Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Mark Spencer

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

Work is ongoing on avian influenza. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have suffered two years of catastrophic effects of that disease. Animal and Plant Health Agency vets are working round the clock with primary producers to protect their flocks. I do not want to jinx myself, but at the moment we are making good progress. We will continue to work hard with the sector to protect it and ourselves from that terrible disease.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

As the Secretary of State knows, my constituency is chalk stream central, with the headwaters of the celebrated River Test, the Bourne rivulet and the River Anton, which runs through Andover. What can the Government tell me to reassure my constituents that the unique ecology of chalk streams is uppermost in their mind as they work to enhance our rivers across the country?

Draft Direct Payments to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2023 Draft Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Mark Spencer

Tuesday 28th February 2023 General Committees

[Mark Spencer]

I was just coming to that, because it is a really important point to land, so I am grateful for the two interventions that have given me opportunity to do that. We want to move in a direction that is much less about enforcement and catching people out and more about supporting and encouraging people to do the right thing. Instead of inspectors, we will have assistants and people going on to farms to advise and support. People will not be turning up with a tape measure and saying, “Aha! You’re 50 cm short on that margin.” Rather, they will be saying, “This is what you need to do, and this is how it needs to work.” We want to help and support people to move in the right direction.

There is another side to that. With modern technology it is possible to monitor things via satellite. We can see cropping and improvements to hedgerows via satellites. If individuals take the mickey, do not do the right thing and try to commit fraud, we will of course go after them and prosecute them for defrauding the taxpayer. We aim to support the people who want to do the right thing, while penalising the very small number of people who want to take the mickey.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire made a point about pest management and the use of pesticides on a crop. The purpose of pest management buffer strips is to encourage the production and growth of natural insecticides—in other words ladybirds, lacewings and predators that will go and eat aphids, which are the pests we want to get rid of. We are encouraging people not to use insecticides. They can still use herbicides and fungicides, but they cannot use insecticides, which are the chemicals that will kill those ladybirds and lacewings. I accept that there may be a time where a farmer, having committed to not using insecticide, has to backtrack on that agreement because of a huge aphid infestation. They would have to make a commercial decision as to whether they wanted to stick to receiving taxpayers’ money for not using insecticides or wanted to backtrack on that, use insecticide and not receive payment for that crop.

[Kit Malthouse]

There is a third element to the decision that should surely be of interest, which is whether we want the food. For example, there are certain crops that are particularly prone to aphids—for example, beans. If someone grows beans, the risk is much higher, because that crop is much more likely to get aphids. As the Minister will know, there can be a massive infestation, and the farmer will have no choice—either they lose their crop or they spray it. If they spray it, they lose their subsidy. Quite a lot of farmers will say, “You know what? Beans are too much trouble. I am not going to grow beans. I will grow something else, because I know what is going to happen with beans. They are going to get aphids, because that is what they do.” We may see a migration away from the farming of some crops, because of that risk.

From the Government’s point of view, it is perfectly possible for the inspector in a high-vis jacket with a clipboard to come along and say, “Do you know what? On balance, we would rather have the beans, so we will give you a bit of flex on the pesticide. We recognise that you have a huge infestation that needs to be dealt with, and if we do not deal with it, we are not going to have any beans.” That is the conundrum that a lot of farmers with those particularly pest-prone crops are juggling.

[Mark Spencer]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. We are getting very much into the detail of the personal management decisions farmers will have to make. Farmers may be thinking that they need to use a chemical to kill those aphids, but there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that if they have put in insect buffer strips and give the lacewings and ladybirds three or four more days, those lacewings and ladybirds will go and do the job for them.

If you will allow me to digress, Mr Hollobone, I spoke to a gentleman called Martin Lyons—I am sure he will not mind me giving his name—who farms in Cambridgeshire. He had such an event in a field of beans. He went to inspect the field, but on arriving he saw that the beans were swarming with aphids. When he got back to the yard, the sprayer—the machine he was going to use to apply the chemical—was broken. By the time he got the part, four or five days later, he thought he had probably lost the crop, but when he went to look at it before applying the chemical, he found literally tens of thousands of ladybirds all over the beans, and they had removed the aphids. He was able to return the chemical to the company that had supplied him and save the money.

We have become a little bit too dependent—I say this as a farmer myself—on chemical solutions, when nature often finds the solutions for us. We need to do more of that and to get back to some of the practices we saw in the ’30s and ’40s, working with nature rather than against it. That is what many of the changes we are bringing in will deliver.

To turn to the second part of today’s proceedings, there are two schemes to which the financial assistance regulations are applicable—he says, looking for inspiration from his officials to his left. It is really important that we understand that we want to motivate people to do the right thing. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire referred to avian influenza, which is slightly different, in that it is a notifiable disease. There may be other examples, such as bovine viral diarrhoea in cattle. If people become aware that that disease is in a herd, they will not want to trade with it. Where farmers want to be part of the scheme and engage in data recovery, we do not want those who are being supported, who do not have BVD, to be penalised because people think their being on the list of those who have received support to prevent the spread of the disease means they have the disease in their herd—we do not want them to be blacklisted. Anecdotal evidence shows that if people are allowed to keep the matter private, they are much more likely to come forward and report any issue they have, rather than hide it.

Plant Health and Trade in Animals and Related Products (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Mark Spencer

Wednesday 25th January 2023 General Committees

[Mark Spencer]

That sounded like a challenge to speak quickly, Ms Cummins. I thank colleagues for their interest in this SI, and for taking the trouble to read it and engage. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire raised the question about how those decisions are made. We are blessed in the UK with some of the best scientists in the world, who are able to make an analysis of what the risks are and what the response should be. Of course, Ministers will ultimately decide on the response, but on the back of the advice they receive from those experts.

Action would be something along the lines of stopping the trade in the material that was at risk of spreading the disease. For example, the Opposition asked about the actual disease that has highlighted this challenge; it is actually called phytophthora pluvialis. In English—I think that might be Welsh—it is a fungus that affects trees, mostly pines and Douglas firs. What we would do in those circumstances, and what we have done, is prevent the movement of timber of that nature. We would put restrictions on nurseries and wholesale plant areas, but also on physical timber that was being moved from woodland in a certain area to another. We would prevent the movement of that to stop the disease spreading, so that fungus spores were not allowed to be transported anywhere else.

The hon. Member for Cambridge also made reference to the challenges of ensuring that our borders are safe in the future. That is something that the Government are very much alive to. I spend a lot of time, for example, worrying about the possibility of African swine fever spreading across Europe and reaching our borders. We have protocols in place to try to stop that from happening, which is actually one of the benefits of Brexit. It allows us to put more controls at our borders to try to prevent that from happening and to ensure that Border Force is aware of the challenges that we face. But, of course, we try to balance that with ensuring that trade is as free as possible. Working with our colleagues in Europe, we are able to strike that balance, but it is one that we take seriously.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I take his point. Obviously, there has been a phytosanitary boundary around the whole of the island of Ireland for some time now, which has protected it from diseases coming from the continent of Europe, the wider world and indeed the rest of the UK. However, my constituency, for example, is being devastated by ash dieback. We have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ash trees that are struggling and will be gone from the landscape quite soon.

While I understand the scientific advice that will be given, that is the same scientific advice, presumably, that resulted in the awful foot and mouth disaster that hit farming a couple of decades ago, which people remember well. Mounds of carcases were burnt on farms. Whether that was the right approach has been debated, even to this day.

Is the Minister able to give an example of a plant or animal disease being controlled by the imposition of one of these zones in the past, and therefore being eradicated from the UK? It strikes me that what we are learning—whether from Dutch elm disease, ash dieback, avian flu, or even tuberculosis, which we are obviously trying to control—is that these techniques are actually not that effective from a disease control point of view. As the Minister said, our most effective defence is at the border, by stopping the stuff coming in in the first place.

[Mark Spencer]

The best example that I can think of within two or three generations would be anthrax. We were able to eradicate that completely from the United Kingdom. However, of course, it is about not just eradication but mitigation, in terms of stopping that spread.

My right hon. Friend mentioned avian influenza. Of course, had we taken no measures and just allowed the disease to run its course, that would have led to the total devastation of the UK poultry sector and enormous damage to the wild bird population. While it sometimes appears that we are not having the positive effect that we would like to deliver, taking no action would lead to catastrophe. I think there are examples of where stepping in, and intervening at that moment does assist and does lead to better outcomes, although it may not feel like that at the time.

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[Mark Spencer]

That is a fantastic, positive story, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In conclusion—

[Kit Malthouse]

Lebanese potatoes?

[Mark Spencer]

Lebanese potatoes, of course. We take such things case by case, and will continue to take that approach. There are some challenges in the seed potato market, not least to the ability of Scottish growers to export to the EU. We will continue to push that agenda as well, to ensure that the Scots can export seed potatoes. Decisions on whether we allow the import of seed potatoes will have to be taken on a case-by-case basis and with a risk analysis of the risk to UK growers. Decisions will be taken by those with the expertise, but we recognise the importance of trade links with Lebanon.

In conclusion, this is an important piece of legislation and it is important that we agree the draft regulations today. They will help to fight disease and to prevent disasters in future. I am grateful for the Committee’s support.