Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-01-29
Topic: Agriculture
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I confess to having a roughly 4 acre field for which I get no subsidy whatever, except for an electricity pole for which I get about £200 a year—maybe less than that. I am also a co-chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership I will approach this in a slightly different way. I support this Bill, which is a sort of sticking plaster between now and 12 months’ time. It is quite delicious to me, in a way, to see the Conservative Front Bench going out strongly for state aid for a particular sector—something that normally the Conservative Party would not necessarily associate itself with. I know that this is a money Bill, so we will, quite rightly, not have much influence over it, as it is the other end’s business. We say that perhaps rather glibly as the Bill goes through, but this is big bucks—it is a lot of money. We put state aid into this industry of between £3 billion and £4 billion a year. That is quite a bit of money. In fact, if you look at it per household in the United Kingdom, every household contributes about £120 to the agricultural industry. That is just a little less than the TV licence fee, for instance. I guess that the 1.6 million people who use food banks might find it quite ironic that, on average, as a household they also pay £120 towards the food production sector in this country. That may well be necessary, and I will not argue against it here, but we should be aware of that, because that money can be used for other things as well, and increasingly will be, we are promised, over the next eight years I must admit that I am particularly impressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, who has somehow managed to persuade the Treasury, almost it seems without any argument, to add about a quarter of a billion pounds to this. That is excellent—perhaps we could find a way to do that with other sectors. I would like to have a masterclass from him afterwards on how he managed to achieve that The noble Earl, Lord Devon, in his excellent speech, talked about trying to get more certainty in this area. In fact, he mentioned that one good thing about the common agricultural policy, with all its faults, was that there was predictability. However, I should remind the House that, at the moment, the EU Commission is going through a major reform of the common agricultural policy which is in fact so fundamental that it has had to postpone it for one year. That has two strands: one is semi-renationalisation of agricultural policy, and the other is that some 25% of the EU budget, of which agriculture is a major part, will be dedicated to the climate change challenge. Ironically, therefore, even if we had stayed in the European Union, which clearly we will not, some of these issues regarding our agricultural sector would have come anyway, and maybe the Government could have come up with some of the same solutions that they are coming up with now. However, I am concerned that that uncertainty will be extended over some seven years—in fact you have to add this year on as well, so there will be eight years of transition to the next form of final implementation of the new system regarding payments for public good Actually, I want to praise Michael Gove as Secretary of State in Defra for changing the agenda here in a forthright, brave and courageous way to make a radical change in how this works. I regret that he will no longer be the custodian of the 25-year environmental plan, of which this effectively is a key part, because there is public expenditure here on a big scale, and a way to do it I was quite surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, did not mention that we have a biodiversity crisis in this country at the moment. If you look at the State of Nature 2019 report, which came out at the end of last year, you will see a list of all the species, particularly in rural areas, which are heavily challenged and the numbers of which have decreased since 1970. That is urgent, yet we have an eight-year transition period until we put in a scheme that has some hope of reversing that biodiversity challenge. I say to the Minister that, both on getting more certainty for the sector, as the noble Earl said, and on our environmental challenges, surely we can start to make that transition shorter. We had a debate on the landing obligation for fisheries—the Minister did not answer it, but he was there—and, although that was a European and partly British issue, we know that you tend to wait for deadlines to happen before you get round to doing something about them. I think that eight years is too lazy; it risks leaving those major reforms to the last few years, which to a large degree it already does. So let us bring it forward Of course, the real challenge to the sector is not this one. The destabilising factor is not the funding mechanism; it is international trade. Let us be under no misapprehension whatever that, with the United States, with Canada—which has refused to do a rollover deal with the United Kingdom on its EU agreement—with South America and with Australasia, the key asks for those trade deals will be on agricultural entry to the UK market. How that is done is down to how good we are at negotiating as a country with those other nations. I hope and pray that we will be very good at doing that, but the uncertainty about those trade deals, how they will be interpreted and who has power—that power equation—will be unknown for some time. I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. As he is probably aware, in the Northern Ireland protocol under the withdrawal agreement, Article 11 states—clearly for once; it is a pretty unclear document otherwise— "consistent with the arrangements set out in Articles 5 to 10, and in … respect of Union law"— that is, European Union law— "this Protocol shall be implemented and applied so as to maintain the necessary conditions for continued North-South cooperation, including in the areas of environment, health, agriculture" Under the state aid provision in Article 10, it states: "The provisions of Union law"— that is, again, European law— "listed in Annex 5 to this Protocol shall apply to the United Kingdom, including with regard to measures supporting the production of and trade in agricultural products in Northern Ireland" Will this and future state aid to the agricultural sector be constrained by that Northern Ireland protocol My other question is this. Previous speakers have mentioned the Rural Payments Agency. The RPA has done a lot better on Pillar 1 payments. We are never confident about it, given its history, but what concerns me is that, as my noble friend Lady Bakewell pointed out very well, the current delay relates to Pillar 2. Effectively, the future support mechanism will be a Pillar 2-type process. How that is managed, enforced and communicated will be very complex. I wonder whether Defra has taken into account how much of the capacity of the RPA will be needed under the future regime My last question is this. A fundamental change that has not been mentioned in this debate is that at the moment, under the CAP, the money comes from Brussels a year later, as we heard, to cover the cost of the CAP paid out by the UK Government. That changes. This will now be an integral part of Defra’s budget. Given the fact that it is quite difficult to predict payments, there will be a difference from what has been budgeted for in government expenditure—Defra expenditure in particular—at the end of the year. If it is 10% of £3.5 billion, that is quite a bit of money. Will that be taken off Defra’s budget if it has under-budgeted or, if it goes over, will it be sent straight back to the Treasury? I know that in the past Defra has often suffered from Treasury cuts, and I am concerned that, if it gets its budgeting wrong, other essential services it provides will be prejudiced by the fact that the Treasury will be very unhelpful at the time.