Agriculture Bill (First sitting)

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I beg to move,

That—

(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 23 October) meet—

(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 23 October;

(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 25 October;

(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 30 October;

(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 1 November;

(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 13 November;

(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 15 November; and

(g) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 20 November;

(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:

TABLE

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I would like to make a point to the Minister about this. Regarding the witnesses, I was very disappointed to see that the National Farmers Union, Scotland had not been called in to give evidence. Given that the Bill is the subject of some dispute between the UK and Scottish Governments, it would have been appropriate at least to have Scottish Government officials down to explain some of the finer points of that.

[George Eustice]

The Scottish Government have not yet signalled that they wish to be part of the Bill. Indeed, our understanding is that they intend to pass their own Bill, which is why it was decided at the time that this Bill would not apply to Scotland. We now have a list of witnesses and a programme motion for the evidence sessions.

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[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Does that mean, Chair, that when Scotland produces its Bill it will ask for evidence from English farming organisations? Is that the logic of what is proposed?

[Deidre Brock]

The point is that elements of the Bill affect devolved legislation and competencies, so it is appropriate that at least Scottish Government officials should be allowed to put those points across to us. As MPs, surely we want to get the full picture. The Bill is the subject of some dispute between the two Governments, so surely it is appropriate that we hear about that.

[George Eustice]

I do not really have anything further to add. The Bill is predominantly for English farmers and there is a schedule for Welsh farmers as well. There is a more limited schedule for Northern Irish farmers because the Northern Ireland Administration asked for a minimalist addition to enable them to continue to make payments.

As the Scottish Government have been clear that they do not intend, as things stand, to invite or ask us to add a schedule on their behalf, we have agreed the set of witnesses that we have. I have nothing further to add.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(George Eustice.)

Resolved,

That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(George Eustice.)

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[Deidre Brock]

Q I do not know whether you have had the chance to read the report on the Bill by the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, but it is pretty scathing. It describes it as a skeleton Bill and refers extensively to its lack of detail. It states:

“The central purpose of the Agriculture Bill is to provide a framework that confers on Ministers extensive powers…with correspondingly few duties…exercisable indefinitely and without sunset clauses. They include…the ability to create criminal offences punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment”.

What areas of your organisation are you most concerned about, in view of the extensive powers that Ministers will have under the Bill and the lack of detail that the report criticises so heavily?

Thomas Lancaster: I am not sure that I have any particular concerns about our organisation as such, but we do have concerns about the lack of duties in the Bill. We think that that is a big gap.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Can you give us some examples?

Thomas Lancaster: Yes. We want to see a duty in the Bill to have an environmental land management scheme in England. At the moment, it provides the powers for that, but there is no certainty about whether Ministers will choose to use them. That is one of the few backward steps from the common agricultural policy, which through its rural development programmes requires member states to have an agri-environment scheme. Because of that requirement, there are four agri-environment schemes across the UK.

A second duty that we have called for is an annual assessment of the funding required, particularly to meet the purposes in clause 1. A third is for current and future Ministers to use the powers in the Bill to improve transparency in the supply chain and strengthen the position of the farmer in it.

Patrick Begg: I back up what Tom says. I am not sure that our organisation is worried about the powers, but we will certainly be asking for duties to fill the gaps, such as a duty to create multi-annual payment settlements. That is not exceptional; the Highways Agency do it and the Environment Agency do it for flooding. It is a question of creating confidence and certainty within the farming industry that it will stick and that people can invest with confidence. We would also wish for a duty to get an independent assessment of the quantum of money required to deliver the aspirations set out in clause 1.

Martin Lines: There are lots of powers in the Bill, but the concerns for farmers in the network are about who can use them and how, and what triggers them. Some of those powers should be duties. It is about the long-term view of how we need to manage and be managed as farmers.

Gilles Deprez: My two main concerns are about points that I have highlighted. The first—I am not sure whether it is right or wrong—is about being competitive, not only with UK farmers but worldwide, because we are a very fragmented market.

My second concern is that innovation is not really highlighted in the Bill. In chemistry, for example, there is a kind of mutual recognition: if one country recognises something as an innovation, it goes through the system a lot more quickly. I do not see that in the Bill. We must not block innovation; it needs to be key in business, in order to look at the future and be competitive.

[Colin Clark]

Q ADAS produced a report in 2016 that stated that a

“‘Public Money for Public Goods’ approach…would be a radical change and one that would certainly need to be tested for efficacy before adoption.”

Do you agree that the seven-year transition will be adequate for testing? We have heard from Mr Lines that people already have good practices. Is seven years enough time to activate a policy, considering how long it takes to grow hedges, trees and cover? Or will we have to come up with policies like those that you are already using, Mr Lines, on your farm? Patrick Begg, you mentioned the public good.

Patrick Begg: Yes. Seven years is actually a little bit longer than we have called for, but I can see why that was done; the last thing we need is a cliff edge. If you think about it, it is in fact 10 years from now—a seven-year transition is effectively 10 years from today, give or take a month or two. If you consider change programmes—this might be one—generally speaking, you need to get going with stuff, and the sense of urgency is a good stimulus for things to happen well. I think the balance of seven years is probably about right in the end.

DEFRA has a programme of tests and trials work that starts next year. That will start to land on the ground, and we will be able to test mechanisms. On seeing outcomes, we have plenty of evidence of the things that work; I do not think we necessarily need to test the outcomes. We know how to deliver the things that have been set out in the Bill; the issue is just the mechanisms by which the farmer is adequately supported to make the change and to deliver those in an effective way.

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[George Eustice]

Q Briefly, because I know we are tight on time, our understanding of farm animal welfare has developed somewhat over the past 15 years or so from the traditional five freedoms—freedom from hunger, pain, and so on—to much more of a notion of a life worth living and animal wellbeing. Do you share that view, and what are the implications for the types of schemes we should be incentivising, versus the types of approaches we should take to a regulatory baseline?

David Bowles: Absolutely. The uptake of the RSPCA Assured scheme, which the RSPCA sets standards for, is patchy. It covers about 55% of egg production in the UK, about 23% of pig production and about 30% of turkey production, but for the sheep, beef and dairy sectors, uptake is under 1%. However, as part of the scheme, the RSPCA has been doing welfare outcome assessments for the past 10 years or so, which started off with laying hens, dairy and pigs and is also now moving into chickens. We have got a lot more skilled in working out what the animal is thinking and what its welfare outcomes are. The RSPCA knows from its schemes—this is a commercial scheme—that those systems are easy to put in, that they are fairly easy to measure and inspect as part of the audit trail, and that they work. The farmers appreciate them because they need feedback in terms of how their animals are feeling as well.

We already have a lot of the science there to enable us to look at this. We would certainly welcome using those measures as part of any scheme going forward and, of course, welcome anybody coming to any of our farms to see how those welfare outcome assessments work in practice.

ffinlo Costain: A sustainable farm is, in our view, a happy and healthy farm. It is one where the animals and farmers are making progress and are both having a life worth living. It is not just about the animals; it is about the farmers as well.

I used to run a regional branch of the National Farmers Union. For many of the members that I represented, the main time that they came across metrics was when they sent an animal to the abattoir and were told that it did not quite achieve the grade that they expected it to. That was the feedback they got, and they got less money. That is really negative. We need to change that so that there is a much more positive relationship with metrics.

I take the example of my neighbour’s farm. He has big challenges with his lamb production. We would like to see an assurance scheme that measures his farm in the round—that there are what we might call iceberg metrics that are measured by the Government, partly on a farm and partly at slaughter, where we are looking at low levels of lameness, low levels of ailments such as liver fluke and low levels of antibiotic use, and measuring those things together.

My neighbour is putting in place some really interesting measures around hedgerow management, carbon sequestration and water management, which will improve sustainability at the same time as improving the health and the welfare of the sheep on that farm. If he was achieving against those three measurements together and improving year on year, he would be happier with the farming system that he has, would be earning more money and would have increasing yield at the same time as feeling good about his farm, being able to communicate that with his community and also earning additional money in relation to those public goods. That is the sort of progress that we would like to see, which is very much along the lines that the Minister is thinking of at the moment.

David Bowles: Of course it is a balance. You have to make sure that you do not make any scheme too complicated. You have to have measurements that are easy to measure and quick to measure as part of the audit scheme. It is a balance between getting that data out and making sure that the audit scheme works properly.

[Deidre Brock]

Q A lot of doubt has been expressed around the Government’s commitment to the maintenance, or indeed the improvement, of animal welfare standards in the face of future difficult trade deals. What concerns do you have about that? What commitments might you might like to see placed in the Bill?

David Bowles: The RSPCA, like the previous witnesses, has huge anxiety about future trade deals. Let us look at the number of countries that we are looking to do trade deals with. At the moment we are obviously looking to do a trade deal with the EU. We have broadly a level playing field with the EU, because we have had animal welfare standards since 1974 and they cover most of the species in the EU. Of course we would like to see them higher, but they are pretty good. The EU and the UK have probably some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, so that means that anybody else that we are trying to do trade deals with has lower standards—the only exception is New Zealand. The USA has hugely lower standards. Not only is it still using methods that are illegal in the UK, such as beef hormones or ractopamine, but it is also using standards that are illegal in the UK, such as the conventional battery cage and sow stalls.

The RSPCA would like to see an amendment to the Bill that was rejected by the House of Commons on the Trade Bill—that any trade deals would allow in only products that are produced at least to the standards in the UK. If we do not have that, we have a race to the bottom; we are just exporting our good animal welfare standards to somewhere else and we do not want to see that. We want to see a vibrant, healthy farming community in the UK, producing at higher welfare standards and giving the consumers what they want, not the bringing in of products and food that are produced to illegal or worse standards than here.

ffinlo Costain: I echo what David said, but I would also say that, in my meetings with Ministers and officials at DEFRA, I think there was a genuine commitment to improving farm animal welfare. I have been really heartened by that as we have been going forward. At the same time, there are some really challenging balances, exactly as David said. However, at the heart of this is what is the market in the UK, not only for our farmers at home, but abroad, and it is about quality. If we have lower standards coming in, it undermines our marketplace and our rural economy. It is essential that we recognise that we are never going to win a race to the bottom; we cannot. We can win a race to the top. We already have good quality products that could be much better quality in terms of welfare and the environment that we can sell as a story, as a whole product, whether that is branding, as Tom was talking about before—Cumbrian lamb or whatever—or whether it is selling branding at home; whether it is building the business case through public goods to our local communities and to the taxpayer for additional assistance in terms of land management and public goods; or whether it is underpinning the British brand and selling and promoting that quality around the world.

In addition, if we are building a market based on quality and reviving our rural economy, whether it is small, medium or large farm businesses, we will be developing new technologies and new machinery that we can also export. We want to see not only a growth in improved welfare and environmental standards, but a revival in the countryside. The Bill is a fantastic step in the right direction, but it is just framework legislation. We need to see more work in the future—for example, the gold standard work that DEFRA is engaged in.

Simon Doherty: I agree with the two previous correspondents entirely. I will not repeat everything that they have said. We have had some very encouraging, strong lines from DEFRA. The disappointment has been that there have been weaker lines from the Department for International Trade. We need to make sure that there is a join-up across Government to make sure that we are all singing off the same hymn sheet in relation to welfare, so that we do not have one part of Government saying one thing and another part doing another. Obviously, I will say this as the president of the British Veterinary Association. We feel that we are absolutely at the juxtaposition of animal health and welfare. We are here today because the role of the BVA is to represent the veterinary profession to Government. We hope that one of the outcomes across the board will be a recognition of the role of vets in veterinary public health, in animal welfare, in animal health, and ultimately in food security for the country.

David Bowles: Of course, the other way to stop this, apart from in trade deals, is to give the consumer information. At the moment we only have one mandatory method of production label, which is on eggs, and we know that that has worked. It has driven the market up to 55% now for free range eggs, because the consumers wanted that. We hope that in the Bill we get some mandatory method of production labelling going into other areas. There is a chance of getting that. I know the Government share some of that enthusiasm, and that would be really good. The consumers always say they want higher animal welfare, but some of the time they are confused because the label does not show that.

ffinlo Costain: The evidence shows that, where method of production labelling exists, at least 50% of consumers choose the higher welfare option, which is often a little more expensive. Method of production labelling is not only important in terms of helping to drive that market, but is really about improving communication. There is a big disparity between, particularly, people who live in the city, but also often people who live in the countryside as well, and the way that food is produced; I do not know whether that is driven by CBeebies. I have a four and a six-year-old and they constantly see one model of farming that does not necessarily reflect the way that farming is. Labelling and communication in general builds the case for improved prices and for commitment to local farmers, or farmers at a British level, and across the board. I think it is really important.

[Jenny Chapman]

Q I note what you say about the positive comments from DEFRA on the animal welfare that we have at the moment, but the Bill needs to be future-proof, and not all future DEFRA Ministers might be as cute and cuddly as the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth. You talked about a level playing field with the European Union. We need to make sure that we maintain at least that. I am told that we have probably the best animal welfare standards in the world. How can we make sure that the Bill stands the test of time and that we maintain that position? Some people argue that we ought to be almost pegging our standards to those of the EU so that we do not fall behind, and future Governments might experience pressure in the light of trade deals that might come in future years.

David Bowles: One of the most exciting things about trade deals at the moment—if I can use the words “exciting” and “trade deals” in the same sentence—is that we are starting to see language in them about equivalence on animal welfare standards. The EU has been a driver for this. It started with South Korea and has now got it with Chile, and it is looking at getting it with Mexico as well. That is a real incentive. We want to see similar language on equivalence with the EU, as well as with others. RSPCA Assured has shown that raising animal welfare standards can be done on a commercial basis—consumers will vote with their purses if they are given the right information and if there is enough transparency on the retailer market shelf—but some specific language on equivalence needs to be put into trade deals.

ffinlo Costain: Being in the lead is not something that continues unless you keep working at it. There are areas in which other countries are catching up with the UK, and possibly one or two in which they are starting to move ahead. It is therefore critical that we have metrics to measure the inputs and outcomes, and to understand at a national level where we want to be and how successful policy is at making that progress. We should be leaders—this is our opportunity. We will not win the race to the bottom, but we can win on quality by selling at home and selling abroad.

Look at Origin Green in Ireland. It is a unique national brand, although its climate outcomes are nowhere near as strong as what I would like to see. If we had a national brand based on metrics for climate change and biodiversity, with farm animal welfare used as a critical indicator of progress in both areas, it could be part of our gold standard work. It would underpin our progress and ensure it continues, and be a national brand that we could sell abroad. Origin Green is a really good place to look for an opportunity that we could quickly overtake and surpass in export and home production.

Simon Doherty: There is a huge commercial advantage from other parts of the world opening up to exploring improved animal welfare. We have consultancy firms such as FAI Farms that are working globally to help other jurisdictions to raise their standards towards those that we work at in Europe and in the UK.

I mentioned the underpinning research and development that is going on in the field of animal welfare. There are certainly other parts of northern Europe that are working on curly tails on pigs, for example, or improving health indicators such as mastitis or lameness in dairy cows. We have that world-class expertise across the board, and we need to continue to build on it. We also need to ensure that the funding is there to underpin that research.