The Climate Emergency

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

I can reassure the hon. Lady by drawing her attention to clause 10, which provides for interim targets. The OEP will also have the authority to hold the Government to account on our progress towards meeting long-term targets.

Taking on board the recommendations of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and of the Environmental Audit Committee, the Bill extends the OEP’s proposed remit to climate change. More than half the Bill’s measures will apply beyond England, helping the environment across our Union from Shetland to the Scilly Isles. Measures requiring developers to deliver a net gain for biodiversity will provide millions of pounds to boost nature and access to open green spaces.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous with her time. As a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I am pleased to hear that she has taken some of our recommendations on board. When she looks at improving water quality, will she consider whether there is a role for Ofwat? Its periodic reviews of water companies’ charging regimes should be linked to improvements in water quality in our rivers as a means of encouraging savings to customers.

[Theresa Villiers]

I assure my right hon. Friend that Ofwat and the Environment Agency work together closely in their complementary roles in regulating the water industry. Ensuring that the water companies play their part in protecting the environment is vital. Our Environment Bill will help us to maintain and increase the pressure on water companies to cut down on pollution and improve their record on water quality and the natural environment.

The local nature recovery strategies in the Bill will help to join up the network of habitats that the Government committed to delivering as part of our 25-year environment plan. We will boost recycling and cut down on avoidable plastic waste and litter by ensuring that businesses pay the whole cost of the packaging that they produce, including disposal.

Environment and Climate Change

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Last week, the leaders of the parties in Parliament, with the exception of the Prime Minister, attended a roundtable with a group of young people led by Greta Thunberg to discuss that very issue. Yes, I am very happy to sit down with anybody to discuss the issues of our environment and sustainability, and I invite the right hon. Lady to do exactly the same.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

On the subject of coal, does the right hon. Gentleman now regret the comments he made while he was seeking to become leader of his party in 2015, when he stated that he was in favour of reopening coalmines, and does he therefore deplore the recent decision to open a new coalmine in Cumbria?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I do not regret any of the statements I made in the 2015 leadership campaign. I was talking then about the way in which the coalmining communities in south Wales had been so disgracefully treated by the Government that the right hon. Gentleman supports. On the question of the Cumbrian mine, yes there is an issue there, and there is also an issue about the supply of coal that will always be necessary for fuelling the blast furnaces in the steel industry. This is why I am talking about taking a balanced approach to energy that recognises the need for sustainable industry and for reducing emissions. None of this is easy, but we have to move in the right direction by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and creating a cleaner, more sustainable environment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I am grateful for your calling me early, Madam Deputy Speaker, and for being able to contribute—albeit briefly—to the debate. I start by agreeing with the Leader of the Opposition; he was right to call for consensus on tackling climate change. I also thought it entirely appropriate that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs clearly showed the cross-party support for delivering on the UK’s ambition and global leadership in this area, as well as pointing out how far the UK is delivering on this agenda. We need to introduce some balance into this debate, and I am pleased that both did so. I join others—on both sides of the House—in suggesting that we should proceed with efforts for London to host next year’s climate change conference. I very much hope that it does.

I am a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, and as such have the opportunity to review the Committee on Climate Change’s and activists’ claims and challenges, as well as to hold the Government to account on the delivery of the sustainable development goals and their climate change priorities. I was pleased therefore to support my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) when he yesterday introduced his 10-minute rule Bill, which was very well supported by Conservative Members. It is absolutely right that the House seek to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, and this in itself will require facing up to many significant challenges—some have already been mentioned, I am sure others will be—on land use, transport, energy sources, energy efficiency, joining up Government policy and showing international leadership to share the burden across the globe.

Taking that further and faster, however, as some have called for, would increase the challenge. As a farmer, I join the Secretary of State in applauding the NFU for accepting a net zero emissions challenge for agriculture by 2040. This will require very significant changes to land use, as has been graphically highlighted by the “Zero Carbon Britain” report from the Centre for Alternative Technology, which shows that diversifying land use is required across most of what we currently do today. We would need to double the land used for food for human beings in this country; to dramatically reduce the grassland for livestock; to double the forested area to a quarter of the entire UK; and substantially to increase the areas for biomass and renewable energy.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. On reforestation, did he share my enthusiasm for the Secretary of State’s remarks today about planting 11 million trees across the country? Could this not fire up schools’ imagination? We could get them to do much more of this and maybe have an award for the best primary schools locally to follow through on this agenda of reforestation.

[Mr Dunne]

That is well worth doing—we should encourage younger generations to recognise the power that trees have in capturing carbon—but 11 million trees goes nowhere near what would be required to get to net zero. It is a step in the right direction but only a single step.

Brexit and leaving the common agricultural policy provide the UK with a unique opportunity to take a lead, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is doing through the Agriculture Bill, in developing a new system of support to encourage such change in land use. While it will not be easy, it is absolutely right that we take full advantage of this opportunity.

We have heard much about the problems and challenges of meeting these targets but very few solutions offered yet in this debate, so I would like to highlight two. Innovation and maturing technology will create opportunities and solutions and drive down costs—as we have seen, solar costs have declined by 35% in the last three years alone—but a balance of technologies will be required; there will be no simple single solution.

There has been considerable focus—my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) mentioned it earlier—on the switch to electric vehicles, but this will pose very significant generation challenges. One example provided to me recently suggests that one motorway service station replacing 20 petrol and diesel pumps with 120 electric superchargers—the number needed to fuel the same number of vehicles in an hour—would require a 14.5 MW substation, which is equivalent to the electricity required for 32,000 homes. This is, then, unlikely to be the simple solution that some of us hope for, so I would like to make a quick plug for hydrogen fuel cell generation, which can become cheaper than batteries and is being pioneered by a small company, Riversimple, which was started in my constituency. It has the added benefit of reducing reliance on cobalt, which is required for batteries and is itself a finite resource.

The second solution is for changing attitudes and behaviour in an area of UK global strength—it is something I have taken a particular interest in on the EAC: the UK’s leadership role on emerging green finance initiatives. This was set out in our Committee report last year, “Greening Finance: embedding sustainability in financial decision making”. Climate risk reporting by companies and pension funds will make clear the financial implications of ignoring climate change and provides an opportunity for the UK to show global leadership.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is always important to get things in proportion, but across the business spectrum—from those who argued for remain and for leave—there is a strong consensus that no deal would, in the short to medium term, cause significant harm.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. I want to pursue his argument about the sheep meat implications of a WTO-terms Brexit. He referred to the introduction of tariffs of more than 40%. Will he confirm that that would apply on day one of moving to WTO terms?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, I am afraid that it absolutely would, and a tariff of 40%—it is just above 40%—is one of the lower ones. For example, there are tariffs on some meat exports of more than 140%, and in one case there is a tariff of more than 200%.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith). I would like to focus my remarks on the rationale for the decision I have taken, which I believe to be in the best interests of my constituents and this country, on the vote next Tuesday.

I have received plenty of advice from constituents, as I am sure all hon. Members have, much of it contradictory, reflecting the division in the country since the referendum. Many have asked me to represent their views, which, given the range of views and the physical impossibility of being in both Division Lobbies at the same time, it is not possible to achieve. I stood on a manifesto in 2015 that pledged to respect the result of the referendum. I voted to remain in 2016, but 57% of my constituents voted to leave. I have accepted the referendum result, and indeed I stood on a manifesto in 2017 that pledged to do so. That is why I voted with the vast majority of Members of this House—498 to 114, with a majority of each of the Conservative, Labour and Democratic Unionist parties—to invoke article 50.

The Government have had the most complex negotiations to undertake of any Government since the second world war, as evidenced by the sheer length of the EU withdrawal agreement and the number of pieces of secondary legislation that the European Statutory Instruments Committee, on which I sit, is currently scrutinising. There have undoubtedly been many challenges presented by the EU and its 27 other members throughout the negotiations. On some of these we have prevailed, and on some we have not.

Although I would not have started the negotiations by accepting the EU framework for the negotiations in the way we did, I have accepted that leaving the EU after 43 years of membership, during which our laws, regulations and standards have become increasingly intertwined, will require a negotiated deal, and negotiation requires compromise. I spent 20-odd years negotiating as an adviser to companies around the world, so I know that every negotiation comes down to the last moments, when the final compromises have to be made. We are now at that point. The word “compromise” has been used across the Chamber today, and it was particularly well encapsulated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann).

The reason why we are debating this issue so long after the invocation of article 50 is primarily its complexity, but coming a close second is the lack of consensus in the House, which is partly a result of the balance of arithmetic in the House following the 2017 election. We still do not have a consensus, which is why we have had to delay the debate. The only consensus in the House was on the decision to invoke article 50 in the first place.

We have heard from Conservative Members who have a strong tradition of seeking to leave the EU, and I respect their conviction and consistency of purpose. Some of them, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) earlier and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) just now, have made it clear that they are willing to compromise and support an orderly withdrawal if the Irish backstop issue can be removed or time-limited. I hope the Government will find a way to give them satisfaction before we vote next Tuesday, but if not, I believe that a willingness to compromise among Members from all parties is essential in order that we can do our duty as representatives of the people of this country and bring this matter to an orderly conclusion.

Opposition Members have told us that they will not support the deal because it does not reflect what they would like to see in a deal. Some have been straightforward in acknowledging that they wish to ignore the referendum and remain in the EU, but others have not, and they have not come up with any pragmatic suggestions as to what could be done to improve the deal. The official Opposition Front-Bench team has been consistent about one thing, and one thing only: it will not do anything at all to help, and will only try to bring about a general election, because that is its purpose. Opposition Front Benchers are not interested in compromise, whatever their warm words earlier. They have made no suggestions whatsoever on how to improve the deal.

The prospects are extremely alarming to those watching the debate from outside and for the countless businesses and constituents who are urging us to get on with it and provide some certainty to the nation about how we leave the EU in an orderly fashion. That is why, despite the deal’s imperfections and my concerns about aspects of it, I shall support it in next week’s vote. I will not support any proposal to have a second referendum, because that would be to deny completely the initial referendum, and it would perpetuate the division in this country that we can frankly no longer afford.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I remind the House that topical questions are supposed to be significantly briefer.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Michael Gove)]

I am looking forward to addressing the annual conference of the CLA—the Country Land and Business Association—later today, where I will congratulate the association on its fantastic work in environmental enhancement.

[Mr Dunne]

Good farming practice depends on multi-year rotations. The existing financial support system, the common agricultural policy, is multi-year and the proposed transition system is multi-year. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that when the Agriculture Bill comes back on Report, it will include a multi-year framework?

[Michael Gove]

I will enlist my hon. Friend’s persuasive powers in making just such a case to the Treasury.

Agriculture Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Committee Debate: 14th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Drew]

I will pass on that, because I have lost the plot at the moment. We can have this argument outside the room. However, the fact is that I am not talking about banning live exports to anywhere within the United Kingdom. We are looking purely at the trade. An argument during the referendum debate was whether live exports would end because we would leave the EU. All I am saying is that this is the opportunity for people to make their minds up on whether they want that put into legislation. It has been the subject of numerous Adjournment debates. As I said, I was quite interested in the degree to which there have been splits within political parties, as well as between political parties.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify a remark he made before getting into this debate about the Bristol channel? If I heard him correctly, he said, “For as long as the United Kingdom continues to exist”. Is it now official Labour party policy to support the break-up of the United Kingdom?

[Dr Drew]

We really are getting away from the issue. I am making the point that the United Kingdom has a clear policy on allowing live exports. So long as that stays the case, it has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. We are talking about trade between the United Kingdom and other parts—principally Europe, of course, although livestock could be exported to various different parts of the world. We choose not to, because it would be very cruel and also probably economically illiterate to do so.

We are moving the new clause to allow the debate to take place for those who believe that the ban is going to happen as a matter of course when and if we leave the European Union, when we have the opportunity to do it under WTO rules. There is some debate about whether it is going to be that easy, but we will have to face up to that in due course.

The reality is that unless we have some legislation to enable us to implement the ban, we will never do it anyway. This is our opportunity to have a debate and to see whether this legislation can stand the test of time. Without the new clause or something like it, the ban will never happen. We can have as many Adjournment debates as we could possibly want: it will never take place until and unless we are able to put it into legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Drew]

If nothing else, that gave me a chance to rest my voice.

This is an important Bill. We got it through in time—it is a good job we left enough. Although I am using this opportunity to thank everyone from both the Opposition and the Government, I hope that, to finish with, we will hear some good noises about tenancy reform. People will be watching, listening or reading even at this stage because their livelihoods depend on that, so the Minister should listen and, if nothing else, accept this final new clause.

[Mr Dunne]

On a point of order, Sir Roger. Will you advise me how I can add my thanks from the Government Back Benches to Opposition Members for the good natured way in which the Committee has functioned? On virtually every clause and amendment thus far, there has been a sense of consensus across the Committee that this is an important Bill and we need to get it right. I would also like to add my thanks to the 27 individuals who came to give evidence in our opening sessions last month and the countless more organisations outside this place with a committed interest, whatever their standpoint, to ensuring that the Bill sets out a new agricultural support framework that lasts for generations to come. I look forward to the Minister’s echoing those remarks.

[The Chair]

That is not strictly a point of order for the Chair, but the hon. Gentleman has already made it. There are a few formalities to complete. We had better get through those or we might be congratulating ourselves a little too early. Let us put new clause 31 and the Government amendment to the long title to bed and see where we go from there.

Agriculture Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendment 96, which seeks to ensure that nothing in clause 26 affects the devolution agreements in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is our responsibility to ensure that there are appropriate safeguards for agriculture in Wales and the other devolved nations. That is important, as the farming unions in Wales do not support the centralising approach that has been proposed. We cannot support any situation in which artificial and arbitrary limits can be placed on what devolved Governments can do.

I recently met my local farmers and our Assembly Member, Rebecca Evans. These farmers were young, dynamic and successful, working hard and planning how their farming businesses can be more profitable and resilient when they do not know what is around the corner. Not knowing what is happening in the light of Brexit makes that planning practically impossible. That is why they need the security and protection of such the amendment.

Those farmers have a great fear of the limbo that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud spoke about. We need to ensure that this is not a power grab. No express agriculture reservations should be carved out for DEFRA Ministers without their engaging first with Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. Any agreement must be made by common consent, not imposition.

This is a probing amendment. However, I look to the Minister to protect the devolution settlements, even more so in the current climate.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I am grateful that this morning’s sitting was suspended so that we could all take part—or attempt to—in the debate going on in the Chamber. I have only one point to make to my hon. Friend the Minister. I represent a border constituency. I have 35 miles of the English-Welsh border in my constituency, which I suspect is the largest, or close to the largest, certainly along the English-Welsh border. That area is represented almost entirely by agricultural holdings, many of which extend on both sides of the border.

I have been informed by NFU Shropshire, to which I pay tribute for digging out this information, that there were, in a recent year—I believe it was last year—a total of 575 basic payment scheme claimants, of which the Rural Payments Agency paid 244 for cross-border claims and the devolved Administrations of Wales and Scotland paid 331. This is not an insignificant group of farmers. There are a total of 83,500 in England, so it is a meaningful number. For those farmers, operating under two separate support regimes is already a challenge, but it is one that they have become used to under the common agricultural policy, which at least has a common framework. Here I have some sympathy with new clause 11, which we will come to today or in our next sitting. It seeks to provide some form of commonality, which we have touched on before in previous sittings.

I respect the fact that agriculture is a devolved matter, so this is a challenging thing to get right, but it is a problem for cross-border farms to operate in two systems. There is a real risk that, if the systems on different sides of the border diverge too much—in particular in the financial support given to farmers—it will lead to some distortion of trade and, at the worst end of the spectrum, some gaming to maximise the support available. I am sure that none of us wants to set up a system in which that is encouraged.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I want to give the hon. Gentleman some reassurance about clause 32. It is a fairly standard inclusion in many Bills, and it is clear from subsection (1) that it is about consequential changes. In particular, that subsection talks about

“provision or savings in connection with any provision of this Act.”

If a change were made to the administration of a pillar 2 countryside stewardship scheme, and that affected a scheme that had been entered into under a previous body of law, the Government might want to be able to make consequential amendments as a result—to be able to pay the final year of a countryside stewardship agreement, for instance. Those are the kinds of changes we are talking about. It is difficult to predict when the Government might need to use that power, but it is to be used in a very narrow set of circumstances—for those savings provisions, effectively—just to ensure that we can tidy up loose ends. It is not to be used to make, or change, policy. It is very clear that these amendments are consequential to other provisions that have already been debated.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 33

Financial provision

[Mr Dunne]

I beg to move amendment 109, in clause 33, page 24, line 39, at end insert—

“(2) Payments made by virtue of this Act must be paid pursuant to regulations made by the Secretary of State to implement a multi-annual financial framework determining the monies available under this section.

(3) Prior to any payments being made under this section, regulations must be laid before the beginning of the agricultural transition period.”

The Agriculture Bill should establish a multi-annual budgetary framework that provides certainty for farmers and allows them to plan and invest for the future.

I stress at the outset that this is a probing amendment, and I am looking for the Minister to give me some comfort that what I am asking for is in line with current practice and widely supported by the industry. I urge the Minister to have discussions across Government to consider whether something along the lines of this amendment could be incorporated in the Bill at a later stage. I have tabled the amendment because under the scheme that we are currently looking to replace—the CAP scheme—multi-year support packages have been agreed, and all farmers across the UK have been operating according to those packages and are accustomed to them. That is my first point.

Secondly, the Government have already acknowledged the importance of a multi-year settlement in the transition arrangements that they have announced and the Minister has secured from the Treasury, with a commitment to 2022, which is a significant development. I give full credit to the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for securing a commitment from the Treasury that takes us ahead of the comprehensive spending review period—outwith that—in order for farmers to have confidence in the way in which the current scheme will transition into the new one.

Thirdly, the new scheme is intended to be a multi-year arrangement for the period from 2021, as we move from an area-based payment to a public goods-based payment. The Government have clearly recognised that multi-year arrangements are required for this industry, not least because—as we have heard previously in this Committee—many tenancy agreements and stewardship arrangements are undertaken by farmers on a multi-year basis. That is not always the case: some tenancy arrangements, such as grass keep, last for only one season, but many last for many years.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I have visited a farm in Suffolk at the NFU’s invitation, and seen the various improvements that the farmer wanted to make to his farm. However, he was not sure whether he would be able to claim money for those improvements in future. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is extremely difficult for farmers to make improvements to their farms when they do not know the future shape of the financial settlement?

[Mr Dunne]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is not just about farm improvements, of course; it is about the rotational nature of farming. Arable farming relies on an assumption of continued occupation for a period of years, in order to adopt an appropriate rotational pattern for the use of the land over a number of years. For all those reasons, it is entirely appropriate that the Government should consider a multi-annual scheme.

Perhaps I may refer to some of the external support that I have received for the amendment, which I am sure other members of the Committee have seen as well. I am sure that it is no coincidence that during the passage of the Bill we have had the benefit of presentations elsewhere on the parliamentary estate from a large number of groups interested in agriculture, and in what happens in the environment on and around our farms. I am sure that many hon. Members will have gone to yesterday’s presentation by the wildlife trusts. There have been presentations in the past couple of weeks from Greener UK, an umbrella group of 14 organisations, all of which are supportive, including the NFU, the Country Land and Business Association and the Woodland Trust, which has also organised presentations in Parliament recently.

Also in Greener UK is the National Trust, which I visited on Friday in my constituency, and which is particularly concerned about some of the conservation measures it is introducing across its estate. I think it is the largest private sector landowner in the country, with something like 1,800 tenant farmers operating around the UK. While on the subject of the National Trust, I commend to the Minister the Stepping Stones project, in which it seeks to link together landscapes across the Shropshire Hills area of outstanding natural beauty. As he has not visited my constituency to see that work in action, I am keen to invite him to do so, because the trust wants to bring forward an environmental land management scheme, and I was impressed by what I saw last Friday. It wants multi-annual arrangements, as do the other organisations, and I strongly encourage the Minister to recognise that that is how farming in this country functions, so it is appropriate at least to consider a scheme of that nature.

The amendment would also insert a provision about having a scheme in place at the outset, not as an afterthought during transition. Whenever we move from one scheme to another, things should be set out clearly in advance, to give farmers the confidence they need to undertake projects that, as I have explained, take several years, as well as confidence that they will be able to farm appropriately in the future.

[Dr Drew]

The amendment is similar to new clause 10, which we debated previously. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on tabling it. Finance is at the centre of the Bill. Unless we get some clarification, the Bill will not, despite all the powers in it and all the good intentions, really provide certainty and security—whether to farmers or environmental organisations, which all signed up to it.

We are dealing with pretty important stuff. Although there has been some variance between the farmers’ organisations and environmental organisations, they speak with one voice on the amendment, as they did on new clause 10. We pay attention or lose their valuable support, which is a shame, because the Bill has a degree of cross-organisational support and we have made it clear that there are good things in it, which we support. We are just carrying out our Opposition role of trying to improve it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ludlow on the amendment. It is important that we have a further debate about it, and that we recognise that the money is crucial. Otherwise, the warm words will not satisfy those who feel strongly about what they will be expected to do when and if the Bill comes into force. It involves a huge cultural change in the way we support those who work on the land.

As the hon. Member for Ludlow rightly said, the proposal has received a wide range of support. I hope that that matters to the Government, and that the Minister will respond to it. It includes other things that we might want to do on the land, which is not necessarily what we have done in the past. For example, we could look at transport infrastructure or social housing, which may be a sequitur to the things we want to do to improve the environment. If people cannot live in the countryside, they cannot work in it and carry out the environmental improvements that we want. The Government have a whole raft of environmental schemes in mind, including planting woodland and alleviating flooding, but those who want to do it need to have some knowledge of the funding arrangements that will be in place. Unless that is done annually, we will not know how serious it is. We are saying that it could be done over a number of years. The Government need to report to Parliament, which means that there will be a public document showing exactly what money is being made available and what the restrictions are. We talked earlier about the devolution settlement. It is important that the Administrations outside England know exactly what moneys they will have and the purposes to which they can be put.

Greener UK pointed to the need for an independent assessor. The amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Ludlow does not do that, but Greener UK argues that it would be helpful to know the minimum and maximum amounts that might be forthcoming from the Government to do the sort of things that are necessary. The idea of multi-annual funding is that it allows the money to be vired from one year to another if it cannot be spent in the year originally intended.

I hope the Government see the benefit of the amendment. We will support it wholeheartedly. We see it not as a probing amendment, but as a very important part of the way in which the Government should be doing their business. It would mean that our countryside is healthier and funded more appropriately and transparently than would otherwise be the case.

In evidence to us, Andrew Clark made it very clear why the NFU supports the amendment. It sees it as part of the long-term commitment to allow farming to continue contracting around the environmental and land-management arrangements that the Government have in mind. He was clear about why we need the power to vire money between annual budgets. Knowing what those budgets are is absolutely crucial. The hon. Member for North Dorset, in cross-examining him, seemed quite sympathetic to that idea—as, indeed, is the hon. Member for Ludlow and, I hope, other Conservative Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

Like my hon. Friends the Members for Ludlow, for Gordon and for Brecon and Radnorshire, I understand that this is a critical issue. I agree with the sentiment that we can put into the Bill all the powers we like and come up with all the creative policy we like, but that they will not mean anything without money to underpin them.

For reasons that the Committee will understand, I will not support the amendment. Before I come on to that point, however, it is important to recognise what we have already done to acknowledge the importance of clarity on funding. At the last general election, we made a commitment to keep the total cash spent on agriculture at the same level for the duration of this Parliament until 2022. That breached and went beyond a Treasury spending review period, but the Conservative party took the decision that it was right and proper to prejudge the spending review process so that we could give clarity and certainty to farmers.

The challenge, as I understand it, is that the scheme is currently funded in a roundabout way by our sending money to Brussels and then getting it back. The concern that some farmers will have is whether the Government will be willing to support the scheme. My view is that the approximately £3 billion that we currently spend every year on agriculture and the farmed environment is relatively modest in the context of other areas of Government spending. Some Departments—perhaps including a Department that my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow is familiar with—regularly accidentally overshoot their national budget. Given what it delivers for the farmed environment that covers 70% of our land, for habitats, for water and air quality, and for our important environmental objectives, £3 billion is a fairly modest sum.

As the policy returns home and we take back control, there will be a responsibility on Parliament—and on political parties in their manifestos—to demonstrate their commitment to our farmed environment and wildlife. We know that wildlife organisations have huge memberships: the RSPB and the Wildlife Trust each have between 1.7 million and 2 million members. We know that the British public are passionate about their countryside, wildlife and environment and want us to give them due priority and support.

We have therefore not only committed to keeping the cash total the same until 2022 but made a manifesto commitment to implement and fund a new environmental land management scheme after that. We have not described the total quantum of funding after 2022, but there is an absolute commitment for there to be a funded policy. We have also made it clear that agreements entered into by the end of 2022 under the existing pillar 2 schemes—some of which will run for a decade—will all be funded for the duration of their terms. I believe that we have done a lot in the area already.

As a former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow knows that in the long term these matters are ultimately dealt with through the spending review process. A spending review process is under way, and we expect it to conclude next year. By their very nature, spending reviews are multi-annual; they tend to set a financial envelope within a period such as five years. Departments also have other processes, such as single departmental plans and Supply estimates applied at departmental level, so that we have some continuity and multi-annual understanding in our approach to funding, rather than a stop-go process from year to year.

Finally, our new environmental land management scheme is predominantly designed around multi-annual agreements. There will not simply be one-off yearly payments; we envisage farmers entering into an agreement for three, five or possibly 10 years. It is implicit in the design that we have outlined for the scheme that a multi-annual understanding of funding will be needed.

I hope that I have been able to reassure my hon. Friend that I share his view that this matter is important and that I view the current spending on agriculture and the farmed environment as a relatively modest sum of money. We could deploy it far more effectively to achieve far more, but the spending review process is the right place to identify funding post 2022. I am sure that he and other colleagues will be making representations to the Chancellor and the Treasury on this matter.

[Mr Dunne]

I have heard what the Minister said. I indicated that this was a probing amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 34

Extent

[George Eustice]

I beg to move amendment 42, in clause 34, page 25, line 15, at end insert—

‘( ) Part (Red Meat Levy) extends to England and Wales and Scotland only.”

The amendment relates to NC4 which is expected to form a Part of its own (under the heading “Red Meat Levy”) rather than being inserted in an existing Part of the Bill. The amendment provides for the new Part to form part of the law of England and Wales and Scotland only, because nothing in it relates to Northern Ireland.

Agriculture Bill (Ninth sitting)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[George Eustice]

Our plan is to leave the European Union, which means leaving the common agricultural policy and LEADER, but also putting in place superior schemes that we will design nationally. That is what we intend to do.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

If I can take the Minister back to his comments about the duration of existing schemes, perhaps he can take this opportunity to inform the Committee that he will have the powers to continue to pay under the existing higher-level, entry-level and countryside stewardship schemes, which in many cases run for up to 10 years. As I understand it, we had commitments from the Treasury that that amount of money would continue to be made available. Will he confirm that he will have the power to ensure that those existing agreements will be honoured?

[George Eustice]

That is a very important point. I can absolutely confirm that existing schemes will be honoured for the lifetime of those projects. I know that we will probably come to this when we consider later amendments, but the grant agreements between the Government and individuals will be honoured even after we leave the European Union. The Bill, together with the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, gives us the power to bring across retained EU law and to continue to make payments under it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes, that is entirely the case. This is about the food supply chain. If we are only to look at our food system in relation to farming and treat that as something segregated, we cannot help farmers in the way they need to be helped.

[Mr Dunne]

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Lady is saying; perhaps I could illustrate to her, with a current example from my farm, the difficulty with what I think she is suggesting. We have a potato crop, and the very dry conditions through the summer, followed by some rain in August, have led to a large proportion of the potatoes in unirrigated fields developing what are called “dolly heads”, where there is an extra spurt of growth, and the potato, instead of being a single shape, has a misshapen bit alongside.

To get buyers to accept loads that contain those shapes, we have to send samples off to them. They decide whether to accept or reject them; sometimes, we send the entire load off and it is rejected on sight and sent back to the farm—we cannot anticipate precisely how the supermarket or intermediary will react until they see the load. What is being suggested can lead to extreme complication for the farmer in deciding what should happen to the particular product. What happened to the product is not their fault, but is to do with the climatic conditions.

[Kerry McCarthy]

There is certainly evidence that, whereas under the Groceries Code Adjudicator regime produce should not be rejected because supermarket buyers have just decided they do not actually need what they are contracted to buy, they are increasingly using cosmetic reasons as an excuse, because they are still allowed to reject on cosmetic grounds. A crop of potatoes in one period might be entirely acceptable to the supermarkets because they need those potatoes, but then, on cosmetic grounds, they will reject produce that looks almost identical, because they have got their predictions wrong and do not actually need the potatoes they thought they would. Sometimes this produce is not going to be sold as nicely smooth and rounded baking potatoes packaged up in the supermarket; it will be going into products where the shape does not matter, but the supermarkets have got their predictions and buying calculations wrong and do not actually want it, so they use cosmetic reasons as an excuse.

The memorandum on the delegated powers in the Bill says that clause 20 provides powers for new marketing standards that could be used to

“reduce food waste (for example, by having the flexibility to change any standards that are purely visual)”.

That picks up the contention about EU marketing specifications being responsible for some produce being rejected. As I understand it, the supermarket standards are actually much higher than the EU marketing standards, so the fault does not lie with EU standards; the issue might be supermarkets trying to employ them as an excuse. I think that having more flexibility in relation to marketing standards is unlikely to make a difference, and I hope that the Minister addresses that point.

My key point is this. When we discussed amendment 85, I think, the Minister said we should not make farmers responsible for meeting the food waste target, as most of the time they are not responsible for food waste, and I absolutely agree. That is why the mandatory target should sit in this part of the Bill, where we are talking about the supply chain.

I have said that the Courtauld 2025 commitment is a helpful tool, but it is not ambitious enough. The fact that participation is voluntary means that it will never achieve as much as we would like and will certainly not get us towards the sustainable development goal. However, when Courtauld 2025 was announced, the Waste and Resources Action Programme was meant to be generating a baseline for primary production by the end of 2018. Can the Minister update us on that? My understanding is that it might now be only an estimate rather than a set figure. The fact that there have been funding cuts to WRAP and the industry is still being secretive with its data means that we cannot come up with the baseline that we would like to see.

Finally on amendment 113, I just reiterate the point that we want to see a level playing field. At the moment, 89 businesses have signed up to the food waste reduction roadmap, but that is fewer than half of the top 250 food businesses. Again, the good guys will sign up and get a lot of credit, and then the Government can say, “This is really working. We’ve got companies that are doing their best to reduce food waste.” But what about those companies that have not signed up? I will leave the food waste side of things there.

Amendment 114 is a probing amendment to follow up on a debate that I had a few weeks ago, on international Anti-Slavery Day, about modern slavery and labour exploitation in supermarket supply chains. We know that the sector has a really serious problem with that. The International Labour Organisation estimates that agriculture, if grouped with forestry and fishing, is the sector with the fourth highest proportion of victims of forced labour worldwide. Other sectors, such as apparel—the fashion or clothing industry—seem to be getting to grips with the problem, but the food sector does not appear to be. I mentioned many examples during that debate, so I will not go into detail now, but they ranged from organised crime in the Italian tomato-growing sector to workers in the Thai seafood industry—cases of torture, enslavement and workers being kept at sea and passed from ship to ship for years at a time, with 59% of workers, I think, saying that they had seen the murder of a fellow worker. In this country, we still very much have an issue with gangmasters and poor conditions in the sector.

Oxfam has sent up the Behind the Barcodes scorecard, which rates supermarkets on their transparency, accountability and treatment of workers and farmers. There is also a gender element, because women tend to be more likely to be victims. On that scorecard, Tesco again comes out best—at 23%. It did actually come along to a meeting of the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery, which I thought was good. It listened to the clothing industry talk about what it had done, and it seemed keen to do more. So Tesco was on 23%. Morrisons and Lidl are on 5%, and Aldi is on 1%, so we have a discrepancy between the supermarkets trying to do the right thing and others not taking it seriously at all.

Agriculture Bill (Tenth sitting)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[George Eustice]

The issue in all those circumstances is less about the customs union and more about border inspection posts. That is why we have outlined in our approach a commitment to a common rulebook on those areas that require a border inspection, so as to reduce or even eliminate the need for border checks, and then an agreement on equivalence in other areas of legislation. So the border issue is less about customs.

Let me give another example. Scotch whisky is currently our most successful export, and yet it is always sold as a bonded product in an individual national market, because you have different alcohol duties in national markets, even within a single market. We already have examples of some of our most successful exporting sectors having no problem at all dealing with variable tax rates within a market.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

Is the Minister able to confirm what I learned last week? Scotch whisky sales to China amount to £35 million, but pork exports to China, which were opened up by this Government in 2016, I believe, amounted to twice that last year—£70 million in one year.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. In the agri-food sector, as in most other sectors, our trade with the rest of the world is growing far faster than our trade with the European Union.

Agriculture Bill (Eighth sitting)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

That is precisely the point I was coming to. The European Union instructed OLAF, its own anti-fraud body, to look at that sort of thing. Even this year, in Slovakia, journalist Ján Kuciak was murdered along with his fiancée after he exposed widespread fraud involving the Italian mafia, Slovak business and politicians in Slovakia. That resulted in the fall of that Government, so widespread was that fraud. We have seen similar problems in Bulgaria, where, rather surprisingly, a farmer wanting to get agricultural support must first register to pay health and pension insurance, so the very smallest farmers, who we would want to help in this country, do not get help in that country.

If we have that type of fraud in this country, even though there has been no evidence and no cases of widespread manipulation and fraud in the system, there is already criminal and environmental law under which farmers could be prosecuted. The worry among many farmers—I hope the Minister will reassure us and perhaps even clarify this on Report—is that this could be an opportunity to create lots of new criminal offences and punitive financial penalties for farmers who are trying their best. The Minister mentioned the farmer who accidently ploughed an extra 20 cm on his headland margin. Indeed, when I spoke to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I was told that if my daughter rode her pony on the field margin strip, that would be against the rules and, therefore, that we could have been penalised.

We have no similar cases of widespread fraud in the UK. This type of offence is already covered by existing anti-fraud or environmental legislation. There is some worry that trivial offences or mistakes could be penalised and that farmers could be unnecessarily criminalised. I hope that the Minister will give us some reassurance that that is not the intention of clause 3(2)(h), and that he will give further clarification to ensure that some future Government could not use the clause in a way that was not intended.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I will not detain the Committee for long. I endorse the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby. I note that the hon. Member for Stroud does not intend to press the amendment at this stage, but it is important to reflect on the spirit of what my hon. Friend the Minister said in this morning’s debate when he outlined the Government’s intent in devising the new schemes: they are intended to be less onerous on the recipients of financial support than the schemes that they replace under the CAP.

In the same spirit, I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to enlighten the Committee that this power to create offences is designed primarily not to create a mass of further offences that would allow people to be criminalised if they made inadvertent errors in the receipt of their financial assistance, but to—as I understand it—replicate existing Government powers. Anything he can do to reassure us that there will not be an extension of the kind we have described will be very helpful.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I think there are two things that taxpayers would presume to be inherent to this, and which they would require. First, the hon. Member for Stroud alluded to the need for transparency and to know that moneys being provided by the Exchequer through DEFRA to support any public good or food production scheme are being spent wisely. There must be public confidence in this, and I go back to a point I made in Tuesday’s debates: in the increasingly urbanised country we live in, which is less interested in rural life, it is imperative that the public know that, just as we insist on transparency, fairness and rectitude in, for example, the welfare system or other things.

The balance that I detect, certainly from my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby and my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, and which I echo, is that while we must have these powers to allow public confidence to set in, be fostered and flourish, we must also have proportionality and discretion. It would be frankly bonkers to trot somebody off to the magistrates court, the Crown court or indeed the High Court over somebody’s daughter riding a pony on a bit of set-aside, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby has said, or other such small things.

We need within the Bill—I think it is referred to in other subsections of the clause—the discretion to say, “Right, we have overpaid you for that, or you haven’t done this in-year, so we will roll over,” and so on, which provides the transparency and accountability.

However, we must remember that a lot of our farms and farmers are small businesses, where people do not have time and space to go off and instruct a solicitor, get their defence ready and take those two or three days off to go to court—only to find that the court hearing has been adjourned because the judge is not available or the chief usher has a heavy head cold. In many of our smaller courts, which are also constrained in terms of manpower, there is a huge delay in the delivery of justice.

I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will reflect on what I appreciate are often competing demands, namely for transparency and discretion. The heavy hand can often fall on, “Let’s go really big on the criminal stuff,” and we have a pretty crowded statute book at the moment. I think that is why lawyers are able to charge so much money, because there is a hell of a lot of reading involved even in making a case for a minor or small point.

Let us not overcrowd the statute book with statute law and criminal offences if we do not need to. We should ensure that the robustness is there, as in those other clauses, but I urge my hon. Friend the Minister—not today, but either in the other place or on Report—to reflect on the considered and informed remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby and my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, and on my small and amateurish contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dunne]

Thank you for the clarity of your guidance, Sir Roger. I rise to speak to clause stand part and to pose some questions to the Minister following the comments of the hon. Member for Stroud. The proposal is very complex and the explanatory notes make it clear that this is a novel system. The concept of de-linking payments is welcome, but because it does not exist at the moment, it is hard for us to get our minds around it, so when the Minister responds, I encourage him to give us as much clarity as he can about the intent of how the de-linking scheme might work.

First, hon. Members have raised several challenges about how the structure of ownership and tenure of land might be affected by such a de-linking payment, which is designed to facilitate the transfer between one generation of a farming family or of a farming business and another. Farming businesses are very diverse, however, as is the nature of all businesses in this country, so it is difficult to assume that they will all fit in a neatly prescribed and, dare I say, bureaucratically designed structure.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby referred to his farming business with his wife. My farming business is in partnership with my wife too, but I was previously a partner with my father. The advantage of a partnership structure is that it allows generations to come in and to retire in the same business. If the scheme is not capable of coping with that kind of structure, it will not apply to several family-run farming businesses. We need clarity about how the scheme will be designed to cope with the business structure.

Secondly, it is unclear to me, although I might not have picked it up in the drafting, whether the de-linking payments will cover the entire transitionary period or just a number of years that are yet to be determined and spelt out through the regulations. Any clarity about whether they are likely to be for a limited number of years or the entire period would be helpful.

Thirdly, it would be helpful to understand whether, when the regulations are proposed, the way the transition payments are reduced over the period will be determined through regulation and fixed, or whether they will be capable of adjustment. If they are adjustable payments, that will not provide the clarity that would help somebody to make a decision about whether to accept the de-linking payment at the beginning of the period, or whenever it is first allowable, because they will not know whether that is the right judgment to make.

Fourthly, if a payment is made in relation to a farming business, does that make the land to which it relates sterile in relation to other payments in future? Does that land become eligible only for public goods payments under the new scheme, or is there flexibility? If a business is sold, and the land is sold to an existing or neighbouring farmer, will that preclude them having any access to the transition payments? Those are my main points and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Sandy Martin]

I do not particularly want to address the amendments or the whole de-linking scheme in detail, but we need to bear in mind one or two basic principles. Obviously, if we support the movement to payment for public goods, and a tricky transition, people who have farm businesses that will be involved in that transition need to understand what will happen to them before they get there.

We do not want large numbers of farmers to move out of the business involuntarily. Subsection (7) provides the opportunity for support for somebody who has voluntarily decided to leave the business. However, there is a problem with small farmers in particular, who might have extremely delicate finances. They need to know before they get to the year in which they might find themselves unable to continue financially—indeed, they would need to know three or four years before—whether they are going to get there. They need to know that before deciding whether to take the lump sum payments under subsection (7). If they do not know whether they will be financially viable under the new payments regime more than three years before, that might become a fatal position for them. They might take the payment and go anyway, even though it might turn out that they would have been better off and happier continuing to farm under the new payment for public goods system, rather than the current system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Davies]

I have a query, which I am sure the Minister will be able to answer easily, relating to the decoupling of cross-border farms. There are many on the Welsh-English border, as there are on the English-Scottish border, that will own land in both England and Wales, or both England and Scotland. I can give many examples of farmers in my constituency who own land in Herefordshire or Shropshire—well, not much of Shropshire, because my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow owns most of Shropshire.

[Mr Dunne]

None in Shropshire.

[Chris Davies]

None in Shropshire, all in Herefordshire—all in Wales.

Agriculture Bill (Seventh sitting)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[George Eustice]

No, this is a power for England only, and it will be for each of the devolved Administrations to decide how they want to design their enforcement and management process.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the clarity with which he has laid out for the Committee the Government’s intent regarding the implementation of the new scheme through accrediting bodies, and that is extremely helpful for the Committee to understand. While I recognise that this will be a new scheme with much more streamlined implementation and systems, we have significant problems with the existing countryside stewardship and environmental stewardship schemes administered by the Rural Payments Agency. If we are to persuade farmers to enter into new schemes, they must have confidence that the current schemes, where we have outstanding disputes and a lack of full payments being made under many of them, will be ironed out. If they are not, farmers will be increasingly sceptical about the prospects of a new scheme being introduced under these powers.

I am straying slightly beyond the purpose of the amendment, but I urge my hon. Friend to encourage the Rural Payments Agency to get existing schemes fully paid up. As at the middle of October, DEFRA’s statistics show that 751 countryside stewardship agreement holders, or 15%, have not been paid their final 2017 payment, while 8,116 environmental stewardship agreement holders, or 33%, have yet to receive their final payment. Please could he help to get a welly on?

[George Eustice]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I intend to address those issues in more detail when we get to part 2, because clause 11, in particular, gives us the power to modify the existing EU schemes. As I pointed out earlier, the difficulty that both the RPA and Natural England have with these schemes is the dysfunctional nature of the enforcement regime designed by the EU that sits behind them. We have an opportunity to clean that up once we leave the EU.