Farming in Wales and the UK

I will call Jonathan Edwards to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up—as he knows; he is an experienced Member—as is the convention for 30-minute debates. I suspect, however, that he will get a number of interventions.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered farming in Wales and the UK.

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and to have the opportunity to raise the concerns expressed in rural Wales in particular, but seeing that there is an honourable turnout from Members from all constituent parts of the UK, I suspect we will hear about the concerns of other farmers across the UK.

Feelings are running at fever pitch in Wales, and last week a mass protest converged on the capital city of Cardiff. For those in the rural heartlands of Wales, Cardiff is not the easiest place to get to. My hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) will attest that it is easier to get to London than to Cardiff from Caernarfon.

It is easier to get to Dublin.

Yes, it is even easier to get to Dublin. The turnout was extraordinary and showed the strength of feeling that has erupted over recent weeks. I was listening to the Wales podcast on the BBC on the train down over the weekend, and it said it was the largest demonstration that the Senedd has ever seen. That is testament to the strength of feeling in rural Wales.

Although I do not come from farming stock directly, my father and his brother were raised on Ffos y Ffin farm in Capel Dewi following the death of their father from tuberculosis. He got involved in the local young farmers movement, and his best friend was David Woods, who farmed Waunyryddod in Cwmfelin Mynach in the west of Carmarthenshire, near Whitland. Some of my fondest memories as a child include visiting the Woods family at their farm on weekends, watching my father and Mr Woods milk the herd, and helping out as I got a bit older. I witnessed at first hand the unwavering dedication of our farmers and grew a huge appreciation for their work and for the pride they feel in being food producers for the general population.

The pressures farmers work under are considerable. They are open to hugely fluctuating costs and prices while their payments largely flatline, and they work on extremely small margins. One of my first meetings after being elected was with a dairy farmer, who explained the huge financial difference that a 1p increase or decrease in the price of milk would cause his business. The inflationary pressures squeezing our economy are hitting farmers particularly hard, with skyrocketing input costs severely impacting their income. Last year, I received a justifiably angry message from a constituent complaining that fertiliser costs had doubled in less than 12 months. He was talking about having to drastically cut back on production. The inflationary pressures have driven up costs across the industry, yet farmers have not had the option of passing those costs on to consumers due to their position in the supply chain.

I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward. He is absolutely right to highlight the issues for Wales, and indeed for the whole of the United Kingdom. Does he agree that there are many issues facing farmers UK-wide, and that the farming community needs support to ensure that we are providing opportunities to not only those from farming backgrounds but those outside, so that they can realise that there is potential for a fulfilling career in the countryside? Perhaps we need to push for this vocation as passionately as we do for the NHS or even engineering.

I am extremely grateful for that very valuable contribution. Later in my speech I will talk about how the agricultural community needs to perceive us as wanting to work with them, as opposed to being unsympathetic towards them, which, unfortunately, is especially the case in Wales at the moment.

Returning to my point about the NFU gathering, following the meeting, NFU Cymru president Aled Jones said:

“The food and farming supply chain is an £8 billion industry in Wales that employs some 233,000 people, Wales’ biggest employer. As a sector we are completely interlinked with each part of the supply chain relying on the other for their viability.

A productive, progressive and profitable Welsh farming sector is essential to the wider supply chain, farmers spend around £1.4bn annually on products such as feed, fertiliser, veterinary and medicines, farm machinery and contract work. The produce from our farms is processed and sold in retail and food service markets in Wales, across the UK and globally.”

To return to the issue of intervention, we get the impression that policymakers at a Welsh level in particular view our farmers as some sort of economic burden. Their mindset needs to be turned around, and a key part of that is accepting the anchor status of farming for the whole rural economy.

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate, and I very much agree with all the points that he has made. He will be aware that in much of East Anglia, just as in Wales, one in eight jobs in rural communities are linked to agriculture, food and drink, and the wider supply chain. I wonder whether more can be done to support the agricultural sector through public sector procurement, such as the UK Government and the devolved Governments introducing minimum requirements for food in our hospitals and our schools to be purchased from local farmers.

I am extremely grateful for that intervention. I think that such a policy would give the added bonus of providing high-quality food in hospitals and schools, which we should be aspiring to achieve as policymakers.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what is going on in Wales—the real disappointment faced by Welsh farmers under the Labour Government provided by the Welsh Assembly—is the gypsy’s warning for farming across the whole of the UK? If we were unlucky enough to get a Labour Government, what is happening in Wales would happen in the rest of the UK, and there is not even a Labour MP present to defend the Welsh Government. It’s a shocker!

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his passion and his support of the farming industry. I do not want to write his election leaflet for him, but I will certainly be concentrating on Welsh Government policy further on in my speech.

Earlier this month, 3,000 farmers converged on Carmarthen market under the protest banner “Digon yw Digon”, which translates to “Enough is Enough”. I pay tribute to my constituents Gary Howells and Aled Rees for mobilising so many farmers in my home county. Indeed, protests have been erupting across Wales and England. As an aspiring historian in a past life, I have to mention that those massive protest meetings have parallels with the Rebecca rioters’ mass gathering at Mynydd Sylen, near Pontyberem, in the summer of 1843—I had to get that in. What we are witnessing today, however, is colossal discontent in the agricultural community. Thankfully, organisers and the unions have done a great job in ensuring that matters have remained peaceful and within the law.

Much of that anger has been growing since the EU referendum, as farmers have witnessed the destructive approach taken by policymakers to the development of post-Brexit agricultural policy. There is no doubt that leaving the European Union has been a disaster for Welsh farming. They were promised sunlit uplands by the leave campaign but have been let down, and in the post-Brexit trade deals that have been signed, the interests of our farmers have been sold down the river by the UK Government. I acknowledge that there seems to have been a slight change of approach with the current deals, such as the one with Canada. However, that is too little, too late in relation to some of the previous deals.

The Welsh Government calculate that, for the period 2021-25, rural support funding will be £243 million less than had we been under EU farming support policy, and that figure does not account for inflation. The difficulty faced by the Welsh Government in managing an overall budget declining in real terms perhaps explains some of the unfavourable policy approaches that we have seen towards agriculture over the last few years. If the UK Government have left themselves open to accusations that they have neglected agriculture, the Welsh Government are open to accusations of hostility.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate; he is making a fine speech. He points to the double whammy facing Welsh farming. It is not only Brexit and the subsequent disaster—of course, the Canada deal is far from settled; a cruel pantomime is going on at the moment, as we shall see later in the main Chamber—but there is also the incompetence and lack of understanding and listening from the Welsh Labour Government, as witnessed at the very large protests last week. Clearly, we need a change.

My hon. Friend’s point about the Welsh Government is well made. I do not know of any farmer who votes for the Labour party, and I suppose one can understand why the Labour party takes the approach it does. But it is disastrous for agriculture to have a Government who are open to the accusation of being hostile to farmers.

One of the most emotionally difficult meetings I have had as an MP was on the case of the farm that was struck down with bovine TB. It is difficult to explain the mental health impact on those affected. Earlier this month, “Ffermio”, an agricultural programme on S4C, unmasked those horrors graphically on the Castell Howell farm of Mr and Mrs Davies in Capel Isaac in my constituency. The family had to witness their cattle herd shot in front of them, one by one. It was absolutely harrowing for the viewer and utterly despairing for the family. It has become a tipping point for the emotional outpouring we are witnessing in rural Wales at the moment. It was an incredible piece of filmmaking by the “Ffermio” programme team, led by my constituents Ellen Llewellyn and Meinir Howells.

The failure of the Welsh Government to get to grips with bovine TB, and the continued faith in the policy of destroying cattle herds, has become a perfect metaphor for the unsympathetic environment farmers face from their own Government. I am glad that the Welsh Government committed to reviewing their policy on farm slaughter last week, but there should be a wholesale review of policy, including dealing with TB in wildlife.

To compound matters, the Welsh Government partnership parties have acted with blatant disregard on changes proposed to school terms and the potential impact on the Royal Welsh show, one of the marquee events in the Welsh national calendar. Proposed school term changes could see the show fall outside the traditional summer holidays, with the organisers warning that they will face a £1 million-plus shortfall, making the event unviable. Last week, the Minister hosted an event by the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society in the very room where the idea to form it came to fruition, Committee Room 12, to celebrate the 120 years since that initial meeting. England has lost its royal show, and we in Wales now have the most successful, and possibly the largest, agricultural event in Europe. Yet the event operates on small margins, and a £1 million operational loss could be fatal. The Welsh Government need to sit back and think this policy through, and make sure that the Royal Welsh show and the National Eisteddfod are protected.

On support for farmers, yesterday I was speaking to a former president of the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society, a Mr Finlay Munro, a farmer in my constituency. He made the point, which I found quite thought provoking, that when we talk about carbon sequestration, we are not really giving grassland its full value, and that, if that could be worked into the equation, it might be a support mechanism for our farmers. Does the hon. Gentleman—who is making an excellent speech—agree that the Government should look at that?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; indeed, that is the criticism of the SFS coming from farmers. The Welsh Government made a statement last week saying they were going to review it, which is a positive step forward in response to the protests. However, reviewing is one thing; what we want is policy implementation. The hon. Gentleman’s point is well made, and it is often made to me by my farmers in Carmarthenshire.

Returning to what I was saying, it is worth reading out the section on the SFS in the partnership agreement, so that it is on the record. It says that both parties will work together to:

“Introduce a transition period as we reform the system of farm payments so stability payments will continue to be a feature of the Sustainable Farming Scheme during and beyond this Senedd term. We will agree the longer-term arrangements for Welsh agriculture, recognising the particular needs of family farms and acknowledging ecologically sustainable local food production.”

It pains me to say this, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) will not be too happy with what I am about to say, but it seems to me that Plaid Cymru has been completely outmanoeuvred by the Labour party in the partnership agreement. They have effectively been lead down an endless 20 mph road to nowhere by Labour.

There is a clear case that the farming community has a vital role in helping the Welsh Government to reach their environmental targets, especially in terms of carbon sequestration—to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). The alternative is letting the speculators buy up Welsh agricultural holdings—as has been happening—and planting trees on productive Welsh farming land. As always, the Welsh Government would be better advised to take farmers with them on a journey, as opposed to dictating and imposing. Just to reiterate the point I made in response to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, there has been a Welsh Government statement saying that there will be a review, but what we really want to see is action.

May I just say that the hon. Gentleman does a slight disservice to my party by lumping Plaid Cymru in with the Welsh Labour Government. We do have an agreement, as he knows full well, having been involved in discussions on this issue in past times, but that is far from being jointly responsible together as a coalition—as some parties have recently titled it.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention because what he said is what a lot of the public discourse around the protests has been. However, I read out the actual partnership agreement—

Which has since developed.

Yes, there is a negotiation going on, and the hon. Gentleman is aware that his colleague in Arfon is the lead negotiator. I think she has been blindsided by the Labour Government.

He will like this bit now, though—