Food Security

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I wish to start by thanking all three Committees for their excellent reports and for securing this important debate. Let me also highlight some shareholdings in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Food and drink is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, contributing some £127 billion to our economy. The quality of what we produce is recognised throughout the world and plays a significant role in our global brand. As a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I know that farming is an integral part of our national identity, helping to bind our Union of nations together. The value of our upland farmers is particularly keenly felt across the nations and regions, and I pay tribute to them and all farmers, and indeed everyone involved in the food sector.

Clearly, farming is not just a job; it is a cultural identity at the heart of our rural communities. As we have heard, the role that farmers perform goes far beyond the food they produce; crucially, they are custodians of our natural environment and our iconic landscapes. Events of recent years have emphasised the huge importance of food security to every single one of us. A massive Government effort was focused on preparing for our EU exit, then on maintaining food supplies during the pandemic and, most recently, on dealing with the impact of the Ukraine war. In the face of all those challenges, the UK food supply chain has shown itself to have great resilience.

However, as the Select Committee reports show, further vital matters still need to be addressed, including by tackling the food price inflation of recent years. I really welcome the progress we are seeing on that, with yesterday’s fall in the overall rate of inflation. We also need measures to ensure that farmers get a fair price for what they produce, and it is good to have the Prime Minister’s assurance that the Groceries Code Adjudicator will continue as an independent body and not be merged into the Competition and Markets Authority.

Thirdly, we have to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture if we are to meet our net zero commitments and ensure that we transition to farming methods that give more space for nature. That includes tackling the serious problems we have with insects, which were highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. Much depends on ELMS, which are replacing the common agricultural policy. We need to achieve the crucial balance of ensuring that they keep our farms viable and profitable, while securing public goods on nature and climate.

When I was Environment Secretary, I was dismayed to receive a certain amount of collective responsibility push-back because I wanted to assert that ELMS should help farmers earn a living. Of course they should do that, because a successful and profitable farming sector is crucial for food security, the importance of which every speaker has emphasised this afternoon. In the role I then played, I felt it was very important to add commitments on food security to what was then the Agriculture Bill, now the Agriculture Act 2020, including the three-yearly report. I welcome the progress towards an annual food security index report publication, as promised by the Prime Minister.

Real progress is being made on improving ELMS and the sustainable farming incentive in response to feedback and concern expressed by the farming community. I am confident that those programmes will be a huge improvement on the EU ones they replace, and that they will deliver substantial benefits in reducing carbon emissions and protecting nature. In particular, I commend the efforts that are being made to protect peatland habitats and care for hedgerows.

In my view, it would have been extremely difficult to deliver a successful transition to more sustainable farming without maintaining overall levels of funding for farm support. I fought successfully for the Conservative manifesto commitment to do that; I hope we see similar commitments in the forthcoming manifesto. Even with that funding, the transition continues to be complex and difficult. I appeal to Ministers to continue to engage closely with farmers and to make further alterations to ELMS, as and when it is needed in response to changing circumstances and as a greater knowledge base is built up in relation to the schemes. I emphasise that we should not follow the example set in Wales, where their proposals would do significant damage to our farming sector and thus to our food security.

We have one of the biggest science and research budgets in the world, including £168 million for agricultural innovation. All of these reports show that we must increase the uptake of new technology in the farming sector if we are to have a chance of meeting the crucial environmental and biodiversity goals we have been speaking about. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), I think lifting the EU ban on gene editing technology is a tremendous step forward. It could play an important part in boosting our efforts to ensure we can feed an ever-growing global population in a way that is consistent with our commitments on climate and nature.

Finally, if we are to ensure we have resilient supplies of food and thriving agriculture in this country, these domestic goals must be at the heart of our trade policies. Like others who have served as DEFRA Secretary, I had a number of debates with ministerial colleagues on these matters. A key problem with the global trade system is that sanitary and phytosanitary rules are focused on concerns about human health, important as they are, and they are less clear on environmental and animal welfare standards.

I have always argued for permanent quotas to restrict imports in sensitive sectors, where those imports are produced to lower environmental and animal welfare standards than ours. There is little point imposing high standards at home if we simply import more food as a result, with the outcome that we offshore carbon emissions, biodiversity loss and animal cruelty. For those reasons, I have concerns about aspects of the Australia trade agreement, particularly in relation to the beef sector, but I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s statement in advance of his Farm to Fork summit that permanent quotas would be used where appropriate. As far as I know, neither of his two immediate predecessors as Prime Minister was ever prepared to say that, and it demonstrates the Prime Minister’s strong commitment to British farming.

Our farmers here in the UK operate to some of the highest environmental and animal welfare standards in the world. We should be proud of them and we should back them. If we are to meet our goals on climate and nature, we must work closely with them to deliver a successful transition to net zero, while ensuring that everyone continues to have access to the safe, high-quality, affordable food that they need.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I shall now call the speakers from the three Front-Bench teams, starting with the SNP spokesperson.