Food Supply and Security
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for securing this debate and for her comprehensive and deeply sobering introduction. I associate the Green group with all the concerns that she expressed. I do not know whether in recording this debate, Hansard plans to put the phrase “cheap food” in scare quotes, but it certainly should. So-called cheap food is costing us the earth and our health.
I know that when farmers hear criticism of the food system, they often feel that it is directed at them, but many noble Lords have rightly focused on the over- weening, enormous place of supermarkets in our food distribution system. The National Farmers’ Union has highlighted how farmers get just 6% in the food chain. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, focused on how supermarkets advertise, promote and push highly processed food that is disastrous for our health. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, rightly said that government procurement should look to support local food-growing and distribution systems rather than supermarkets. Here in Sheffield, I have been lucky enough to get great Yorkshire cheese from local suppliers, and just this morning I got a fruit and veg box from a local cafe. These should be supplying schools, hospitals and prisons.
We also need to think about how food is grown. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred to European workers doing the heavy lifting. In a report in the Times, an asparagus grower was quoted as saying, “British workers just won’t do 12 hours a day of back-breaking work”. But I think that no one should be asked to do that. That means that we need a different kind of food system: small, market garden, biodiverse crops, which pretty well anyone could work on. That also means that we need reform of our land ownership. We need tens, even hundreds, of thousands of small businesses around our towns and cities, growing healthy food and supporting horticulture, building a different kind of food system that works for people and planet.
Agriculture: Genome-edited Crops
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I absolutely agree with what the noble Baroness has said. That is precisely what we need to do when considering any changes. The most important thing is consumer confidence. We are absolutely clear that there is merit in certain genome-editing activity. The noble Baroness mentioned the Rothamsted Research institute. There is also the Earlham Institute, the James Hutton Institute, the Sainsbury Laboratory and the John Innes Centre. All of our great laboratories are very positive about this research, and we do think that we should reconsider the current regulations.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I commend the Minister on the Government’s focus on agroecology as the way forward for agriculture and on the inclusion of soil health in the Agriculture Bill. Does the Minister acknowledge that the 21st-century approach of working with nature, with a whole-farm approach, is the direct opposite of the simplistic 20th-century GM editing approach? Should not our research efforts be focused on agroecology and working with nature?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Obviously, much of what we want to do is to work with the rhythm of nature. The point I was seeking to make earlier about gene editing is that, in particular where it merely escalates a natural process, there is an advantage to it. In terms of enhancement of the environment, we want to get disease-resistant crops and to improve animal welfare. A lot of the research is in order to assist things that the noble Baroness would support.
Tree Pests and Diseases
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his lyrical introduction to this debate and for the initiative shown by him and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, in securing it.
I will begin with a sentence from the Royal Horti- cultural Society website:
“Importing plants poses potential risks of introducing new pests and diseases.”
Much of the debate has focused on the actions of individuals. The noble and learned Lord began by referring to his pine cone. Perhaps he missed the Government’s Don’t Risk It! campaign, which involved posters at ports and airports. But as the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, has just outlined, the real risk is actually from commercial imports. Individual actions form a tiny part of the problem and there is a risk that if we focus on those actions we will engage in displacement activity rather than focusing on the real problem.
Forestry Commission figures show that the plant trade has doubled over the last 10 years. In the past decade, the number of diseases brought in is the same as the number brought in over the previous 50 years, so it is rising five times as quickly. The UK Plant Health Risk Register lists five to 10 new pests and diseases every month. Any scientist will tell you that correlation is not causation, but the links are clear and well evidenced. This is globalisation in action: a change in our systems embarked upon with scant consideration for the impacts. A few people have made very large profits while the rest of us have paid.
We are inevitably going to see an increase in plant and tree pests and diseases because we are in a climate emergency. The changing weather conditions will enable pests and diseases to flourish which could not get a hold before. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, birds will fly around and that is the sort of thing we cannot do anything about except to be vigilant, but we can act by changing the system of how we secure our plant supplies. I say plants rather than simply trees because many noble Lords have talked about Xylella, which poses a risk across a wide variety of plants. We are also seeing huge imports of indoor plants and even cut flowers which present a risk to our native ecosystems. In 2017, those imports were worth £975 million a year. I have a direct question for the Minister: we will soon see the Government’s food strategy, so surely it is time for a horticulture strategy. We have been talking about tree nurseries, but the issue goes more broadly in terms of fruit and vegetable production. Should that not be tied in with the food strategy as well?
The fact is that a lot of the imports of trees and other plants are from the Netherlands. It set up a co-ordinated government strategy to develop its horticulture industry. I too have met some horticultural food producers in the UK who also focused on the fact that they are finding it very difficult to get finance from our banks, while banks on the continent are prepared to fund horticultural industries, which is something else to look at in the policy area.
If I were to offer the Minister some thoughts about what a horticultural strategy might look like, I would point him to the Government’s own words about their agriculture strategy and agroecology. That means working with nature and not relying on giant industrial monocultures. If we are thinking about a British tree nursery industry, what we will need is diverse small-scale holdings made up of independent businesses and co-operatives that are scattered around the country, which will help produce a more diverse stock. When I tweeted about this debate before it began, the Bristol Tree Forum came back to me asking me to stress the importance for their health of the genetic diversity of the stocks that we plant, and I am very pleased to do that. It is what we need to ensure healthy woodlands and trees.
How do we create those small, independent businesses? There is perhaps a model in the One Wales: One Planet development strategy, which allows small businesses access to land. I suggest to noble Lords that we also need to look at land reform in England to enable people to access land in order to set up small, independent tree nurseries. Another way in which the Government might act was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes: government procurement. We have seen progress on this already, but not far from where I am standing now, the Florida fig trees in Portcullis House are an example of how government procurement traditionally has not done what it should have done to support local industry.
A number of noble Lords have referred to the need to protect woodlands from pests which are already here. Again, we should think about the agroecological approach. Reference has been made to grey squirrels. We know that supporting the spread of pine martens will help red squirrels compete against grey squirrels. Also—dare I say?—if we are thinking about deer, perhaps we should also be thinking about reintroducing the lynx as a natural control mechanism. I am talking, of course, about the rewilding of the UK. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, “Copy nature and you will succeed”, and that is essentially the agroecological approach.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, referred to the heavily overstretched Forestry Commission staff and the amount of work they have to do. At the end of last year, Friends of the Earth produced a report showing that overall, the UK Government were spending less than £1 per person per year on trees, including the work of the Forestry Commission. We hear much talk of the end of austerity, so I ask the Minister whether we can expect to see a significant boost to the budget of the Forestry Commission to deal with all the threats that have been so clearly outlined today.
The Library briefing, which other noble Lords have cited, refers to the need for common frameworks for working with the devolved Administrations. We also need to see close co-operation with our European neighbours on tackling many of these pests and diseases: a co-operative approach to ensure that they are held back. I hope very much that we will see the kind of diplomatic environment which allows that to continue.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle ExcerptsWednesday 29th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the gestation period of a cow is about 280 days. I make that reference not to remind your Lordships that my first degree was in agricultural science but to reflect on the fact that most of the calves that will be born under the Bill that we are about to pass have already been conceived. As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said, this is policy-making on the hoof. For a farmer who is deciding whether to plant a tree in a shelterbelt or to plant a new hedge, the timeframe for seeing the returns on that are much greater, well beyond even the planned seven-year phase-out of the basic payment system that we expect to see in the forthcoming Agriculture Bill.
The decision to disapply CAP in the withdrawal agreement was probably unavoidable but it has left our farmers in a state of great uncertainty, as we have heard from many noble Lords who are themselves farmers. Yes, they had promises that it would happen, but those are only words. We have heard many words, some of them referring to your Lordships’ House, but I doubt that anyone has yet consulted their removers on the cost of moving their residence up to York.
If the Government had made progress on the Agriculture Bill—stranded since November 2018—in the previous Parliament, we would not need this one. I remind your Lordships’ House that that is a reflection of the huge problems that we have in the quality of governance, independent of its ideological content, and the way in which our unreformed political system is simply not working.
I make another systemic point, this time about the Rural Payments Agency. A number of noble Lords have referred to the delays in farmers receiving payments. The RPA saw its budget cut from £237 million in 2010 to £95 million in 2018. This is austerity. We hear talk about austerity in lots of other contexts, but let us recognise that this was a decision made across government that has had real consequences right across society.
The Bill is narrow in scope and duration but I want to take this opportunity to focus on the level of uncertainty that our farmers and growers are facing, relating to both policy and climate—that is, the uncertainty of what the climate emergency will bring them. We have of course heard references to the weather this year. I thank the Minister for his response to my Written Question HL541 about independent advice to farmers. In response he referred to
“considering both private and public sector options.”
I am disappointed not to see in that Answer any reference to farmer-led advice and research.
Last year I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. I heard a German minimum-till organic vegetable grower talking about how government-funded academics had come to his farm, conducted research to answer the questions that he wanted answered and then provided him with advice based on that research. The farmers and growers in the room gasped. They were gasps of astonishment that government-funded research could work in that way, and perhaps also gasps of envy because they would like to see something similar. We have seen so much advice farmers have had to rely on coming from commercial interests based on commercial research by seed companies and agrochemical companies. Facing this state of uncertainty, how will we ensure that farmers get answers to the questions they need answered in the next seven years and beyond?
I am very aware of the narrow scope of the Bill. We are all of course looking forward to the Agriculture Bill. I will make three brief points with regard to what we have seen of that thus far. I do not believe that we have seen anything like an understanding from the Government of the need for the utter transformation of our agriculture and land use that the climate emergency and our nature crisis demand. We will also get to a social crisis. UKSSD looked at Britain’s ability to meet the sustainable development goals and we are not on track to meet any of them. Farming and land use are an important part of how we reach those goals.
We have heard some reference to the food strategy. That needs to be integrated with the land use strategy. We also need to be thinking about incomes policy, benefits and welfare, with people being able to pay for the food they need so that farmers and growers get a decent return. That is part of agriculture policy. It is all interrelated. Control of the supermarkets is crucial. We need to think about food security and feeding ourselves; that has to be the most basic requirement of government. We also need to think about food quality. I heard an academic being asked what kind of food and farming we need and they said, “I can answer that in one word: vegetables.” Only 18% of children in the UK eat their supposed five a day. That five-a-day recommendation was decided by sociologists, not nutritionists. Nutritionists will tell you that it is 10 a day. That means we need to grow at least eight times as much fruit and vegetables in the UK as we do now to head towards healthy food self-sufficiency.
This may be my most unpopular point—noble Lords might be surprised to hear that. I am sure most noble Lords would agree that we need to tackle food waste. When thinking about our future agricultural policy, I put it to your Lordships that feeding perfectly good food to animals in factory farming is food waste and has to stop.
In concluding, I come back to the point on which I started: the quality of governance. This Bill is fundamental for security and we are racing it through just days before the deadline. That is no way to run a Government. A Member of your Lordships’ House commented that they thought I would come back to democracy in every speech I made—that is probably just about true. I refer your Lordships to an excellent little book called Nation of Devils by Stein Ringen that shows that countries with democratic proportional electoral systems have a better quality of governance, make better decisions and do not end up in an utterly last-minute, on-the-hoof race, as we have today.
Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report)
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I join others in welcoming the Minister to this House and look forward to working with him.
When I started contemplating this debate, one phrase kept popping into my mind: “There are plenty more fish in the sea.” It is usually used, of course, by people who have perhaps heard a bit too much from their friends about their broken hearts and wish to reassure them. I tried to look up the first use of this phrase, but it seems to have been lost in the mists of time. As the noble Viscount has just outlined, that is because things have changed very much over centuries. The tenor of this metaphor in the age of online dating may be more true than it has ever been, but the vehicle for the metaphor no longer bears the weight that it carries.
There is a lot of focus on the state of nature on land. We have recently seen reports from NGOs, and people can see for themselves what is known as “insectageddon”: the fact that, when we drive along the highway at night, we no longer see insects spattered over our windscreens. The loss of, say, our cod is much less visible and much less talked about. We owe a real debt to the commentator George Monbiot, who has drawn attention to this and written about the fact that it goes back a very long way—further even than the noble Viscount went. Paleolithic fishers were catching giant beasts that medieval fishers could not imagine, and what medieval fishers saw modern fishers cannot imagine even in their dreams. We have shifting baseline syndrome and we should never forget that.
Before I get to the main points of this debate, I will say one more thing directly to the Minister: although not specifically our topic today, it is clear from this background that we need to see many more marine reserves and many more genuine no-take zones protecting our fish stocks.
On the specific point of today’s debate, I record my debt to the Greens/EFA parliamentary group fisheries adviser Björn Stockhausen, who very much informed what I am about to say. The Green parties of the United Kingdom will continue to be part of the European Green Party, with which we will continue to work very closely. Similarly, our fish stocks will continue to be European after Brexit. Fish do not carry passports. If they tucked them under their fin on one side, they would be able to swim only in circles. They do not stop at borders. We will have to continue to work very closely with our European neighbours.
Several noble Lords have referred, as I did yesterday, to the fact that the discard ban is not simply an EU rule. This is the people’s rule, fought for and won by people. It is up to the Government to enforce this rule to continue to reflect the will of the people after Brexit—and up to your Lordships’ House to scrutinise what the Government are doing about that, as these two reports do.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who said that not much attention is being paid to this by NGOs. We should pay tribute to the excellent ClientEarth, which put out a report last October highlighting how France, Denmark and Spain are, like us, failing to enforce this ban. I ask the Minister to ensure that, in ongoing talks and negotiations, we focus on doing the right thing ourselves so that we can push for others to do the right thing as well; this needs to be part of the negotiations.
A number of noble Lords have referred to the challenges of being a fisher. They need to be properly paid; we need to look at issues that also apply to our farmers and growers about the payment pressures put on them by supermarkets and multinational companies. We know that much of our stock, our catch, is sold into European markets. What kind of access will our fishers have to those markets?
In light of the food strategy for England that will come forward quite soon, we also need to think about more sustainable, closer-to-home consumption of some of our catch. I ask the Minister to ensure that his work is closely integrated with the work of the food strategy, in this area and others.
I come to a couple of specific points on these reports. Paragraph 49 of the EU Committee’s report refers to how
“Using different types of equipment could enable some fishers to fish more selectively.”
What do the Government plan to do to help and support fishers to do that?
The report also extensively covers the issue of remote electronic monitoring. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has already covered that point extensively so I will merely say that I want to ask the questions that she has already asked.
Paragraph 57 refers to a system of
“real time notifications that is useful to, and trusted by, fishers.”
We need to change systems and indeed, as other noble Lords have said, cultures so that we can reduce the choke risks for fishers. What plans do the Government have to support that happening?
Finally, there is a small area that I want to address—small in both senses of the term. Paragraph 71 refers to vessels under 10 metres not having the same ability to mitigate choke risks. What are the Government planning to do to support and help those vessels under 10 metres in particular? Those vessels, which often work locally in inshore waters and are a part of strong local economies, make a different kind of contribution and, I would say, a very positive one, unlike the giant vessels taking huge volumes from our seas and oceans. What are the Government planning to do to ensure that we have strong support for those crucial small vessels?
National Biodiversity Network Report
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the point about gene editing is that it is very important that we use the best science to ensure that we feed the world and restore nature. The whole point about the scientific endeavour is to make sure that we do both. We must be aiming for both. We cannot find ourselves enhancing the environment and then not producing enough food. We need to work on that as a joint endeavour.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the Minister referred to neonicotinoids. I am sure that he will be aware of the report from Japan in Science this week of the horrific effects documented there on the lake and fish populations. We have been through this again and again with different pesticides that arrive as a wonderful new cure and then are exposed as causing massive damage. Is it not time to stop soaking our countryside in pesticides, with the effects that we have seen on nature, and move to organic and near-organic solutions for agriculture? That has to be the way forward for nature and people.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the balance is as I have sought to describe it. Yes, we need to improve and work on soil fertility and soil health. Mixed farming is very important. However, scientific advances in integrated pest management are the way forward. We have to move to a more nature-friendly form of farming. That is important and farmers recognise that. This country can do it well.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am honoured to follow the noble Baroness, with whom I share a recently acquired—in my case—interest in fake ermine, and in many other animal welfare issues. I rise conscious that I have spent only a few days in this Chamber, yet already I have encountered great encouragement and kindness—something I will continue to rely on in the days ahead, as we face up to the stupendous chaos that is British politics.
That kindness is in spite of the fact that I am aware I am being looked at with some trepidation, arising from the knowledge that I am bringing into this House an unfamiliar kind of politics: the politics of Extinction Rebellion, of the anti-fracking stalwarts at Preston New Road and Misson Springs, and of the tree protection groups in my home city. I have been reminded of the words of a senior councillor in Sheffield who, when I invited him to join me in front of a tree-feller’s lorry in defiance of police orders, said: “You Greens are dangerous”, and scurried away. In introducing myself, I give noble Lords fair warning that we Greens are aiming to overturn the entire status quo. We want to radically transform our society, our economy, our environment and our politics. Yet I would argue—to borrow a phrase from the other side—there is no alternative.
Earlier, we heard the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, referring to the Government’s growth strategy, yet we Greens know that there cannot be infinite growth on a finite planet. That is not politics; it is physics. This new kind of politics is just what your Lordships’ House, the other place, the whole country, needs. Things will not continue as they are. We must build something new, different and much better.
I speak regularly in schools, colleges and universities, sometimes through the excellent organisation Speakers for Schools, which I commend to noble Lords. Often, I begin with an apology. On behalf of my generation—I am 53—I say to this new generation: “I am sorry. We have made a right mess of things”. But my focus is always on hope. Together, all of the generations, from the climate strikers to the oldest Member of this House, can together build something new: a far better society.
I must, early on, offer my profound thanks to my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb for her support. I know that she will enjoy hearing that phrase in the Chamber after the lonely years she has spent here working incredibly hard as the sole Green representative. I also pay tribute to the Herculean labours of Caroline Lucas in the other place. My noble friend Lady Jones has set a standard that I hope to live up to, of using this Chamber and its processes to best effect while never getting too comfortable.
I address noble Lords today specifically about the agriculture Bill. My first degree is in agricultural science, and I continue to be fascinated by the amazing and still barely understood ecology of the soil on which all our lives depend. On other occasions, I will have cause to speak further on the subject of tardigrades and nematodes, mycelium and rhizobium, but you may be relieved to hear that I am not going to do any more soil science today.
I have not seen confirmation of whether the Government’s agriculture Bill will match their previous versions. I would be delighted if the Minister, when answering, could shed light on that. I suggest that three key things should be changed. The first is the provision of healthy food as a public good—earlier, the noble Baroness the Minister referred to the Government’s aims for farming, and food was not mentioned. Secondly, the Bill must ensure that the Secretary of State has a duty to act, rather than just the possibility of acting. Finally, the promotion of organic agriculture should be prioritised as the only form of agroecology that has a recognised system of registration.
Today, however, I will follow the tradition in telling noble Lords a little more about myself, and so will range back to the personal, which, as we feminists have long known, is intensely political. So that noble Lords do not have to sit there wondering, the accent comes from Australia. I am told that I am the second Australian-born woman to enter this Chamber, and I look forward to hearing the experiences of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who was sitting opposite me earlier. Her accent has long graced this chamber, but that voice has far older antecedents. Noble Lords may not know that the first woman to speak in the other place, the suffragette Muriel Matters, who achieved that feat by chaining herself to the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery in 1908, was also Australian. At that time, my native land was known as “The Workingman’s Paradise”. It boasted the world’s first Labour Government, and it rivalled Finland as a leading place in global social progress. Today, Finland still proudly holds that place—for example, with a schooling system that provides an education for life, not just exams—while, sadly, Australia’s politics has deeply degraded.
My other political tradition is from Sheffield, or what was once known as the “People’s Republic of South Yorkshire”. Sheffield was home to the first women’s suffrage society in the UK, founded in 1842—yes, before London’s—and the adopted home of the socialist and gay rights campaigner Edward Carpenter. He was a Green before Greens had been invented. As proof, I offer the fact that he brought sandals to Britain, even making his own. Even earlier, Sheffield was home to the Chartist poet Mary Hutton, the wife of a pen-knife cutler, who wrote a poem entitled “On the Poor Laws’ Amendment Bill”, which spoke of the legislators and the great allowing the poor,
“To writhe with endless pain and misery”.
Noble Lords, particularly those on the Benches opposite me, might care to consider the continuation of that suffering today, two centuries later, and the parallels with the endless pain and misery of universal credit. I would like to think that it is uncontroversial to say that the duty of the Government is to alleviate the suffering of those most in need rather than to add to it. This is one reason why I have long been a champion of a universal basic income, something you will be hearing a lot more about from me.
But I am aware of the time, and so will leave you with one key point. We on this planet, and in this country, have enough resources for everybody to have a decent life, for the natural world to be restored and for the climate emergency to be tackled, if we share those resources out fairly. As the Green Party has long said, economic and environmental justice are indivisible. That is a mountain for all of us to climb. I hope that noble Lords will join me in that, because, to quote the American suffragette Susan B Anthony, “failure is not an option”.