Agriculture Bill

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

I think we all welcome the renewed ministerial emphasis on the challenge of our climate change commitments over the last few days, renewing the priority given by the coalition Government. We look forward to a positive response from the Minister to this group of amendments.

[Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests in Suffolk as in the register. I am rather doubtful of the wisdom of some of these amendments on climate change, especially Amendments 272 and 274. I believe they are too declaratory and unrealistically mandatory to be part of the Bill.

Of course, the great majority of us believe that we must do what we can to reduce carbon emissions and the consequences they can have on the climate, and much can be done. Farmers have to live and work within the constraints of climate. There is probably no group that keeps a closer eye on the weather: the climate is a practical reality for farmers. The weather can and does have a huge impact on farmers’ prosperity and, indeed, economic survival. For example, the drought in England this April and May will have a severe effect on the 2020 harvest. But the idea that the Government can:

“Within 12 months … publish a strategy outlining how Her Majesty’s Government plans to reduce the emissions resulting from agriculture”,


is so unrealistic as to be absurd.

I warn noble Lords that quite a lot of misinformation is used in this climate change argument. I shall give one example. A few years ago, I heard my noble friend Lord Deben, who is a great panjandrum on this issue, start a speech on climate change with the story that one of his constituents had had to abandon growing apples because of the great reduction in rainfall in recent years. I live and farm in my noble friend’s former constituency. Like many farmers, we keep daily rainfall records. From 1945, rainfall has been measured with the same gauge, located in the same part of Marlesford. Over those 75 years, the results are revealing. The average annual rainfall over the whole period has been 25.81 inches. This data is based on more than 27,000 measures of rainfall. The 2019 total was 28 inches, about 9% above the long-term average. The rainfall in 2018 was 22 inches, about 22% below the average. But the most recent 10 years, 2010 to 2019, at 26 inches, has been remarkably close to the 75-year average.

The 10-year period with the highest rainfall was 1999 to 2008, when there was nearly 29 inches—20% more than in the 10-year period with the lowest rainfall. The first 10 years after the war averaged 24.67 inches. The wettest year in the whole 75 years was 2012, with 34 inches, which is virtually double the rainfall in the two driest years—1953 and 1959—when there was 17 inches. The 10-year average has helped to iron out short-term weather-related fluctuations, but the question must be: how do we interpret a 5% increase in this part of Suffolk over the 75 years from 1945?

Climate change is a crucial issue and there will need to be regulations to encourage, and indeed require, farmers to reduce emissions, but let these come forward as and when they are ready, based on their own merits. There is quite enough in this important Bill without loading it with what are in effect political declarations.