Agriculture Bill (Seventh sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 27th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right, and I will say more about that, as she can imagine.

This discussion is hugely important, and I hope that we will be able to give it the attention it deserves. As my hon. Friend said, the document was delayed until half an hour after the Committee had started our sitting, although I am grateful to Ministers for having the grace to look a little sheepish and to be apologetic—not their fault, I suspect. Frankly, however, it was a poor way to behave, although ironically the desired outcome was not achieved—for reasons that I am not entirely au fait with, the Secretary of State went to the NFU the day after anyway, and I understand that he had a fairly traditional welcome. It is not unusual for Ministers to go to industry events and get a bit of a roasting. I am opposed to all forms of cruelty—we will come to that later—but he clearly had a tough day.

More importantly, I fear that this has skewed the way in which we are discussing the Bill. Had we had the document in advance, we would have framed a different set of amendments to the key clause 1. I am grateful to you, Mr Stringer, and to Sir David for exercising discretion, which allowed us to table amendments to clause 2. That would not normally have been possible within the timescale. I put on record my thanks to the hard-working staff in our offices, who were up until late at night working on that, and to the Clerks, who were also up late working on potential amendments. People were under considerable pressure, and I hope to do justice to their work this morning.

I have to say that something made me cross and, when I came to read the environmental land management policy discussion document that we are talking about, at times it made me even crosser. It is a mixed bag. Some of it is excellent, and we will be supportive, but my overriding impression was that, despite detecting some extremely hard work and thought put in by officials, they had been hampered by some basic contradictions in the Government’s thinking. That is a political failing—not a policy failing—which I suspect partly reflects changes in personnel and thinking over time. The original architects—the unrepentant sinners to whom I referred on Tuesday—have moved on, and others have been left to figure out how to make a complicated set of ambitions work.

The thing that made me cross—we do not have to read far—is virtually in the opening line, although I understand that the prefaces to such documents are often bolted on at the end, possibly by eager-to-please special advisers. I will read the opening sentence:

“For more than forty years, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy…has dictated how we farm our land”.

“Dictated”—think about that sentence. We were members of the European Union of our own free will—[Interruption.] I do not want to go over old ground, but I invite people to think about how that reads to those who might not share in support for the current situation, which is possibly half the country. It is a poor way to start the document.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

As a farmer, I can only describe the three-crop rule as dictating what I can grow on my farm. I cannot see any other interpretation.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure we will have a to and fro this morning. We will come to the three-crop rule later. I have a suggestion for a more conciliatory word: “framed” is a more accurate term, frankly. “Dictated” is highly contentious and in some ways designed to rile, and I can say to whomever did that, it succeeded. Some of us take exception to the idea that the Government of our country seems to have become a Vote Leave franchise operation.

To add evidence, I have a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs press release from 2013, when the then Farming Minister—different context, different time, obviously—who is now the Secretary of State, told us:

“The UK ensured that we have choices in how we implement the Common Agricultural Policy, rather than having to work with a one-size-fits-all approach from the European Commission…This gives us the flexibility to target funding in ways that will deliver real benefits to the environment, boost the competitiveness of our farming industry and grow the rural economy.”

I actually agree with him, but it does not sound like the policy has been “dictated” to us. I make a gentle plea to the Minister to change that one word, which might help people to be brought together.

Now that I have got that off my chest, we can move on to the substance of my argument. To be fair, there is something much more welcome a few lines later in the document, although it is not entirely reflected in the body of the document. It talks about the new system making it

“possible to meet the objectives of protecting the environment and producing food.”

That is a significant discussion within the document, and I will come back to that point. I appreciate that this is a framework Bill—as the Government constantly tell us—but there needs to be scrutiny as the framework is fleshed out. That is what we seek to do with our amendments.

As I will show in the next few minutes, these are complicated, interesting and important issues, which need scrutiny. I hope the Government will see sense and merit in our proposal. I hope the excellent Government Whip might consider allowing his side a little leeway, as we have considerable expertise present on the Government Benches today. Although he was gloriously successful in ensuring that people did not make contributions earlier in the process, it would be helpful if a little leeway could be shown at this point in our discussions on the Bill, because we are now getting into the real meat of it.

Some Members will have attended Second Reading of the Environment Bill yesterday. The interaction between these various Bills is really important, as was mentioned by the Chair of Select Committee on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I think many of us have come to the same conclusion. As so often happens, the debate yesterday strayed into the Agriculture Bill by mistake at one or two points. That is no surprise, because the Bill is important.

There are number of puzzles and contradictions in the policy discussion document that are worthy of discussion. I will come to some of the positive aspects, but one or two sentences jumped out at me. On page 6 —I suspect this is by the same author who wrote the opening remarks to which I referred—there is a sort of eulogy to our wonderful system at the moment. The document quite rightly praises our farmers for the wonderful things they do. However, one of them is

“supporting our supply of clean water”.

I think that will jar slightly, particularly with some of the water companies, which know that one of the unintended consequences of our current agricultural system is that they, and as a consequence all our constituents, have to pay considerable costs to clean up some of the water. Obviously, the hope is that our new system will have ways to deal with that.

Later in the document there are some very positive proposals, but there are also some big unanswered questions about the interaction between the documents. Again, that point was raised yesterday in the discussion on the Environment Bill. This is a particularly pressing issue, given our current situation with flooding in this country. Some things look in danger of falling between the cracks, particularly overall land use policy. Our amendment is designed to allow proper scrutiny of how the proposals will be developed. Given that this is a very long-term set of pilots in development, things will change and lessons will be learned. Having proper parliamentary scrutiny seems to be well worth while.

The document—as I said, I suspect it had various authors—is littered with problems and quite a few internal contradictions. On page 7, there is a hopeful claim that environmental land management schemes will

“help us maintain our food security.”

That feels as though it is a bolted-on, pious hope, given the tension between environmental goods, which we all support, and food production. Indeed, in the list of public goods on page 7 there is no mention of food. There are some non-sequiturs here, although if I were to be generous, the fact that some of these problems have not been entirely reconciled may explain some of the delay in producing the document.

It actually gets worse. On page 7, at the end of the introduction, it says that the goal is to “improve” existing standards, but later in the same sentence it says it is to possibly maintain them. This is one of the key conundrums of the legislation—what are we actually supporting? The document goes on to say a bit more about that, which I will come to later.

The key issue is whether we should support people who have already made improvements to get to a high standard or target resources on lifting others. That is an important and difficult point—we could call it additionality, if we want to get into jargon—but it is a profound issue. Page 8 defines two strategic aims. I do not have any issue with them, but there is no strategic aim for food production, so this running internal contradiction continues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 48, in clause 2, page 3, line 30, at end insert—

“(3A) Financial assistance allocated to a scheme in a particular year but not spent within that year may be carried over to a future year for spending on one or more schemes.”

This amendment would enable Ministers to “carry over” any monies left unspent at the end of a particular budget year for spending in subsequent years.

This is a more probing amendment and one that we do not intend to put to a vote, so hon. Members can be at ease. Mr Stringer, you will be pleased to hear that I will not read out the amendment.

I may have misunderstood how DEFRA’s economics works, and I am ready to stand corrected. The Government have not put it in legislation but have indicated that the money will be available for the remainder of the Parliament. If not all that money is used in one year, what happens to it? All I am looking for is some explanation, as the amendment suggests, that it would be possible to carry over money into subsequent years. That point has been raised on a number of occasions by a number of people, and there may be a simple explanation.

When debating the statutory instrument on Monday and looking back at our old friend regulation 1307/2013, it struck me that the current system has quite complicated reserves that the CAP specifies for dealing with some issues around fines, compliance and so on. It goes into considerable detail about how that should work. A similar system may be envisaged for us. I asked some questions about the issue during the debate on the statutory instrument, so perhaps when there is a reply there will be some clarity.

Again, it has been said that this is a framework Bill. That is fine—we get that. But this is the opportunity for Parliament to ask these questions. The headline figure of money is a concern to some in rural communities, and it may not be available if is not within the right timeframe. I suppose I have a simple question.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is the hon. Gentleman talking about money allocated to a scheme in general that is then not used, or money allocated to a farm that is not used due to some situation on that farm? Is he talking about the specifics of money allocated to farms or the generality of money allocated to a scheme?

[Daniel Zeichner]

That is a good point. Some of this discussion has conflated the two things, which may not be helpful for people. Actually, no money is allocated nationally. It is a political promise; it is not in legislation. Of course, no Parliament can bind future spending allocations. We will watch with interest what happens in the coming weeks, but the political promise has been given.

In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, we are thinking of the headline figure. We hope that the £3 billion will be available each year for the next five years, as the Government have promised. Again—I am sorry to sound like a broken record—this is a key question: if the uptake of applications is not high enough, the money will not be drawn down, as far as I can see. As I said earlier, that could be a tempting position for any future Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is that issue not covered by clause 8, which allows for the extension of the scheme? When I come to discuss my amendment 9, we can explore the matter. One could possibly freeze the switch from the basic payment scheme to ELM schemes. I guess that the hon. Gentleman is discussing the situation in which the uptake of ELMS is not very high, because we are fairly sure that the uptake of the BPS will be pretty much 100%. Is this not already covered in that clause of the Bill?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but I am not sure that the issue is covered; that is why I am seeking clarification. I am afraid these points are about a lack of certainty. We are looking ahead a long way—seven years, potentially—for the transition. We have some clarity on the 5% plus, capping and so on for the next year, but beyond that —I hate to go back to the ELMS document, but there are timelines in there—some of it looks a touch optimistic, frankly.

Given that the process was begun 18 months ago, I hope that it will become clearer through the trials and tests, but we would like to pin down the finances. That is what we are trying to achieve through the amendment. I understand why Government Ministers cannot concede, but I suspect that, as people look more closely, quite a lot of them would agree with this position; if we are going to embark on these ambitious environmental schemes, as we want to, we want as much money as possible to be drawn from the Treasury. It is a very unusual situation, politically, to have a pot of money that looks like it has been allocated before. Where does it go in the future? That is what we are trying to pin down.