Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-17
Topic: Agriculture
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support this amendment. I hope it will go to a vote and that we will pass it, because it is so important and requires further discussion, and it would be very helpful for the House of Commons to have to discuss it This amendment is like the proverbial good pudding—it is full of good things or plums, or whatever you want to say. In particular, I pick out the question of food waste, which is such an important issue—everybody says it is important but nobody does a huge amount about it. How important it is to support local and regional food identities in the production of quality and diverse food. On restricting the marketing, promotion and advertising of less healthy food, I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has said There has been huge political, economic and commercial pressure in this country in recent years for cheap food. A lot of food in this country is in fact, by historical standards, incredibly cheap—but being cheap does not necessarily mean that it is good food. It can be: in Trawden, an old weaving village just up the valley from where we live, there was no shop left, but a group of volunteers got together to set up a community shop that provides an astonishing range of really good, diverse, nutritious food which is incredibly cheap. Of course, most of the staff there are volunteers; you can do it on that basis, but it is not a basis for everywhere On the other hand, in June, when I came down before the recess, the facilities here were not all that great, due to the position that we are in. So I called at a convenience store on the way in and bought a couple of what, from the pictures on the packet, looked like rather nice ready meals. I could not believe how ridiculously cheap they were—less than a couple of bags of crisps, really. I put them in the microwave in the pantry on our corridor and thought I would have my tea. I have not eaten such nasty food for a long time. It was awful. You can tell that I do not do much shopping, given that I was buying these things. Nevertheless, it was an eye-opener as to how nasty cheap food can be. The problem is that people who are living on the absolute minimum income—the sort of people whom the Minister was talking about earlier, who rely on the DWP—have to buy the cheapest food that they can get, because of their circumstances. So, for the people who buy a lot of the cheapest food because they cannot afford more, not only is the food cheap, it is not good. This is so important This amendment, in a way, underlines the whole Bill. We have talked about food production; the environment in which it is produced; the effect of food production on the environment; the quality of food; the standards that will be applied to food that is imported and to the production of that food—and all the rest of it. But where is the food strategy itself? What is the Government’s view on the food strategy? The Minister spoke of "safe, healthy, affordable food" and was quoted again by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. But we do not know what the present Government’s overall strategy will be when it comes to the trade-offs between incomes for farmers, quality of food, price of food and where it all rests with international trade. We are still waiting for the Government to tell us We know what the different systems can be. First, if farmers are to produce food in this country, they must have sufficient income—that is pretty obvious—but the question is how that income will be put together. We know that the existing CAP system, which is mainly, though not entirely, based on the area of land in a farm, will be replaced by payments for public goods. In Committee, I tried to tease out from the Government a definition of "public goods" but such a definition was not forthcoming. It means different things to different people, according to what they think is important. I think that access is an important public good; other people do not necessarily disagree but put more priority on other things—even I might put more priority on other things. What is a public good? Is the production of good, healthy, affordable food a public good or is it, as the Minister said several times previously in his replies on this Bill, a private good, because it is something that can be left to the market and the price that farmers and producers get for that food is a private, not public, good? There is a muddle about this You can put tariffs up, which is basically what the Common Market did originally. It protected the European farmers behind tariffs in order to provide food security in Europe. That then turned into production subsidies and a level of intervention in the market that resulted in the famous beefs mountains—which people out there still think are part of the CAP, although they disappeared long ago. Then it was all decoupled from production and the farm payments were based on land; that is the system that we have more or less got to now, with some environmental bells and whistles added. Now it is going to be decoupled from land and based on public goods. That is all very well, but none of that says what our trade relationships with other countries will be—the countries that we import food from and export food to—or what trade arrangements we will have. Deal or no deal, we will have arrangements with the European Union and with countries in the rest of the world. The nature of those arrangements and how they will work will have as much effect on the future of farming and of food—the price and what we get—in this country as everything in this Bill. They must be looked at together I would say that we need to concentrate on fair trade, health and well-being and environmental sustainability, putting the whole trade thing in the context of the environment. One of the best books I have read in the last year or two was Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth, an economist. She puts economics into the framework of society and the environment, rather than at the top. I recommend it to all noble Lords—and to the Minister. I hope he can tell us what our strategy for food will be in the future, in relation not just to all the things in this Bill but to our trading relationships with the rest of the world.