Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Nick Smith

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. Wight Marque celebrates the Isle of Wight’s brilliant range of food, from locally produced milk to a vast array of fruit and veg. It is a great example of how a little public money and the support of partners can really celebrate the provenance of our local food.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Farmers are facing a critical shortage of seasonal labour, and some are afraid that our food will rot in the ground this year. The Government have been asked to reverse their decision to scrap the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, and Ministers say that they are reviewing the issue, but can a decision please be made as a matter of urgency?

[George Eustice]

While we remain members of the EU, we still have free movement, and fruit farms and farmers can still source their labour from countries such as Romania and Bulgaria. We are aware that some have raised concerns about agricultural labour after we leave the EU, and we are listening carefully to their representations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Nick Smith

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Lots of farmers have been affected by the challenges we face in this first year of the new, more complex common agricultural policy scheme. A number of farmers —several thousand—had to go through a reconciliation process where we had to match some of the land-use codes they had with the land maps, which caused some complexity. I believe that the issue has now been resolved, but if she has any specific cases that are still a problem I am happy to meet her to discuss them.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Given the recent discovery of a livestock strain of MRSA in British meat products in UK supermarkets, what action is the Secretary of State’s Department taking to stop the emergence of resistant bacteria? Will she increase support to UK farmers on the use of antibiotics in meat production, to address real concerns about food safety and exports?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Nick Smith

Thursday 4th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), the floods Minister, has heard what the hon. Gentleman has said, and will be willing to meet him to discuss his concerns. My hon. Friend has already had many meetings with the many Members who have been affected by winter floods.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State says that DEFRA wants to be able to spend more on flood defences by reducing the millions paid in penalties to the EU every year. However, the National Audit Office says that the Rural Payments Agency fiasco could cost the country a whopping £180 million a year in penalties. Can the Minister confirm the most recent estimate of the amounts that are being paid to Brussels in fines, rather than being spent on British agriculture and dealing with flooding?

[George Eustice]

The “horizontal” regulation that governs the disallowance system has been changed, and the penalties that the Commission can charge, and their frequency, have increased. That is the issue of concern in this instance, rather than any particular issues involving the rural payments system. I repeat that we are spending £2.3 billion a year on flood defences, and have provided £200 million to help people to get back on their feet after the most recent episode.

Basic Payment Scheme

Debate between George Eustice and Nick Smith

Thursday 28th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[George Eustice]

Sorry, yes, I meant by the end of the month—I am sorry if I said by the end of March. We will have a final batch, which will take the figure probably above 75%, but it is not certain; that is still being worked on now.

We should highlight the fact that we worked quickly to get the dairy support fund out. It went out earlier than expected in the middle of November to help hard- pressed dairy farmers.

[Nick Smith]

I was just listening to the Minister’s comments. Will he confirm whether he thinks that the “vast majority” is 75% of farmers? Is that the definition he is using?

[George Eustice]

We could agonise over the definition of “vast majority”, but as far as I am concerned, “over 60,000” is a vast number of applications and a vast amount of work has gone into processing them.

We should recognise what has been done on the entry level and higher level stewardship schemes. Again, we had a difficult start because of the paper application process, but 97% of applicants have now had their first instalment and 60% have received their second instalment a month earlier than normal. We have made progress, but there is further to go.

Some people will ask why we cannot just pay and why things are so complicated. As the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said, there is a good reason for that. Under regulations and law, the EU requires certain inspections and verification to be carried out. The truth is that we tried to get the Commission to relax those requirements to enable us to expedite payments this year, but it refused. We cannot make those payments from the EU until those various checks and the validation of claims have been completed.

A number of hon. Members referred to communications. In November, we wrote to around 15,000 farmers whom we anticipated would not be paid by the end of January. The two primary groups are some 4,700 farmers with common land—I will come back to them—and around 9,000 farms that had inspections of one sort or another.

A number of hon. Members mentioned part-payments. We considered this, but we ruled it out and I will explain a couple of reasons why I think that we were right. Scotland has decided to make part-payments. It has 3,500 farmers and, according the latest figures I have seen, around 18% of them had received a part-payment of 70%. Compare that with this country where 70% of farmers have received everything. That is a better position to be in. Had we taken a decision in November at the end of last year to start chopping and changing plans again and messing around to try to get part-payments out, even fewer farmers might have received them, never mind receiving full payment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Nick Smith

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

The Government’s position is very clear: we want to renegotiate our relationship with the European Union and see some powers come back to the UK. We will put that to the British public in a referendum and they will decide. Should the UK decide to leave the European Union, at that point the Government would obviously set a national agricultural policy.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

DEFRA’s mismanagement of the CAP delivery programme saw very senior managers embroiled in childish squabbling. This flagship IT project then spiralled £60 million over budget. It was so useless that farmers were forced to switch back to pen and paper. With the NAO predicting millions in penalties as a result, why did the Minister not intervene to save farmers and taxpayers from this IT disaster?

[George Eustice]

I simply point out that we did intervene. We acted in March, once we realised there was going to be difficulty, to ensure that all farmers could get their applications in on time on a paper-based system, and we have worked very hard since then to ensure that we enter it on the core of the system, which has worked well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Nick Smith

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Given that farmers are struggling, may I ask by what date the last farmer will have received this year’s cheque from the Rural Payments Agency?

[George Eustice]

As with all years, the payment window runs from 1 December until June. In each year there are some highly complex cases—typically involving non-governmental organisations, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which run large schemes and do not receive their payments until later—but, as I have said, we expect to issue the majority in December and the vast majority by the end of January. We hope to issue the payments in respect of common land during February, because those cases are more complex.