Food Security

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and I will come on in a few moments to what needs to be done to achieve the status of food security that I believe is necessary. Overall, we produce only about 60 per cent. of all our food, and the food, feed and drink trade deficit has now widened to £14 billion. No doubt the Secretary of State will point out that last year's figure for self-sufficiency was marginally higher than in 2006. Of course that is good, but unless he can assure us that it marks the beginning of a completely new trend, it is pretty meaningless. If I had used the 2006 figures in my calculations, the overall figure would have been even worse than the one I have just given. What is behind the dramatic fall in our self-sufficiency? Essentially, it is all about profitability. In the period 1998 to 2007, food prices rose by just 20 per cent. against overall inflation of 32 per cent. This year, of course, it is different, but throughout that decade, food prices failed to keep up even with inflation. More importantly, the farmers' share of the food pound—in other words, the proportion of the retail price actually taken by the farmer—has declined by 20 per cent. over the decade. That has shown itself as a fall of 86,000 in the work force over the same period. Let me now turn to what needs to be done if we are to halt and reverse the downward trend and to achieve greater food security by ensuring that we have the capacity to produce enough to meet the majority of our needs. Of course we will produce surpluses in some products and we will trade them for those that we need to import. It has been like that for many decades, and it will always be so. Unless we have that strong domestic level of production, it will be to the detriment of the developing world that we are buying our food. There will be those who believe I am about to seek a return to protectionism. Precisely the opposite is the case. Those who advocate a protectionist regime and who want to cling to subsidies, including some leading agriculturists in Europe, are wrong. The real answer lies in fair and free competition—something that patently does not exist at present. We need further reform of the common agricultural policy to make it sustainable and stable. How can our farmers invest if they do not know the shape of any future policy in what is now just four years ahead? The health check proposals on the table at the moment are, in our view, wholly inadequate. We need a phased programme to shift all funding from direct payments to development funds. We need to see full decoupling across all products in all member states. We need a programme to dismantle all the remaining trade-distorting support; and we need to see a programme of increasing co-financing by member states so that those who want to increase expenditure pay for it. The sooner we can achieve such a stable policy, the sooner our farmers will be in a position to make their long-term plans. In the meantime, there are things that the Government should do or, in some cases, undo. First, we have to lift the burden of regulations. We know the Government's rhetoric and I am sure that the Secretary of State will use it in his speech, but I have to tell him that in the past five years we have seen a net increase in DEFRA regulation of about 20 per cent. a year. Whereas in 2002, one regulation was revoked for every two new ones, last year it was just one scrapped for eight new ones. It is not just a matter of numbers. Some regulations are necessary, but how they are applied is the important thing. There is no justification for the continued gold-plating of EU regulations; it should be removed if we are to have the free and fair competition that I mentioned. The legion of inspectors who turn up on our farms needs to be slashed and, in some cases, merged. Even more importantly, however, it is the culture that has to change. In France, a farm inspector sees his job as helping the farmer to meet the regulations requirements; here, it seems that the inspectors are on commission to see how many penalties they can impose. While on the subject of regulation, let me deal with two specific ones that are currently of considerable importance. First, the nitrates directive, which applies at the European level, is obsolete and far too prescriptive. There is no excuse at all for DEFRA to go beyond the minimum necessary to comply with it, while hopefully working to have it reformed. The idea of setting in statute what will effectively be national muck-spreading day is ludicrous. It is compounded by the Prime Minister's decision when he was Chancellor to abolish the agricultural buildings allowance, which would have been of some help in meeting the £50,000 or so estimated costs to the average dairy farmer.