Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister knows how much I respect her, and I also respect Daniel Zeichner in the other place. Daniel, in particular, has spent many years in that portfolio, and I am conscious that these may not have been their decisions. That aside, that is the joy of collective responsibility.

The transition that has happened as a result of leaving the European Union was set out under then Secretary of State Michael Gove, who will shortly be coming to this place. I am not pretending otherwise: I was Secretary of State and inherited a plan that was unpopular with a lot of farmers, going from certainty of income to something a bit more uncomfortable. But it was the right thing to do to have a transition, recognising, as has been pointed out by the Minister—and here I disagree with my noble friend who just spoke—that just 10% of landowners were receiving half the funds. It was important to make these changes towards a more positive environmental aspect to our agriculture, recognising a lot of the harms that had been done—not intentionally—without that understanding of what some agricultural practices had started doing to biodiversity right across the country, including polluting rivers.

Back in 2018, when I was a Minister in Defra, I signed the farming rules for water to try to make sure that we began to turn circle, so that we started to see improvements. Indeed, we have seen improvements in pretty much every river across England in the last five years, none of which, however, are necessarily meeting the ecological or chemical standards. By the way, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland did not adopt these regulations. Nevertheless, there has been progress: the slurry grants, for example, helped by SFI payments more recently, will continue to bring rewards.

I appreciate that there are many Liberal Democrat Peers here to support their fatal amendment. I am not going to get into the constitutional rights and wrongs of that, but I gently point out to them that when the Agriculture Act was debated in this House, they put forward an amendment to reduce the transition period from seven years to five, so as to accelerate the transition, because they wanted more money to go into the environment a lot quicker. I am really pleased they have had a damascene conversion regarding the importance of how we support farmers, but I wish they had not put forward that suggestion back in 2020, during the design of the very schemes we are discussing today.

During my time in Defra, I was concerned. When I arrived, the first option involved soil, which, by the way, is critical not only to the future prosperity and productivity of farmers and the profitability of farming, but to the prosperity of the planet. It was right that the initial focus of Defra was treating soil well and making that the fundamental cornerstone of bringing about improvements in a variety of ways.

One of the things that concerned me was that, as we started to see the escalator—or perhaps the see-saw, if you like—moving from one to the other, we saw that although many farmers could participate, we needed to offer farmers a lot more as their income from BPS fell and we eventually transitioned to delink so as to get away from the EU rules. We needed to open up the number of options more quickly to allow more farmers to look at how those options could help them achieve the outcomes that we wanted to achieve through the environmental land management scheme.

I can honestly that say a lot of thought went into this. I had been in the department from 2016 to 2019 and when George Eustice was the Agriculture Minister. We started discussions early on about how this would work, and this is where we ended up with the seven-years proposal. Not only that, in the Agriculture Act we included a power to be able to extend beyond seven years. When considering some of the options when I was Secretary of State, I deliberately chose to act against the advice of officials, who wanted to set the taper all the way to the end of the seven years. I was concerned even at that point that it was not clear to the department or to Ministers, and I was afraid that the analytical capabilities of the RPA seemed not to be up to it. I was considering extending the transition period for delinked payments beyond the seven years, to make sure that we were not in a situation where the 10% of landowners and farmers who were getting the money were getting even more of the 50%. We wanted to make sure that farms were still viable. That is why we did not set at a particular time the final few years. It was to give us flexibility, so we could see what was going on and see whether farmers were taking up the options.

As the Minister has accurately reported, we now have more farmers involved in these agricultural environmental schemes than ever before. In the times when the UK moved part 2 of the BPS up to 15%—the maximum allowed—we had even more, and that was a good thing. But it was important that we had that flexibility, which is why I am concerned. Having got farmers to look into this, we put money in to allow them a payment to consult to help them think about how they were going to use their land. We knew that that could not just come from their own pocket. That is why we initially put in a £1,000 payment and then £2,000 in order to access that.

We changed the rules, so that you did not have to have received BPS before. Many farmers around this country were not getting any BPS at all; they were actually doing environmentally friendly things but were not getting substitution income. I choose as an example Suffolk, because that is where I used to represent, where many free-range farmers were not eligible for BPS. We changed the scheme for, for example, the pig industry—the entire pig industry was not eligible. We changed that rule because we recognised that, if we wanted to reach the environmental targets that both Houses had voted on, we needed to make sure that as many farmers and landowners as possible would get involved.

We cannot expect them necessarily to do that for free. There are plenty of rich landowners who, out of the goodness of their heart, might want to do it, but as my noble friend Lord Caithness pointed out, and as I have pointed out in farming debates before, there is sadness in where we are today. I have already seen it: farmers I visited when we were discussing how to make some of these things work are now busy ploughing up the cover crops that they planted which are no longer viable to keep the family business going. That is a huge sadness.

I am conscious that the Minister today will probably share in that sadness. It is a real sense of regret. The Government must take away the fact that, for all the talk of food security, and despite the fact that more food will be produced—as I am sure it will be—that will be at the harm of having a combination of what ELMS was seeking to achieve.

Candidly, there has been a lot of talk about underspends, but I have to say that it is quite pathetic. We always knew that this transition would be a bit like a see-saw—there would probably be a bit of an underspend, though not that much in terms of the percentage of the overall budget—but, as we opened up more options, we knew that more SFI money would be needed. That is why it was carefully managed. I am concerned that we are in this situation today, as has been pointed out, despite assuring farmers that they would get six weeks’ notice of when a scheme was going to close. Ideally, we would move to a rolling option so that it would not close, but I appreciate that this was not the practice of previous years. That was designed, again, to recognise the different seasons and the different demands on farmers. To suddenly shut it was really poor—really shabby. That is why I have advised members of the NFU and farmers locally that they should first complain to Defra and then go to the parliamentary ombudsman, because I have no doubt that this is maladministration.

I am also concerned that, in the Explanatory Memorandum to the SI, the Minister has stated that there was no problem in terms of the ECHR. Under A1P1, the expectation of receiving grants is an asset, and I have no doubt that, if people were to make a legal claim against that, they would certainly get compensation too.

In terms of where to head, there is a real issue for farming. It is not just about the inheritance tax but about the agricultural APR, the BPR and all the things that farmers spend, thinking of the long term; yet all of that is being taken away. I used to think that Labour cared about the countryside, but it does not feel that this is the case. It does not feel like it cares about rural communities, which I am sure will be looking at those Members of Parliament who voted for the SI at the other end of the Corridor.

There is a bit of a trend here. I was concerned to read in Hansard that, when the Commons debated this, the impact assessment statements were not updated because they were done in 2020 with the Agriculture Act. However, the plan was very clear then: it was set out in the Bill that there would be seven years of transition. That was the expectation set by the Government at the time. It is a true matter of regret that no impact assessment was updated.

Many of us will have spoken to farmers. According to the transparency, sadly, the Agriculture Minister did not meet any farmers between October and December 2024, when this change in policy would have been considered. However, as I said, I respect Daniel. He has been a considered shadow Minister and now Minister, but we should not be in a situation where farmers are hitting a wall. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will be killing off things such as the biodiversity metrics, which my noble friend referred to, and we will see intensification.

For those reasons, I support my party today in expressing regret. I am conscious that Members in the elected House have already made this determination, but they should do that knowing that they need farmers and landowners to produce food and that, without them, we will not achieve the environment and climate targets that have been set. It is for that reason that I support the regret amendment tabled by my noble friend.

Farming and Rural Communities

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Roborough for having introduced this debate. His eloquent speech at the start was full of detail and excellent suggestions on how things could be better if the Government listened. I try not to get too political in these debates, but I am conscious that, while the Minister is from a very rural area—a magnificent part of the country—it is worth noting that all the Commons Ministers represent urban areas. That is why I feel that there has been a lack of consideration and true understanding of some of the impact of recent decisions that have been made on the farming community but on rural communities too.

There is often an assumption that rural communities are wealthy, but that is simply not the case. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans talked about rural strategy. A couple of years ago, the previous Government produced something called Unleashing Rural Opportunity. It was the one time I was able to get a map into a particular document showing that contrast and challenging other Ministers at the time but also the country as a whole to see how stark the variation is.

So what can be done? Unfortunately, confidence is now trashed by not only the actions but by the proposals to be made—particularly in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. I am sure that we will debate it at length when it arrives in this place, but I hope noble Lords understand quite how bad this has got. When we think about the relationship—the unfortunately regrettable relationship—that Natural England has with a lot of our farming community, for it to be given powers to compulsorily purchase land means not only putting it in the wrong hands, because, if anything, it should be done by the Secretary of State, potentially delegating, but it completely destroys the nature markets framework and the approach of bringing private finance into the sector. Just last week, Steve Reed, the Defra Secretary, was right to praise the standard that has come out to open up this market, building on work from two years ago. It is great that we have finally got there, but the Government do not see the irony that giving powers such as this begs the question of why farmers should be bothered to get involved now in the first place.

When we come to debate the SI in a couple of weeks’ time, after the Recess, we can get more into how the money is being spent—and I am conscious that, with the change in paying farmers away from the guaranteed fixed payments there was always going to be a sort of see-saw when that moved over. People might not initially take up the proposals but they would understand, learn and commit—and we have seen the huge level of commitment. I genuinely hope that farmers are making complaints to the department, because I believe that serious maladministration has been done by pulling the plug against an expectation—and not by going through judicial review but by going straight to the department and the ombudsman.

We need farmers. We need landowners and rural communities to help not just with food production but with the future of our planet. It is about the topsy-turvy difficulties with which they are living—and our farmers are the original friends of the earth. Yes, there have been some really poor farming practices, which we have later recognised, which have now been changed. But we need to bring those people with us.

On one other point that I wanted to make, on housing, I am concerned about the proposal to adjust some of the planning decisions. Noble Lords will find that most councils are not nimbys, but when they are faced with an 82% increase for housing in east Suffolk and no changes in London, where the housing demand is really strong, that will put pressure on not just the fields but the villages and those small communities. By the way, at the same time, housing associations are flogging off the houses in those villages so that they can release capital to build more houses, they say, but they are doing that 60, 70 or 80 miles away—very close to the new areas of growth. It is just ridiculous.

There are other things that worry me about council officers taking decisions, when local plans have already set the housing densities and all of a sudden developers come along and say that they do not want to build at that density any more. What councillors and Ministers are not realising is that as a consequence even existing targets are going to take two or three times the amount of land to build the houses that are already there—so just imagine now being expected to double it.

We are in a difficult time, and I know that the Minister is very much a champion of rural areas. I genuinely hope that she can persuade the rest of the Government to be so too.

Sustainable Farming Incentive

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

We will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and then from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness’s question references a lot of the longer-term work that Defra is doing to get these things right. Regarding solar farms, the land-use framework is designed to look at things such as where we put energy, where the best-quality agricultural land is, where we put housing and so on. The land-use framework looks to address much of that.

Regarding what farmers should be doing, whether their first priority is to produce food and so on, we are developing the food strategy and the 25-year road map for farming. Both are looking at how we address this and how we ensure that we have high-quality, sustainable food production in this country for us to become as self-sufficient as is practically possible. These are important long-term pieces of work that the department is doing. We wanted to move away from short-term decision-making that did not deliver in the long run. A big criticism of what has happened with the sustainable farming initiative is that it was too short-term. Taking that bigger picture view, to give farmers certainty for the future, is a really important piece of work that the department is doing.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I know that the Minister is a friend of farmers and recognise her experience in Cumbria and her previous time as a Member of Parliament. She will know that farmers are disappointed. The money that is available through SFI was always intended to increase over the five years of the agricultural transition, so it is no surprise that more and more farms have come in. A record 65,000 are now in agri-agreements. I am really worried in a different way about the intensification of food production, which will actually hamper the progress that had been made in getting farmers signed up to nature. Let us be candid: the ambitious but practical nature targets can be achieved only with the help of farmers and landowners across our country.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a really good point about the increasing intensification of farming, and that is something we do not want to see. Our focus has to be on high-quality sustainable food that we can buy locally, and on farmers being able to support the country. We said in our manifesto,

“food security is national security”

and that is very true. It is incumbent on us as the Government to look at how we deliver on that promise.

High Seas Treaty

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The UK will continue to be proactive in preparing for implementation and entry. We are committed to partnering with others, in particular the global South and the Commonwealth Secretariat, to ratify and implement the agreement. We are actively engaging in that. The first meeting will take place at the UN in New York this April. We very much support this, and we are working with others to move forward.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, as Environment Secretary, I visited several marine protected areas in 2023. I accompanied my noble friend Lord Ahmad when the United Kingdom signed the agreement in New York. I am really concerned, given that officials had shared with MPs and Peers last year that a Bill would be ready by the end of 2024. I am sure that there is sufficient agreement on both sides of the House to get this legislation through in time for the conference to which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred. It would be really embarrassing for the United Kingdom not to be a full member of the first UN ocean COP in June.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Let me confirm that the Government are completely committed to ratification of the BBNJ agreement, in line with our determination to re-invigorate the UK’s wider international leadership on climate and nature. We are working on the measures needed to implement the detailed and very complex provisions of the agreement before we can formally ratify.

Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2024

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on introducing the regulations before us, which I broadly support. I will direct my questions to two specific areas.

The Minister mentioned that guidance will be given to councils on the separate collections. My concern is around what guidance will be given by councils to households in particular. I remember chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee at the time of the “horsegate” scandal, where people found that they were eating prepared foods—usually lasagne—made from horsemeat, not beef. It ended, I think, a lot of people’s desire to carry on eating these pre-prepared, highly expensive, undernutritious, highly salted foods. However, if you are a householder and you have one of these trays in front of you, it normally goes, I assume, in your food waste because it is highly contaminated—or the packet that the lasagne I have eaten was in will have to be rinsed sufficiently to ensure that it is not contaminated.

Who is going to guide households on what to do with such prepared food, where it is difficult to get rid of the residual food waste? How does the Minister intend to ensure that, if it goes into the paper recycling, which will now be a separate collection, this will not lead to greater contamination? How will guidance be given to households to ensure that there is no cross-contamination? How does the Minister plan to ensure that there will be no increase in cross-contamination because of the contaminated stuff going into the wrong recycling bin or plastic bag—whatever it is called—that we are going to be issued with?

I would also like to press the Minister on ensuring that a strong message will go out from the Government to councils that there will continue to be a mandatory weekly food waste collection. Anything less frequent than that will lead to vermin and a lot of highly undesirable threats to households, through no fault of their own.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I made my maiden speech last week simply to make sure that I could speak in today’s debate. I congratulate the Minister on bringing these regulations forward; it is fair to say, I think, that they have been a long time in gestation. I recall, back in 2018, the resources and waste strategy setting out the idea of trying to get consistent recycling. I have to say, when I became the Secretary of State a while ago, I worked quite hard on this issue to try to get simpler recycling to achieve the outcomes that the Minister has set out.