Welcome, everyone, to this morning’s sitting. I am still asked by the House of Commons Commission to remind hon. Members to observe social distancing and wear masks—that, apparently, is still the guidance and advice.
That this House has considered food and farming in Devon and Cornwall.
I am most grateful and delighted to have secured this important debate on food and farming in Devon. It is good to see so many of my colleagues from Devon, and it is very good, if I may say so, to see some honorary Devonians this morning: the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). It is a particular joy to see them so interested in food and farming in Devon. Of course, many of the themes on which we will touch will be of common interest to those whom they represent and so, speaking for myself and, I am sure, all my colleagues, we are delighted to see them.
I should say straightaway that I own farmland in Devon and derive an income from it. Although I do not myself currently farm the land, it is eligible for some of the schemes that I will discuss today and therefore it is possible that I might benefit from them.
A prosperous and flourishing agriculture in the United Kingdom is in the national interest—I do not imagine that that is a controversial statement in this company. It is not a dispensable or superfluous activity. Recent international events have confirmed, in the most dramatic way, that food production, and more specifically food security, is of increasing national importance and should be a vital Government priority. It does not need much imagination or foresight to see that, for some time now, we have been living through a new and unstable phase of international affairs. The effects of pandemics, wars—threatened and actual—and climate change are thrust upon us with every news bulletin. We cannot take for granted an uninterrupted international supply chain and an endless stream of imports.
On Monday this week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence observed that the impact of a Russian invasion in Ukraine—now already in action—would be to remove access to the breadbasket of the world. It would have the most deleterious impacts upon vulnerable states and nations throughout the world. Similarly, the gradual erosion by climate change of fertile and cultivable areas of the world, increasing regional tensions, confronts us with a growing threat to the interest of this country in ensuring a constant and adequate food supply to its people. Perhaps not for a very long time has it been so critical that our domestic agricultural policies—under our own exclusive control again after 45 years—should be got right. That is no doubt why the Government sensibly included a legal duty on Ministers, in devising the financial support schemes, to have regard to the need to encourage the production of food and to report each five years to Parliament on food security.
I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on initiating the debate. It is specifically about food and farming in Devon, but, as he rightly said, when it comes to farming, Northern Ireland is comparable. Does he agree that, while farmers in my constituency and across Northern Ireland have recently had a reported rise in income, their outgoings will far outstrip their income, and that, if any modernisation or diversification is to take place, the Government need to step up and implement funding streams that can be allocated to those who need them most, UK-wide? The right hon. and learned Gentleman and I discussed this before the debate. He and I understand well that our Minister in Northern Ireland has grasped the important issue of farming—I know that the Minister here has done the same—but does he feel that whatever happens in Devon, the same should happen in Strangford?
You might say that, Mr Betts; I couldn’t possibly comment. What I can say is that I agree with the hon. Gentleman: the commonality of interests between farmers in Devon and Northern Ireland is obvious and clear. Northern Ireland is an important part of the United Kingdom. It is important for farmers throughout our great country that these policies should be got right. Now is not the time to take unnecessary risks with our capacity to grow food and sustain the nation, but the time to seize the opportunities the moment brings.
I very much agree with the thrust of my right hon. and learned Friend’s speech. On self-sufficiency and food security, currently the UK enjoys 64% self-sufficiency. The Government have no shortage of targets in other areas. Does he agree that it would be quite sensible to have a target to increase that figure to, say, 75% over the next decade? What is wrong with that?
I agree with every word of my hon. Friend’s intervention. Food security, as I will come on to say, should be at the heart of the Government’s policy making.
We cannot ignore the international context. What more does it take than tanks rolling across the border of a European nation—one that has been famous in history as the breadbasket of the world? Are we seriously going to assume that from now on the uninterrupted supply of food can simply be counted on? Or are the Government to start to take the precautions necessary to ensure that the food supply for the people of this country is guaranteed? One way to do that would be to adopt the measure proposed by my eminently wise neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter).
On security of supply, one of the challenges that is clear to me is that we have the food, but not necessarily the people to farm it. I heard on Radio 4—yesterday morning, I think—of a pig farm of something like 300,000 pigs where 4,500 were going to have to be killed because it did not have the labour force. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the issue of the labour force in agriculture needs to be taken much more seriously by the Government? The concept that these incredibly complicated jobs are low-skilled or unskilled is utterly wrong; it is not worthy of the people who do them. We need to recognise the skill, reward it, and attract those workers, from both within the United Kingdom and further afield.
The panel of wisdom assembled this morning is extraordinary; it is almost as if my hon. Friends have read the speech that I prepared last night. Of course the issue of labour is critical.
I supported the departure of this country from the European Union. I believed in every fibre of my being that the freedoms it would permit our nation, if seized and enacted, would bring great benefits, not only to the farmers of our country but to our country as a whole. I do not believe the people of this country would fail to understand the need of British farming for skilled labour. I do not think that was the objection of the millions who voted for Brexit. They would understand a policy of flexibility.
There is no need for us to maintain, with adamantine stubbornness, a policy that leads to labour shortages in British farming. So I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) completely. Nowhere is this uncertainty felt more keenly than in Devon, where 13% of the economy of the county consists of food production, almost twice the national average. No one seriously argued that an area-based direct payment scheme, such as the one we have, should be retained. Agricultural support should be aimed, as far as possible, at those who look after and promote the wellbeing of the land, or who genuinely make their livelihoods from it.
The aims and intentions of the Agriculture Act 2020 were widely supported, including by me, but those direct payments accounted on average for 55% of the total farm incomes of England. In the south-west, even with the farm payments, the farm business survey found that the average income of a lowland grazing farm in 2019 was just £4,048. Without those payments, there would have been a loss of £10,000, or closer to £14,000 if existing agri-environmental payments are included.
Last year, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board found that the levels of the new environmental land management scheme then published would, even at the advanced tier to which many could not aspire, not remotely replace the current payments. Yet, according to the agricultural transition plan, by 2024 the direct payments will have been reduced by half, and by 2027 they are due to end completely.
I was watching “Countryfile” on Sunday night, and sugar beet producers in England were mentioned. As we all know, there is an onus on the Minister, but there is also an onus on the companies that buy the product to give farmers the right price for their product. In many cases, the processing company that was mentioned—its name has escaped my mind—has upped its price, but the price has not kept in check with the cost. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to press the Minister, but does he agree that we should also press companies to give the producers—the farmers—the right price for their product?
I completely agree that fairness within the supply and the price chain is vital. I think we have lost some momentum that we gathered a few years back with the enactment of various measures that this Government took in trying to create greater awareness of these matters within the industry and the price chain.
The hon. Gentleman has pointed out one further aspect of what I am attempting to convey. What we need is a conviction at the heart of Government of the importance of British farming. I do not doubt that the Minister herself has that conviction. I do not doubt that the Secretary of State, who is a valued colleague of ours in the south-west, has that conviction. I sometimes doubt that, at the centre of the Government’s councils, that conviction is always as persuasive and influential as it should be. I simply say again: at a time when we are confronting another dictator on the borders of Europe, how much more evidence do we need that food security should be a crucial priority at the heart of Government policy making?
If farmers felt that policies were being designed in our post-Brexit world to lift them up and help them make the most of the market, I have no doubt that they would seize those opportunities with alacrity. They were told that regulation would be handled differently and would not, as so often is the case, stifle farmers with bureaucracy and penalisation, but that there would be—I quote from the transition plan—a “new, more effective approach”. Well, someone appears to have forgotten to send the memo to the Environment Agency. Its new guidance on the farming rules for water has caused widespread dismay about the spreading of muck. I understand that dairy farmers are being visited today and told that they must build more storage for their slurry and invest in their farms—investment that they can ill afford at the moment, and even if they can afford it, they are frequently refused planning permission at the instigation of Natural England.
Slightly out of order, I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, who I know has to return to a Select Committee meeting.
9:57 am
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I thank you for your co-operation, Mr Betts. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) is chairing the meeting, so I need to go back and check that all is well. I am sure it will be.
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) for bringing this timely debate. He speaks with great passion. He has a very rural seat and he understands rural life and farming. I want to echo much of what he said, without trying to repeat it all. The point about food security and the situation in Ukraine is quite simple, inasmuch as we do not grow bananas or pineapples, so we will not become completely self-sufficient, but what we do grow well is grain, chicken, sheep, cattle and dairy.
There is an issue of food security, because Ukraine is the breadbasket of the world, as is the western part of Russia: I have visited Bryansk in the past and I remember that the one thing I wanted to bring home with me was the soil. I have never seen such beautiful soil in my life. It can grow absolutely everything. Therefore, as we change agricultural policy, we need to protect the environment but we need food. That is not an old message but the same message, and I will repeat it while I have breath in my body.
There is not enough food in the Agriculture Act. The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), is doing a great job trying to adapt the policy to incorporate food. I still say that food is a public good. A lot of people in this country still do not have enough food, and I am absolutely certain that they believe it to be a public good. The trouble is that we very often debate many of these issues because we are very full-bellied. I should declare an interest: I am overly full-bellied. The simple fact is that we need to produce food, and the type of food that we can produce is affected by the situation in Ukraine. I need to put that clearly on the record.
The payments can be got right. The level of payment has been raised significantly in the new environmental land management system, the sustainable farming incentive and the stewardship scheme, but the other payments are not yet enough to attract farmers into such schemes. We are taking very significant amounts of money away from farmers, and by 2024, half their payments will be gone and will not be replaced by the new payments. Although payments are not entirely expected to be replaced, they need to be enough to maintain a good quality of production.
I believe that we in the Conservative party, and on both sides of the House, see agriculture as the production of food environmentally. Farmers want to produce food. They actually believe that that is in their DNA, and that they should feed this country. That is what they want to do, that is what gets them up in the morning, and that is what gets them to milk their cows, look after their sheep and poultry and grow their corn. That is what they do: they produce good, high-quality food to feed this country. As we adapt our policies, for goodness’ sake let us actually ensure that food is at their heart, and that there is enough payment out there to keep that going.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am hugely grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) for an excellent speech, and for raising an important set of issues. I will not cheat: I am not a Devon or Cornwall Member. However, I am a Member from a western county that shares a farming heritage with Devon and Cornwall, particularly when it comes to livestock. As a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, I want to say that my party is utterly committed to those two counties, to the west of England, and to supporting farming, agriculture and rural communities more generally.
Although I differ from the right hon. and learned Gentleman on whether it was right to leave the European Union, it is clear that we agree that the common agricultural policy was one good reason to leave. It is one silver lining. The CAP is restrictive and did all sorts of harm, not only to UK farming but internationally, in terms of fairness of trade, and our standing with other countries, particularly those in the developing world where there is farming. It did not reward farmers for the good that they do.
In principle, I agree with the process towards ELMS. I do not believe that many Members who represent farming communities or people who farm think that ELMS is bad, in principle. However, I am deeply concerned that we may be botching the transition. There are three things I want to focus on. Some are accidental, but some are policy related, and I take issue with them.
A couple of months ago, farmers saw their first reduction of between 5% and 25% in their basic payment cheque. Over the next few years, that will decline to 50% and then to nothing. During that time, people will be—and already are—losing their farm income, without having a replacement available to them. What would any of us do if our income fell by half or more?
Some 85% of farm profitability in the livestock sector is from direct payments, so we are talking a colossal chunk of farmers’ incomes. What Devon and Cornwall have in common with Cumbria is a preponderance of smaller family farms, which, we can be sure, will be hit the worst.
Several hon. Members rose—
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However, agriculture in Devon and Cornwall, like farming all over the country, faces a time of great unpredictability and uncertainty. It must adapt to the major implications of the Agriculture Act 2020 and of changes in our trading relationships after our exit from the European Union.
The Public Accounts Committee has described the Department’s approach as “blind optimism”. I do not know, but I certainly hope that that is not an accurate description, and I look to the Minister to reassure me. So far, however, no impact assessment has been published of the effects of the design of these new schemes on food production and farming in Devon, or elsewhere. Nor have measurable standards yet been published by which the environmental benefits and farming outcomes can be assessed.
The Minister herself, in answer to a question about upland farming in April 2020, nearly two years ago, said that she understood the need for payment rates to be attractive to achieve the level of uptake and the environmental outcomes we need to see. The Government have suggested—I believe is an accepted and understood figure—that only if we achieve participation in the sustainable farming incentive of around 70% of all farmers can the scheme succeed.
I understand that elements of the new scheme are still under development, but I must tell the Minister that neither the current published rates, nor the schemes as so far defined, are attracting much enthusiasm from the farm businesses and farmers I represent. They simply cannot yet see sufficiently how these schemes will be relevant to the economic survival of their farms. That anecdotal evidence is supported by the growing chorus of concern from the industry. The Tenant Farmers Association, farming one third of the land in England, has described the current plans as
“a complex patchwork of small schemes of limited impact with little which seems to stitch them together.”
The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—it is a pleasure to see its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), here this morning—the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have all expressed their growing sense of dismay and apprehension. Steadily and relentlessly, the clock is ticking down for Devonshire and Cornish farmers. In the meantime, as the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out, their costs continue to soar.
I understand that in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft coming in to land, sirens and alarms will go off if the plane is approaching the runway either too low or too slow. The sirens are going off now on the Department’s transitional plan. If the market is to play a greater role in farm incomes in the future, it might be less troubling if one could see the necessary vigour and energy invested in creating new markets for British produce around the world—if we could see a bright and bold new vision of a British agricultural export agency with a mission and a passion to convey the magnificent story we have to tell about the quality of British food and to convert it into new opportunities. Perhaps the Minister might say a word about what the Government are doing in this respect.
If Devon and Cornwall’s farmers could sense that the Government were willing to invest in them and back them with the kind of tailor-made and well-designed policies that would lift their collective sales, I have no doubt that they would accept with alacrity the challenge of adaptation, investment and flexibility that these changes will require of them.
Again and again I hear the same of other agencies like Natural England, whose chief executive I have invited to a summit meeting on Dartmoor later this year to discuss its relationship with working farmers on the moor. We must see this fabled new approach manifested in the everyday experience of farmers. We must take the freedom that our departure from the European Union has conveyed upon us and create the light-touch, unbureaucratic approach for which the farming community is yearning. We must also see the sums promised for investment in on-farm productivity materialise, increase, and be simple to access and draw down.
Perhaps it is too lugubriously pessimistic to remind oneself of the ill-fated Rural Payments Agency and the long history of misery that its performance in administering the area-based payments so often caused those who had to deal with it. Perhaps it is too easy to believe that the administration of these new, as yet undeveloped and unfledged schemes will suffer the same fate in execution as they have appeared to in design. There are more hopeful omens: all is not doom and gloom, as I know the Minister will tell us. The countryside stewardship applications have been simplified, the rates have been increased and—lo and behold—there has been a 30% increase in the uptake of that scheme. Nobody rejoices in that fact more than I, but as the Minister will accept, it is not by itself enough. I hope she will give us this morning greater grounds for hope than, I am afraid, my more pessimistic observation produces at the moment.
This is not just a question of the observable facts. Sometimes one must rely on one’s intuition, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs so often seems to wear an air of defeatism and lack the foresight, conviction and urgency that the situation demands. If they do not feel they are getting a fair audience at the heart of the councils of government, I understand that. That is why each one of us sitting here this morning can play our part in lending strength to my hon. Friend the Minister’s elbow and that of her boss, the Secretary of State. We stand here at their side, urging them on, willing to play any part—willing to march, to organise and to express solidarity with the team that we send into battle to fight the British farming corner in the Cabinet and the Government. In that fight she can count on my loyal, steadfast support.
I cannot, I am afraid, touch much more on optimistic and encouraging notes, because I must now turn to the topic of pigs. The Minister knows that pig farmers have suffered acutely from the effects of the pandemic. I have had correspondence with the Secretary of State on this pressing issue. The measures taken by the Government have been welcome, but inadequate to prevent a silent catastrophe on pig farms in Devon. Barely a quarter of the 800 visas for butchers have been taken up. The situation on the farms is just as desperate as when I first corresponded with the Minister last year—indeed, more so. One such local farmer has written to me just this week to say that even after culling hundreds of animals,
“we have 2,700 fattening pigs here whereas we would previously only have had 600 weaners and 650 newborn piglets. We have had to make significant investment”—
they have spent over £100,00—
“into adapting buildings to house all these much larger pigs, as well as buying two new bulk bins to store the extra food and also having to install extra feeding equipment. Meanwhile the cost of animal feed has continued to rocket. The financial burden is immense. The stress of this situation is terrible.”
Thus writes a farming family from Langtree, in Torridge in Devon.
Just yesterday the Irish Government followed other Governments, including Northern Ireland and Scotland, by announcing a hardship fund to allow flat-rate payments to farmers who send more than 200 pigs to slaughter each year. The week before last, there was a crisis meeting with the Minister. I would be glad to hear the progress that the Minister is making in this emergency—and it is an emergency.
There is a silent catastrophe going on in pig farms not only in Devon and Cornwall but throughout our country. The issue requires urgent action. The national interest demands that the Government place food security and agriculture in this country at the heart of their policy making. Surely, as the party of the countryside, we cannot stand by while farming—the very sinew of our rural communities—withers away. Of course adaptations to economic circumstances and modern requirements are necessary but, as the uncertainties and perils of world events remind us with acute and ever-growing force, the neglect of our domestic capacity to feed ourselves would be an omission for which the British people will, rightly, not forgive us.
Many moons ago, Anthony Gibson, who was the area secretary for the National Farmers Union, used to talk about the area payments. He used to say that farmers should really just put them in a separate bank account and not use them, and then one day they could retire in great wealth. Of course, to keep their businesses going, farmers poured all those payments into the farm. You could argue about whether they were right or wrong to do that, but those payments were used to keep them farming and producing food. Ironically, that probably helped to keep food prices down because it kept production up.
That is the other issue that we must face as a Government: if we bring about policies that reduce food production in this country—which we will if we do not do some tweaking—we will import more food, and if we can get it, the prices will go up. The Treasury does not want further food inflation because there is a lot of it out there at the moment. Farming prices have probably never been better, but farming costs have never been higher: that is the issue.
As much as I would love for the Minister to tell us how she will reduce the price of fertiliser from £650 to £250 a tonne, I accept that that is probably beyond her remit. We must accept that, and we may have to accept some more limited use of urea and other fertilisers. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter) mentioned the farming rules for water. We are perhaps getting somewhere where we can have some common sense on those. The Minister has worked very hard in bringing that about.
Another issue that was raised when I was at the NFU conference with the Secretary of State and our very able Minister is that Wales and Scotland will defer reducing the basic payment scheme. I am not saying that we should necessarily follow, but we have to realise that there will be competition across the borders, and that farmers in Wales, Scotland and, I suspect, Northern Ireland will have higher direct payments, which farmers use to keep their farming going. That is why it is even more imperative to get those payments right and get them out there.
I will not speak for too long because my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon did such a good job of laying out the situation. On labour, he is absolutely right: we in this country did not vote to stop all labour coming in; we voted to have a controlled system. That is where the Home Office has been very slow indeed. We had an interesting meeting with a Home Office Minister, in which he was completely intransigent, and what he told us was largely wrong and we had to try to sort out the situation. I am training my guns not just on the Home Office. I am saying quite clearly, and I want this on the record, that the processors have not done their job. They have not upped their game. They have not slaughtered enough pigs and have kept the situation tight on the farms so that they can buy those pigs at a knockdown price.
Furthermore, and this I really want to go on the record, some farmers in Yorkshire spoke out against their processors for the treatment they had had, because those pigs were under contract but the processors would not take them. They were blackballed by those processors. I want that clearly on the record, because I will not have people bullied, and they are bullies. I know the Minister is doing her best to sort it, but we need some tough legislation in place so that there are proper contracts that those processors honour. The Government have put in place a private storage scheme. The processors have not taken it up like they should, and I turn my guns on them as well.
We need not only big slaughterhouses but some smaller ones, and I know the Minister is working on that, because we need to create some competition. At the moment, those great big players are holding everyone to ransom. We tell farmers, “Get a contract. Get closer to the market. Get your things directly into the supermarkets and the big retailers.” That is fine until farmers are entirely in the hands of the big processors and retailers. Anyone with cattle or sheep can take them to market, and my grandfather used to say, “Take them to market and get a market price.” What he meant by that was that if a person took them to market and did not like the market price, they could bring them home again and take them somewhere else. Once they have been processed—I do not have to explain to you, Mr Betts, why they cannot be brought back—they are gone and in the food chain.
The processor says, “Well, they didn’t really grade—there was something wrong with them,” but very often they were perfectly good, healthy livestock. That is the issue, and we have got to sort that out. I will be interested to read the record in Hansard of exactly how the Minister replies, because we need to get the labour situation and processing right. I have mentioned the farming rules for water, and I believe we will get them right. I say to the Minister that the direction of travel is not wrong, but the means of getting there are not right.
In fairness to the Department, it has worked hard to try to get the system to work but we must reduce the bureaucracy. The Secretary of State gave us assurances yesterday that it would be reduced. I clocked it all, and when he is next in front of the Select Committee it may well be quoted back to him. He also talked about flexibility of payment and said that there are not three pillars any more. He said that we can move money around and have some great tree planting, but if we do not need quite so much for tree planting this year, we can perhaps put a bit more into farming and so on. Let us ensure, Minister, that that is delivered, because that is the benefit of no longer being in the common agricultural policy.
The trouble is that we were too reliant on the CAP for a method of managing agriculture in the countryside, and it is proving quite difficult to come up with an alternative, but we will; I am determined that we will, and I know the Minister is, too. Again, I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon for the debate. It is great to see so many hon. Members from Devon. As far as Northern Ireland and Westmorland are concerned, those Members can become honorary farmers from Devon today.
What will happen if farmers have a massive gap in their income over the coming years? They will do one of two things: go broke, or go backwards. They will either leave the industry altogether—taking the golden goodbye or, worse, just leaving because the business fails—or will have to look for other ways to make a living. That will mean piling sheep high, undoing all the good environmental work farms have done over the last several years, and will continue to do only if they are included in the schemes that are to come.
Losing farmers at this point is massively dangerous for food security, for all the reasons that have been given. For all the focus on energy security, and for all that we rely so heavily on supplies from Putin’s Russia, we should be just as aware of the threat to our country’s security if our food supply is interrupted. We are dependent on others for our food supply; more than a third comes from overseas. That is a dangerous place to be. If we do not have farmers, we do not have food. If we do not have farmers, we will have no hands to deliver the Government’s environmental policies, either.
We are focused on a transition towards a system in which we pay public money for public goods. I completely agree with the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, who said that food is a public good—of course it is. There are also environmental and landscape public goods, but if we do not have farmers, those environmental policies are just nice bits of paper in a drawer. They will not get implemented if there is nobody on the land to do that. That is why botching the transition—an accident, I am sure—is something we should all be deeply concerned about.
I also look at what farmers who are in the market to do environmental good—as I know so many are—say about the sustainable farming incentive. They say, basically, that it is not sufficiently attractive to bring them in. I was talking to a regenerative farmer in Cumbria just a few weeks ago who has done enormously impressive things in a couple of years; the quality of their soil has increased enormously. They are absolutely in the mindset to want to get into the SFI, but they have chosen not to bother. It is just not worth the faff. This is a farm that is minded to carry on and do environmental good, but they will just ignore the Government’s schemes because they do not think they are interesting or attractive enough.
What about all those people who are perhaps not so minded, or not so able to go in that direction? They will think, “You know what? I’ll just get another 100 head of sheep. I’ll try to make my living that way.” I fear that the Government are sending farming backwards and decimating it, as family farmers will simply not be able to make a living. They will go out of business, or, at the very least, go backwards, and not meet the environmental targets that all of us, cross-party, want them to. There is the accident. Though the Government are trying to bring people into the ELMS process, I fear they are making the offer too unattractive and setting the bar too high. If people are not in the room, they will not be involved in delivering the schemes.
I am also worried about some counterproductive elements that are coming through in landscape recovery and other aspects of ELMS that are being developed. They provide a very active, real and lucrative incentive for landowners to perform English clearances. They reward landowners in places such as Cornwall, Devon or Cumbria—they probably do not even live there—with money for clearing off their tenant farmers and letting the farm go to seed. That is an outrage. I can see what will happen: people will sit around their Hampstead dinner tables, bragging to their friends about how green they are, having taken a massive chunk of money from the Government. How did they get that money? They got it by evicting someone whose family may have farmed that area for generations. What happens to the farmhouse and buildings? They become second homes and holiday lets. It is a decimation of farming and rural communities, and the Government are incentivising it.
We want to encourage nature. We see people maintaining woodland pasture, and balancing livestock with woodlands. They are doing carbon capture and all those other things that are right. Let us make sure that the funding goes to the farmers, not to landowners who will exploit and expel those farmers and wreck our countryside in the process.
It is very hard to value food production—in Devon, in Cornwall, in Cumbria or elsewhere—if we are signing trade deals with countries that have worse animal welfare standards than ours, thereby bringing down our standards and potentially throwing our farmers under a bus. As has been said, the plight of the pig industry is a reminder that when it comes to migration policy, freedom is no good if it is not used. If 40,000 healthy pigs are slaughtered and thrown away, as NFU president Minette Batters was saying on the radio yesterday, then that is an outrage. That is happening because of a lack of staff in abattoirs and a lack of butchers, and because the Government’s migration policy is not being used in a sovereign way. It is possible to be prisoner to an international organisation, but it is also possible to be prisoner to an ideology that stops us serving our community and our country—and punishes farmers in the process.
Farming is vital to food production in this country. It is vital to our environment, and it is vital to our rural communities. My fear is that as we move from a system that is far from perfect to one that we like the idea of, we botch that transition. That is what the Government are doing. They simply need to do one thing: peg basic payment at the current level and keep it there until ELMS is available to everyone.