Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Campbell of Pittenweem

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have nothing to declare but, I hope, a touch of practicality. It is worth recalling that the food industry, if we take it from one end to the other, is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector. It is also worth remembering that sectors such as horticulture and pigs never received any common agricultural policy subsidies; they were direct to the market.

I want to comment on two or three of the amendments, in particular Amendment 53, on urban production. We have to be careful when we talk about urban production. Allotments and growing food for your own house and family is one thing, but if it is urban production employed for the community at large, we have to be very careful. For example, there are fields around airports where you are not allowed to grow certain foods—I think that the reasons for that will be obvious. That would apply also to fields that were very close to industry where pollutants were present. The only way in which we could really make an effort in urban production, and I agree with it, is if it was under cover or under glass. It might be vertical production, for which I cannot really see why there should be public subsidies, or glass-like production using waste heat. The sugar plant at Downham Market has a glass-house next to it—the last time I was there, it was 25 acres, but I think it has gone to 40 acres—growing tomatoes. They are not allowed even to call them organic. No pesticides or herbicides are used on them, but they are not grown in the soil. That is because of the religious zealots in the organic certifiers, but they are perfectly okay, and we could be productive in tomatoes with the other glass-houses and would not need imports. I am all in favour of that. It is probably factory farming, but it is not animals. It has to be done under cover and be mechanised. That would be an effective use of urban facilities for growing more of our food.

The contrast between obesity and malnutrition is very disturbing—I shudder at that—but we should not blame farmers for obesity. I invite noble Lords to google a BBC2 documentary called “The Men Who Made Us Fat”. It was shown about five or six years ago. The sophistication in encouraging people to eat more, in bigger portions, is incredible and it is very profitable. It should not be, but farmers are not to blame on that point.

The noble Earl, Lord Devon, spoke about livestock supply. People might want to move away from livestock, but what is the problem in exporting it on the hook? We have exported for years. Before the BSE crisis, we had an incredible export performance in beef to Italy. It was cut in a separate way—I shall not mention it because it fitted a particular supermarket’s way of doing it. There was a massive amount of exports. We had the land for doing it, because of the pastureland in the west of England. If we want to cut down in certain respects, that does not mean that we should take the industry out. We should use it for export markets; that is what Brexit is supposed to be all about: we can improve our export markets. I do not really see why we should be too concerned about this.

The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, made the point that we are not really that secure. I am in favour of using our land to grow as much of our food as possible. In some ways, I resent seeing fields of renewable energy platforms when I nip up and down the motorway when they could be used to grow crops. I do not know what the proportion of it is at present, but it is not a good use of agricultural land.

I very much support the point that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, made. I said last week that there has been a massive reduction in antibiotic use in animals, which has been pushed by the supermarkets and the food retailers. However, I made the point that there is still more to do in the game industry.

In some ways, although this is a very seductive group of amendments and I could support many of them, I am more on the line of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, than that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who, as I think he promised, always has more than an ounce of common sense in what he has to say. I will talk a little about Amendment 75, which I am quite fascinated by. Although it has been rather dismissed already, if you analyse its possible consequences, they are both effectively public goods.

The amendment intends that financial support should go to farms that grow fruit and vegetables that are available, affordable and of good quality. That is certainly a public good, not least because it would contribute to food security. However, to follow the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, the more fruit and vegetables we grow, the more likely they are to be consumed. That goes right to the point about better health outcomes. Obesity and diabetes have just been mentioned.

There is also no question that too many people live in poverty in this country. Poor people have poor diets, poor health, poor life expectancy and poorer resistance. If, as a consequence of supporting food security, we are in a position to have an influence on that problem, this can reasonably be described as two public goods.

I looked up a statistic just before the debate started. Some 26% of children in this country live in absolute poverty. The consequences for their diet are obvious. If we encourage farmers to produce more fruit, vegetables and pulses, as this amendment suggests, we have a chance to have a much greater influence on the lives of these children. At first blush, it looked as though financial support had been drawn in the amendment simply for better health outcomes, but it could have a very considerable impact on farming and food security.

Finally, I adopt without question the very powerful arguments advanced by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Bennachie. He asked a number of questions that I hope the Minister will be in a position to answer.