The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, it is my personal pleasure as well as my governmental responsibility to reply to the debate. I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, and the committee, as well as those advising it, on the thoroughness of their inquiry and the subsequent report on innovation in EU agriculture. It really is a first-class report which has informed this debate, as I hope it will the wider public.
I was pleased to be able to attend part of the seminar in November. As I indicated then, and as noble Lords have generously pointed out, this subject is very much up my street. It is an important one, too, and I hope that the response from Defra, which is full and detailed, does credit to the quality of the report. The report will also be useful in reinforcing the Government’s position vis-à-vis their European colleagues, as my noble friend Lord Caithness hopes.
I had intended to start my speech by quoting from the opening paragraph of the introduction to the report. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, used those words to open his speech today. Mr Paolo de Castro encapsulated the essentials of our current position, and the report is unafraid to present the challenge that faces all policy-makers and innovators in science and on the farm. This debate, too, has risen to the challenge, not least because it has served as an opportunity for us to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, who brings to this Grand Committee, as he will to the House in general, knowledge, expertise and an ability to inform. This will be of great value to the House on this and, I hope, many subjects. The noble Lord is welcome as a Member of this House. He reminded us, as did my noble friend Lady Byford, that we must not in our enthusiasm for innovation forget the people and the skills that we need in addressing this topic—I hope to come to that shortly.
Many noble Lords pointed out that but a short while ago we saw ourselves as being in a land of plenty, but Sir John Beddington’s Chatham House speech changed all that, showing us the threat that mankind faces from a perfect storm of resource pressures, climate change and population increase. This was followed by the Royal Society’s Reaping the Benefits, which showed how science could provide solutions if we were prepared to take the opportunities that it offered and, ultimately, by the Foresight report, which placed the challenge in a global context. Many noble Lords talked of this, none more graphically than the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. My own Taylor review was designed to look at the need to provide on-farm solutions here in the UK. The sub-committee not only recognises that but also points to the pan-European dimension of its solution.
At the seminar in November, I was given the opportunity to put forward to the European Commission the Government/Defra position on agricultural R&D and to ask for more information from it, particularly on European innovation partnerships and operational groups. Innovation in agriculture is very important to the UK Government. The Government Office for Science’s Foresight report on the future of farming clearly laid out the global challenges for the agriculture sector. Investment in research and innovation at both national and EU level will play an important role in supporting sustainable intensification and climate-smart food systems that will improve food security for Europe and globally.
If I may talk about one of these systems, my noble friend Lady Byford asked about animal welfare standards as a factor in good farm management, independent of the size of the unit. Animal welfare standards and business efficiency can be mutually supportive. We recognise the concerns about such standards creating a competitive disadvantage; we have had discussions in the House about the egg-laying directive, and I have pointed out that the department is concerned to ensure that the sow stall directive is properly enforced. These initiatives and high standards are something that we in this country are not prepared to jeopardise, but they do not necessarily conflict with the strategy for larger-scale production units.
The Government invest £400 million a year on agrifood research, including collaborative work with industry. As noble Lords have pointed out, that is mainly through BBSRC. Defra itself spends £65 million per annum on agricultural R&D, including animal health and welfare. I will not deny that I wish that as a department we had more, but deficit reduction must be addressed. Meanwhile, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that we are actively leveraging our limited funding.
This investment is coordinated by the UK cross-government food research and innovation strategy published by the Government Office for Science. The cross-government and research council programme on global food security will be a key vehicle for driving this agenda forward.
Perhaps I may comment on my noble friend Lady Parminter’s view, which she expressed very cogently, about the precautionary principle and how it fits with a policy of innovation. The Government agree with the committee that the precautionary principle remains relevant to decisions on food and environmental safety, but it must be applied sensibly and not as an unjustified barrier to new technologies. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, reminded us eloquently about our global responsibility to use technologies to address food supply throughout the world.
I would like to think that we can build on the shared respect for science that has been evident in this debate to move forward in the court of public opinion. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for his willingness to develop cross-party consensus on these issues.
Through the Technology Strategy Board, Defra and BBSRC, the Government invest in the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Innovation Platform, worth £90 million over five years, which matches funding by industry. It is worth noting that the TSB’s contribution of £50 million to this pot is new investment in innovation. The Government are also reviewing R&D tax credit support for innovation as part of the Dyson review recommendation to boost innovation in Britain.
It might be useful at this point to talk about agricultural skills. Several noble Lords mentioned this, and I shall build on the question that my noble friend Lady Byford asked. The national curriculum review is currently looking at essential knowledge that should be studied pre-16. Studying agriculture should be seen as a front-line activity of central importance to ensure that its relevance to the challenges of food security and sustainable intensification can be supported by a skill base. Lantra, the skills council for the environmental and land-based industries, offers information and careers across the agri sector and determines standards to ensure that qualifications meet both employer and learner needs. I know how important this is. Motivation and enthusing people to enter our industry will be vital if a new generation is to take this agenda of change forward. I should like to point out that in Holbeach itself there is a secondary school, which has now developed academy status, working alongside Lincoln University and the National Food Research Centre—an educational institute—to try to develop this in the heart of perhaps one of the most productive areas of UK agriculture. Therefore, I have first-hand knowledge of what is being done and what can be done on a much broader scale.
However, to tackle the challenges of creating a more innovative, profitable and competitive EU farming industry that can better withstand shocks and recover from them quickly, we also need to work in partnership with other countries in Europe and further afield. This is a factor that runs through the report and was reinforced by contributions throughout this debate. We therefore welcome European Union mechanisms that support this approach, including the European Research Area Networks—ERA-Nets—as well as supporting the Commission in its provision of the joint programming initiatives, or JPIs, of the member states.
My noble friend Lady Sharp mentioned the importance of awareness in the Commission of the need to remove complacency and to invest in innovation. At a wider international level, the UK’s proactive engagement with the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases is an example of where a partnership approach can be used to address common global challenges and add value to our own £12.6 million greenhouse gas R&D platform to identify greenhouse gas mitigation options and monitor them more effectively.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, talked about global research partnerships. The Global Research Alliance on Greenhouse Gases includes the USA and Brazil, as well as many EU member states. UK researchers, including those from Rothamsted, which the noble Lord will know well, are actively collaborating with their counterparts in New Zealand and Australia as well as the US. This is all co-ordinated by Defra, which is also collaborating under the sustainable agricultural innovation partnership through the action plan for UK-China co-operation on food security. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, reinforced the importance of this global approach to research projects if we are to meet the global challenge of feeding the world.
As we enter the final years of the EU’s seventh research and development framework programme, we welcome the Commission’s recent proposals for Horizon 2020, a research and innovation programme for Europe between 2014 and 2020. Horizon 2020 should play an important role in addressing the key societal challenges that we face today. We are pleased that food security and sustainable agriculture are among the grand challenges to be addressed by the programme. Indeed, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, is due to sign it off today.
EU-funded research must deliver value over and above that of our national programmes, and the impact of Horizon 2020 will depend on the active translation of research outputs as part of effective knowledge-exchange mechanisms. We therefore welcome the aim for Horizon 2020 to cover the knowledge spectrum from fundamental research through to demonstration activities.
Importantly, ambitious CAP reform would provide opportunities for agriculture to become competitive with less reliance on subsidies, releasing funds to encourage the cost-effective delivery of public goods and stimulate innovation in the agricultural sector as it grapples with global challenges to provide sufficient food to feed a growing population in a way that impacts less on the environment. I believe that the current package of proposals will fall short of this aim. I assure my noble friend Lady Parminter that we recognise the need for the identification of funding within the CAP for research and innovation.
We therefore broadly welcome the Commission’s proposal to establish a European innovation partnership, or EIP, for agricultural productivity and sustainability that will bring together relevant actors across the research and innovation chain. We also support the establishment of operational groups—OGs, as they are called—to test out emerging findings and to drive forward the adoption of new ideas and technologies. However, we await further clarification from the Commission on how the EIP networks and OGs will operate in practice and how they are to be funded, and we look forward to working closely with the Commission and others as these proposals are developed.
A number of noble Lords challenged our position on GM. I include my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lady Byford, but it was mentioned in a number of noble Lords’ speeches. The EU controls are the strictest in the world and robust enough to ensure that any approved GM products will be as safe for people and the environment as their conventional counterparts. Although ensuring that safety is paramount, we also need to be open to the potential benefits of GM technology. That is important, given the challenges ahead on food security and sustainability. My noble friend Lady Byford is right in her appraisal of the current proposals. A sustainable resolution of this issue must be based on science and be established across all 27 countries of the European Union.
In its inquiry, the committee has also examined the provision of farm advisory services to support agricultural innovation and competitiveness. I am delighted by this as it featured in my own report to the Government, then in opposition, to encourage greater collaboration between the public and private sectors in funding research and ensuring that a more effective knowledge transfer takes place.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the climate change risk assessment. I see this as an opportunity. Published last week, it presents the very real challenges posed by climate change. The scenario as painted for British agriculture is that there are opportunities within this agenda, but the assessment points particularly to the resource challenges of water. This will continue to be an increasing challenge not only in this country but across the world if we are to increase the capacity of our existing arable soils to produce crops and our grasslands to sustain livestock.
I am pleased to report that, as from 1 January—as noble Lords have mentioned—the new farming advice service will provide advice on competitiveness, nutrient management, climate change adaptation and mitigation and cross-compliance. The provision of the new service, secured by open competition, will be delivered by AEA Technology in active partnership with industry-related bodies such as the NFU, the CLA, the AHDB, LEAF, the West Country River Trust and ADAS. Farmers wanting professional advice will no longer have to ring round dozens of organisations before getting through to the right source. After all, good advice is essential to the running of any business, and this new advice service will make sure that farmers can get the most out of their farms.
I therefore wish to encourage any future industry-led initiatives that will stimulate co-operation between industry bodies, innovation, applied research and the effective translation of science and technology into practice. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Curry, will be chairing a meeting shortly to encourage the levy bodies, colleges and other stakeholders to work together to deliver innovation. That mission has my blessing.
I have not gone into a lot of detail about something that was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Parminter and the noble Lord, Lord Knight: the reduction of waste in the food chain. I see that as a very important aspect of any strategy to increase the efficiency of the food chain and reduce the needless waste of important foodstuffs. As noble Lords will know, this is also a part of my portfolio. I am working very much towards this end and have the considerable resource of WRAP, an excellent body that has provided advice throughout all of this. My noble friend Lady Parminter also mentioned nutritional and health values in foodstuffs. We should also not ignore the quality of food and its effectiveness in nutritional terms when talking about the capacity of industry to produce food.
It was good to listen to my noble friend Lord Plumb and to have the debate that we are conducting today put into a historical perspective. My noble friend is rightly credited with presiding over this industry in its golden age. I would not describe the future in quite such terms but the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, talked of a renaissance in this industry. I share with him and the committee a sense that we have an opportunity—a renewed opportunity—to address the challenges of the future to build a sustainable and more productive agriculture by the use of science, technology and innovation. The committee, along with our farmers and growers, looks to the Government to provide a lead both here and in Europe to do just that. I thank the noble Lords for their participation in this report; it has served as a very useful catalyst for us to be able to reiterate that objective.