Agriculture Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between David Drew and Philip Dunne

Committee Debate: 14th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Drew]

I will pass on that, because I have lost the plot at the moment. We can have this argument outside the room. However, the fact is that I am not talking about banning live exports to anywhere within the United Kingdom. We are looking purely at the trade. An argument during the referendum debate was whether live exports would end because we would leave the EU. All I am saying is that this is the opportunity for people to make their minds up on whether they want that put into legislation. It has been the subject of numerous Adjournment debates. As I said, I was quite interested in the degree to which there have been splits within political parties, as well as between political parties.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify a remark he made before getting into this debate about the Bristol channel? If I heard him correctly, he said, “For as long as the United Kingdom continues to exist”. Is it now official Labour party policy to support the break-up of the United Kingdom?

[Dr Drew]

We really are getting away from the issue. I am making the point that the United Kingdom has a clear policy on allowing live exports. So long as that stays the case, it has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. We are talking about trade between the United Kingdom and other parts—principally Europe, of course, although livestock could be exported to various different parts of the world. We choose not to, because it would be very cruel and also probably economically illiterate to do so.

We are moving the new clause to allow the debate to take place for those who believe that the ban is going to happen as a matter of course when and if we leave the European Union, when we have the opportunity to do it under WTO rules. There is some debate about whether it is going to be that easy, but we will have to face up to that in due course.

The reality is that unless we have some legislation to enable us to implement the ban, we will never do it anyway. This is our opportunity to have a debate and to see whether this legislation can stand the test of time. Without the new clause or something like it, the ban will never happen. We can have as many Adjournment debates as we could possibly want: it will never take place until and unless we are able to put it into legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Drew]

If nothing else, that gave me a chance to rest my voice.

This is an important Bill. We got it through in time—it is a good job we left enough. Although I am using this opportunity to thank everyone from both the Opposition and the Government, I hope that, to finish with, we will hear some good noises about tenancy reform. People will be watching, listening or reading even at this stage because their livelihoods depend on that, so the Minister should listen and, if nothing else, accept this final new clause.

[Mr Dunne]

On a point of order, Sir Roger. Will you advise me how I can add my thanks from the Government Back Benches to Opposition Members for the good natured way in which the Committee has functioned? On virtually every clause and amendment thus far, there has been a sense of consensus across the Committee that this is an important Bill and we need to get it right. I would also like to add my thanks to the 27 individuals who came to give evidence in our opening sessions last month and the countless more organisations outside this place with a committed interest, whatever their standpoint, to ensuring that the Bill sets out a new agricultural support framework that lasts for generations to come. I look forward to the Minister’s echoing those remarks.

Agriculture Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between David Drew and Philip Dunne

Thursday 15th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Dunne]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is not just about farm improvements, of course; it is about the rotational nature of farming. Arable farming relies on an assumption of continued occupation for a period of years, in order to adopt an appropriate rotational pattern for the use of the land over a number of years. For all those reasons, it is entirely appropriate that the Government should consider a multi-annual scheme.

Perhaps I may refer to some of the external support that I have received for the amendment, which I am sure other members of the Committee have seen as well. I am sure that it is no coincidence that during the passage of the Bill we have had the benefit of presentations elsewhere on the parliamentary estate from a large number of groups interested in agriculture, and in what happens in the environment on and around our farms. I am sure that many hon. Members will have gone to yesterday’s presentation by the wildlife trusts. There have been presentations in the past couple of weeks from Greener UK, an umbrella group of 14 organisations, all of which are supportive, including the NFU, the Country Land and Business Association and the Woodland Trust, which has also organised presentations in Parliament recently.

Also in Greener UK is the National Trust, which I visited on Friday in my constituency, and which is particularly concerned about some of the conservation measures it is introducing across its estate. I think it is the largest private sector landowner in the country, with something like 1,800 tenant farmers operating around the UK. While on the subject of the National Trust, I commend to the Minister the Stepping Stones project, in which it seeks to link together landscapes across the Shropshire Hills area of outstanding natural beauty. As he has not visited my constituency to see that work in action, I am keen to invite him to do so, because the trust wants to bring forward an environmental land management scheme, and I was impressed by what I saw last Friday. It wants multi-annual arrangements, as do the other organisations, and I strongly encourage the Minister to recognise that that is how farming in this country functions, so it is appropriate at least to consider a scheme of that nature.

The amendment would also insert a provision about having a scheme in place at the outset, not as an afterthought during transition. Whenever we move from one scheme to another, things should be set out clearly in advance, to give farmers the confidence they need to undertake projects that, as I have explained, take several years, as well as confidence that they will be able to farm appropriately in the future.

[Dr Drew]

The amendment is similar to new clause 10, which we debated previously. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on tabling it. Finance is at the centre of the Bill. Unless we get some clarification, the Bill will not, despite all the powers in it and all the good intentions, really provide certainty and security—whether to farmers or environmental organisations, which all signed up to it.

We are dealing with pretty important stuff. Although there has been some variance between the farmers’ organisations and environmental organisations, they speak with one voice on the amendment, as they did on new clause 10. We pay attention or lose their valuable support, which is a shame, because the Bill has a degree of cross-organisational support and we have made it clear that there are good things in it, which we support. We are just carrying out our Opposition role of trying to improve it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ludlow on the amendment. It is important that we have a further debate about it, and that we recognise that the money is crucial. Otherwise, the warm words will not satisfy those who feel strongly about what they will be expected to do when and if the Bill comes into force. It involves a huge cultural change in the way we support those who work on the land.

As the hon. Member for Ludlow rightly said, the proposal has received a wide range of support. I hope that that matters to the Government, and that the Minister will respond to it. It includes other things that we might want to do on the land, which is not necessarily what we have done in the past. For example, we could look at transport infrastructure or social housing, which may be a sequitur to the things we want to do to improve the environment. If people cannot live in the countryside, they cannot work in it and carry out the environmental improvements that we want. The Government have a whole raft of environmental schemes in mind, including planting woodland and alleviating flooding, but those who want to do it need to have some knowledge of the funding arrangements that will be in place. Unless that is done annually, we will not know how serious it is. We are saying that it could be done over a number of years. The Government need to report to Parliament, which means that there will be a public document showing exactly what money is being made available and what the restrictions are. We talked earlier about the devolution settlement. It is important that the Administrations outside England know exactly what moneys they will have and the purposes to which they can be put.

Greener UK pointed to the need for an independent assessor. The amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Ludlow does not do that, but Greener UK argues that it would be helpful to know the minimum and maximum amounts that might be forthcoming from the Government to do the sort of things that are necessary. The idea of multi-annual funding is that it allows the money to be vired from one year to another if it cannot be spent in the year originally intended.

I hope the Government see the benefit of the amendment. We will support it wholeheartedly. We see it not as a probing amendment, but as a very important part of the way in which the Government should be doing their business. It would mean that our countryside is healthier and funded more appropriately and transparently than would otherwise be the case.

In evidence to us, Andrew Clark made it very clear why the NFU supports the amendment. It sees it as part of the long-term commitment to allow farming to continue contracting around the environmental and land-management arrangements that the Government have in mind. He was clear about why we need the power to vire money between annual budgets. Knowing what those budgets are is absolutely crucial. The hon. Member for North Dorset, in cross-examining him, seemed quite sympathetic to that idea—as, indeed, is the hon. Member for Ludlow and, I hope, other Conservative Members.