Contributions
1,165 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q I will ask a question that I asked the National Farmers Union earlier: if we had a world in which there were no basic payment scheme payments—no subsidy on land, tenure or…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q On that point: do we want land rents to stay as high as they are? Would it not potentially be beneficial for landlords to have to fight one another to attract tenants on to…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q On tenancy issues, your organisations famously do not always agree, but on the future direction of travel for policy, do you both agree that a move from an area-based subsidy to…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q Based on your assessment of 40 or 50, you would need somewhere in the region of 1,500 to 1,800 of those in England to cover most farms. Is there capacity at the moment in the…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Yes, in the new scheme. Jake Fiennes: We have the regulatory payment. I hear of calls for up to 30% of existing payments that farmers receive, which is about £200 per hectare. I…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (First sitting)Q The Bill explicitly recognises animal health and welfare and native breeds as a public good. In recent years, we have seen a specialisation in arable in some parts of the…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (First sitting)I beg to move, That— (1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 11 February) meet— (a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 11 February; (b) at 11.30 am and…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q The final question from me is about schedule 3, which sets out in some detail a range of quite technical changes to tenancy law that have come out of the TRIG—the Tenancy Reform…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q I suppose the point I was making was less to do with the market. If you removed from the market the roughly £100 per acre basic payment scheme payment—if that just vanished—what…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q I have a linked question, although it might be too complex to answer. From the CLA’s point of view, at what point does it cease to be worth renting land and start to make more…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q A previous witness said that if a tenant farmer exercised an option that we set out under clause 13 to take a number of years payment in lieu as a lump sum, under the way…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q If at one end of the scale you have what could be called the broad and shallow but largely universal interventions that most farmers would sign up to—catchment sensitive farming…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Do you support the general thrust of the future policy, moving from subsidy on land tenure to— Jim Egan: Yes. Jake Fiennes: If we split it into pillar 1 and pillar 2, the current…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q Will you each tell us what you think have been the main shortcomings of the existing area-based common agricultural policy; whether we can, in the short term, modify it to make…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q I suppose the key question is: if the views and interests of a British minority, for instance, were compromised by the majority in a big pan-European cooperative because of a…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q Are you content with the—I think—30% market share provision? So no co-operative is allowed to go above that—certainly with dairy. Richard Self: I think that would be sensible.…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q On the competition law side, what kind of exemptions or special provisions in law would you seek to enable the co-operative model to develop? Richard Self: I think that the…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture Bill (Second sitting)Q I wanted to return to the issue of dairy contracts, and whether there should be a continuation of the special exemption for dairy co-operatives. What is the remedy for a farmer…11 Feb 2020HANSARDAgriculture and Fisheries CouncilThe UK did not attend the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels on 27 January 2020. The UK Government decided that until 31 January UK Ministers and officials only attend…06 Feb 2020HANSARDTopical QuestionsI have met officials on that matter. The reason we introduced the catch app is that, if we want to improve our management of the inshore fleet and offer fishermen, say, three…06 Feb 2020