Food, Farming and the Environment

We have waited more than six years for a debate on farming in Government time, so this debate is extremely welcome. It is also a timely opportunity, and I congratulate the Secretary of State on being here to move the motion himself. The recent collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain has sent tremors through the farming community and serves to remind us that farming is not an industry that can be taken for granted. However, under the current Government, one could be forgiven for thinking that agriculture is an afterthought or, worse, an obstacle in the way of DEFRA's broader objectives. Government policy tells us that""domestic production is not a necessary condition for food security,"" as my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) reminded the Secretary of State. That policy document still stands. There is no mention of farming in the Department's title; indeed, it is not even mentioned in the Department's sole public service agreement. If food security is so important, why is it not reflected in the Department's primary mission? Farming Ministers come and go with every harvest. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), the latest to exit, left before the harvest, having completed little more than six months in office. I hope that the Minister of State, whom I genuinely welcomed to his place on Monday, is feeling secure. However, he and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State can console themselves with the thought that they have, at most, 11 months left in their posts. A lot has happened since the Government's last debate on farming. The single payment scheme has shaken up the system of support. Farmers face new disease threats, such as bluetongue, not to mention the travails of dealing with foot and mouth and bovine TB—a subject to which I wish to return. They also operate in an increasingly open and competitive marketplace, as the nature of support has changed. However, many things have remained all too familiar since that last debate: dominant supermarkets, inadequate food labelling, and excessive and growing regulatory burdens. All that is set against the backdrop of concern about food security, which the Secretary of State quite properly set out. But what has been the Government's response to this looming crisis? Within a very short time the world will not be able to feed itself, as the Secretary of State has pointed out, and a Chatham House report has recently warned that the problem will have a particularly great impact on import-dependent countries and on poor people everywhere, yet the Government's response has been to preside over an increase in the United Kingdom's reliance on imports. They have overseen significant declines in the production of cereals, milk, vegetables and meat. In short, they have decreased our productive contribution to food security. No one is suggesting that Britain either could or should be wholly self-sufficient in food. That would be impractical and, arguably, undesirable. Nor is anyone suggesting, as far as I am aware, a return to production subsidies or targets, and we are certainly not suggesting import controls or any kind of interference with the market—of course not. However, one of the country's foremost experts on food security, Professor Tim Lang, has said:""The present Government's food security policy creates unnecessary vulnerabilities."" We recognise the benefit of a diversity of supply, but that needs to be balanced against the sustainability of food miles, the importance and value of local production—to which the Secretary of State referred—and the threats posed by climate change and terrorism. Trade will continue to be important, but in our view the pendulum has been allowed to swing too far away from domestic production.