Oral Answers to Questions

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (David Rutley)]

Our new Secretary of State’s commitment to animal welfare is very clear. The Government share my hon. Friend’s abhorrence at the thought of eating dogmeat. I recognise both the substantive and symbolic nature of the issues he raises. As he knows, I am exploring actively with colleagues what else we might be able to do to send the clearest possible signal that this behaviour should never be tolerated.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

Does the Minister share my concern that the Environment Agency states that Yorkshire Water has unacceptable environmental pollution performance, and that Yorkshire Water discharged sewage into the River Wharfe on no fewer than 123 days last year?

[Dr Coffey]

The Government absolutely take that seriously. Investment in sewerage has seen a huge reduction in phosphorous and ammonia entering waters, and the Environment Agency is very active on the issue. It undertakes checks of the ecological health of rivers regularly and it will, as will Ofwat, take action against Yorkshire Water when it fails.

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[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I find it an interesting idea that I have a Department, but the Church of England will seize the initiative next year; it is a great year for anniversaries in the Church of England, with the Pilgrim Fathers and Thomas à Becket, and it will be a year of cathedrals. The Association of English Cathedrals will provide a pilgrimage passport for those at home and abroad who want to visit as many cathedrals as possible.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

9. Whether the Church of England plans to allocate strategic development funding to Keighley constituency.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

Mr Speaker, since this is the last question, I think, for me today I want to thank the parliamentary division in Church House and Simon Stanley in particular, as I do not yet know if I will be renewed in post; I sincerely hope so, but I imagine this is not high on the list of the Prime Minister’s priorities at the moment.

I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that the Archbishops’ Council recently awarded funding totalling over £1 million for Leeds diocese, £490,000 of which will be awarded to the Anglican churches in Keighley.

[John Grogan]

I feel that I will speak for many in saying I hope that the right hon. Member is reappointed by the Prime Minister by lunchtime, but further to her reply, does she agree that the work of the united parishes of Keighley is perhaps one of the finest examples in the north of England of faith in action, along with the work of the Catholic Good Shepherd Centre, the Salvation Army and, indeed, Keighley’s mosques?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

In the diocese of Leeds, Bowling, Idle, Great Horton and Clayton have a strong focus on deprived areas and groups that the Church of England found hard to reach, and that is why this large sum of money has been conferred by the Church Commissioners to the diocese.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We will be able to continue to invoke the Hague preference in certain circumstances, and it is vital that we do so in defence of our interests.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

6. What assessment he has made of the potential merits of a moratorium on new waste incineration plants to promote recycling.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

It is important to do whatever we can to recycle as much waste as possible, but waste incineration plants continue to play an important role in generating energy instead of diverting waste to landfill. However, our assessment is that additional residual waste energy capacity above that already planned to 2020 should not be needed if we achieve our recycling targets.

[John Grogan]

Further to that welcome reply, has the Minister seen the recent report from independent consultants Eunomia? It indicates that we will indeed have enough waste incineration capacity to deal with our country’s residual waste and that if we build more incinerators, the danger is that waste will be diverted from recycling.

[Dr Coffey]

I have not seen that report, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we discussed this matter in his recent Westminster Hall debate. It is important to say that we are still making progress to ensure that we achieve our recycling targets, but incineration by default is certainly not the answer that we want to promote.

Waste Incineration: Regulation

John Grogan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the regulation of the incineration of waste.

It is particularly pleasing to open this short debate this morning for three reasons. First, it is good to talk about anything other than Brexit. Secondly, it is good to have a fellow Yorkshireman in the Chair and as Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which is looking at the Government’s waste strategy in a short inquiry. Thirdly—I hope we can reach some consensus across the Chamber—this debate is inspired by two rising stars. I am glad to see one of them, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), in his place. He is the first ever shadow Minister for Waste and Recycling combined. The second, who not in his place as he has other business today, is the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. When I pointed out at Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions recently that new incinerators could divert waste that might otherwise be recycled, he said I had a good point. That is perhaps the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me during questions. I am particularly glad for those three reasons.

I wish to put three propositions to the Chamber. First, there is a case for a moratorium on incineration. We have quite enough incinerators to deal with residual waste at the moment. Secondly, the Environment Agency should be more robust in its approach in enforcing the waste hierarchy. Thirdly, the Treasury should continue to look—as it has be doing publicly in recent months—at whether a tax on incineration should mirror the landfill tax.

I acknowledge at the beginning that there are many Members in the Chamber today and I will happily take interventions. There is an organisation called the UK Without Incineration Network that is to be commended on the quality of the information it provides. Indeed, in reporting on an industry conference, an industry paper said that if Paul Davidson, who is a strong lobbyist for incinerators,

“wanted technical and other details”

about individual incinerators,

“he went to the website of implacable opponents UKWIN.”

Mr Davidson was reported as saying

“It’s a great website. It’s a disgrace that that is the best source of information.”

When I form my first Administration, the organisation’s chief co-ordinator, Shlomo Dowen, will be the first person I will recommend for a peerage.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. There is no doubt it will be lively. He has just hit the nail on the head. When incinerator operators apply for licences from the Environment Agency, a lot of bureaucratic and complicated paperwork goes with that that prevents local residents from scrutinising some of these applications. Does he agree with me that more needs to be done to unpick that information to make it more accountable and transparent for local residents?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Grogan]

I agree. Many residents feel that the Environment Agency’s job seems to be to try and do everything possible to nod through the application rather than rigorously interrogate it. Indeed, as I pointed out in my opening remarks, the Environment Agency has responsibilities under the Waste Regulations (England and Wales) 2011, passed by the coalition, to enforce the waste hierarchy, which puts reuse and recycling at the top. It fails to do this.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

In my constituency of Swansea East, in the very pleasant community of Llansamlet, Biffa is currently attempting to get permission to build one of those incinerators and 2,500 members of the local community have come together to object. Does my hon. Friend agree that placing such a facility in the middle of a community is detrimental to its health, schools and homes and that we should be looking at other ways of disposing of our waste?

[John Grogan]

I am quite shocked by that application, but it mirrors an application in the centre of Keighley, to which I will refer in my closing remarks.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene in this brilliant debate. I agree with his propositions, particularly on the waste hierarchy and the likelihood that incinerators will reduce both the amount that we recycle and our attempts to reduce waste in the first place. Does he agree that there is a risk, through so-called gasification, that we may have incineration by another means, and that it is absolutely right that applications should be considered—if they are to be considered at all—only if they are away from centres of population, on the precautionary principle?

[John Grogan]

I agree absolutely with the hon. Gentleman on the precautionary principle. However one defines incineration, it is true that the more of it there is in a local authority, the less recycling there is.

[Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

Some 7,000 constituents in Carnbroe rejected this for 11 years, and the council fully backs the community. The Scottish Government keep overturning that decision, however, and keep coming back. Will anyone listen to the communities who actually have to live with the incinerators?

[John Grogan]

My hon. Friend makes a point and in a moment I will briefly set out the case for a moratorium on new incinerators, which I think is definitely needed.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

At the moment, my constituents are very worried about proposals for a new incinerator the size of Battersea power station in the Hampshire downs countryside, which is a rural location, not an urban one. It would be in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), whom it is good to see in her place. Given that incineration is not recycling and the proposals would lead to countless lorry movements just to feed the machine, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be good to hear from the Minister about where the Government see incineration in the hierarchy of waste management in England today?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Grogan]

I, like the hon. Gentleman, am looking forward to the Minister’s remarks. As I said, I do not think that the Environmental Agency has done nearly enough to enforce that waste hierarchy, to which all parties are committed.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend knows that I have a long-term interest in the sector. Indeed, he can check the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I have always been interested in energy from waste. He should be very cautious about calling it “incineration”. Energy from waste is at its best—looking at Sheffield or the new power plant in Leeds—when, for most of the town or city, it not only feeds into the electricity supply, but is a large contributor to it. On the other hand, if the heat is retained and heats the whole of the centre of Sheffield, as it does, it is a very valuable part of the balance that we need. We can never recycle everything, and if we do not have that balance between good quality energy from waste, recycling and minimising throwing stuff in holes in the ground, we are lost. I would love that sort of facility in my constituency, where we have an old-fashioned incinerator, but all the heat goes out into the atmosphere.

[John Grogan]

I say to my hon. Friend that I used to chair the last but one coalmine to close in this country; Hatfield Colliery, in Yorkshire. Incinerators actually emit more CO₂ per megawatt-hour generated than any other fossil fuel source, including coal. On CO₂ and global warming grounds alone, we must consider that.

I will go back to my remarks about whether we have enough incinerators. Only one independent analysis is widely respected: Eunomia’s. It is an environmental consultant with expertise in this area that has issued 12 reports, the last of which was published in July 2017. The analysis clearly demonstrates that operational incineration capacity has grown rapidly, from 6.3 million tonnes in 2009-10, to 13.5 million tonnes in 2017. Additional capacity is assessed to be 4.8 million tonnes.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate that many councils and local authorities are entering contracts relating to providers of incineration. In doing so, they are diverting waste that should be recycled, because of those contractual agreements. That is creating a big problem.

[John Grogan]

The hon. Gentleman hits the nail on the head. It creates a perverse incentive for local authorities which, on the one hand, have a duty to recycle, but on the other must fulfil a contract that they have entered into. That means that when Eunomia did the analysis it looked at a series of projections, assessing the capacity of the incinerators against the availability of the feedstock of waste. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I would point out the assumed levels of recycling to which we are committed in Yorkshire in particular. We are committed to a recycling rate of 55% by 2025, 60% by 2030, and 65% by 2035. Eunomia and, indeed, the Government have accepted that we will have enough incineration capacity to meet the residual waste, given those recycling targets. Tom Murray, the deputy head of resources and waste policy at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said this year:

“Our evidence is suggesting that, when we meet recycling targets…recycling will leave no capacity gap”

with respect to incineration.

[Mr Sheerman]

Before my hon. Friend moves on from recycling, will he give way? He is a good friend of mine.

[John Grogan]

Just because my hon. Friend is a very good friend: I have only a few minutes left, so I can take a short intervention.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend knows that his local authority’s recycling is pathetic, as is mine. My challenge for him is, if energy from waste is stopped, what will we do with the non-recyclable plastics that are pouring into every town and city in the country?

[John Grogan]

The way I would help local authorities to recycle more would be to tax incinerators, just as landfill is taxed, to give them the money to increase recycling rates. That is being considered by the Treasury at the moment. The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury said recently that the Treasury

“would be willing to consider a future incineration tax once further infrastructure has been put in place to reduce…the amount of plastics that are incinerated, further improving the environment and reducing the amount of throwaway single-use plastics.”––[Official Report, Finance (No. 3) Public Bill Committee, 6 December 2018; c. 299.]

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

On the point about incinerator tax, does the hon. Gentleman agree that in situations where, as in my constituency, there is a proposal for a major incinerator yards outside the constituency boundary, and local people feel they have no ownership to enable them to affect the outcome, whether through their MP or councillors, it is particularly important that any tax that might come in should be shared broadly with neighbouring communities, and not just in the council area where the incinerator is?

[John Grogan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. There are precedents that can be looked at, such as the landfill tax. However, I hope that the Government—any Government—will rapidly bring the matter to a conclusion, to give certainty. Instead of just flirting with the idea of taxation it is now time to act on it.

If the House will indulge me, in my remaining couple of minutes I need to refer to the outstanding application in the Keighley area. I commend the work of Aire Valley Against Incineration, which has campaigned hard on the issue. There is planning permission. It is quite unusual to apply for planning permission and not to apply at the same stage for an environmental permit. I do not know whether the Minister would have a comment to make on that. The application for an environmental permit bears little resemblance to the original planning application. Fifty per cent. more waste is envisaged. There is planning permission for 100,000 tonnes, and an extra 48,000 tonnes is now being added. The layout of the buildings and chimney stack has changed. The nature of the waste that might be burned has changed. The planning committee was told that only residual waste in the form of refuse-derived fuel would be included. Now the Environment Agency is being told that the facility will accept residual, commercial and industrial waste of a similar nature to unsorted municipal solid waste.

There is therefore great concern in the community. We hope that the Environment Agency will do a rigorous job. There is even more concern because of the nature of the company involved—Endless Energy, which is not even a member of the trade association. It is based in the Isle of Man. It has two directors who have been named by the Environment Agency. One of them, Rajinder Singh Chatha, was the controlling force behind Oddbins, which has recently gone into administration. A tax tribunal recently found that he was

“intentionally misleading about some of the explicit lies that the tribunal has found were told to HMRC”.

It decided that he was not a fit and proper person to be allowed to sell or distribute duty suspended alcohol. He is not a fit and proper person to sell alcohol! Despite the pleadings of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that this industry should be given a fair chance, these people are cowboys. Until recently cowboys were running Keighley Cougars, our proud rugby league team, but they have now gone. I will be writing to the chair of the Environment Agency to ask how it can possibly trust a man who the tax authorities say cannot be trusted.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will my hon. Friend give way? He did mention me.

[John Grogan]

I will not give way to my hon. Friend for a third time, but I look forward to having a cup of tea with the chair of the all-party group for Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire, and restoring our friendship. In the meantime, I hope the Front-Bench speakers will be robust about this. Obviously the Opposition Front-Bench speaker cannot speak on this occasion, but there is a chance that we could reach agreement on incinerators, perhaps even before we reach agreement on Europe across the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It is a good Bill, and I am a cat owner. Let’s bring it on.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

Most studies now indicate that we have an excess of incineration capacity to deal with residual waste. Is there not a danger that, if we build more incinerators, waste that would otherwise be recycled will be diverted to those incinerators?

[Michael Gove]

That is a fair point.

Water Industry

John Grogan Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who has displayed his knowledge of not just the water industry but Momentum rallies, Venezuela and so on. His remarks put our party and our Front Benchers on notice that we have to get the detail of this policy right. It is a very radical policy, and I support changes in the water industry, but we will hear many mentions of Venezuela and Momentum rallies in any election campaign in which this is an issue. It is also a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), who opened the debate in a typically urbane and knowledgeable way. He is a great loss to our Front Bench, and I hope that one day he will be a Minister again in a future Labour Government.

[Gareth Thomas]

A £5 note is on its way.

[John Grogan]

I do not know whether that is a “thank you” or a bet.

I will speak briefly, but perhaps a little explicitly. I think that part of my hon. Friend’s speech was directed at our party’s own Front Benchers. At the moment, we are consulting on our plans for the water industry, and I hope nothing is set in stone. In developing our policy, we need to learn as much from Scotland, Wales and—if I may say so—Northern Ireland as we do from experts who reside in the north of London. My hon. Friend referred to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the shadow Chancellor competing, about a year ago. It was last spring—spring was in the air—and one of those gentlemen said:

“Far too often, there is evidence that water companies—your water companies—have not been acting sufficiently in the public interest.”

It could have been either of them; in this instance, it was the Secretary of State. On that occasion, he was as cruel and as vehement in his speech about the water industry as he was about the Opposition last week, so this is an open goal for the Opposition.

I will not repeat the statistics that my hon. Friend referred to when opening the debate, except for the basic statistic that the privatised water industry has taken out about as much in dividends as it has put in as investment, so the idea that the privatised water industry has brought new investment into the industry that would not have been made otherwise is wrong. However, what should be a Labour Opposition’s policy on changing ownership? I hope that the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), can confirm that the submissions that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West has made will be considered very carefully in our current review of policy in this area.

I share with the right hon. Member for Newbury a love of employee share ownership schemes, particularly if they involve the whole of the company. I chaired such a scheme, which ran Hatfield, one of the last two deep mines in our industry. It has a different feel from any other form of capitalism. I hope we will consider that. I hope we will also consider the role of regulation, because any reference to external regulators seems to have gone from our paper. I do not want civil servants making all the decisions on the regulation of the water industry. It is a specialist role.

In Scotland, there is a publicly owned industry, but there is also an independent regulator. Incidentally, there is also competition in the business retail market in Scotland, which exists alongside public ownership of the industry. We have had some debate already about the precise form of ownership, but as I understand it, in Wales it is not employee-owned, but a not-for-profit model. I understand that the cost of debt for the Welsh industry is less than for any other industry in the public or private sector in the whole United Kingdom. I hope we learn from Wales, too.

If we are to take some of the water industry at least into the nationalised sector, why not let a thousand flowers bloom? I hope our Front Benchers will consider that. Why not have some on the model that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West mentioned and some where there is demand in the public sector? That would be one way of doing it, but it will be more costly to have all the water industry in the nationalised sector, as compared with my hon. Friend’s suggestion. We have to face up to the question of compensation. It is not good enough for an academic in north London to refer to how the banks were taken in distress into the public sector. Certainly they were, but they had virtually no value in their assets, and that would not be the case with the water industry.

Some of the water industry shares are owned by the workers of the water industry, and some are owned by the pensioners. I have had an interesting dialogue with an organisation called We Own It, which is contributing to the field. When I asked it about this question, it said—I paraphrase—that it did not really believe in compensation, but that it recognised that workers and pensioners somehow have to be looked after. We have to do better than that if we are to stand up with a general election campaign.

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Polls are often cited to say that an enormous percentage of people want to take the companies back into national ownership. Of course, it depends on which way the question is asked. When it is phrased, “In order to do that, the Government would have to spend £90 billion of taxpayers’ money. Do you not think that could be better spent on other areas of the public sector?”, they nearly always agree. It depends on the question.

[John Grogan]

It does, but obviously if a Labour Government went down that road, they would then have assets on the public sector books to match that spend, as the right hon. Gentleman is well aware. The arguments are not black and white, as he admitted in his speech. We do have to think out the policy very carefully. I am a great believer in radical policies. I voted from the Back Benches in favour of some of them under the last Labour Government when those were perhaps not the flavour of the month. We have to get it right.

I will mention one other issue and then finish. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, did a report on the water industry. I commend some of the detail of that, and one detail in particular. The overflows from combined sewers owned by the water industry are a national disgrace. We have cleaned up our beaches in the past two or three decades, largely, dare I say it, because of European regulation.

We now need to clean up our rivers. Ilkley in my constituency is a great tourist destination, with swimmers in the Wharfe all the time. It connects downstream with the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) at Otley. We should not have sewage being discharged on a very regular basis. While I understand that various other things are going on in Parliament next Tuesday, I will be concentrating on the afternoon drop-in session of the chief executive of Ofwat and the Environment Agency. I hope they will address the issue of sewage and commit to cleaning up our rivers, just as we have cleaned up our beaches.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. First, I should congratulate Liv Garfield of Severn Trent Water for the progressive measures that she has taken, which my right hon. Friend mentions. More broadly, the challenge of climate change—as graphically pointed out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by the chair of the Environment Agency, Sir James Bevan—requires us all to take further steps to make sure that our communities are safe.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State concerned about the quantity of raw sewage that is being discharged into our rivers by many water companies?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, absolutely. Remedial action must be taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I was grateful to my hon. Friend for raising his constituents’ concerns about the condition of the River Windrush, and he is absolutely right to do so. We have subsequently got a commitment through Ofwat, the regulator, for all water companies to spend more on making sure that the environment that they safeguard is protected.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

T4. Does the Secretary of State agree with those experts who argue that the UK has sufficient incineration capacity and that to increase it further could imperil recycling rates?

[Michael Gove]

The balance between the two is delicate. What we must do is recycle more.

Agriculture Bill

John Grogan Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

I will take on board my right hon. Friend’s wisdom, and we will look at that as we go through the Select Committee process to ensure that do not do that. I thank him for his intervention.

The Bill very much attempts to tackle unfairness in the supply chain. That is essential. We need to ensure that the groceries code covers all aspects of trade—from the big retailers through to the processors and right down to the big suppliers—so that we can have true fairness in the supply chain. Often, when a consumer buys a product, enough money is paid to the retailer to ensure that there is enough money for the producer, and it is a question of ensuring that that money then gets back to the producer. There is an uneven relationship, with producers often being the weaker partner and not having enough strength in the market.

I welcome the proposals to request data, which will improve transparency in the supply chain, but the way in which that increased transparency will improve fairness in the supply chain remains unclear. Furthermore, there are proposals to streamline support payments and reduce bureaucracy, which I believe we all welcome. I look forward to the Secretary of State and the farming Minister coming before our Select Committee to explain exactly how that can be done. Whether people love or hate the common agricultural policy, there is no doubt that we can have an agricultural policy that suits the four nations of the United Kingdom and that we can devise a better system than the one designed for the 28 countries of the European Union. I have direct knowledge of that, having previously chaired the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, so I know that we can do better and I look forward to that.

We welcome this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape British farming and the environment. We can improve policies such as our stewardship scheme, for example by ensuring that it runs for a minimum of 10 years and involves forestry. We can also ensure that we do not have to work out when a tree is a sapling and when a sapling is a tree. If we want to include water management, our schemes can include planting trees on banks to hold back water and so on. We can do so much better, and I look forward to hearing about that from Ministers.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Committee on which I serve, agree that there is a real danger that it will be the big landowners and farmers who will be best able to apply for environmental grants? We have to guard against that by reducing bureaucracy, as he has indicated.

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We have to ensure that applying for grants is simple enough for all farmers, not just the big landowners who can employ offices full of people to do that, and I believe that we can. With some of the ideas coming forward about how we make payments, we can also ensure that, as we transition, family farms and smaller applicants can have less taken from them in the first instance. There are ways we can make this much more palatable.

Upland farming, which the Secretary of State mentioned, is very important, especially because of lamb and beef production. It is coupled with that great environment on the hillside, and we will not be able to pay public money just to keep sheep and cattle on the hillside; we have to ensure that they are profitable. Profit is what will drive this because—this point has already been made—if you are in the black, you can go more green. That is absolutely essential.

We produce great food. We also have a very effective poultry industry, although sometimes that is not mentioned. That is why we can produce good-quality chickens for under £5. Let us look at how we deal with our food industry and our production.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The Church cannot do this on its own, and it works very closely with Historic England, the police and its insurers alongside the Home Office in order to provide advice and guidance to its parishes. All dioceses now advise their churches to install deterrents such as alarms and cameras. I am pleased to say that the Church in Wales similarly endorsed Historic England’s metal theft guidance.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

9. To ask the right hon. Member for Meriden, representing the Church Commissioners, what recent steps the Church of England has taken to promote inter-faith dialogue.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The Church of England continues to take active steps at local and international level to promote inter-faith dialogue. The Church works through organisations like the Council of Christians and Jews and the Christian Muslim Forum alongside close working with the Office of the Chief Rabbi and senior Muslim clerics.

[John Grogan]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that many Church schools, both C of E and Catholic, with multi-faith intakes, such as Our Lady of Victories Catholic School Keighley, pupils from which came down to Parliament last week, including many Muslim pupils, bind our communities together from a young age and teach respect for others?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I could not agree more. Church of England schools are open to the whole community and reflect the demographic profile of the community they serve. Thus in some parts of the country 80% or 90% of pupils in a Church of England school may be Muslim. If you will forgive me, Mr Speaker, I would like to commend what the new Home Secretary had to say about his own education as a Muslim in a Church of England school, and how important a part of his own upbringing was an awareness of religious literacy in our world today.

Brexit: Trade in Food

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and for the excellent work that she does on the Select Committee. She makes a very good point about geographical indicators. Interestingly enough, when the Secretary of State visited Exmoor and Devon last week, there was talk of giving protected geographical indication status to Exmoor, where we can sell lamb from both sides of the border—from Somerset and from Devon.

All those things are intricately linked to the need for a future food policy, so that people know where their food has come from and so that we can market it better and, hopefully, get a better price for the producer. That money can then be linked back to the landscape. I cannot emphasise enough that the landscape and the food production, especially in certain parts of the country such as big livestock areas and more marginal land, are intricately mixed.

We must also ensure that we have high-quality vegetable production. Where we can produce organic vegetables, we should; where we can produce vegetables with fewer pesticides and fungicides, we should. We must be very positive about a food policy. I am worried that in the recent Command Paper on health and harmony, the only real talk of food production was very much at the high end. The high end of food production is great—from local restaurants, to tourists buying food and to everything linked to the countryside. However, we also need affordable food that the whole population can eat.

At least 90% of our food business goes through our major retailers, and people often buy on price. As we move forward, we have to be assured that our vegetable production not only is of good quality, with high welfare standards, but comes at a price that the average consumer can afford to—and will—pay. Whatever we buy in life, it is a choice, so not only do we want to have good, high standards, but it needs to be affordable.

We have a managed landscape with many natural features, as I said. The onus is on the Government to engage more closely with the industry to provide the food and farming sector with greater clarity. Tit-for-tat tariffs will do more harm than good—just look at the situation in America. The Americans have started putting tariffs on steel and aluminium. That might well help the steel and aluminium industries in America, but it will drive costs up for the industries in America that need to use those products. Food, a commodity and a manufactured product, does not need tariffs on it. In the end, that will only create more costs and could well lead to higher prices to consumers. I do not believe that those tariffs will ever come back to the producer.

It is imperative that we have a farming-focused free trade agreement with Europe. I repeat what has been said day in and day out in this House: two years since the referendum, all sectors—not just the farming sector— need some clarity on the direction in which we are going. People in all lines of business need to make investments, but those in the beef and dairy sectors in particular need to have a long-term view of where the world is going in order to make investments.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

On that point, it is worth mentioning Northern Ireland, which the Select Committee considered. There is a particular need for as much certainty as we can give regarding Northern Ireland, because I think 45% of all sheep produced there go south of the border. We made a specific recommendation on Northern Ireland, as any change in trade arrangements could be more disruptive there than anywhere else in the kingdom.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is also a very good member of the Committee. He raises a good point regarding the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The lambs go south and the pigs go north to be processed—and the milk goes round and round in circles, as far as I am aware. A lot of processing goes on across the border. If anywhere in the whole of the United Kingdom is essential, it is that border, for obvious political reasons—reasons of peace and many others. We must get that border right. I am sure it is not lost on the Minister that we need to do more regarding that border.

The various systems we are putting in place are interesting. I am quite happy for the Government to look at having a new system. It does not have to be the single market and the customs union, but we have to ensure that the new system we devise is recognised by the EU, because the Republic of Ireland, obviously, is an EU member state. Those are the great challenges, and I am sure that that is not lost on the Government.

If tariffs were imposed, I believe that consumers would suffer. Tariffs would also make it more difficult for our farmers who produce food to our world-renowned high standards to compete and properly export, inhibiting the building of “Brand Britain”, which is going to be even more important in the future than it has in the past. We will be able strongly to market not only regional produce, but the British product. We have only to go back to horsegate, when horsemeat was being put into burgers because it was a lot cheaper, and look at the food cycle, the provenance of food and the food processing industry, to find that food travels all across Europe. Provenance, branding and the confidence that the world—and those in our own country—has in our products are going to be more important than ever.

As I said, the Government have struggled with their post-Brexit policies. I am hoping that we are seeing some clarity; we have had some interesting votes this week. I believe that will bring forward a clarity, so that we can move forward; the industry needs to have confidence to invest and to address the opportunities and challenges that Brexit will offer. We must go into this with our eyes open.

That is not all. We have dealt with the cross-border situation in Northern Ireland; investing in an IT system to support a more efficient export certification process could minimise delays, and we need to make sure, whether through the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, the Food Standards Agency or our veterinary services, that we have the necessary personnel to be able to get the licences up and running quickly, especially if we are going to have a change in the system as we cross the border. It is very important that we move quickly where we are talking about perishable products, which include not only agricultural products but fish.

It is possible to design a bespoke support system that encourages greater productivity and further strengthens our animal welfare standards, which are already among the highest in world. To do that, we need clarification from our Government. It is good to have very high welfare and environmental standards, but the quid pro quo is that the standards of imported products should maintain our high standards, through the free trade arrangement with Europe—which should not be difficult because our standards are currently the same—and free trade arrangements with other countries across the world. Otherwise we will put our producers and farmers out of business.

Our food and drink sector needs a reinforced trade deal. “Brand Britain” must become a national advertisement to the world, showing what an outward-looking, open nation we are. The new farming policy we call for in the Select Committee report is about creating a “Brand Britain” that delivers high-quality food that is affordable for all. British agriculture should be front and centre of all our negotiations, not left to feed from the crumbs under the table.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Grogan Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

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

I can reassure my hon. Friend that I regularly meet members of the under-10 metre sector. Their trade body, the New Under Ten Fishermens Association, meets regularly and is actively engaged in discussions about future policy.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

T2. Given the recent report that indicated there is an excess of incineration capacity in the United Kingdom, which is discouraging recycling, is there not a case now for a tax on incineration, or even a moratorium on new incinerators?

[Michael Gove]

I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will look with interest at that submission for the forthcoming Budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. In March, the Clewer initiative launched a campaign called Hidden Voices, basically so that all of us open our eyes and our ears to the slavery that is all around us. It provides residential training courses for faith communities and day courses, so that we all become more sensitised to see what is happening around us.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

2. To ask the right hon. Member for Meriden, representing the Church Commissioners, what initiatives the Anglican communion is supporting in the diocese of Jerusalem to help promote peace between the Israeli and Palestinian Christian and Muslim communities.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

One of the most important ministries of the episcopal diocese of Jerusalem has been the ministry of dialogue and reconciliation between Christians, Muslims and Jews. Its archbishop recently announced the establishment of the diocesan department for peace, reconciliation and interfaith dialogue. We were very lucky, Mr Speaker, recently to have a visit from the Dean of Jerusalem to the Houses of Parliament to talk about its work.

[John Grogan]

Is the right hon. Lady worried that the number of Christians in the Palestinian territories is declining? What more can be done to bring together, in particular, young people of different faith communities?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. The Christian community on the west bank has plummeted as people have left in droves to come to live in Europe or to go to live in America. It is a particular challenge to persuade young people to remain. If they leave for university, it is quite often difficult to get back. So the Church is working very hard on this. There is a scheme whereby children from the region can do exchanges with children in other places. For example, 16 children from the Zebabdeh community did an exchange with Ballinteer Community School in Dublin. This enables them to see beyond their tight and very difficult world but also to feel supported in remaining in their homes, where their roots are.