My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Vinson, for this very timely debate. All of us here could go on discussing the subject for much longer, but we are limited to eight minutes and we must make what use we can of them. This is certainly a period of great contrast because this is the time of year when optimism strikes a high note for the farmer. The leaves on the trees are fresh and green, the grain is well through the ground, the fields are full of lambs and sleek cattle and the magic of nature is all around. I declare my interest in all that we have to discuss today as a producer of cattle and sheep and a member of the Scottish National Farmers Union.
Within the past month, as the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, pointed out, we have finally seen the lifting of the ban on the export to Europe of cattle aged under 24 months. That leaves the industry trying to recover from a catalogue of disasters that go back for 10 years or more. It has been a hard spell for farmers with ever reducing incomes and also for government. We have to be grateful for the generous support, however reluctantly provided. It is easy to forget that one of the aims of the CAP was to bring the level of rural income up to the general level of the population, as the noble Lord, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, pointed out to us.
There has been a crescendo of crises—BSE, foot and mouth, now TB and avian flu. We live in a country with a great penchant for regulation and a very variable and tricky climate, so our production cannot compete on price alone. As the noble Lord, Lord Vinson, pointed out, we produce only 62 per cent of the food that we require.
However, the future of our livestock production has to come from our ability to produce a quality product. The new regulation allowing for export to Europe applies to cattle and carcasses under the age of 24 months. That has already triggered an increase in the general price of cattle by 8p per kilo carcass weight and has also been reflected in the price of sheep, which gives some welcome relief to the industry. But current production within this country has been geared to produce cattle of up to 30 months and these are rated as totally acceptable for human consumption. That now leaves a great tranche of cattle between the ages of 24 and 30 months that can qualify for that premium export market only if the beef is bound and packaged. For all the effort and expense that this takes, what is left is then regarded in the trade as a second-rate product and any premium that might have been gained from quality is lost. Are the Government planning to tackle this anomaly with our European partners? There does not appear to be any scientific basis for excluding the cattle aged up to 30 months. Are meetings scheduled at which the subject can be raised?
In Scotland, we have just lived through the first incidence of a case of H5N1 bird flu in this country. Norfolk has seen another variant. We can only consider ourselves very fortunate that it never spread beyond the first case. We still do not know what would happen if the disease was carried in by a live bird. The remarkable thing is that for once, despite an animal disease, there does not appear to have been a drop in consumption in the United Kingdom. That has not been the case for Europe, however, and the oversupply of poultry products has meant a severe cut in the price. The Minister will be aware that the EU Commission is allowing that governments may give assistance to producers who have suffered. Will the Government be holding meetings with representatives of the industry to assess whether any assistance would be appropriate?
Another great concern is the perverseness when European regulations are implemented with a literal interpretation, such as seems to be our speciality, and achieve the opposite of their purpose. The most outstanding current example is the waste incineration directive, where anything that is not a primary product of a process is liable to be classed as waste. This has led to the banning of the burning of tallow in most rendering plants. They were then going to be forced to burn heavy engine oil to heat their processes instead of tallow, which is a locally-produced and green, renewable fuel. I understand that this has been put on hold at the moment, but one wonders how long it will take to get some resolution from Europe to let people know what the future should be. Agriculture has always been a great utiliser of these secondary products, now considered waste, as well as a producer of a number of others from its own processes. There seems to be a case for a special classification of these materials so that everyone is not forced to go running around constantly looking for special licences.
The Scottish NFU has drawn my attention to the purpose of the EU water framework directive, another EU regulation, which is there to ensure that all water bodies are of good ecological quality by 2015. That concerns areas where water shortage raises environmental questions about water use. This issue must apply in many areas of England and Wales as it does in Scotland, where there is high rainfall and volumes of water are satisfactory. In those areas there is no need to have the trouble and expense of licensing abstraction and impoundment, unless it is to compound the sea of red tape that surrounds us. That particularly applies to agriculture. I have to accept that in England and Wales the regulation is more generous than the one we have up north, in that it allows a de minimis level of 20 cubic metres without a licence. Even so, it bears consideration.
As with so many of the stipulations of cross-compliance, and as was pointed out by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, it would be reassuring to think that the Government were giving some thought to the cost of implementation. Perhaps it is worth noting the figures that have been supplied to us by the Country Land and Business Association, which reckons that regulation imposes a cost of approximately £1 billion on an industry with a turnover of £8 billion; that is, of small and medium-sized businesses in the rural economy.
The production of the countryside may need some redefinition or refocusing, and it may need some guidance on useful ventures, but we should never lose sight of the central role that meaningful production plays in keeping the countryside as a living and vital part of the whole rural economy.
Agriculture
Proceeding contribution from
Duke of Montrose
(Conservative)
in the House of Lords on Thursday, 18 May 2006.
It occurred during Debate on Agriculture.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
682 c441-3 
Session
2005-06
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
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Timestamp
2024-04-21 10:14:07 +0100
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