Animal Welfare

It would be difficult to do that within the parameters of this debate, but I shall certainly write to my hon. Friend and elaborate on his point. I think we all agree that we face major environmental challenges, such as protecting and enhancing biodiversity, protecting the quality of our waterways and mitigating the effects of climate change. The agri-environment schemes have a proven track record, but they must cover a greater proportion of farmland if we are to meet those future challenges. Aside from rural development programme funding, there are no alternative sources of funds available in sufficient quantity to meet those major challenges. Our focus for the next programme is therefore to sustain our commitment to environmental stewardship as a scheme that is open to all farmers. My hon. Friends will recognise that the environmental stewardship programme and the funding that it will make available will have an impact on stocking levels—a point that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire said was specifically mentioned in other countries’ programmes. The fact that that may not be specifically mentioned here does not imply that it will not be achieved. We decided to focus on those key environmental challenges. An independent report conducted for DEFRA in 2004 found that the cost of a national animal welfare scheme was likely to be high due to various factors, such as diversity among livestock farmers, variability of welfare incidents and the need for assessment and monitoring. We decided not to divert our rural development funding away from that core environmental priority. However, we recognise that there are potential links between particular agri-environment measures such as stocking densities and animal welfare outcomes. Indeed, colleagues referred to the proposal made by the Welsh Assembly in its consultation to consider animal welfare issues in its forthcoming review of agri-environment schemes. In England in 2007-08, we will review progressunder environmental stewardship. The RSPCA has considered how incentives for animal welfare could be provided under the rural development programme. It has done so in its report, ““Into the fold””, and that work will provide valuable input to our thinking, but to return to where I began, we must be able to demonstrate the added value of what we are spending. I am sure that colleagues will recognise that not only we, but the EU as a whole, have a significant amount of work to do on animal welfare and we must work together to take that forward. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire referred to the support provided under farm assurance schemes. Farmers who participate in food quality schemes generally do so either with a view to obtaining a price premium, when their participation is rewarded through the market, or because they need to do so to sell to a specific market, as is often the case with baseline assurance schemes and which is also rewarded through the market. The RSPCA’s freedom food scheme is an assurance scheme that promotes high animal welfare standards and is a good exampleof what can be achieved without Government intervention. Given that fact and the high proportion of farmers who already belong to assurance schemes, we believe that relatively little additional public benefit would be gained from supporting such schemes financially through the programme for England. That has been our thinking. It is not that we think the schemes are not valuable ways of achieving animal welfare outcomes, but that we think we should put our money where it will achieve added value and where there is a market failure. In this case, we do not believe that to be so. Encouraging innovation aimed at developing new markets and new value-added products is one way of helping to make our farming industry more competitive. That could include support for marketing on the basis of higher animal welfare standards, either alone or in combination with other innovative ways of improving farm competitiveness. We have proposed that support for such innovation could be an area of focus for the next programme. I have been speaking about animal welfare in the context of the rural development programme, but I want to remind colleagues of the wider picture in England on animal health and welfare issues, which we feel is important, and our approach to addressing those issues. We are working in partnership with industry to promote wider use of a proactive approach to health planning on farms, including management of livestock diseases that have welfare implications. We are doing that by supporting a culture change in the industry with consistent messages and better communication about the benefits of a risk management-based approach at farm level. Our approach supports greater use of the farm health and welfare plans, to which the codes of recommendations for the welfare of livestock refer. My hon. Friend said that the proposals for the next programme are a missed opportunity as they focus on limited traditional areas and do not look widely enough at Government objectives—