Once again, may I say how grateful we are to you for sparing the
time because you are busy men in an important industry and it
is a crucial time and we hope we will come up with something which
actually means a lot of sense for you. Thank you very much indeed.
1 See supplementary memorandum from Dr Sanguinetti. Back
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