Upland Sheep Farmers

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Glyn Davies]

That was the very point I was coming to.

I spoke to another farmer who came to see me with his wife yesterday, desperately worried about how his family business was going to survive. Normally, his flock produces 340 lambs to sell in the autumn. This year, he will have but 120, and some of those will have to be retained as replacement stock. The only chance of survival will be from off-farm income, and so many others are in the same position right across Britain.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech on an extremely important subject. From what I hear from my sheep farmers in Teesdale, I know that they face similar issues. I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about the media coverage. It seems to me that we have heard endless news from the United States over the last fortnight, but extremely little coverage of this problem. I hope that his excellent speech will be heard beyond “Farming Today”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

It is important that we all learn from one another. The answers will not be the same in every part of the United Kingdom, and the proportional scale of difficulties will be different. We must listen to what each other are doing and hopefully come towards the right solution, but also listen to what the farmers themselves in the constituent parts of the United Kingdom are telling us. Certainly that is what I wanted to do with regard to England. I cannot speak for what happened in Northern Ireland and say whether it was the right solution, and similarly for Wales. I can see what has been done, but it seemed to me that my responsibility was to listen to the farmers and their representatives in England, and to do what they asked me to do so far as I could, in order to mitigate the difficulties that farmers were facing.

[Helen Goodman]

My constituent, John Warren, has specifically asked me to raise this point with the Minister. He is concerned that in Scotland the National Fallen Stock Company was used to distribute state aid. He asked me to urge the Minister not to go down the same route in England. He was concerned that if he did, the aid would not necessarily reach the right farmers and the farmers who had been most severely affected. He asked if a more direct mechanism might be used for distributing the aid that will be consequent on the losses due to the bad weather.

[Mr Heath]

I will come back to that point in a moment if I may, but the most important thing is that we reach those farmers who are severely affected, irrespective of whether they are registered with the National Fallen Stock Company. I want to make that absolutely clear, and I hope that that will help the hon. Lady’s constituent.

I want to put on record how grateful I am to the local NFU in Cumbria and the farmers themselves. I will mention Alistair Mackintosh and Robin Jenkinson in Corney Fell who gave their time to explain the consequences to me and to help me to understand what they were up against. I strongly feel that as a Minister one of the best ways to respond to a problem of this kind is simply to talk to people and see for oneself, and then, I hope, take the appropriate decisions.

I also want to put on record the strong impression that I had in Cumbria that the farming community and the wider rural community have responded in a positive and big way. A lot of mutual support went on and continues to go on. People helped one another, and farmers who were not affected searched for sheep on their neighbours’ holdings when they realised that they were in trouble. That is the country way and it is what we expect, but it was happening.

People who were not connected with farming also lent their support. I will mention one group of people, an organisation that occasionally we have differences of opinion with. It was pointed out to me how profoundly helpful the RSPCA officers in the area had been, lending a hand and getting stuck in, not in strict pursuance of their duties as RSPCA officers but because they cared about the animals and the farmers and wanted to do their bit.

I will also mention the banks, because they almost universally get a bad press. It was pointed out to me how helpful HSBC has been in the area and how it has gone out of its way and bent over backwards to offer local farmers support at a time when they desperately need it. I do not know whether that was universal and whether other banks followed suit, but it is important to put it on the record when people help and are prepared to be supportive.