Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-09
Topic: Agriculture
Malcolm Sinclair (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, on his determination and persistence in pursuing this amendment. He was ably backed by Minette Batters and the NFU, NFU Scotland and the British Veterinary Association, among others, but it was the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and this House who, I think, managed to shift the Government I said at an earlier stage that we were beating our heads against a brick wall, but, however bruised our heads are, at least the wall has cracked to some extent on this amendment. Therefore, I thank my noble friend Lord Gardiner. I have no doubt that he understood the mood of the House and helped persuade the Secretary of State that this really needed to be taken seriously I have no doubt that Defra would have accepted this amendment on Report if it had been in total charge of the Bill. I still have very severe reservations about the attitude of the Department for International Trade on this matter. We have not seen the amendments to the Trade Bill that will be brought forward. I sat in Committee with the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, when we discussed the agriculture side of it and we met a very strong brick wall on that occasion. Let us hope that at long last there is a bit of light in another department, because the attitude so far has damaged Defra’s reputation with the farming community. Defra will always get blamed for anything relating to agriculture, even though it did not have ultimate control of this issue I strongly welcome the fact that the TAC has been put on a statutory footing, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, it is the amendments to the Trade Bill that are key, and we will keep a very wary eye on those I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Boycott, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh said about labelling, although I slightly disagree with my noble friend, because I think that labelling is hugely important. I do not think that it is good enough now, and that is why we had the problems with Danish pork and sausages—they were not labelled properly. Unless food is properly labelled and there is a traffic-light system for health and food safety, we will not get anywhere. That was highlighted by the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, chaired and on which I had the privilege of sitting. When we get around to debating that report—whenever that is allowed—it is no doubt a subject that I will bring up again The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned enforcement and checks, and I agree with him. I thought that everything would be all right until I saw the recent reports about the funding of the Environment Agency and how there was an increase in pollution due to farming and industry. The Environment Agency was not doing enough checks and there was not enough enforcement. If that is followed through into the Food Standards Agency, a lot of the hope that we have that things will improve will disappear. We will have to watch that. Meanwhile, I have much pleasure in thanking my noble friend Lord Gardiner for the enormous amount of work behind the scenes that he has done to get us this far.