Storm Henk

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and for contacting me over the Christmas period to raise his concerns, not only about the farm at Short Ferry. It was good to meet his constituent Henry Ward at the weekend to see the EA asset and the implications of the water flooding his farm. I also saw on that visit how the vegetation in the River Witham and the delphs, which sit alongside it, needs attention. As my right hon. Friend will know, I am minded to look at options including dredging and removing vegetation in EA assets to ensure that we deliver a system that moves water further down the system more efficiently, which better protects our farming community. I have seen the report from the NFU and look forward to working with my right hon. Friend, his Lincolnshire colleagues and the NFU to try to get to some conclusion on that.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In Cumbria, we sadly know only too well the devastating impact of extreme weather events and flooding, so I and all of us in Cumbria stand in solidarity with those reeling from the impact of Storm Henk.

I want to say something positive about the Minister’s statement and what he has said in replies about farming. The worry that I have, which I think many of us have, is that farmers are still systematically at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to tackling flood risk. Can he tell us—he can do it later if he finds that easier —how many farms have received support for managing flood risk through countryside stewardship schemes? In my area, will he agree to direct the agencies of his Department— the Marine Management Organisation, the Environment Agency and Natural England—to act swiftly to support the Lynster Farmers Group to secure action to tackle flooding that threatens farms, livestock welfare, the Grange golf club and other local businesses by allowing the channel of the River Winster to flow as it should?

[Robbie Moore]

I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with the detail and figures he requires, but I reassure him that the Government are taking our farmers and the impacts on agricultural land incredibly seriously. That is why this weekend we announced that farmers who have suffered uninsurable damage to their land will be able to apply for grants of up to £25,000 through the farming recovery fund. That is a step where we have gone over and above what we have done before, and that is in recognition of the fact that the ground is absolutely saturated on the back of Storm Henk, Storm Babet and the constant rainfall we have had over the winter and autumn period.

Sustainable Farming Initiative

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of transitioning to the Sustainable Farming Initiative.

It is an ongoing pleasure to continue serving under your guidance this morning, Dame Maria. I welcome hon. Members to their seats and the Minister to his. I start by wishing everyone merry Christmas, in the spirit of the debate we have just had.

The sustainable farming incentive is a cornerstone of the Government’s environmental land management schemes. The hallmark of SFI in particular, and ELMS in general, is that public money should support our farmers for delivering public goods. The principles underlying that transition are supported by farmers across the country, by environmental groups and, for what it is worth, by me. The point of this debate is to issue a plea to the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister that they start listening to farmers and acknowledge the damage they are doing to farmers, food production and our environment by the way they are managing the transition from the old scheme to the new.

The Conservative manifesto promised £2.4 billion to English farming, yet in the past year the Government spent only £2.23 billion on various schemes and, crucially, only £1.956 billion of that went into farming. The Government have, therefore, broken their promise to farmers to the tune of £444 million last year and, with the phasing out of the basic payment scheme stepping up, they are set to break their promise to farmers to an even greater degree next year.

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Recent figures show a remarkably low uptake of the sustainable farming incentive. Does my hon. Friend agree that it simply does not have enough incentive for farmers to join?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point; I will come to that in a little while, because I think that does explain a lot of why that underspend has happened. It is easy to see how it has happened; it is not a mystery. It is down to two things: first, the Conservative Government have been very good at phasing out the old BPS, and secondly, they have been relentlessly incompetent at bringing in the new schemes, including for the reason that my hon. Friend set out.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs figures show that around £460 million has been removed from farmers’ pockets in the form of the BPS phase-out, which eclipses the increase in environmental payments of around £155 million. Much of that has not even gone to farmers. It has instead found its way into the very deep pockets of large landowners, including new entrant corporate landowners, looking to do a bit of greenwashing at the taxpayer’s expense.

In the spring of 2021, the Government promised to spend £275 million on SFI schemes in the 2022-23 financial year. Yet, in reality, excluding the pilots, they spent literally nothing—zero pounds, zero pence. This year, the Government plan to spend just shy of £290 million on SFIs. One question for the Minister is: how much of that money will actually go to farmers in this current financial year?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I understand clearly what the hon. Gentleman is saying but I would respectfully like to put forward a suggestion. There are examples where the schemes have done good. For instance, there are some wonderful farm shops in my constituency, such as Corries butcher’s, a good scheme set up some years ago, and McKee’s farm shop. For those farmers who can afford additional farm shops, this is a wonderful way to diversify in an effort to boost income and ensure functioning sustainability. Does the hon. Gentleman agree—I think he does—that small financial incentives could be a way to support our local farmers to diversify, and that could be introduced through the sustainable farming incentive? In other words, we can all gain.

[Tim Farron]

I go back to what I said at the beginning. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are clear advantages in the scheme, and we support its principle. The problem is that they are outweighed across the piece by the negatives.

What does the botching of the transition mean for individual farmers? Last week, I met a group of farmers in north Westmorland at Ormside near Appleby. One told me that SFI would replace just 7% or 8% of what he is losing in basic payment. Another explained that if he maximised everything in his mid-tier stewardship scheme and got into all the available SFI options, he would replace only 60% of what he received through BPS. The others in the room looked at him with some envy: he was the least badly affected.

Last month, I met a group of farmers in South Westmorland, in Old Hutton near Kendal. One told me that the loss of farm income meant that he had to increase the size of his flock to make ends meet. He knew that in making that choice he was undoing the good environmental work that he and his family had been doing for years, but he could see no other way to keep afloat. That is a reminder that the Government’s handling of these payments means that they are often delivering precisely the opposite of what they intended.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

One issue that farmers in my constituency have raised is that existing schemes to help the environment are not eligible under the sustainable farm incentive, so farmers are incentivised to rip those schemes out, undoing good work that they have done and damaging the environment. Does my hon. Friend agree that a tweak to the payments to recognise good work that has already been done would be welcome?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point, and that also happens in my constituency. Accidentally, the Government are acting in a counterproductive way when it comes to the environment.

Others at that meeting in South Westmorland near Kendal told me that they are putting off investing in capital equipment because the loss of BPS and the lack of replacement income means that they do not have the cash flow to invest in a long-overdue new dairy parlour, a covered slurry tank or other things that would increase productivity and improve environmental outcomes. The Minister will say that many grants are available to farmers to help them in that respect, and in some cases they absolutely can, but not if contractors need to be paid up front as DEFRA expects farmers to demonstrate that they have the money in the bank to do that before releasing those grants.

DEFRA’s own figures show that upland livestock farmers have lost 41% of their income during this Parliament, and that lowland livestock farmers have lost 44%. One famer near Keswick told me, tongue in cheek, that he had calculated that the fines he would receive for committing a string of pretty terrible crimes would not amount to what he lost in farm income thanks to this Government.

[Sarah Dyke]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. Does he agree that financially aware farms help make financially secure farms, which build food security for the country?

[Tim Farron]

Absolutely. If we do not give people stability of income and certainty, how can we expect them to provide the food and the environmental gains that we need?

I challenge the Minister to come up with any industry that has been penalised as badly by the Government over the past four years as our farmers. To be fair, I do not think the Government actually intended to do so much harm to farming and farmers. I do not believe they sat down and decided to break their promise to farmers and make a net cut of more than a sixth in farm spending, but those cuts have happened all the same because of flaws built into the system either by accident or by design, which have led to predictable and ever-increasing sums of money being taken out of farming, while smaller and less predictable amounts have been introduced.

Let me set out some of the flaws, in the hope that the Minister will address them. First, the system has built-in perverse incentives, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) said, which mean that farmers at the forefront of environmental work are penalised. Farmers who are in an existing higher level stewardship or uplands entry level stewardship scheme lose their BPS—by the end of this month, they will have lost between 35% and 50%—yet they cannot fully access SFI. In other words, farmers already doing good environmental work can only lose income from this process. That is especially so in the Lake district, the Cartmel peninsula, the dales and the Eden valley—some of our most treasured and picturesque landscapes. In upland areas, basic payments typically make up 60% of financial support. Farmers in those beautiful places, which are so essential to our heritage, our environment and our tourism economy are stuck. They are already in stewardship schemes, but their BPS is being removed and they cannot meaningfully access SFI.

The Lake district is a world heritage site. If the landscape changes dramatically for the worse in the next few years because of the Government’s failure to understand the impact of their error, that world heritage site status is at risk, and its loss would cause huge damage to our vital hospitality and tourism economy in Cumbria, which serves 20 million visitors a year and sustains 60,000 jobs.

The Government’s failure to allow farmers to stack schemes to deliver more for nature is foolish and bureaucratic, and it means that they were always going to be taking more away from farmers than they could ever give back.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I am not sure whether things are just different in North Devon, but my farmers seem to be able to stack their schemes. I was asked to come here today by a lovely lady called Debbs Harding, who is part of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, to fully endorse this programme. Yes, there is more to be done—there is always more to be done. However, I am delighted to hear that the Liberal Democrats welcome the schemes and are not just going back to Brexit, which has been their previous position.

[Tim Farron]

On the point that SFI can add value, the reality is that, with the exception of moorland options, there is no reason for anybody in a stewardship scheme to add to what they currently lose. My colleague from Appleby, who said he can only replace 7% of what he loses from BPS, is typical of many people. There are exceptions, of course, and I could name people who have done well out of it. Yet when we have taken out the best part of half a billion and put in £155 million to replace it, it stands to reason that the average farmer in North Devon and everywhere else is worse off.

I try to give the Government some credit by saying that this is incompetence and not malice. They did not mean to break their promise; they have just botched the transition and broken it by accident. However, if the Minister will not address the flaw that prevents farmers in stewardship schemes from meaningfully accessing SFI, we can only conclude that the betrayal of England’s farmers is not accidental after all, but deliberate. Will he look at the matter urgently, so that we do not lose farmers pushed to the brink due to the Government’s obvious failure?

Another flaw in the Government’s approach to the new scheme is that they keep chopping and changing. The Rural Payments Agency cannot keep up with the constant flux, as the Government reinvent SFI every few months. The platform for delivery is struggling to keep pace. For example, the Government’s latest edict is that everyone who began an SFI application in September must have completed it by 31 December. If they have not completed and submitted it by then, all their details will be wiped and they will have to go back to square one and start again. To add to that, the Government’s insistence on drip-feeding SFI options to farmers means that many have not applied because they are worried that if they do, a better new option may be revealed soon after.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks about SFI options. One thing I have picked up from the farmers in mid and east Devon I represent is that they are concerned about how the options are profligate. At the beginning of this year, more than 100 options for both schemes were new or were being reviewed. I am hearing from farmers in my corner of Devon that they want greater simplicity in the SFI.

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which I hear across Westmorland and beyond. All that puts people off applying for new schemes because under DEFRA’s rules, farmers can only change or upgrade options once a year, on the anniversary of their entry into the scheme. As a result, hundreds of farms in Westmorland are hanging on. They are unwilling to apply for the latest option because they cannot be sure that it will not be superseded a month later, leaving them locked into an inferior scheme.

I mentioned earlier the concerns expressed to me by farmers in Westmorland about capital schemes. That is a typical concern in landscapes with sites of special scientific interest, especially in the lakes and the dales. SFI moorland payments are higher than others, which is welcome, but farmers cannot get into that option without significant capital spending. For instance, farmers —or more likely a group of farmers—who farm on a common might typically need to spend a quarter of a million pounds on peatland restoration, sorting out leaky dams and slowing the flow of rivers and becks before they can qualify. Yet farmers—many of whose incomes in reality amount to less than half the national minimum wage—do not have a quarter of a million pounds sitting in the bank to pay up front for that work.

The Minister will say that those farmers could get the money back through the grant schemes, but if they do not have the money up front to defray the costs, they are effectively barred from entering. What are the answers here? We could start with the Government revising their payment rates. If we value these public goods—biodiversity, access, carbon sequestration, flood prevention, and so on—we should pay for them accordingly. That is why the Liberal Democrats have committed an extra £1 billion in UK agricultural payments to protect our environment and support farmers. Increasing the payment rates for SFI would draw more people in, and increasing payment rates for stewardship schemes would help too. The payment rates for HLS and UELS are £60 per hectare for commons and £50 per hectare for non-commons. Those rates have not been changed since 2010, so will the Minister address that?

The Government could then get rid of the barriers in the application process, such as counterproductive cut-off points that prevent farmers in stewardship schemes from replacing lost BPS income with SFI options. Next, the Government could do a really radical thing and actually decide on a policy and then stick to it. The Government constantly changing their mind is damaging the ability of the RPA and Natural England to deliver these schemes. The Minister might also consider whether three-year SFI agreements are long enough. Should there in addition be 10-year options, to at least give farmers the choice of a longer, more stable scheme? That would give them the security and stability they need.

On capital grants, the Government could ensure that the lack of cash flow—exacerbated by the withdrawal of BPS—does not prevent farmers from securing capital funding. The transition is a stressful and complicated business for farmers, as well as a costly one. Will the Minister invest more in face-to-face, on-farm, trusted advice to support people as they make these significant business changes? Will he ensure that Natural England does not habitually block access to new schemes to those in SSSIs by throwing hurdles in their way—as we saw on Dartmoor—and instead offers a helping hand to lead farmers into those schemes?

I restate that public money for public goods is the right principle to support farming, but the transition to the new scheme is causing hardship across Cumbria and across rural England as a whole. We need to remember that farmers are food producers first and foremost. If we do not understand that, we run the risk of damaging our food security even further. Already, the UK is only 55% self-sufficient in food. The Government’s approach will mean fewer farmers and less food production. Not only does that further undermine our ability to feed ourselves, it also displaces the environmental damage overseas. It racks up food miles and makes us reliant on food sourced from commodity markets, which will impact on and increase food prices for some of the poorest people in the world. There is a clear moral imperative for Britain to back its farmers so that Britain can feed itself.

Farmers are also our best hope in securing environmental gain. Of England’s land, 70% is agricultural. If we push farmers to the brink, who will deliver our environmental policies? Let us be dead clear: pushing farmers into bankruptcy is bad for the environment. The greenest thing the Government can do is to keep farmers farming, yet by botching the transition they are doing the opposite. [Interruption.] I will draw my remarks to a close soon— I apologise.

I can think of farmers who are essentially staring into the abyss. For example, people in their 60s who are tenants or else owners of a family farm. They are the fifth or sixth generation to run that farm. It is a beautiful place, but at times it is bleak, and it is always isolated. Life can be lonely.

[Dame Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Member wind up, please?

[Tim Farron]

I will. I was a bit too generous—I apologise.

That farmer is working 90 hours a week, with no headspace to deal with the flip-flopping and chopping and changing of the new schemes. They see their BPS disappearing, with nothing to fill its place. There they are, on the farm that their great-great-grandparents farmed before them, and all they can see is that they look increasingly like being the one who will lose the family farm. It will all end with them. Can we imagine what that does to someone, to their state of mind, and to their business and personal choices? What a burden we place on the farmers who feed us and care for our landscape and our environment, all because the Government will not face up to the reality that the transition is bleeding a torrent of cash from our farms, while injecting merely a trickle.

My final word is this. A farmer from near Kirkby, Stephen, who works with farmers on common land, said this the other day:

“I spoke with all the graziers over the weekend. Desperate and broken would probably describe the mood. A few years ago, I scanned a customer’s sheep, and six days later he killed himself. His friend and neighbour to this day cannot forgive himself for missing the signs, as did I”.

I am proud of our farmers and of the work they do to feed us, care for our environment, tackle climate change and maintain our breathtaking landscapes. I plead with the Minister to take note and to urgently make changes to SFI and to the whole transition, so that we do not irreparably damage people, businesses and our land, just because we did not listen to our farmers.

Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am happy to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), and to agree with many of the things that he said. My party and I are very supportive of the Bill. To ban the live export of animals, in particular cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses and other equine beasts, is a really positive step. We hope there will be no opposition to the Bill this evening, but should it come to a vote, we will support its Second Reading. If there is, we will join the Minister in the Aye Lobby.

We are disappointed—and we are not alone in this—by what is not in the Bill, because it was dropped in the last Session; by the fact that the measures previously promised by this Government are now either being dropped altogether or put through the very unreliable route of private Member’s Bills; and by the length of time it has taken to get here. But we cannot avoid the fact that the ban on live exports of animals is a positive move towards easing unnecessary suffering of animals. The journeys that those animals have been forced to make before being slaughtered are often needlessly stressful and distressing and a threat to animal welfare. It is a basic act of decency that today we begin the process of legislating accordingly.

However, as has been mentioned by more than one contributor to the debate so far, we signed trade deals not very long ago with at least one country that is not abiding by this kind of legislation. Australia still permits live export of animals over long distances, including overseas, for the time being, and in a country much larger and much hotter than the one in which we are legislating to regulate. If we are talking about the impact and influence that this country has on animal welfare, why did we not use that sovereignty and that power to ensure that we were not just exporting the animal welfare problems while importing produce to this country?

That deal threatens not just animal welfare globally, but the wellbeing, welfare and incomes of our own farmers, who abide by animal welfare standards often higher than those we legislate for in this country and legislated for previously through the EU, and are a beacon of strong animal welfare performance. For them to be undermined by that trade deal was an outrageous assault on our farming community and a threat to animal welfare. I hope the Government will learn the lessons from that in any future trade deals.

The Secretary of State, who is no longer in his place, was right when he said that the UK has the best animal welfare standards in the world. I think that is accurate. Not only does it feel correct, but I think it is accurate. I am concerned, though, that they are not just accidentally so. One of the reasons they are so is the nature of the farming we have in the United Kingdom: largely small family farms, maybe large in geographical scope but small in terms of the size of the businesses. They are the basis of our farming economy across the United Kingdom.

I would say that getting rid of the common agricultural policy and moving to the environmental land management scheme is one of those rarely sighted beasts, a Brexit benefit—a good thing, if the Government were handling the transition well, but they are not. We see that at least a sixth of the money that the Government promised to English farmers is not being spent and has not been spent in the last financial year, not because the Government have chosen to cut that money, but because they have just not managed to spend it. Farmers are losing vast amounts of their basic payments and are gaining very little in environmental payments to replace them. I talked to a farmer on Friday who reckoned that he would make up about 7% or 8% of what he had lost in basic payment via the new schemes.

What does that do to farming across the country? We lose farmers. If we lose farmers, we lose the ability to do good environmental work on our landscape, we lose our ability to feed ourselves as a country and we increase the chances of moving to ranch-style farming, which tends to have less close animal husbandry and therefore, culturally and necessarily, lower standards of animal welfare. As we pass this legislation, and I hope we are going to start that ball rolling tonight and that we will all agree to it, let us ensure that we are not, through our fiscal actions, undermining animal welfare throughout the country.

It is true that how we treat animals is a sign of what we are as a culture and whether we are decent or whether we are not. It is absolutely right that we are doing what we are doing; while the challenges out there still remain, if we can minimise journeys of animals from where they are reared to slaughter, as my neighbour the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border rightly pointed out, that is of great significance and importance to tackling animal welfare problems.

My fear is that the red tape and the collapse of the workforce in our abattoirs, not just the inability to bring in vets from overseas, but the lack of other members of the slaughterhouse workforce, mean that many small abattoirs are under enormous threat. Four million pounds will not even touch the sides when it comes to protecting small abattoirs in Cumbria, which are the best in the country—they are family firms, they aid animal welfare and they are massively important to our local economy.

This Bill does many good things, but it does nothing to address a series of other compassionate moves that could have been dealt with in one swoop, as the Government originally were planning to do. The RSPCA, which of course has campaigned for this particular ban for 50 years, found that the dropping of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill last year and the omissions in the King’s Speech broke a grand total of 14 pledges on animal welfare. I will just list a handful of them.

The first pledge was on zoo licensing. The original plan was for animal welfare standards in zoos to be enforced more thoroughly, increasing the penalties for zoos that missed those animal welfare standards. That pledge was dropped and there was no sensible reason for that. The second was livestock worrying, which is a serious problem for our communities in Westmorland. It is unbelievably distressing to farmers, their families and everybody else to see the goring of livestock by uncontrolled animals. In the Government’s original plans, the police would have been given additional powers to protect sheep and livestock from dogs, something that was not only an animal welfare issue, but an economic one for the farmers. There was no obvious reason why that would be dropped.

The third pledge was a ban on primates being held as pets, and dropping that ban was a ridiculous nonsense. There was no reason why it should not have been in this Bill or why the original Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill should not have proceeded. That has been omitted. It is bizarre that that was not all in the same legislation. The fourth was puppy smuggling. We know that, as things stand, people can bring five animals per person in a vehicle over the border legally. We know that puppy farming is a problem, and the failure to tackle it through this Bill just seems peculiar. The lack of additional intervention and action to punish the theft and unlawful importation of such animals seems a massive missed opportunity.

By the way, the Government could have adopted my presentation Bill, the Pets (Theft and Importation) Bill, just a few months ago, if they had wanted to go down that route. The Bill was a reheating of their own promise from the 2019 Conservative manifesto. I just wonder why the Minister did not just seek to adopt my Bill and put it into practice. I would obviously have been very happy if they had stolen every single word of it.

To conclude my remarks, I also regret any sense that one party loves animals more than any other. I understand that, and I am sure that the Government Front Bench is filled with animal lovers as much as every other part of this House. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that that was not enough for, maybe not the Minister, but Government business managers to have acquired the backbone to take on their own Back Benchers when they threatened to be troublesome over a more comprehensive version of this Bill, the one that was promised in the Conservative manifesto and that has now not been delivered.

The omissions from this Bill are a source of shame and anger for many of my constituents in Westmorland, but what remains in the Bill is good, so it would be foolish to oppose it, and we will support its Second Reading.

Rural Communities: Government Support

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your guidance once again, Sir Charles. It is a real privilege to follow everybody in this debate, but especially my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke), who succeeded in securing this debate and made an outstanding speech at the beginning.

I want to cover many issues we have already talked about, and I will start with farming. Farming is crucial to feeding our country, protecting and restoring our environment, tackling climate change, promoting biodiversity and underpinning the landscape that our tourism economy depends on, but it has been badly let down. Farmers across my community feel angry with this Government for many reasons—including the trade deals with New Zealand and Australia that threw them under the bus—but specifically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned, the botched transition from the old scheme to the new scheme.

We believe in environmental land management schemes, and we think the project is one worth supporting. However, the Government promised £2.4 billion in their manifesto for farming in England, and the latest figures for 2022-23 show £1.97 billion for agriculture in England. Environmental schemes have increased in their expenditure to farmers by £145 million a year—great—but basic payments have fallen by £490 million. We see upland livestock farm incomes down by 44% and lowland livestock farm incomes down by 41%.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I remind hon. Members of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. If the Government find it so difficult to put money into farming in the way my hon. Friend describes, could they not perhaps give a bit more attention to ensuring that farmers get a fair price for their product at the farm gate? The Groceries Code Adjudicator has not achieved what we wanted it to, but surely somebody, at some point, has got to address the fact that that market is failing, and it fails to the disadvantage of our farmers and rural communities.

[Tim Farron]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point; he is absolutely right. The Groceries Code Adjudicator has the capacity to potentially make a big difference for farmers and growers—producers of all kinds. But the reality is that it does not have the sanctions and remit. It is not allowed to take third-party referrals from the likes of us or the NFU on behalf of farmers who are being stitched up by processors or retailers. It is absolutely right that the Government support farming, but the market should be fixed so it does not exploit our farmers either.

We already have a situation where we are only 58% self-sufficient in farming in this country. We are never going to deliver the environmental goods we need if we do not have those expert hands on the land delivering those environmental policies. Our landscapes are at risk of changing radically, dramatically and negatively to undermine—for example—the £3.5 billion-a-year tourism economy of the English Lake district.

Moving on to broadband, Project Gigabit is a good idea, but there will be many people who miss out. Thousands of homes in my part of Cumbria are outside the scope, or in deferred scope, of Project Gigabit. B4RN—the Minister may be aware of it—or Broadband for the Rural North is an excellent local community interest company. It could absolutely connect all of those homes in—I am going to mention them now—parts of Sedbergh, Kaber, Murton, Long Marton, Winton, Warcop, Ormside, Hilton, Hartley and Bleatarn.

I mention those places because, if the broadband voucher system were still available, they could be connected now through B4RN, if it was not for the fact that Project Gigabit is trying to only ride one horse, and is not prepared to accept that not every issue has to be dealt with in the same way—one size does not fit all. I ask the Minister to look specifically at those communities and consider restoring the vouchers to them so that they can be connected well and connected now.

I want to briefly move on to buses. The right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) rightly points out the importance and value of the £2 bus fare, which I think has increased footfall or “busfall” by about 10%—it certainly has in my community. The £2 bus fare does a fat load of good if there is no bus. I want this Government to give local authorities like mine the power to run their own bus companies and the funding to ensure that they work. Buses often do not make a profit, but they are the oil that ensures that the economy works in communities to keep people connected and to ensure that people can get to work and school, or make use of leisure facilities. Back our buses.

[Keir Mather]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

If the hon. Gentleman gives way, he will squeeze the time available to the mover of the debate to wind up.

[Tim Farron]

In which case, I really apologise—I will not give way. I apologise, Sir Charles. I do not want to be ungenerous to the mover especially.

I will finish on health, and I want to talk about cancer in particular. The reality in a community like mine is that, throughout south Cumbria, there are around 700 people having to travel each year for radiotherapy treatment to their nearest radiotherapy centre—the Rosemere Cancer Centre in Preston in Lancashire, which is excellent. That is a two, three or four hour round trip for those 700 people. Swindon has recently been allocated a satellite unit on the basis of 600 patients who would use that centre. My call is for a satellite radiotherapy centre to be placed at the Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal to serve south Cumbria and to ensure that those people receive the treatment they need.

The latest figures tell us that 38% of people in south Cumbria diagnosed with cancer wait more than two months for their first intervention, and 54% of those in places in north Cumbria, such as Appleby, Kirkby Stephen and Shap, have to wait more than two months for their first intervention. We know that, for every four weeks of delay in cancer treatment, one has 10% less chance of surviving. I believe that people in rural communities have as much right to have a life ahead of them than those who live elsewhere, yet we have a funding situation that does not treat them as such. I will finish there, Sir Charles, and thank you for overseeing this debate. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I call the spokesman for the SNP, who has five minutes.

Storm Babet: Flooding

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course it is critical that warnings go out appropriately at the right time, and that was why this incident started to be flagged the previous weekend and why the national flood response centre was set up. There is a comprehensive Environment Agency flood warning service and I advise people to sign up to it, as well as checking whether they are in an area that might be at risk of flooding. One of the issues is awareness. The EA runs a lot of comms programmes on this, but if there is more that should be done, I will look at that in the review.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

When Storm Arwen hit Cumbria two years ago, many of our villages and other communities lost electrical power for several days due to damaged power cables. I know that that has happened to many communities over the last few days. What progress have the Government made since 2021 to make Britain’s power infrastructure more resilient—for example, by creating a national bank of mobile generators to ensure that communities are not left cold, dark and vulnerable for days on end? Have the people hit by Storm Babet benefited from lessons learned from Storm Arwen, or are we no further forward?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would like to assure the hon. Gentleman that DEFRA has been working closely with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which has a strategy for exactly this issue, because it is critical that power outages are considered when emergencies such as this take place. Effective action was taken over the Rolls-Royce plants in the Derbyshire area; that was a very effective alignment with the Energy Department. Just as an aside, we work closely with the water industry on preparedness, should there be electricity outages, some of which might be linked to flooding. In fact, there was another incident near Derby and it had a clear management plan.

Animal Welfare (Kept Animals)

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In their manifesto, three and a half years ago, the Government promised a single Bill that would crack down on puppy smuggling, ban live exports, protect sheep and other livestock from dangerous dogs, and ban the keeping of primates as pets—a Bill that I think pretty much everyone in this place would have been in favour of and voted for. The Government seem to have time on their hands; we will probably finish at about 6.30 pm today, and we stopped at 4.30 pm yesterday, so it is no excuse to say that the agenda is packed. Parliamentary time is clearly available, so there is no excuse for the Conservatives having failed to pass the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill that they promised in their manifesto three and half years ago, in the general election of 2019. We are told that all will be well—that the Bill will be broken up into bits and delivered over the next year. We will see.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Nearly 200 constituents have written to me about the Bill. They want it to happen, and are so worried that it will not. The plan is for the provisions to be put into private Members’ Bills, but given that Members, not the Government, decide what is in private Members’ Bill, and that there is no clear plan for how the measures will be apportioned to Members, I am not filled with confidence that this will get done before the next general election. Does my hon. Friend agree?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

I do not know when the next general election will be; most of us have no more than a bit of a clue about that. My hon. Friend makes a really good point: there is an absence of leadership from the Government. They have declared what they want to do, and most of us agree with it, yet they are delaying the process, for reasons that have been set out, though they all seem pretty weak. The Government are, at best, dragging out a process that should have been completed by now. At worst, this is in effect a betrayal of their promises to the electorate to care for our animals in a practical way. However, even before the Government begin that weakened and watered-down process, there has to be yet another month of consultation—pointless consultation, I would argue. A cynical person would say that that has the benefit to the Government of kicking the issue into the long grass of the summer recess. They might hope that after that recess, people will have stopped caring, but we will not have stopped caring.

All this dither and delay is transparently not because Government Members are all monsters who hate animals—that is clearly not the case. It is because the Government are scared of unhelpful amendments from their own Back Benchers. That is in keeping with what was demonstrated earlier this week by the mass abstentions on Monday night. Rather than challenging bad behaviour or standing up for what is right, we have a Government who habitually bravely run away. As Lord Lamont said in this place of a previous failing Conservative Government, they are a Government who are in office, but clearly not in power. That weakness is not just embarrassing for the Government, but costly: it costs animals the protection they need, or at least delays those protections, and it costs our country the reputation it deserves. As such, I support the Opposition’s motion, as I hope they will support my private Member’s Bill on pet theft and importation, tabled on 6 June. By the way, if the Government wished, they could give that Bill its Second Reading next week. I am not precious: it is all theirs if they want to take it off me.

The Government’s own Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill matters, because how we treat animals and how we allow animals to be treated marks out what kind of people we are and what kind of country we are. We are a nation of animal lovers, not just in theory but in practice, so we cry out for a Government who will act in accordance with those values in practice. Liberal Democrats have a track record of animal rights advocacy, including improving standards of animal welfare in agriculture, ensuring the protection of funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit, and ending the practice of housing chickens in battery cages while we were in the coalition Government. That matters because, like humans, animals experience suffering, pain and fear, so it is crucial that we change the law to better protect animals from harm.

Of particular interest to our communities in Westmorland and Lonsdale is that the Government’s Bill would have extended the cover of law on livestock worrying to include deer, llamas and other animals, and would also have given police more powers to investigate and prosecute the worrying of sheep and other livestock. NFU Mutual estimates that livestock worrying costs farmers £1 million a year, and the word “worrying” does not conjure up the reality of what that practice actually means and what people in our communities understand that it means. For instance, sheep worrying by dogs means ewes miscarrying lambs, lambs being separated from their mothers, and horrific incidents of goring causing unspeakable pain and suffering.

Just as the Government’s weakness in this case is sadly characteristic, so is their willingness to put political considerations ahead of animal welfare. It is not that they do not care about animal welfare—they just do not care as much as they care about the politics. The Australia and New Zealand trade deals are a case in point. Those deals were agreed despite farmers and animal welfare charities protesting the fact that they gave an advantage to those who practise lower animal welfare standards over British farmers who practise higher standards. The Government’s desperation for deals at any price for political reasons came at the cost of British farmers and animal welfare. Here we see a pattern: this delay, or this betrayal, is sadly characteristic. That might be hard for Government Members—many of whom, of course, care about animal welfare—to hear, so I challenge and invite them to prove me wrong by backing my private Member’s Bill and supporting today’s motion unamended.

Agricultural Tenancies

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend and his Committee for their work. We want to avoid any such perverse incentives. We do not want to motivate landlords to take land from tenants for the purpose of, for instance, rewilding, or to remove them from the sector for any reason. We want to encourage a positive working relationship.

There are, of course, some challenges. If, for example, a tenant applies for a grant under our new slurry scheme to introduce physical structures that will last well beyond the length of the tenancy, the landlord will need to have some engagement in the process and to support that tenant. We want to open up these grants to tenants as well as owner-occupiers, so that tenant farmers can invest in their productivity as well as their sustainability and their ability to make a profit.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I welcome and broadly agree with the review, and pay tribute to Baroness Rock and her team for their hard work. I am grateful for advance sight of the Minister’s statement, which also included much encouraging information. However, the Government have dragged their feet in responding to the review, and many of the policies that will affect tenant farmers have already been set in train, which is one reason why a mere 27 of the more than 1,000 farms in my constituency, roughly half of which will be tenanted, have taken part in the SFI so far.

I think the Government should stand rebuked by two particular elements in the review, and I should like them to look at those again. First, does the review not remind them to ensure that landscape recovery includes tenant farmers, and that the landscape cannot be gobbled up by water companies and large estates, which is what is beginning to happen? Secondly, given that many tenant farmers in Cumbria and elsewhere are upland farmers, does the Minister recognise that the intention of funding environmental schemes via the system of income forgone discriminates against the uplands and will force many hard-working tenant farmers out of the industry altogether, to the detriment of our environment and of food production?

[Mark Spencer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm welcome for the report and our response, but I think that some of his characterisations are a little misplaced. Let me say first that in designing the ELM schemes we took account of the feedback we were receiving from those conducting the review. We were in possession of it when it was published some time ago, and we worked with the group to ensure that we were taking it on board. Secondly, of course we want to support upland farmers. We want to support all tenants, to ensure that they have the best possible opportunity to make a living, and to protect the beautiful landscapes that we see not only in Cumbria but in the south-west and other places with landscapes that matter to the British people.

Let me say this, gently, to the hon. Gentleman. He will be aware that the Liberal Democrats entered into the political game of trying to keep our farmers tied to the bureaucratic EU land-based subsidies by tabling a motion in the other place. Under that system, far too much time was spent on burdening farmers with complex sets of rules, and on debating whether a cabbage was the same as a cauliflower for the purposes of the three-crop rule. We have to move on to a different place, and that is what we are doing. The hon. Gentleman can play his political games, but we will look after those farmers and ensure that the system works for them.

Environmental Land Management Scheme: Funding for Upland Areas

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered environmental land management scheme funding for upland areas.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and great to see the Minister in his place to respond to what I am going to say.

Our uplands are precious beyond measure. They are on the frontline in the fight to restore nature and to tackle climate change. They provide us with water for drinking and with the opportunity to protect population centres from devastating flooding. They underpin our tourism economy and are home to our most stunning historic landscapes. They provide food and they enable the flourishing of communities that are as much a part of our heritage as the landscapes that they care for.

I support the transition to the environmental land management scheme. The principle of public money for public goods makes sense and is, in theory, a great improvement on the area-based payments of the common agricultural policy. I also welcome a move to a more sustainable payments scheme that supports environmental benefits alongside ensuring food security. In practice, however, the Government are sadly putting our uplands in peril, and they are doing so needlessly.

Farmers across the country are being put at risk by a failure to listen, but in the uplands that failure is worst of all and threatens to be catastrophic. In this debate, I aim to speak for upland communities in Westmorland, but also for communities elsewhere. While preparing for the debate, I visited many farms and listened to dozens of farmers, and my hope is that the Minister will acknowledge the Government’s failings and commit himself to putting them right.

The transition from the old farm payments scheme leaves upland farmers especially exposed as they typically rely on the basic payment for more than 50% of their income. As the basic payment scheme is phased out—every farm will have lost at least 35% of its BPS this year—upland farms will need alternative sources of funding to fill the gap. Those sources of alternative funding are, however, not forthcoming, and the consequences will be devastating.

It is my honour to represent more than 1,000 farms in Westmorland and Lonsdale, but the last time I checked fewer than 30 had registered for the new sustainable farming incentive. Those farms have lost a huge chunk of their BPS, and most of them so far have nothing to replace it. That is the Government’s fault. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs rules dictate that farmers who are not already in the countryside stewardship or higher level stewardship schemes cannot maximise SFI benefits because the schemes do not fit together seamlessly. This means there is a guarantee that almost all upland farms will not be able to replace their lost income and that their financial viability will decline steeply.

If farmers are in a stewardship scheme and also received the basic payment, they can expect to get no more from their stewardship scheme. Meanwhile, they lose their basic payment. Therefore, in the transition, farmers can only lose income. That is the case for many farmers, including lowland farmers, but especially those who farm in the uplands. Why can we not permit those in stewardship schemes to provide additional environmental value by applying for an SFI that fits with stewardship?

The new schemes seem to have been written deliberately to disadvantage upland areas, in particular because Ministers chose to stick with income foregone plus costs as the principle underlying payments for SFI and stewardship schemes. That caps, or limits, income for delivering for nature, climate and water at the amount a farmer could have earned from beef and sheep in the uplands, which is an awful lot less than the famer could earn elsewhere. The lowland rate is £151 per hectare, but the upland rate is only £98 per hectare.

The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), is on the record saying that DEFRA must depart from

“the outdated income foregone methodology”

for payment rates. I wonder why DEFRA has chosen to ignore its former Secretary of State. Why, instead, do the Government not pay farmers a fair rate for the immense value of the environmental work they do, rather than giving them the equivalent of the poorly paid work they have given up? If we valued nature and valued farmers, that is what we would do. Why is there not equality of opportunity? Why are we not allowing all farmers who want to deliver for nature to do so? Why are upland farmers effectively being locked out?

The failure to pay upland farmers a fair rate is a major reason why most have been put off even applying. Another reason is the Government’s choice to reveal the SFI options in a drip, drip, drip fashion over time. Many farmers I have spoken to in the past few weeks, including two in the Eden valley, tell me that they have not applied for two reasons: first, the payment rates are pathetic and it is just not worth their while applying; and secondly, they are waiting to see whether something better comes along from future options that the Government may or may not reveal. All the while, those famers and others are seeing their incomes eroded by the phasing out of BPS and have no alternative sources of funding to replace it.

In particular, we desperately need more detail on the new moorland option. I am glad there is one, but can the Minister tell us when it will start, what it will be worth and when farmers will have the full details of what it will entail? Take-up of the option is slow, yet as the chair of the Uplands Alliance, Professor Julia Aglionby of the University of Cumbria, points out, DEFRA has refused to fund a digital app that would have enabled effective and efficient moorland surveys. Relatively small decisions such as that make a big negative difference, and reveal the Government’s apparent disinterest in the plight of our uplands. It will be a disincentive for our farmers to deliver more for nature and the climate.

The lack of clarity and the limited nature of the options available are particularly damaging for tenant farmers. How are they to make long-term decisions about their businesses when the Government are dribbling out incomplete information now and again and leaving them effectively in limbo? Meanwhile, as Baroness Rock revealed in her very welcome review of tenant farming, many tenants are being forced out so that their landlords can access ELM schemes for themselves.

I sincerely hope that it was not the Government’s intention to advantage wealthy absentee landlords at the expense of hard-working farmers, but whatever their motives, that is nevertheless happening. DEFRA has repeatedly said that the transition aims to stop big payments going to large landowners, yet we see asset-rich landowners embarking on 21st-century clearances, and scooping up big payments in the process. We are already seeing new money pouring into the uplands and being invested in land for its hope value—for carbon credits or offsetting. It is transparent greenwashing in exchange for wads of taxpayers’ money, while farming families are turfed out and cleared from the land for which they have cared for generations.

Many upland farms have the potential to get into the countryside stewardship higher tier, yet reports from throughout the country show that few of those who might qualify even begin the application journey, mostly because Natural England has had its staffing so badly cut that there is no one to help those farms or groups of farms to get through the process. Just the other week, farmers near Ullswater put it to me that the Government are missing out on a vast amount of nature restoration, water quality improvement, and carbon reduction and sequestration, all because of penny pinching in relation to Natural England and farms being locked out of the schemes that were supposedly designed for them.

Many farms have benefited from the Government’s shift towards more grant funding, and that is a good thing, but even then there is a failure to understand how farms really operate. Capital grants work on the basis of reclaiming outlay that farms have already made, but upland farmers’ cash flow is disappearing with BPS. The grants are often welcome, but they ignore the reality that farms need regular, reliable revenue funding for the good work that they do, not one-off chunks that they have already had to spend up front. The very fact that DEFRA is paying BPS in instalments—which is also welcome, by the way—is a clear admission that it realises that cash flow is vital and that the loss of BPS without replacement will cause huge damage to businesses in the uplands and elsewhere.

This litany of mistakes, incompetence, unfairness, penny pinching and broken promises is putting our vital uplands in a treacherous position. It is surely obvious that the Government will not spend the promised £2.4 billion on farm support. With so few farms entering the new schemes, while every farm is losing BPS, it is surely impossible for the Government to have kept that promise.

In the uplands, where BPS makes up such a large proportion of farm incomes, the betrayal is felt even more sharply. Will Cockbain, who farms near Keswick and is the chair of the Swaledale Sheep Breeders Association, tells me that he has written to the Prime Minister four times setting out very clearly that the BPS cuts for upland farms, even if they are in countryside stewardship schemes, means a loss in farm incomes of more than 50% in direct support. He pointed out that tinkering with countryside stewardship does not come close to compensating for the loss of BPS. Will the Minister clarify whether his Department has done an economic assessment of the impact of the transition from CAP to ELMS on upland farms? If such an assessment has been done, will he please commit today to publishing it? If one has not been done, why not? Will the Minister now commit to doing one?

The forecasts of the farm business income survey show that, in the most recent financial year, upland farms will have seen a 51% drop compared with average farm incomes over the previous three years. The average income for an upland farm is now £16,300. Farm business incomes for upland farms for 2028-29—the end of this process—are not predicted to improve beyond £16,500, even with the full introduction of ELMS. That equates to an average hourly rate for farmers of £4.20, which is much less than half the minimum wage. This catastrophic fall in incomes is a direct result of Government policy and choices, or at least of the incompetent application of those policies.

The consequences are stark. We will see farms fail. People whose families have farmed in our uplands for generations will find themselves in the crushing position of being the one who lost the family farm. We do not think enough about the mental health impact on farmers and their families of the uncertainty caused by this botching of the transition. What does it mean for our upland communities when families that have formed the backbone of village life for centuries get uprooted because the farm has failed because of the Government’s failures? What does it mean in children lost from our schools, jobs lost, lost demand in the economy and the loss of homes and human dignity?

We do not think enough about the damage to our environment caused as farms cease to farm and farmers decide that they cannot afford to farm with care for the environment. Without farmers, we will lose the essential partners we need to put environmental policies into action. Even the best environmental plans in the world are useless pieces of paper in a drawer without the expert hands of farmers to put them into practice.

Many upland farmers will go broke and many more will go backwards. Having spent time on farms in the lakes, dales and elsewhere in the last few weeks, I am struck by how many have looked at their falling incomes and the fact that the new ELM schemes are either impossible for them to enter or too unattractive or restrictive, and made the reluctant choice that the only thing they can do to make ends meet is to farm more intensively and get more livestock, and in doing so undo the good environmental work that they and their families have done for decades. It breaks their hearts, but it seems to them to be the only alternative to losing the farm. How stupid and irresponsible to design a scheme meant to protect and enhance our environment, but to deliver it so badly that it does the exact opposite.

Might I suggest that the Government could make one of two choices? First, they could pause the phase-out of BPS to give farmers breathing space to get into the new ELM schemes—and, indeed, to give the Government the breathing space to fix their mistakes and put them right. Or they could choose to turbocharge the introduction of ELMS and demonstrate a commitment to supporting upland farmers to address the nature and climate crises. Throughout covid, we learned that with political will Departments can, at great pace, introduce new schemes to address crises. I suggest that this is a crisis on multiple levels.

There are only 6,500 upland farms. It cannot be beyond the wit of DEFRA to bring in an effective scheme for early next year, 2024, that enables upland businesses to thrive, delivering for nature and climate and underpinning a tourism economy that in Cumbria alone is worth £3.5 billion every year. Surely now is the time to admit that if we want to ensure that we do not devastate our environment and our capacity for food production, £2.4 billion is a wholly inadequate sum of money. If we care about biodiversity, reducing greenhouse emissions, the production of good-quality British food, protecting water quality and maintaining our landscapes, we must surely add at least another £1 billion to the pot. Central to the Government’s failure is that they are trying to do a range of incredibly important things on the cheap.

It is our farmers in Longsleddale, Kentmere and other upland valleys who protect thousands of homes in Kendal, Staveley and Burneside from flooding. It is our upland farmers in the lakes who maintain water quality for the whole of the north-west of England. It is our upland farmers who produce food, and maintain, shape and protect our historic landscape—so much so that UNESCO awarded world heritage site status to the Lake district largely on the basis of how the national park is farmed. We remember that Liverpool recently lost its world heritage site status. That is a warning that if we fail to protect this awesome natural environment in the lakes, we could lose that status, too, causing damage to a tourism economy that employs 60,000 people across Cumbria.

Our upland farmers are at the forefront of the fight against climate change, as they restore peatland and woodland, including imaginatively managed woodland pasture. They are crucial to nature recovery and biodiversity: 53% of England’s sites of special scientific interest are in the uplands. All that is at risk because the Government are not listening to farmers, are failing to understand the impact of their actions, and lack the humility to accept where they have made grave mistakes.

We will not stand by while this Government, by accident or design, cause avoidable harm to our uplands and the people who are their faithful stewards. I am proud to represent and fight for such a breathtakingly beautiful and important part of our country. But I am prouder still to represent the people—the families at the heart of those communities—who take care of that landscape. I hope that I have done them justice today, and that the Minister will acknowledge the peril facing our uplands and act before it is too late.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 11.30 am.

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

Thank you for that guidance, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for calling this important debate.

Farming is the lifeblood of our communities. I know at first hand the invaluable work that farmers do. They keep food on our tables, nurture our natural environment, improve our biodiversity, and protect the environment for future generations. It is only right that we take time to consider how best we can support our farmers —our custodians of the countryside—to run sustainable, productive and profitable businesses, and to ensure that there is an offer for all types of farms with our environmental land management schemes.

We recently announced detailed plans for the nation’s farming sector. Our environmental land management schemes have something to offer for every type of farmer, and we plan to introduce further offers and are updating others so that they can be more focused on producing the great food that we consume, and the environmental gains and climate outcomes that we want to deliver.

Upland farmers can take advantage of 130 actions through a variety of schemes. That is more than 60% of the total actions available to all farmers. The level of coverage is similar for farmers grazing livestock on the lowlands, arable farmers, and those growing horticultural and multiannual crops. Those actions are designed to work alongside farming practices, and to protect and enhance our most environmentally important sites.

In order to ensure that upland farmers can take advantage of what our schemes have to offer, we are making it easier for farmers to apply for paid actions. This year we have improved the application process, increased the rates and broadened the scope of countryside stewardship. That includes allowing agreement holders of higher level stewardship to take up countryside stewardship revenue agreements alongside their HLS. That will benefit farmers who already have an HLS agreement but want to increase their income from schemes by doing more on their land. We have introduced a new, fully improved online service for countryside stewardship mid-tier applications. That service is closer to the application process used for the sustainable farming incentive, which we know farmers find straightforward to use.

In the uplands, a number of farms are on common land, and we have designed the sustainable farming incentive so that it works for those farmers. Eligible single entities can apply for an agreement on common land, and they will receive an additional payment to help with the cost of administering that agreement.

There is more to our offer than countryside stewardship and the SFI. Upland farms can also apply to the landscape recovery scheme, which funds large-scale projects to produce environmental and climate benefits through bespoke, long-term agreements. The uplands were well represented overall in round 1; a majority of landscape recovery projects involved groups of land managers and farmers, including tenants, working together to deliver a range of environmental benefits across farmland and rural landscapes. Applications for round 2 open this year, and projects in upland areas are likely to contribute to the focal areas for that round.

For farmers in areas of outstanding natural beauty or national parks, our farming in protected landscapes programme provides funding for one-off projects. We have funded more than 2,400 fantastic projects, and earlier this year we decided to extend the programme for a further year; it will now run until March 2025. Farmers who have livestock can also get funding for a vet, or a team chosen by a vet, to visit their farm and carry out health and welfare reviews for eligible livestock. That is part of the SFI offer.

Additionally, we are offering grants to support animal health and welfare. The first round is open, and grants will go towards the cost of a list of items designed to improve the health and welfare of livestock. We are also funding free business advice for farmers through the resilience fund. More than 10,000 farmers have taken up the offer so far. I encourage all upland farmers to take advantage of that free service and find out what might work for them and their businesses.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said that he welcomed ELMS and that he wanted to see the schemes go forward. I therefore find it strange that his party chose to vote against our new environmental schemes only a few weeks ago. His party voted to retain the old EU common agricultural policy, which to my mind was a vote against food security.

[Tim Farron]

I am happy to clarify.

[Mark Spencer]

Let me just finish the point. In my head, that was a vote against food security, given that the old area-based payments were specifically de-linked from food production in 2005 and have inhibited productivity improvements. I am happy for the hon. Gentleman to clarify why he chose to stick with the old common agricultural policy.

[Tim Farron]

At the moment, the BPS is set to be reduced by 35% this year. As I set out in my speech, one of the options, which would get farmers out of the mess that the Government have put them in, is for the Government not to make that cut this year, given that they clearly have not spent all that money on the environmental schemes, as they promised. That would be a way of keeping farmers farming, which is the best thing for food production and the environment. That money could have kept many people focused on environmental delivery, rather than either moving out of business altogether or choosing to intensify their farming. Both those things are happening on the Minister’s watch.

[Mark Spencer]

So the motion put forward by the Liberal Democrats was misworded, because its effect would have been to take us right back to the beginning of the process. It would have scrapped countryside stewardship and the ELM schemes. It was basically a vote against river restoration, because it would have ended all the funding to our environmental schemes. That includes 32,000 countryside stewardship schemes already in existence and signed up to by farmers, which would have disappeared if the motion had passed. It feels like a gimmick. We are in the business of delivery—of trying to help farmers move forward and improve our environmental output and biodiversity. The hon. Gentleman wants to play games, and I think that is really disappointing.

Let us look at what we have actually done. We have set out all the details of our farming schemes, which are designed to make farms profitable, resilient and sustainable food producers while protecting nature and enhancing the environment; we have announced an additional £10 million of support through the water management grant to fund on-farm reservoirs and better irrigation equipment; we made 45,000 visas available for seasonal workers in 2023 to increase productivity in horticulture; we launched the £12.5 million fund for robotics and automation to help with innovation in agriculture; we announced plans to regulate pig contracts to ensure fairness in the pig supply chain; we doubled the money for slurry infrastructure for farmers to £34 million through the slurry infrastructure grant; we have registered New Forest pannage ham under the geographical indication scheme; we have increased payment rates for farmers under countryside stewardship and the sustainable farming incentive; and we passed the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, unlocking key technologies to improve UK agriculture.

That is a fantastic record of support for our farmers, but it is not the end of the process. We are very keen to engage with our farming communities and our farmers to support them. We will continue to listen to those farmers, engage with them and understand the challenges that they face. We will constantly review the process, and we will work with farmers to ensure that they continue to be profitable as well as to improve our environment and biodiversity.

[Tim Farron]

I asked a number of questions and I would be grateful if the Minister would answer them all, although he may not have to time do so verbally. One question I am really keen that he answers is whether his Department conducted an economic impact assessment on the transition from CAP to ELMS for upland farmers. Did that assessment take place?

[Mark Spencer]

We have consistently and constantly engaged with farmers through the development of the SFI. There have been a number of farmers on working groups, working directly with DEFRA to design the schemes to ensure that they work for farmers in a practical way. That is an ongoing process. Instead of saying, “At this moment in time, this is our assessment of this brilliant project,” we consistently and constantly engage with farmers in the real world to understand the challenges they face, to improve the schemes, to listen to their views and to support them.

We have had an interesting debate. We stand ready to help and support farmers on the uplands, the lowlands and the arable fields of the east of England wherever we can to continue to produce great food and look after our environment.

Question put and agreed to.

Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In Cumbria, it is our privilege to be the stewards not only of the fells and the dales, but of our lakes, rivers and coastal waterways. That is why we are angry about the fact that six out of 10 of the longest spills of sewage in this country in 2022 happened in our county of Cumbria. Sewage was pumped into the River Kent at Staveley for 169 days, into the River Eden at Kirkby Stephen for 101 days and into the River Eea at Cark for 252 days. At Windermere, the centre of the Lake district’s tourism and economy, and the largest lake in England, sewage was pumped into the lake or its tributaries for 5,000 hours.

Sewage is discharged not only in Cumbria. As I speak, sewage is being discharged into the River Mole at Esher, which happened 220 times last year. There were 280 spills in Winchester, 750 spills in Lewes, and 2,200 spills in the borough of Stockport. All of these were legal. United Utilities in the north-west is the worst offender because it is situated in the wettest part of England, and therefore storms happen and overflows are permitted more often.

Let us also look at the situation with regard to bathing water, which we have heard many people talk about today, and the way it ensures higher water quality. We bid for bathing water status for Coniston Water and the River Kent, but we were turned down, despite those being more popular bathing sites than many places where that status was granted. I have heard what Government Members have said about monitoring, but in 2021 12% of the monitoring stations were faulty and 16% were faulty last year, so what we know is probably an underestimate of the state of the problem.

We have talked about legal dumping of sewage, but what about illegal dumping? In 2021 and 2022, there were 827 offences and illegal dumps of sewage. How many of those 827 were prosecuted? Just 16, which means that this Government have effectively decriminalised the dumping of sewage in our rivers, lakes and coastal waterways. Water companies know that that will happen and factor in the fines, because it is cheaper to pay them than to invest in the infrastructure. Since privatisation, £65.9 billion has been paid out in water company dividends. There was a 20% increase in executive pay last year. We hear the Government saying that the polluter should pay. Yes, the polluters pay: they pay themselves massive bonuses.

In Cumbria and across the country, we are outraged. It is not just about the threat to the biodiversity of our lakes and rivers, to our fish stocks, to those who swim, to our pets using our waterways and to the tourism economy that underpins the Lake district. It is also about the deep injustice that large corporations are raking in enormous profits, while this Government are doing nothing to stop them pumping sewage into the waterways that we value so dearly in Cumbria and elsewhere.

Food Security and Farming

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is important that we continue to look closely at regulation and some of the bureaucracy around food production and farming, and ensure that the journey from farm to fork, and from one market to another, is as smooth as possible.

The production-to-supply ratio of food in the UK has been declining since it peaked in the mid-1990s. For me, the question is not so much why, although that is important, but what we are doing about it and what more can be done. We can start by recognising the dual role that farmers play as both food producers and custodians of the countryside. I am a farmer’s daughter, so I have a bit of experience in this, although it is a few years since my dad gave up farming. We need to get that important balance right, because farming must be viable and economically sustainable, as well as environmentally sustainable.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady is being very generous, and I thank her for bringing an important debate to this House. Like me, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has demonstrated that, while the official Opposition may not be here, the unofficial one is deeply concerned about the future of farming across our great family of nations. In Westmorland, and indeed across the rest of England, 100% of farmers will lose more than a third of their basic payment by the end of this year. Less than 10% are in the sustainable farming incentive so far, so there is a real gap in farm incomes. I can tell the right hon. Lady, just from my own experience of talking to farmers in Westmorland last week, that that is forcing some farmers out of business and some to intensify farming. Would it be wise to address that, so that we can continue food production?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. This is only a half-hour debate. It is not normal to have many interventions in this sort of debate. The Back Bencher produces his or her argument and the Minister replies.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I start by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing the debate.

Farming is the lifeblood of our communities. As a farmer myself, I know at first hand the invaluable work that farmers do, putting food on our plates and caring for the environment and for nature. As we all know, farming in England is now going through the biggest change in a generation. It is an exciting time, but it is important that we get those changes right. We are phasing our subsidies so that we can invest the moneys in policies that work for farm businesses, food production and the environment. We have a unique opportunity to shape our policies to the needs of our farmers. I pledge that we will do exactly that, making sure that farmers are at the heart of everything that we do.

Here in the UK, we have a highly resilient food supply chain. We are well equipped to deal with disruption. However, farmers are facing challenges as a result of the global economic situation to which my right hon. Friend referred, including the illegal invasion of Ukraine, which is of course driving up the costs of fuel, fertiliser and agrochemicals, and that is why we have taken action to support them.

We have already split direct payments in England into two instalments each year to help with cash flow. We have committed to spend around £600 million on grants and other support for productivity, animal welfare and innovation over the next three years. We have provided 10,000 farmers with help and advice through the future farming resilience fund. We have moved the 25% tariff on maize imports from the US to help with animal feed costs and we have now passed the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 to help farmers become more productive and to feed the nation.

Our high degree of food security is built on supply from diverse sources—strong domestic production as well as imports from stable trade routes. Recently, we saw in supermarkets some disruption to a small number of fruit and vegetables due to poor weather affecting the harvest in Spain and north Africa, where a high proportion of the produce consumed in the UK at that time of the year is grown. In that instance, we met the industry to assess the severity of the disruption. Item limits have now been removed, so we are in a much better place than we were at that moment in time. DEFRA has a collaborative relationship with supermarkets, retailers and suppliers, to get involved and to help minimise any disruption.

The Government recognise the importance of food security. We certainly did in the Agriculture Act 2020, and we will carry on monitoring that and ensuring that we monitor food security every three years. The first UK food security report was published in December 2021. We have committed to at least maintain current levels of food production under the food strategy, which set out what we will do to create a more prosperous agrifood sector.

When it comes to self-sufficiency, which my right hon. Friend referred to a number of times, we produce about 74% of the food that we can grow in the UK. Thanks to our farmers, we are almost 100% self-sufficient in fresh poultry and certain vegetables, and close to 90% self-sufficient in eggs. Further to that, we are 86% self-sufficient in beef, fully self-sufficient in liquid milk, and produce more lamb than we consume.

Sectors such as soft fruit, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) referred, have seen a trend towards greater self-sufficiency in recent years. However, we do recognise the huge pressure on the sector. She has done a lot in this place to highlight the challenges faced in the soft fruit and food production systems, particularly in the county of Kent.

Let me turn to getting the balance right between the environment and food. Ultimately, putting food on the plates of people across the nation is the primary purpose of farming in this country and always will be, but if we want farming and food production to be resilient and sustainable over the long term, farming and nature must go hand in hand. Indeed, our new farming schemes invest in the very foundations of food security, from good soil health and water quality to climate resilience and an abundance of pollinators.

[Tim Farron]

This will be a short intervention—I apologise for being overly long before. In this transition period, where we appear to be phasing out the old subsidy scheme but trickling in the new ones, is the Minister seeing in his communication with farmers, as I do in Westmorland, some who find it hard and are thinking of giving it up all together, and some who feel that they cannot access the environmental schemes and therefore must increase their intensity of farming? I am sure it is not just happening in Westmorland. What can he do about that?

[Mark Spencer]

The hon. Member will be aware that last week I was in Cumbria talking to those very farmers. I think it is fair to say that with the sustainable farming incentive in particular, we have been through a trial period where we have been talking to farmers directly and taking their direct feedback on how those schemes work. We will roll out the latest phase of the SFI this summer and, as he has identified, as we move away from common agricultural policy payments and direct payments to this new phase, we want to make that as accessible as possible.

We continue to have conversations with farmers in order to support the very people he talks about. We can do that in a number of ways, such as, as I said, supporting farmers’ soil quality, improving their grassland and trying to help them to reduce their input costs. We can also give them access to capital grants to help make them more productive and efficient in their farming. It is an ongoing process. This is not a presentation saying, “Here are the new schemes and this is how it will be for 20 years.” Outside the EU, we now have the flexibility to listen to the industry, to work with the sector and to ensure that we can respond to its needs, so that we can keep ourselves well fed while continuing to look after the environment.

Let me turn to what we have done this year. We have provided farmers with extensive detail on the new schemes; increased payment rates in countryside stewardship to reflect the increases in costs; and introduced new, additional management payments for farmers taking environmental work through the sustainable farming incentive. We have accelerated the roll-out of SFI, with six new standards coming this summer—three more than originally planned —and we have announced that we are expanding our existing countryside stewardship scheme, adding about 30 actions to the 250 that are already available.

We will continue to broaden our offer and support thousands of farmers up and down the country with the schemes. We will continue to do everything we can to meet our three main goals of supporting viable farming businesses, maintaining food production at its current level, and achieving high environmental and welfare outcomes. My door is continually open to those conversations and discussions. We will continue to support our great British farmers and we will continue to ensure that our constituents are well fed with beautiful British food.

Question put and agreed to.