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Nick Herbert: I said earlier that I believed in the market, so the trend of agricultural policy towards farmers decoupling and producing increasingly for the market is the right one. Where public support is necessary in the future, it should be oriented towards the delivery of public goods—things that would not be secured by means other than intervention, or public funds, if necessary. In my view, sustainable farming—producing to the market with profitable farms—will ultimately be necessary if the industry is to thrive. Farming can be successful only if it is carried out in an environmentally sustainable manner, which explains why I do not always accept the distinction sometimes made between farming on the one hand and the environment on the other. The balance has often gone wrong when the Government have interfered in the wrong way.
It is our farmers who manage most of Britain’s wonderful landscape, so we must enable them to be competitive in a truly open market, and in harmony with the environment. We need a balanced approach that recognises that we cannot keep imposing regulations and hope that the industry remains viable. Farms are businesses, after all, as I think the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) was suggesting. They need to make a profit, and we need to remember that. Farmers cannot be told both that they must operate in a global marketplace, and that they have to compete with cheaper foreign produce that can be labelled “British”.
Ministers have been promising a voluntary agreement with the supermarkets on country-of-origin food labelling for more than a decade, but consumers still cannot have full confidence that “British” actually means “British”. There is still misleading labelling. Six months ago, the Secretary of State told the Oxford farming conference that labelling rules were “nonsense” and had to change. He said that he would meet processors and retailers to discuss how to bring about a voluntary agreement. Can he tell us what progress he has made? If he wishes to intervene, I shall be happy to give way.
I have been meeting representatives of the supermarkets as well, and I regret to say that although Waitrose and Marks and Spencer support our “honest food” proposals for clear country-of-origin labelling for meat and meat products, it is clear that Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda do not. I believe that while consumers are still being misled, if agreement in the European Union—which the Secretary of State says is slow to be secured—is still not on offer and if the supermarkets will not agree to the voluntary scheme that the Secretary of State appears to have been trying to establish for six months, the Government themselves must act. Consumers cannot go on being misled.
I urge the Government to support the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), which is due to receive its Second Reading in a few months’ time. However, I can give an undertaking that if the Government do not act and introduce a domestic labelling scheme—which is possible under European Union law—when our consumers are being misled, the next Government will do so. Farmers and consumers alike value action, not hollow promises.
We hear the same story from the Government about the proposed electronic identification of sheep. In Yorkshire recently I met a group of hill farmers who left me in no doubt about the damaging impact that that costly and absurd new requirement would have on an already
fragile industry. When I questioned the Secretary of State about the matter in the House on 21 May, he said that the Government
“showed leadership in arguing that the cost...outweighs the benefits” .—[ Official Report, 21 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 1620.]
If only that were so. Back in 2002 the Government’s negotiating position was set out by the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who was then the Minister responsible for animal health. He declared:
“I am convinced that electronic identification of farmed animals is the way forward—especially in respect of sheep”.
Let us be clear. Following the example of Senator John Kerry, the Government supported the electronic tagging of sheep before they opposed it. Is that what the Secretary of State meant by leadership—leading on the imposition of another expensive and unnecessary burden, and then claiming to be trying to tackle it? I regret to say that on electronic identification of sheep, food labelling, pesticides and reform of the common agricultural policy, the story is the same: it is the story of a Government who have failed to stand up for British agriculture.
Farmers are striving to reduce their environmental impact, and want the industry of which they are so proud to be a part to stand on its own two feet without support. Most farmers to whom I speak would like that outcome. However, if we are to dismantle the market-distorting support which has inflicted so much harm on the developing world, which in my view has undermined our own industry in significant ways, and which farmers ultimately do not want, and if we are to shift resources to the environmental and public goods that farmers could deliver, we must be prepared to allow agriculture to become more competitive so that it can operate in that market. That means less and smarter regulation that delivers proportionate gains for the environment and animal health, and steps to ensure that the market works more effectively in the consumer and producer interest, with honest labelling, fairer supply chain arrangements and strong co-operatives. It also means action on TB, which is undermining the beef and dairy industries across large swathes of the country.
Since the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree left her post, she has given an interview in which she indicated her belief that the Government’s position on the culling of badgers could or should change. It appears that the Secretary of State is increasingly isolated in his position, which is to oppose such a measure. The Welsh Assembly has decided to go ahead with a more robust measure. My understanding is that the Liberal Democrats support a targeted cull. We have consistently done so. We cannot continue slaughtering 40,000 cattle a year, or preside over a bill now rising to £600 million a year and heading towards £1 billion, and do nothing, simply waiting for a vaccine that may or may not be effective.
The Secretary of State says that agriculture is pretty strong, but underlying that is a continuing fragility in important sectors. The dairy sector is one. We have already lost a quarter of our dairy farms. I referred to the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain and listened with interest to what the Secretary of State had to say about the measures that the Government are trying to take to support farmers who find themselves without a buyer. Only today I received an e-mail from a constituent who tells me that as a Dairy Farmers of Britain supplier, he has 34 days of unpaid milk, amounting to £17,500. He is concerned about the attitude that his bank is
taking and whether, even if he can find an alternative purchaser, it will supply. He wants to know what can be done to put pressure on the bank to honour its milk cheques. It is important that we recognise the fragility of the industry and the continuing need to ensure that a viable dairy industry remains in existence in this country.
The fragility also extends to upland farming. Again, the Secretary of State says agriculture is pretty strong but it is clear that even with the improvement in prices we have seen since their low point a couple of years ago, upland farm incomes are almost wholly dependent on the public support that those farmers are receiving. Therefore, both sides need to think hard about the long-term future of upland farming, as we consider the next round of CAP reform.
There are things that the Government can do, and public procurement is surely a good example. The pig industry is in dire straits, so why is it that not a single rasher of bacon served to our armed forces is British? At the very least, why cannot we move towards a system whereby all publicly procured food meets British standards of production? That is a legal requirement that we could impose.
There is no more important industry than the production of food. Food security sits alongside climate change as one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Indeed, those two issues are intimately linked. But at this critical period the department responsible for the industry has lost its way. We need a new mission for the Department, which occupies such an important role in the health, security and well-being of our nation. We need a commitment to the irreplaceable role of our farmers as custodians of the countryside and producers of food, and we need the actions to back it up. We need an approach that views farming and the environment as compatible, not in competition. We need a radical new policy framework to ensure the sustainable and integrated management of natural resources, including water. I regret to say that it is increasingly clear that the only thing that will bring about that much-needed change in approach is a change of Government.
3.24 pm
Mr. Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole) (Lab): It is an honour to be the third speaker in the debate and to follow the two Front Benchers, both of whom made splendid contributions to a debate that will be a good one. I do not want to detain the House but there are a number of things happening in my constituency that may be happening in other areas, especially if they are rural. I welcome the opportunity to draw these to the attention of the House and hope that the Minister will be able to respond later today.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State talked about Dairy Farmers of Britain, the collapse of which has been a real tragedy for all involved and traumatic for all those who suddenly found themselves as members of a co-operative that had gone into receivership. Dairy farming is not king in my area, but that has in fact worked against us finding a resolution to this problem. Only last night, I was speaking to Keith Wilson, a dairy farmer in the Isle of Axholme in the south-west of my constituency. He is one of only three dairy farmers now left in the area. Although we all welcome my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s announcement today
that 1,600 of the 1,800 affected farmers—along with 96 per cent. of the milk—have now been placed with new companies, that still leaves 200 who have not, and anyone who is among that 200 faces a very bleak future indeed. Mr. Wilson and the other dairy farmers in my area find themselves in that position through no fault of their own. They have currently been given the receiver’s standard four-week rolling contract. Under that, the milk gets taken away, which they welcome, although at a 10p a litre minimum price, and nobody needs to be a rocket scientist to work out that that is an extremely low price that does not cover even the most basic costs of running a farm. This situation clearly cannot continue.
Mr. Roger Williams: I am sure that many Members present in the Chamber have constituents who are in similar situations. Many of the farmers who are finding it difficult to get a contract would like to get out of milk in the near future, but they need a contract for six months or a year at a decent price in order to plan their exit from the industry and ensure that they get the best price for their assets so they can reinvest in another form of farming in the future. Would it not therefore be a good idea for DEFRA to get involved and see whether it can encourage those contracts to be put in place?
Mr. Cawsey: I endorse that comment entirely. DEFRA is always chanting the mantra to farmers that diversification is the way ahead and they must move with the times and look for new ideas, but they cannot cross the River Jordan instantly, and I think there should always be support for farmers who are trying to do the best for their companies and trying to keep farming going in their communities. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister might be able to respond to that later.
The dairy farmers in the Isle of Axholme are annoyed that they have so far been unsuccessful in their attempts to get placed with other contracts. The Isle of Axholme is quite remote, and there are only three dairy farms there, none of which is a large concern, so the problems are clear—except that the tanker that currently comes to collect their milk every day is collecting on behalf of the other companies, and there is therefore a slight frustration that it is the tanker of the same companies that will not take their milk that is coming to their farms. That seems absurd. Also, Dairy Crest has contracts placed in Gainsborough and Retford, neither of which is very much further away. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister might speak to the receiver about this. I understand that attempts are being made to try to get contracts for the farmers who are left, but might these companies, who are picking up milk now and who have already placed new contracts for farmers who are not far away, be encouraged to go that bit further? I hope that that might be achieved even if it is only for a period of time so that, as the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) said, people can consider their options. That would be better than the situation they are in now—one in which they face a very bleak future and could be forced out of the industry very quickly. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to this point in his reply. For these 200 farmers, including the three in my constituency on the Isle of Axholme, it is no consolation that so much progress has been made for everybody else. They face a very bleak future, and DEFRA should do something to help them.
Of course, like most representatives of a rural area, I have meetings with my local farming representatives. I had a good meeting at West Butterwick recently with the local members of the National Farmers Union, at which I was heartened to learn that many of them are doing quite well at the moment—much of my area is arable—despite all the problems facing other farming sectors and the British economy generally. A lot of that has to do with exchange rates, subsidy and so on, and before we get too carried away it should be borne in mind that those farmers have been through a pretty rough time too, so if they are having a window of opportunity now, where things are a bit better, I say “More power to their elbow.”
“Farming” is not a generic term. One sector may be doing well while others are struggling—and not just dairy farmers; the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) mentioned pig farmers and I cannot help but agree with everything that he said. That is an unsubsidised part of farming that does a really good job producing an excellent product and it genuinely does have much better animal welfare standards than are found in other countries across the world—I say that as someone who has a passionate interest in animal welfare—yet the magic premium that we all seek for it never seems to come through, certainly not at the level it should. We must support the sector because if, as I do, hon. Members believe animal welfare is not an add-on for people involved in agriculture but should be an integral part of what they do, we should back British people who take that view and deliver it. There are a number of ways to back them.
We know that pig farming is an unsubsidised industry, but we can change things through procurement. It is a disgrace that the pork procurement rates of national and local government are as low as they are. I am sick to the back teeth of having this discussion with people who say, “We have to put things out to tender and we must have the same specification and so on.” I see no reason, and never have done, why an animal welfare standard should not be part of the specification. Let other people meet it and compete on it, but for goodness’ sake let us not ignore it. We must ensure that it is part of everything we do. I am certain that if the Minister could get Departments to add that to their procurement specifications, it would make a real difference and British pig farmers would rightly be the beneficiaries.
This debate on food, farming and the environment is wide-ranging, and I welcome that because about six months ago—I am not claiming any glory for the fact that we are having this debate—I asked at business questions whether we could have such a debate. I did not quite use the phrase “food, farming and the environment”; I think I was more interested in having a debate on land use. However, what I was asking for could almost be fitted into that title, because we are in a quandary over land use in rural areas, and the Government, across all Departments, have to start thinking through what their response is going to be. I am sure that my area is not that different from everywhere else and, as I have mentioned before, people have concerns about food security, so they want to ensure that we keep good agricultural land, we keep Britain’s farmers farming and we keep a high level of ability to feed ourselves.
Alongside that, there are pressures from people who want more rural housing—in particular, affordable rural housing. I have seen the effect of that housing need in
my constituency. I feel helplessness, as much as anything else, when, as happens time and again at my surgeries in one of the villages, I meet a young couple or their parents who want to be able to say that they have lived as a family for generations in the same village, but they cannot afford to pay the current house prices—these are very nice places to live and the market is king—and there is hardly any social housing for them to move into. I have no problem with the policy, but when it was decided that council houses could be sold off under the right to buy, it was inevitable that tenants in very nice rural parts of the country who could get a big discount on their houses did so—they would be fools not to. Nothing came after those houses and, as a result, there is a real shortage now and we need to do more about that.
We need to encourage local authorities to invest more in the social housing in their rural areas and we need to have a sensible—I plead for no more than common sense—approach to sustainability. There was a planning application in my constituency—it was in the East Riding of Yorkshire—a few months ago by somebody who wanted to build a new house for a family who had lived in the village for years. There had been a house on the site previously, but it had been demolished and they had been living in a mobile home, admittedly for some years. They simply wanted to replace that mobile home with a house again, but the application was turned down because it was an “unsustainable development”. It was simply the same people wanting to live in the same village. While we are making decisions like that, we are getting into a quandary about our use of rural land, and that needs to be addressed.
Flood defence is another key issue. My constituency is split by several rivers—the Trent, the Humber and the Ouse—and the Environment Agency is trying to draw up flood defence risk strategies and plans for the future. That is difficult for everybody, because people are concerned about the extent to which they will be defended in the future. It is clear that the Environment Agency’s thinking, given the pressures that it is under—and the fact that climate change is making such planning difficult for the next 50 to 100 years and beyond—increasingly includes the use of wash land. My hon. Friend the Minister will recall the DEFRA document “Making Space for Water”, and it is driving much of the consideration.
We have three competing pressures for land—the need for more rural affordable housing, the aim of food security in the future and the need to ensure that rural areas remain dry. The Government need to think carefully about a land use policy for the future. The farmers in my community accept that they are potentially part of the solution to flooding, but they do not want to lose good agricultural land. If it is to be used only occasionally during extreme weather conditions, they want reassurances that they will receive adequate compensation for anything that they lose, such as crops on flooded land.
I plead for common sense. The Government need to ensure that the different Departments and agencies that are considering how land should be used talk to each other and come to sensible conclusions. It may sound as though my whole speech is about the Isle of Axholme, but that area has had terrible problems. It is reclaimed land below sea level, and is no longer an island—although it used to be. For those hon. Members of a Methodist bent—as I am—it is where John Wesley was born. It
was reclaimed by Vermuyden, who was brought over from Holland to drain it. Drainage in the area is already complex, but as pressures grow—on surface water drainage because of increased building, and from the Trent, which flows through the isle—there are real fears about protecting the area for the future.
The Environment Agency started its review of the Trent strategy, which includes the isle, by saying that it probably did not need to be as well defended in the future as it has been in the past. That is not a great message to send to people who live on land that is below sea level. It took an enormous effort, but in the end we managed to get all the agencies together and the Environment Agency is now spending £1 million on a specific Axholme strategy to try to work out who will do what in the future.
The problem is that the agency was looking only at what it did, and was not talking to the internal drainage boards—the people with the real local knowledge of the area. They know where every drain goes, which pump is on its way out and which pump will last for a bit longer. We have solved the problem now, and everyone is sitting around the same table—I have the great honour of chairing our flood strategy—but that was not the direction that the agency was taking in the beginning, and I am worried that it is working in isolation in other areas.
The other problem with the agency is that all the river defence strategies cover particular rivers and particular areas, stopping at county boundaries, but water does not stop at the boundaries. For my area, there are several different strategies affecting the East Riding of Yorkshire, west Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire, but—as I have told my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State before—there is not enough co-ordination by the different teams in the Environment Agency that are working on those strategies. I am sure that they are doing a good job on each individual strategy, but where they meet is crucial.
The East Riding of Yorkshire council shares my concerns and has been in very difficult correspondence with me. In fact, I think it is still subject to a judicial review of the way in which the Environment Agency has done its work. We want to avoid that. We do not want to get into litigation about it; we want to get people to sit round a table, sorting it out. The Secretary of State has told me before that he is reinforcing that message to the Environment Agency and that that is what will happen in the future. I can only wish him more power to his elbow and I look forward to seeing the results.
May I finish on one other point that I think is important? It is certainly important in my area. It is the whole issue of composting and landfill. Composting is growing, and I represent several farmers who have moved into it as a way of diversifying. We need to ensure that there are good standards throughout. The example that I am going to give involves not a farmer but the local council.
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