argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend will be aware that we have presented a separate Agriculture Bill, which has had its First Reading. It sets out all the powers we would need to reform agriculture policy. The direct payment regulations before us bring the CAP into UK law and on to the UK statute book, and in the Agriculture Bill, there are powers to modify these regulations, so that we can remove the rough edges and simplify them. There are also powers in the Agriculture Bill to strike a very different course for our agriculture—a course based on payment for public goods, but also on providing farmers with grants to invest in new technology, so that they can improve their profitability or add value to their produce. That Bill also recognises that our food security is vital, and commits the Government to reviewing it every five years. That, however, is obviously a matter that we will debate in the coming weeks and months; I want to return to this direct payments Bill.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) mentioned the need for certainty in her arable sector. We have a strong arable sector in North Dorset. Does the Minister agree that the certainty that this Bill provides to our farmers is of particular importance to those involved in the dairy and beef sectors, both of which are incredibly strong in North Dorset?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The Bill will give certainty and clarity about this year to all farmers who currently make a BPS claim and have done for some years. That will include, of course, dairy farmers and beef farmers. Beef farmers in particular have been through a rather difficult year, in which beef prices have been suppressed, and the knowledge and clarity that there will absolutely be continuity this year, and that payments will be made, will be very welcome to them.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): It is important to recognise that a significant proportion of sheep farmers in particular do not receive the basic payment scheme area payment, because they are on contract farm agreements and the landlord receives that money. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I think the principle of investing in public goods has support across the House, but we need to strike this new course sensitively and ensure that agriculture remains profitable. We want a vibrant and profitable agriculture industry, which is why the Agriculture Bill also makes provision for payments to improve productivity, and sets a quite long transition period of seven years, so that we can gradually phase out the old legacy scheme. He will be reassured to hear that the Bill before us makes no changes at all for the coming year. Farmers in his constituency can rest assured that once this Bill is passed, the direct payment scheme will operate this year in exactly the same way as it has in previous years.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Ben Everitt (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Minister agree that there is a balance to be struck between incentivising productivity and rewarding farmers for their role in looking after our countryside—the hedges, copses and spinneys that make England, and indeed Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, so unique in their character, and so different from some intensive agricultural operations in European and beyond? If we are to remain competitive and our land is to remain productive and profitable, we need to find a system that balances those priorities, protecting what we love about our countryside, while recognising the wonderful contribution our farmers make to our agricultural economy.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is all about striking the right balance. The premise behind the direction of agriculture policy is this: rather than trying to put on a sticking-plaster, and masking poor profitability in agriculture, we ought to have a coherent policy that rewards farmers properly for their work to improve the environment, create new habitats and so on, and that makes them able to become more profitable by investing in new equipment, adding value to their product and improving transparency in the supply chain. That is our approach—tackling the causes of poor profitability, not masking them with an arbitrary area-based subsidy.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is being characteristically generous in giving way. I hope he will agree with me, and probably most people in this House, that as important as this Bill is—so, too, is the Agriculture Bill, to which he referred—it will be for nothing if we do not have some form of equivalence clause on food imports to ensure standards of animal welfare and public health. All of the Minister’s good intentions, both for this Bill and the Agriculture Bill, will come to nothing if we suddenly find ourselves swamped by cheaper imports that make all the countryside issues to which my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) referred absolutely irrelevant.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Foreign Trade
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point. Obviously, that is not a matter for this Bill, but our party’s manifesto makes a clear commitment to our maintaining standards as we approach new trade deals, and to our ensuring that we do not water down our standards or undermine our producers.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister says that there will be complete continuity of the basic farm payment over the coming year. Does that include continuity of the three crop rule and all the regulation that goes with the present system? Farmers will need to know that. They have got used to the system, and so has the Rural Payments Agency, so we need to know whether the system will be exactly the same, or whether there will be some changes.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will come on to that when I describe some of the regulations that will be brought across by the Bill. The system will be exactly the same, including the so-called three crop, or crop diversification, rule, the requirement for environmental focus areas, all the scheme deadlines for getting forms in, and the penalty matrix. I am not a huge fan of many of those things, and have been critical of them in the past, but we have taken a decision that charting a different course is a matter for the Agriculture Bill. This is a short Bill that is about providing farmers with immediate continuity and legal certainty that they will get their payment in exactly the way they used to—for this year only; then we will set out a different approach and a different course.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): As my right hon. Friend will be aware, under the financial settlement in the withdrawal agreement, we did not make a contribution to the next multi-annual financial framework, so the UK will not contribute to the EU budget from 2021 onwards, and will therefore not contribute to the budget that would fund this current year of BPS. We will fund it domestically, and that is why the direct payments regulation must be brought on to a UK regulatory footing.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): There is an argument that for many years the UK has actually contributed much more to the common agricultural policy than we have received from it. Can the Minister assure me that as we will not make those payments, we should save some money for the Exchequer?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend will remember the debate that took place in 2016. The UK has typically received back roughly half of what it put into the EU budget, and our contribution to the common agricultural policy on average has been double what we have received from it, historically.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): Further to the intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), and so that I understand this point, am I right that in this transition year we effectively pay as if we were members, but we are also funding domestically this farming payment under the Bill? Is it netted off, or are we in effect paying more for this year overall? Does that make sense?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): It is complicated—as ever—with the common agricultural policy, but I tried to explain this point in my opening remarks. It is a quirk of the way that the EU budget works that the EU borrows the money for the pillar one payment—the BPS and area payments—from next year. Because the payments are made typically from December onwards, the money comes out of the 2021 budget. The pillar two payments come out of the 2020 budget—the year in which the money is spent. Put simply, we have not contributed to the 2020 capped budget because it is borrowed from 2021. I know that is complicated, but in essence we are not paying twice.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Fay Alicia Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): Am I right in saying that the Welsh Government take 15% of the direct payment away from farmers and transfer it into pillar two, and that that is the most that any Government across the European Union can take?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, my hon. Friend is right. Under the common agricultural policy, there is provision for something called modulation, under which member states are able to transfer a chunk of money from pillar one to pillar two. Wales transfers 15%, or modulates by 15%, from pillar one to the pillar two budget. England modulates at the rate of 12.5%, and Scotland and Northern Ireland modulate considerably less, but still a little bit. There is a provision for that, and the Bill brings that regulation into UK statute Without clause 1, neither the Government nor the devolved Administrations would be able to continue to operate the 2020 direct payment schemes, and that would severely affect the agricultural industry, threatening the financial viability of agricultural producers who have planned on the basis of continuity of payments for this year. The direct payments basic legislation, and the implementing and delegated legislation, will become domestic law on exit day, as opposed to at the end of the implementation.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Siobhan Kathleen Baillie (Conservative, Centre-right): Climate change is a threat that we must all take action to tackle, and my constituents and farmers care deeply about it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Agriculture Bill and these changes will provide us with a great opportunity to encourage greener practices in the world of agriculture?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes—my hon. Friend makes a very important point. As we chart a new course on agriculture policy, one key objective set out in the Agriculture Bill, which was recently published, was on climate change. It is absolutely the case that we should support farmers to farm more sustainably and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and that will be a matter for future policy. This Bill does not envisage radical change compared with what has gone before. Some provisions—the so-called "greening provisions" that are brought across by the Bill—will potentially have a modest impact on our carbon emissions and climate change, but addressing that issue properly will be a matter for future policy Clause 1(3) sets out the regulations that are covered. That includes the direct payments regulation, apart from article 13. Article 13 of the direct payments regulation is still there in retained EU law, because the withdrawal agreement Bill brought that element of the regulation across, so we do not need to do that a second time. We need that state aid provision because the withdrawal agreement committed us to an equivalent approach to the EU for this year. There is also the Commission delegated regulation (EU) No. 639/2014, which supplements the direct payments regulation, and Commission implementing regulation (EU) No. 641/2014, which lays down rules for the application of the direct payments regulations.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Joy Inboden Morrissey (Conservative, Centre-right): In Beaconsfield, we are still very keen to receive these payments, and the Minister is right to bring forward the Bill. Many of my farmers would like to produce more, but that is currently restricted under the CAP. Does the Bill deal with that? For example, I have a chicken farmer who would like to increase the number of chickens and eggs that they produce, but there are restrictions because of the common agricultural policy payments. Is there anything in the Bill that will allow them to increase productivity as we move out of the EU?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): If my hon. Friend writes to me on the specific issues for the chicken producer that she mentions, I am happy to look at that. As a general rule, poultry producers tend not to qualify for the basic payments scheme, because it is area-based. Of course, it could be a mixed enterprise, where the producer has a poultry unit and some land on which they claim BPS. There are also some domestic environmental regulations and a licensing scheme that the Environment Agency runs that would affect certain establishments in the poultry sector The Bill brings across existing legislation exactly as it is and does not envisage any change. The only change might come from the absence of EU auditors, as this is no longer an EU budget. Therefore the absence of the risk aversion that is a feature of Whitehall—where we have perpetual legal jeopardy and the constant threat of infraction, of disallowance risks and of arbitrary fines slapped on by EU auditors—means that we may be able to have a margin of appreciation in how we interpret some of these regulations, so that we can, for instance, send farmers a warning letter, rather than stinging them with a fine as we are required to under EU law.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): It is very welcome to us in Cheltenham that in future the Government plan to use state support to promote biodiversity on farms to a far greater extent than is permissible under the CAP. However, will the Minister indicate how we can expect our landscape to change as a result of these very welcome policy changes?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): The Agriculture Bill, which is a matter for future discussion, envisages in clause 1 that we would support, for instance, measures to reduce climate change and carbon emissions and measures on carbon sequestration. We have a commitment to establish additional new woodland areas. In some areas, I suspect that there would be some land-use change. We also want to use our future policy to support a more sustainable approach to farming, for instance getting more farmers involved in catchment-sensitive farming schemes, integrated pest management, better soil husbandry and better stewardship of our hedgerows. All these issues will have an impact on our environment and its biodiversity.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister talked about having a lighter touch, in terms of moving to a warning letter rather than having fines, and many farmers will breathe a huge sigh of relief at that. What scope does he see in the Bill to build on the trend of performance improvement, which we have started to see from the RPA but where there is still headroom for further improvements, therefore hopefully further de-stressing the art of agriculture in this country?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point, which links to something I said earlier about the removal of the perpetual legal jeopardy that Whitehall has been subjected to while we have been an EU member. The issue, particularly in the CAP, is that there is a system of fines relating to what is called disallowance risk. The UK typically pays around £100 million a year in disallowance risk fines, often for very trivial errors such as a supposed lack of accuracy on maps, with a requirement that we map fields to four decimal points of accuracy, and issues about how things are recorded—even though they may be recorded, it may not be in the form that the EU auditors require. Some EU audits retro- spectively make things up, so we never know how an auditor will interpret the regulations in front of us. That means that officials who work very hard in DEFRA to make sense of these complex regulations will often take a view, have legal advice and interpret a regulation in a particular way. Subsequently, auditors will come along with a different view and that creates a disallowance risk. It is a very difficult situation to have a constant sense of legal jeopardy, which leads to risk aversion and people being very cautious and sometimes quite draconian in how they deal with farmers. That has been a constant problem with the existing scheme.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): As a former Parliamentary Private Secretary to my hon. Friend, I am pretty forensic on these matters, as he will know—I am grateful to him for his indulgence. What plans do he and our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State have for communicating, monitoring and embedding the change of culture in the RPA? I do not say this to be rude to the RPA, but it will have been trained in a certain way of doing things and, rather like people who have been held prisoners for 40 years, will have no idea how to deal with its freedom once it is released. How will he ensure that the lighter touch that is now available as a result of the domestic legislation is communicated to all levels of the RPA so that as soon as possible, from day one, farmers will feel the benefit? A legislative change, if not implemented by the practitioners, is no change at all.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point. All of us—officials in Whitehall, Members of this House, and indeed, generally as a country—have to get used to our freedom and to enjoying it, and develop the confidence to exercise judgment in all fields as we leave the European Union and become a genuinely self-governing country again, which is what we will do I have already had a meeting with the chief executive of the RPA. It has made considerable progress over the past 18 months in improving its performance, but I have tasked him with looking at any changes in process—anything that could be adapted, removed or changed—that would make the application of the scheme easier once we have removed the constant threat and legal jeopardy caused by EU auditors, so we are doing a piece of work on this.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Richard John Holden (Conservative, Centre-right): Many upland sheep farmers, particularly in my constituency, will welcome not only the extra year of payments and the confidence it will give them, but the less draconian approach that the Government seem intent on taking. With the Agriculture Bill coming, can the Minister further reassure farmers in my constituency that there will be a phased approach so that they have time to get used to the new measures?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, my hon. Friend makes a very important point. Today’s Bill today simply brings across the existing schemes, including, as I have pointed out, all the so-called greening rules, all the cross-compliance rules, and so on. There is a small margin of appreciation that we can apply to interpret these sensibly and proportionately, which we have not been free to do to date. That said, we recognise the importance of a gradual transition to our new agriculture policy, which is why that policy envisages a seven-year transition, with a gradual phasing out of the BPS and with support to ensure that farmers have a prosperous and profitable future.
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Alexander Paul Thomas Stafford (Conservative, Centre-right): Now we are getting rid of the cosh of legal threat hanging over our hard-working farming community, including in Rother Valley, can we use this as an opportunity to help, educate and upskill our farming community on the importance of biodiversity and so increase the flora and fauna in our beautiful areas? The farming community in Rother Valley already knows this, but what other support can the Government provide to encourage these things?
Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-28
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): There are several important schemes, such as the Government-funded Farm Advisory Service and the various wildlife campaigns that also support farmers to farm in a more environmentally sensitive way. The future agriculture policy envisages that we will provide advice and support to farmers—direct on-farm advice—about what might work on their particular holding, with their particular soil, landscape and topography. It is an exciting future, and having the right technical advice will be an important part of it, so my hon. Friend makes a good point.