Direct Payments to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2023

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I first declare my interest, as set out in the register, as president of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. The statutory instrument on direct payments that we are considering today is very short, and should be straightforward, but I have tabled an amendment, as we have some reservations about how the agricultural transition is being managed. This was done with no intention to confuse farmers.

Farm businesses have been facing increased volatility, uncertainty and instability and have been expressing concerns about the phase-out of direct payments against a backdrop of huge cost inflation. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, talked about the huge extra costs being faced. According to the NFU, agricultural inputs have risen by almost 50% since 2019. It says that fertilisers are up by 169%, energy by 79% and animal feed by 57%.

During a time of fresh food shortages, it is worrying that the production of salad ingredients such as tomatoes and cucumbers is expected to fall to the lowest levels since records began back in 1985. Is Defra talking to supermarkets about the need to support British farmers? The NFU survey of livestock producers found that 40% of beef farmers and 36% of sheep farmers are planning to reduce, with input costs given overwhelmingly as the main reason.

Following the survey results, and with the SI reducing payments to farmers by between 35% and 55%, I was perturbed by paragraph 12 of the Explanatory Notes, headlined Impact, which states:

“There is no or no significant impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies”.


How can there not be an impact? I also draw attention to paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which indicates that the Government intend this to be last year of the current direct payment scheme in England. It is being replaced by the delinked payment. Will that process require a further SI, or will what is in front of us today be sufficient to make that transition?

I would also appreciate clarification of the claims in paragraph 7.2, which states that direct payments are untargeted, can inflate land rent prices and can stand in the way of new entrants to the farming industry. These are quite sweeping assertions. What is the evidence base for this and what impact has the reduction in basic payments so far had on land prices and new entrants?

As the Minister knows, we have always supported the introduction of new ELM schemes and we clearly want to see them succeed, but between 2018 and 2022, Defra struggled to provide farmers with sufficient information. This unsurprisingly led to concerns, particularly against the backdrop of changes to our trading relationship with Europe, the Covid-19 pandemic, the impact of the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis.

There has been a huge number of differing pressures and uncertainty. It is no surprise that farmers are concerned and worried about all the changes that are happening. But it was very welcome that in January this year, Defra finally published the details of the three ELM schemes and provided much needed clarity to the farming sector. As we have heard, this includes a sustainable farming incentive, an expanded countryside stewardship scheme and a further round of the landscape recovery pilots.

It is important for the different options to be attractive to farmers, enabling them to produce food while helping to protect and enhance our natural environment. We have heard that this year, Defra has increased countryside stewardship payment rates and removed the caps, so that farmers can access more capital to invest in farm infrastructure, improve air and water quality and restore habitats. This is very welcome, but we believe that Defra could go further in offering support. One way could be to increase access to the higher tier options, including for hill farmers. Currently, only about 300 to 500 farmers a year benefit from this, but it has the potential to provide a flexible, effective and more attractive offer to many more farmers. Is this something the department would perhaps consider? Defra has stated that it will manage the budget in a flexible and transparent way but has not made firm allocations to each scheme. When is that information likely to be available?

We know that the successful rollout of ELMS is critical to meeting our domestic and international commitments to tackle the nature and climate crisis we face. Following COP 15, we now have international commitments to pursue more nature-friendly farming. So, while we have concerns about the lack of long-term certainty about the future that farmers are struggling with, and we still need to know details of how all this will work in practice, we do not support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

Analysis by the Green Alliance has demonstrated that a two-year delay to the phase-out of direct payments would halve the contribution of ELMS to the fifth carbon budget, leaving a substantial gap in the UK’s net zero plans. The analysis also found that retaining the previous EU scheme for an extra two years would mean that at least £1.2 billion—that is £770 million in 2023—would continue to be spent on the wealthiest farms in England: in other words, those already receiving more than £100,000 each in public subsidy in exchange for carrying out no public goods whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the Government have dithered for a number of years over the future of ELMS, which has been significantly delayed from the original start date of 2020. There was also uncertainty when Liz Truss even looked at axing it. So, January’s announcement was very helpful, but everything has been moving far too slowly, both for farmers and for our environment. Many farmers are also concerned about a gap in funding as they work out which schemes they are eligible to apply for.

My colleague in the other place, Daniel Zeichner MP, said:

“Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine the money that’s been lost in direct payments will now be replaced through environmental schemes. Farmers are losing thousands and thousands. Labour is committed to making these schemes work and unfortunately it appears there is no such commitment from this government”.


I know that the Minister is personally very committed.

The extra £1,000 that has been mentioned is not exactly a huge sum for struggling farmers, but this SI is part of the next stage in the transition to the “public money for public goods” approach to agricultural support. We strongly support that transition, and we want it to work. We need to move to a more environmentally friendly and nature-positive food production system, but we remain concerned that the complexity of the schemes currently proposed may hamper take-up. The noble Baroness mentioned the slow uptake of the scheme so far. In terms of food supply and environmental gain, that is something we simply cannot afford. We support the Government’s aims, but they just need to get on now with delivering what both our farmers and the environment so badly need.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting discussion so far. Both noble Baronesses talked about farmers in general, as if all farmers are struggling. That is not the case. A number of farmers in this country are doing very well at the moment because of the nature of the land. There are roughly 45 million acres of farmable land in the UK. Of that, 15 million acres constitute very good land, and its farmers are able to adapt and grow high-value crops at good yields. There are about 15 million acres of moderate land, and they are a serious problem; my noble friend and Defra are tackling it, and ELMS will undoubtedly help. There are 15 million acres of hill land, which again present a very difficult problem. The challenge facing my noble friend and Defra is sorting out the two less productive areas. The way they are going with ELMS is absolutely the right direction.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, who up until today has been a great supporter of the farmers, said that the high cost of fertiliser is causing farmers a lot of problems. She is right in one way, but quite wrong in another. It is entirely due to the high cost of fertiliser that more and more farmers are putting in leys and cover crops, and hill farmers are looking, probably for the first time, at soil quality—the most important thing for farmers and for us. So the situation is not all bad.

I share some of the concerns that have been raised. One reason that there has not been greater take-up—although, as my noble friend rightly said, the Countryside Stewardship scheme has just about doubled in the past three years—is that it is quite natural for farmers to think there is a better scheme coming in the next couple of months. That is causing a lot of farmers to sit back and wait to the last possible moment. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will make as clear as possible to farmers what the situation is. If farmers know what the schemes are and what the payments are going to be, they will make a decision. They have to be moved from the position where they think that a better scheme will come in a few weeks’ time.

Food Price Inflation

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. On free school meals, the Government fully support the provision of nutritious food in schools to enable pupils to be well nourished, develop healthy eating habits and concentrate and learn in school. There is so much evidence from a number of different bodies about the importance of the right nutrition to assist with learning and ensure that the school day is as beneficial as possible. We have full confidence that schools and catering suppliers will continue to deliver a quality service. As the noble Baroness will know, under this Government, eligibility for free school meals has been extended several times, and to more groups of children than under any other Government over the past 50 years. This has included the introduction of universal infant free school meals and further education free school meals, as well as the permanent extension of eligibility to children from all families with no recourse to public funds—for example, people with temporary immigration status—which came into effect in April 2022.

We are doing much more to assist households, but she rightly asked where this money is going. It is going directly to those households that need it. Farmers and producers, who are at that end of the supply chain, are being assisted, supported and incentivised in a number of ways. She will have seen measures brought in in the Budget to help farmers through fiscal changes. We are securing and ring-fencing the £2.4 billion a year that we spend supporting farmers, but encouraging them to move towards a system of sustainable farming so that they are protecting our natural capital. This secures the food supply in the long term; it is not just dealing with a temporary problem that has emanated from the alarming effect of the war in Ukraine. Of course, we need to take further long-term measures to make sure that we are incentivising farmers to continue to produce food close to those who eat it.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for their generous support, but what further measures beyond the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill are they planning to help science enable farmers to produce more in this country while at the same time improving the environment?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. Technology is our friend in tackling the needs of future generations. As part of seeing how the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill would work, I went to a laboratory in Oxford and spoke to real experts in this field. I came away extremely optimistic that, through the changes we are bringing in through such Bills, but also the incredible work happening across institutions in the United Kingdom and abroad, our ability to feed ourselves in future is perfectly feasible. It needs will from government, investment and continued support for the scientific community, which is driving this change. Also, that scientific evidence needs to feed through to the farmers, producers and processors so that they can continue to produce food affordably and in a sustainable way. I can absolutely assure my noble friend that science is at the heart of government policy on this.

Water Companies: Pollution Penalties

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend tell me whether the increased incidence of storm overflows is due to new developments being put through existing, poor systems, increased monitoring, or poor behaviour by the water authorities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The number of spills per overflow per year in England in 2021 was 29. That compares, for example, with Wales, where it was 44. It is undoubtedly the case, in a river that I know, that there is a problem. There are eight villages up that valley. Every one of those villages has increased in size—in the number of houses—over the past four decades by between 25% and 40%. There has been a consistent, decadal problem of investment to match that. We are now requiring water companies to play catch-up, and they are, in that catchment and many others. We are complying with regulations such as the urban wastewater treatment directive, which has seen £1.4 billion invested in stopping just 50 storm overflows in the River Thames. There are 14,000 storm overflows in England. To deal with them all is a massive job and will require billions of pounds of investment to restore our rivers.

Agricultural Transition Plan

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Viscount makes a very good point. One of the things that the review looked at was what was going on in the sea at the time. He is absolutely right that there are factors that can affect species and their ability to withstand a pathogen if such a pathogen exists. Those factors can include storm and tide effects and other human effects; they were certainly considered as part of the review and will be considered in any future reviews of this work.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, during the passage of the then Environment Bill, my noble friend’s predecessor as Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, promised the House that there would be a soil health action plan and that it would be a “key plank” of the Government’s policy. When is that promise going to be honoured?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am not sure, because I was not involved in any commitments made at the time of that Bill, but I will certainly look into it and contact my noble friend. I should say that soil is absolutely at the heart of our agricultural reforms. We want farmers to use it in a way that means we are protecting it. There are certain areas, such as lowland peat, where the soil is being depleted at an alarming rate. We want to make sure that the measures we have introduced are used to protect and maintain soils; and that soils can be used for all the things we want, such as cleaning up rivers and protecting our environment.

Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2022

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this SI. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has spoken in detail about the lack of ambition and urgency in the Government’s regulations on fine particulates, and previous speakers have made powerful arguments for more ambitious targets.

I fear I feel like a single-track CD that is on continual replay, continuously playing the same track or, in my case, repeating the same arguments. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am currently a member, has drawn the attention of the House to the issue of reducing concentrations of PM2.5, the pollutant causing the most harm to human health. The extensive consultation carried out by Defra drew responses on this regulation from Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Woodland Trust and Asthma + Lung UK, all of whom jail felt the annual mean concentration target—the AMCT—of 10 micrograms per cubic metre at the sites of the highest level of concentration by December 2040 was not adequate. The Royal College of Physicians has written to me saying:

“Air pollution and poor air quality are a significant and growing public health challenge. In 2016, the RCP alongside the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health published Every Breath We Take. This report examined the impact of exposure to air pollution across the life course.”


The report found that around 40,000 premature deaths every year in the UK were attributable to exposure to outdoor air pollution.

The Healthy Air Coalition stated that the EU Commission proposes that this same target, of 10 micrograms per cubic metre, be reached by 2030 —10 years earlier than Defra’s target of 2040. The Healthy Air Coalition also asked why the requirement for a minimum number of monitoring stations will not come into effect until January 2028. Without these stations it is extremely difficult to have confidence in our ability to monitor the particulates and meet the targets, even at their very unambitious levels. Defra’s response to the questions on this were that it expected the monitor network to be completed in the next three years, but it had allowed for unavoidable slippage in building, networking and testing. Therefore, the legal requirement was going to be 2028.

The consultation responses from all quarters were clear that the targets were unambitious and should be higher. Despite this, as with all the other five areas of environmental targets, no change was made to the final targets. As this is the last of the six target areas to be debated, I ask the Minister how much the consultation exercise has cost in total? How many hours of Defra staff time were spent analysing and collating the responses? Given the very large number of responses—over 181,000—were extra resources deployed and temporary staff employed in order to help deal with the level of responses?

Defra spends a lot of time consulting on various pieces of legislation. I therefore imagine that the consultation department is used to the processes involved and is efficient in collating the resulting responses. On this occasion, to totally ignore and override the submissions received, and stick to the original targets, gives a very strong impression that Defra’s mind was already made up long before the consultation started. Defra was only paying lip service to the process. Meanwhile, those who suffer from asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory tract conditions, long-term and short-term, are left with no hope of improved air quality in the immediate future. That really is unacceptable. Given the level of concern on the total lack of meaningful response to the consultation exercise, if the Minister is not able to answer my questions on costs and staff resources this evening I would be grateful if he could write to me with the necessary information and put a copy of his response in the Library.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, can I challenge the noble Baroness on what she said? While it was very interesting, she focused entirely on outdoor pollution from PM. There is a much greater problem of indoor pollution from PM, about which we know much less. There is much less monitoring of it but it comes from damp houses and from the chemicals we use; it comes from a whole range of issues. She referred specifically to the outdoors and then to people suffering from asthma. They are going to be suffering indoors as well, given the pollution inside our houses. This is why the whole of air pollution is so difficult. Theoretically, we know much more about outside pollution, which is much more heavily monitored. Even the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said how difficult it has been to reduce particulates in the City of London, despite how much the traffic has reduced. Yes, this is a hugely complex and very difficult and sensitive issue, but we need to look at it in the round. I have no doubt that by 2030 we will have a huge reduction, but it is going to be totally impossible to get to the required level for every single area in England.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone for their valuable contributions to this debate. To answer directly the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I say that this is not about a lack of ambition. I have had many opportunities to speak in the House on this issue and I share entirely noble Lords’ ambition to achieve it, but we have to comply with the law. That is why the regret amendment, praying in aid 5 micrograms per cubic metre, is not achievable.

The World Health Organization is entirely right to push countries to be ever more ambitious, but we have to comply with Section 4 of the Environment Act. To do that, anybody who is in government or aspires to government cannot just stand up and say, “We want to achieve more”, in the full knowledge that it is impossible. We would therefore be breaking the law and I am not prepared to do that. However, I entirely accept that there are real and genuine concerns and I want our Environment Act, which is world-leading, to deliver ever greener and more environmentally friendly measures.

The EU is also mentioned in the regret amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is absolutely right: it seeks to achieve 5 micrograms per cubic metre, but we have to achieve the target that we set. We cannot just pluck one out that sounds good and makes the Government look as if they are listening to every single campaigner who wants a reduction, quite understandably. We want to produce a target that we can achieve, and we can set out clearly how we are going to do it.

To say that Ministers have somehow fiddled with the evidence to be less ambitious, for whatever reason, is absolute nonsense. The suite of targets that we consulted on was the result of significant scientific evidence, collected and developed over preceding years, and included input from evidence partners and independent experts, supported by over 800 pages of published evidence. We have full confidence in the final suite of targets, which represents a robust analysis of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that this was a pessimistic view, but in government you can set a target and seek to achieve it before the date. We think we can get to the low-hanging fruit and show a trajectory much earlier than the date of 2040.

Avian Influenza: Game Birds

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend confirm that, when decisions are taken, they will be made on the best scientific evidence and not emotion or by those who shout the loudest? Has he seen the latest thorough scientific research which shows that shooting is beneficial to biodiversity in the same area?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is right to raise this point. My department will make decisions on the basis of evidence. We will not be swayed by those who say we should allow activities like shooting regardless of the risks or by those who use this tragic outbreak as a hook on which to limit shooting or even ban it. We will make evidence-based decisions. However, we better make sure we are thinking of the counterfactuals as well, such as £2 billion of investment to some of the most remote parts of the country and 74,000 jobs. These are factors we also have to consider. If a shoot no longer exists, there will be no predation control, and cover crops being planted and other activities which are of massive benefit to wildlife in this country will no longer take place. That needs to be remembered.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, when genetic technology is mentioned, many of us still get alarmed because we associate it with GMOs and remember our press in an unedifying moral panic using dramatic headlines such as “Frankenstein foods”. However, with precision breeding, we need to look deeper than the headlines and the shroud-waving, shrill screams of the “anti” campaigners, which are more often semantic than scientific. I believe many are playing on popular misconceptions and a general lack of knowledge about the science of genetic improvement or breeding.

What is breeding? My noble friend Lord Roborough called it “imprecise”. At its most basic, it is the random recombination of literally hundreds of thousands of genes of living organisms. There is nothing new to us in that; us humans have been doing it for 10,000 years. Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified now. Thus, there is nothing particularly natural about farming. For example, wheat is not a natural food. It is a wheat grain that has been genetically modified from grass. Equally, my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond’s guide dog is a genetically modified wolf. There is nothing new in it.

As it involves such a random recombination of genes, I have heard breeding described as like playing a fruit machine—not with three or four reels, but with several hundred. Over time, as our understanding of plant genetics has increased, the process of breeding has become more sophisticated, with each new advance improving the plant breeder’s chances of hitting the jackpot. Much of the success of plant breeding, for example, is based on invasive laboratory-based techniques such as protoplast fusion, doubled haploidy or somaclonal variation, to name but three. All of them, it could be argued, are as difficult to understand as “precision breeding”, if not more so. All the questions the noble Lord, Lord Winston, raised about precision breeding could equally be asked about what is happening now.

Despite these advances, plant breeding remains a lengthy, research-intensive process. It can take up to 15 years to develop each new crop variety. Precision breeding techniques such as gene editing allow scientists a tool to control adjustments to a living organism’s existing DNA, when these changes could occur in nature or in traditional breeding. That is worth stressing. The Bill is absolutely clear and precise that the changes could occur in nature or traditional breeding. As my noble friend Lord Jopling reminded us, it does not permit the introduction of a new gene from another species. That is why the result is not a GMO. Its great advantage is that it speeds up the process considerably by many years in the same way that keyhole or minimally invasive surgery has transformed the ordeal of a full-blown surgery.

By taking products which would equally have been bred conventionally out of the scope of the GMO rules we inherited from the EU, the Bill will realign our regulations with the mainstream approach taken elsewhere in the world. Countries such as Australia, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and the United States do not treat the products of these techniques as GMOs but rather as conventionally bred products. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was right that there are now strong indications that the EU will revise its position and follow the example of this Bill.

Some argue that precision breeding is unnatural. Many of us enjoy a glass of craft brewed ale. It is often made from golden promise barely, as was most Scotch whisky in the 1970s and 1980s. This excellent barley was created by bombarding seeds with gamma rays from cobalt-60 isotopes in a nuclear reactor to introduce random mutations, then picking out the seeds with a desirable character. What is natural about that? I have not found a beer drinker or a Scot who likes a 40 year-old malt who has changed their mind at all when I mention the origin of their beer or whisky.

Exempting gene-edited products from GMO provisions does not mean that they are no longer subject to regulation. I welcome that the UK has well proven and robust regulations to improve new plant varieties, underpinned by the general requirements of food safety, novel food and environmental protection laws. However, we will need to look closely at Part 3 of the Bill, as the current performance of the Food Standards Agency in regulating GM feed import dossiers does not inspire confidence that implementation of these provisions will be either light touch, low cost or proportionate.

The first tranche of GM feed import applications approved by the FSA lagged behind the EU by more than 12 months. What action is my noble friend the Minister taking to ensure that the FSA is not allowed to stifle the good intentions of the Bill through bureaucracy and drive up costs so high that it is uneconomical for the smaller seed merchants producing less popular crops such as vegetables or for farmers to grow new varieties competitively? We do not want to be in the hands of only the international firms and to have to import seeds when we could produce our own.

I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Devon, that precision breeding will benefit our environment hugely, as it will help minimise our environmental footprint by enabling increased and better production of food. It was very useful for the House to hear the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, about Africa. Everybody and every country in the world stand to benefit from properly regulated precision gene editing, but will my noble friend the Minister confirm that in Defra precision breeding will not be regarded as a single, silver-bullet solution? It needs to be adopted as part of a broad toolbox of technologies and management approaches incorporated into farming systems to encourage sustainability, increase food production under climate change challenges and protect unproductive areas for the benefit of conservation. It should not allow farmers to farm more productively yet shirk their responsibility to farm sustainability or dedicate more land to nature and to maintain the high animal welfare we already have.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, was right to say that this Bill is a game changer. It deserves our support.

Food: Imports and Security

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that food inflation adversely affects those on the lowest incomes and she is right to raise the issue of healthy food for children. We have increased the value of our Healthy Start vouchers to £4.25 a week and spent around £600 million a year ensuring an additional 1.25 million infants enjoy a free, healthy and nutritious meal at lunchtime following the introduction of the universal infant free school meal policy of 2014. I am very happy to keep her and other noble Lords abreast of other conversations we have in the context of food and the work happening across government to help families deal with the cost of living crisis.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, could my noble friend assure us that, when he is helping to increase the productivity of farming in all its spheres, it will be done with the best science available, so that it will improve not only farming but nature at the same time?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We operate on the basis of the best scientific evidence. Sometimes the evidence presented to Ministers can be conflicting, and we have to make a value judgment. Scientific advice underpins our new farming systems, and there is a determination to produce food sustainably and reverse the catastrophic declines in species that we have experienced in recent decades—which, as the Dasgupta review pointed out, has an economic cost as well as a cost to our environment.

Climate Change and Biodiversity: Food Security

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for securing this debate and the amazing tour de force of her speech. Food security is a huge area, but she covered most of it and I shall not attempt to try to do the same. I am also glad to see my noble friend on the Front Bench; I hope he has a good deal of Araldite to keep him there a bit longer, because we need his experience and knowledge.

It is also a pleasure to welcome the recently published government food strategy. I should like to mention three aspects in particular: the commitments to maintain the current levels of domestic food production, which is very important; to a separate horticultural strategy; and—such good news to me—to develop a land-use strategy. At long last: we have been banging on about this for many years and have always had the thumbs down from Defra. At long last, the Government will produce a land-use strategy next year, and I look forward to it. However, I feel it is a bit of a cart before the horse, because the Government are half way through the ELMS programme, and we needed a land-use strategy before a policy for the land.

It is good to see the change in Defra’s approach, because the past decade has not been its finest. In the first part of the past decade, it flirted with sustainable intensification in agriculture. That followed Professor John Beddington’s Foresight report—many of your Lordships will remember it. No sooner had that gone cold and started to collect dust than the pendulum swung and Defra moved off in totally the opposite direction, on a rather nebulous path to sustainable agriculture. At long last, the pendulum is a little more central.

I fear that in the past few years, Defra has been too influenced by some NGOs and well-meaning environmentalists who have rather a picture postcard view of the country and what farming was about. Ideals were based on emotion rather than science and fact. I now want to concentrate on the importance of Defra making all its decisions on hard, provable science. Without that, we will not get the resilience and sustainability in our farming system that we so badly need, as just highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

Let me start with production levels. I go back to the 1960s, when I was working on farms before I went to agricultural college. If we had kept the same yields as we achieved then, we would have to farm 85% of global land surface, rather than the 35% we do at the moment. That is a huge credit to our farmers, not just in this country but throughout the world, who have increased their production to keep us fed as they have. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude, and we rely on them to keep us fed in future. Can my noble friend confirm that the strategy set out by Henry Dimbleby in his National Food Strategy will be followed by the Government: that is, to have high-yield farming, low-intensity farming and natural habitat? It is important that there are these three different parts.

Conservation scientist Andrew Balmford said:

“Most species fare much better if habitats are left intact, which means reducing the space needed for farming. So areas that are farmed need to be as productive as we can possibly make them.”


That will be anathema to some people, but it is absolutely vital because we must improve the biodiversity. Is it possible to farm in the way that Henry Dimbleby suggested? It is; we have been doing so for 30 years at least. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, in its Allerton project, have been doing exactly this. It has increased the number of farmland birds, productivity and the areas of land subject to wildlife and to low-intensity farming. It can be done, and I hope the Government will use that as a template for the future of farming in this country. That was a question I posed to my noble friend Lord Gardiner of Kimble when he was a Minister; I am glad to see him in the House. He did not give me an answer then, but I hope that my noble friend the Minister will give me an answer today.

It was the late Harold Macmillan who allegedly said, “Events, dear boy, events”. The question of Ukraine and what it has done to farming was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, but it shows how resilient and adaptable we must be in the future, to adapt to all the new circumstances thrown at us.

My penultimate point is to ask my noble friend about the soil health action plan for England. Many of us were delighted when we got a commitment from my noble friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park that there would be a soil health action plan. Alas, Defra seems to have gone to sleep on it. It was promised to me in a Written Answer in the spring. Well, spring is a long time away. I have followed that up with Written Questions but there has been obfuscation. I wonder whether we were accidentally misled by my noble friend, or whether there is a new policy in Defra. Can my noble friend tell me what the up-to-date situation is?

In conclusion—this is all related to science—I pay a particular welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. Being a scientist, she is exactly the sort of person we need in this House, to help us and guide us through our deliberations. Some of our hard—perhaps crusty is the wrong word—farming and environmentalist noble Lords are in the Chamber at the moment, and the noble Baroness will get to know us all pretty well in a short time.

Sewage Disposal in Rivers and Coastal Waters

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for procuring this debate. I totally agree with him that the discharge of sewage into our rivers is a disgrace in the 21st century; it should not be happening. It was not the intention when we privatised water, and I declare my interest as the Minister for Water at the time. I say to the right reverend Prelate that I am sorry that we are in the state that we are but I assure him that the investment in water, clean drinking water and pipe renewal has increased incredibly because of privatisation, and I dread to think what the situation would be if it were still in the hands of the taxpayer and we did not have access to that private finance.

I am a little surprised by the timing of this debate because a lot has happened in the last two years and it seemed to me that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, was really speaking about the situation two years ago. He mentioned the Environment Act, and I did not come here to defend water companies or the Government, but I think it is time to put a little perspective into this. The Environment Act was improved hugely in your Lordships’ House; I was glad to be part of the group that secured that change. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, did not talk about the Storm Overflows Taskforce that has been set up. He did not mention that, under the Environment Act, by 1 September the Government have to produce a storm overflows discharge reduction plan, so I would have welcomed this debate after the Summer Recess—after 1 September. I need to ask my noble friend: are the Government on time to produce this report by 1 September? In that report, we will be looking for a step change in how the money will be spent and the progress that will be made, and a much tighter timetable. I agree with everything the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said about this, but until we get this report on 1 September, it will be very difficult meaningfully to challenge the Government. All eyes will be on my noble friend for that report.

To dump sewage into water is a complete waste of an asset. Sewage is an asset; it contains phosphate, nitrates and organic matter. As we know, phosphate is a mined commodity and most of its deposits are in Russia, so it will be even more scarce. Sewage is a resource that should be utilised and put back on the land. There should be absolutely no need for any sewage to be discharged into waters in future.

The future is the key question. It cannot be done immediately; it is horrendously expensive. We discussed this during the Environment Bill and got quotes of hundreds of billions of pounds under one option and under £100 billion in another. A step change in the programme needs to be made to improve the situation. I once again have to thank our Victorian engineers for providing a sewerage system that still works, partly, in the 21st century. The way they did it is remarkable and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

The Motion refers only to sewage disposal, but there is a much wider issue: the whole issue of water needs to be looked at in context. I therefore turn to farmers. There is a big opportunity under the new environmental land management schemes to get farmers to work in clusters to improve a whole river system. Along with some other Peers, I was fortunate to have a briefing from the Minister yesterday on what will happen with ELMS. He gave the example of the Ridgeway, a walkway crossing lots of local authority areas. I suggest that, equally, there should be clusters of farmers not only in the catchment area but working together along the whole river. Unless farmers work together, we will not get the changes we want.

I also ask my noble friend about the role of the Environment Agency. I was very impressed yesterday when a lot of emphasis was given by the Minister and his officials to the necessity for Defra to work with farmers and gain their trust. Can the same be said of the Environment Agency? I have not found many farmers who trust it, yet they are an integral part of how we will manage wastewater. What was the role of the Environment Agency in the construction of the chicken farms along the Wye, where there has been so much pollution? Was it involved in that? Did it give an opinion on what the effect of the discharge of all this poultry manure would be? If it was not involved, ought we not tackle the planning system to make certain that it is?

This needs to be tackled holistically. It is no good just blaming water companies; it must be tackled at source by independent regulators such as the Environment Agency and farmers need to be more responsible. As your Lordships know, I am a great supporter of what farmers do. They will produce good food in the best way they can, but they have been directed by politicians to farm in a certain way. At long last, we might be getting into a much better system of farming for the future. There is hardly a farmer I know who does not want to work more closely with nature than they have been able to in the past months. Can my noble friend tell me about that and the Environment Agency? Will he instruct it to work as closely with farmers as Defra is, to try to gain some trust from them?

Another group of people who need educating and admonishing is us. We are the polluters—the people who, as my noble friend Lady Altmann said, put wet wipes in lavatories and throw things away that we should not—who help block up the water companies’ pipes, which causes some of the discharges. We waste far too much water. There needs to be a big education programme for us as individuals to realise what damage we are doing, because a lot of us are totally unaware of it.

I move to the question raised earlier of developers having the right to connect to existing sewerage systems—I am sure my noble friend Lady McIntosh will pick up on this, as we were on the same side on this during the Environment Bill. If the existing sewerage system is overloaded and there is a demand for new houses, with planning permission granted, we will get storm overflow systems. We have a real problem. If we do not discharge it into rivers or the sea, what will we do with it until we get a better system? The answer is that it will be put on to our streets and cause far worse pollution. We need to look at this much more holistically and stop the problem in all areas as well as giving the water companies the incentive and drive to produce answers at their end on a much quicker timetable.

My final point, looking at this holistically, is on our aquifers. Much of the problem we have in our rivers is due to them being so low, particularly our chalk streams. This is because the aquifers are being depleted. Until we can start refurbishing our aquifers to get them back to where they should be, we will always have a problem in our rivers. With less flow, you have less sedimentation and get smaller fish, less biodiversity in the river and more stormwater problems. One of the effects of climate change is that we will have many more localised storms: one area of the river might be perfectly fine, but if the river is at a low level, if you get a massive storm in another area, downstream you will have a stormwater problem.

We need to get our river flows up; that will be a huge task for my noble friend but I hope that, as part of the environment plan, the Government will look at this and take action so that we take less out of the aquifers and more out of the river as it gets towards the sea. In that way, we will benefit nature and the environment throughout the river and stop some of this quite unnecessary disposal of sewage into the water and seas.