Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-105)
19 JANUARY 2005
MR PETER
KENDALL, DR
NEIL KIFT
AND MR
HARRY JOHNSON
Q100 Alan Simpson: Would it be worth
including it as part of the cross-compliance measures for entitlement
to Single Farm Payments?
Mr Kendall: I think this is a
difficult area to handle because the Voluntary Initiative has
been an industry-driven initiative and cross-compliance has been
very much a European regulation with Directives that are covering
that. I think that would be yet another burden on inspectors and
regulation that farmers would not welcome at this moment in time.
It is again, if you like, using the stick when we have been trying
to work on partnership and encouraging people down the route of
environmental responsibility and good practice.
Q101 Alan Simpson: That is what worries
me. We hear this every time we have had heard evidence on whatever
issue. We had it in terms of gang masters and the quite grotesque
misuse of migrant labour. When the NFU came you brought some fantastic
farmers who run terrific schemes and you would be proud to be
associated with them. We were left as a Committee saying, "What
about the rest?" There are outrageous things that have been
going on around the country. How do you get the rest of the people
into the line that you are in? That is the difficulty we face
here. It is not the best; it is the compliance of the rest that
we have to address because ultimately that is what we will be
judged on. So how do we do that?
Mr Kendall: Exactly like the gang
masters we want people pulled in line. We want to get everyone
performing to this standard. I think the way the market is changing
and the way the structure and dynamics of the industry are changing
everyone is going to be a part of Farm Assurance. To sell your
grain, for example, you will need to be going through all these
protocols. The loopholes for people to be performing badly and
irresponsibly are being driven out very quickly. It does not make
my job very easy when I go and talk to farmers and say, "You
need to sharpen up your act," but that is happening. As I
say, the economic climate out there is making that happen even
faster than ever.
Mr Johnson: We were talking about
some of these very problems at the last meeting of the Leam catchment
steering group a couple of weeks ago, and there are some relatively
simple tools which can be used—snippers, I think they call
them—for going up a river and finding out where a particular
piece of pollution has come from. Within the catchments there
have been variable results and the question we have been asking
ourselves is how can we identify those within the catchment who
have not been doing the job properly. What we are saying is perhaps
we should be looking at some of these simple tools to identify
individuals, and going back to the polluter pays principle seek
action with those individuals to pull them in line because ultimately
it may be the case, as with the persistent speeder, that if you
do not take tough sanctions they will continue to do what they
are doing unless they are hauled up, so we would certainly support
action on the minority and we would support action to seek out
the minority.
Chairman: Thank you for that. Mr Drew
is going to conclude our session today by looking at the compliance
of others.
Q102 Mr Drew: We have already touched
on this so I do not want to labour the point but just to carry
on Alan Simpson's heartfelt plea. We are not just talking about
farmers, and one of the weaknesses of the VI is that the industry
can only insist on its immediate customers that it has regular
contact with. What is your responsibility to the others because
they make or break the effectiveness of the VI?
Dr Kift: I think the important
thing about the immediate incentive is that it is very, very diverse.
You have got some people who are very good, for example people
who treat railways with very good stewardship. However, you also
have the local authority sector for whom it is not a priority
and for whom tax would not be an issue because their proportion
of spending on parks and gardens is nothing compared to what they
spend on social services and housing and those sorts of things.
That particular sector has been very, very hard to engage indeed
and because it is so diverse we are trying to engage it through
the Amenity Forum with the amenity management plans and similar
but specialised tools for those sectors. Because the Amenity Forum
is so new and because they are almost still designing the range
of people who they cover, we are not making the same progress
there that we have made in the agricultural area.
Q103 Mr Drew: So I go back to what I
was saying earlier: make your Voluntary Initiative have a statutory
Code of Practice so that all these people will have to prove that
they are using pesticides properly.
Dr Kift: It is finding a mechanism
by which you bring a local authority to account on that front.
Q104 Alan Simpson: Are you saying that
you would at least consider a statutory code?
Mr Kendall: What I am nervous
about is that you talk about a statutory code for the whole industry
but where does the amenity sector start and end? When is it someone
with a very large garden or a railway? How do we demarcate between
these different sectors? What I am enthused about at the moment
is the sheer industry partnership that is going on and I am worried
that when you start making things statutory you lose that drive
to try and change general practice.
Q105 Alan Simpson: Just to finish then,
is that where the Voluntary Initiative is now going? You say you
would want it to go in that direction but for it to go in that
direction those who are currently indifferent to the use of pesticides
(because they think they are not important or they are just blasé)
have to be brought to some extent within the fold.
Mr Kendall: Absolutely. We heard
from the AIC that they were running schemes to try and bring amenity
users into a Voluntary Initiative sub-scheme. That is absolutely
critical, I am sure of that.
Dr Kift: Can I make one final
point. Lots has been talked about risk. Are you aware of risk
indicators and their development? We have done a short paper that
reviews some of the European work and also there is a new European
project just being funded on comparisons of risk indicators for
regulators. Would that be useful to the Committee?
Chairman: Yes indeed. May I thank you
very much, Mr Kendall, Dr Kift and Mr Johnson for your time this
morning and for your submissions. If there is anything on reflection
that you feel you would like to share with us further please feel
free to send it to us in writing. Thank you very much.
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