Food, Farming and the Environment

There is a double loss, but I do not deplore the practice entirely, because a good co-operative includes a degree of member involvement in the business. None the less, it just shows how fragile the whole set-up is. Indeed, to return to my point, until we can be sure that liquid milk prices are sufficiently high to ensure producer and co-operative profitability, we will experience such fragility in the market. We have already mentioned nitrate vulnerable zones, and I accept entirely what the Secretary of State said: the problem was not of his making and what was signed up to in Brussels predated this entire Administration. But, what was signed up to in Brussels was daft and needed unpicking, and some of us have argued strenuously over the past couple of years for proper derogations to ensure that we do not put our producers in considerable difficulty, given not only the capital investment that they will have to make, but the agricultural activities into which they will be forced. Those activities are not sensible in terms of proper land management and slurry spreading, given the latter's confinement to limited periods. They do not make sense for the land, for good husbandry or for the people who live around those farms and who, for a couple of days a year, will be subject to misery as a result. We should strenuously argue that case, and, until we have the right response from the European Union, the directive should be quietly put in a box somewhere, because it is too difficult to implement. Bovine tuberculosis is a national scandal. In 2008, 41,718 cattle were slaughtered—a huge increase. One can almost see the front line, and the little arrows with bovine tuberculosis on them, spreading up and across the country from the south-west, like the introduction to "Dad's Army". But we are not prepared to do what is necessary to arrest the advance. It is no good saying that the principal vector is cattle-to-cattle transfer. We know that; everybody does. However, I know of all too many closed farms in my constituency that have had no cattle movements but where tuberculosis comes out of nowhere. But it does not come out of nowhere, of course; we know that it comes from the feral population. Yet we are not prepared to deal with that endemic badger disease, although it has to be addressed for welfare reasons. The situation cannot go on. Even if we did not believe that acting for welfare reasons was necessary, the situation is a nonsense in economic terms as the cost to the taxpayer is enormous. Furthermore, when a farmer sees his or her herd slaughtered, the effect is catastrophic and appalling. That is especially true if the herd is of pedigree or organic stock and irreplaceable, or if it is destroyed on the basis of a gamma interferon test and the Department refuses to carry out a corroboratory test to see whether there is an infection. In such cases, the Department acts on the basis of a test for tuberculosis that has already been shown to be far from conclusive. We have to grasp that issue. I know that it is politically difficult and why the Government do not want to act, but that is not an excuse. The time has come, I am afraid, to do something about it. We have mentioned the electronic identification of sheep. Again, I hear what the Secretary of State is saying; he is attempting to delay the introduction of the measure and trying to argue for a derogation. However, that is another nonsense, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) pointed out. The rationale behind the directive—if ever there was one—has already gone, and in practical and economic terms it is a nonsense. Why are we proceeding? Sometimes we just have to say to the European Commission that some directives are nonsense and that it is not sensible for the country to implement them in their current condition. I am glad that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) mentioned the pig sector. I am very fond of it, because I used to breed pigs myself—albeit only four breeding Tamworth sows, which hardly made me a major producer. The pig sector has to compete in a totally artificial and unfair trading environment, as it is not getting the benefit from the high welfare standards that it has rightly introduced. I do not argue for one moment against the pig industry's welfare standards, but the issue of food labelling is critical. It has been pushed by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon); I am a co-signatory to his Bill, which I support strongly. Until we let the consumer know and give them the confidence that they are buying meat produced in the most welfare-friendly environment, they will not have the option of choosing British and knowing that British is best. It is important that we give them that confidence. Others have mentioned the problems of regulation. We still vastly over-regulate the industry in too many ways. The Rural Payments Agency, which got itself into one heck of a mess—an absolute fiasco—recovered slightly, but I fear that it is getting back into a mess. All the indications from my constituents are that it is again not doing its job effectively. I ask Ministers to intervene now to stop it getting into yet another disastrous situation. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) mentioned abattoirs. What a nonsense it is, when we are trying to develop good welfare systems and reduce mileage, that we should be closing all our local abattoirs and create circumstances in which we have to move animals over long distances to go to the abattoir. That confounds common sense. My last point about the industry concerns marketing effectively and finding the right markets for our goods. I agree with the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole about public procurement policy. However, I am not sure that I entirely accept his remarks about the effects of what we used to call the compulsory competitive tendering regime, which the previous Government introduced for local authorities. I seem to remember cases going before the courts where it was said that it was impossible to add a moral dimension to the tendering process because that was anti-competitive behaviour. That led to the absurd situation whereby one could not specify the origin of the produce or the standards that it was required to meet. Surely we can do something about that. We are now 15 or 20 years on from CCT, and it is now right that public procurement agencies—whether the military, local government, or the national health service—do the right thing, which is to buy British, and to do so in quantity, to support our industry. Let me finish by linking agriculture to the environment. We need to have systems in place that do not go back to the encouragement of over-production but reward good practice in agriculture and environmental stewardship. We need to protect the marginal areas of production, such as hill farms, which are very fragile, and wetlands, which are very difficult to farm, and ensure that they can be farmed effectively, not only for the inherent benefits that that brings but for the better management of the land and the success of the communities in those areas. We should ensure that farmers are able to enter into agreements for whole river catchment area schemes to maintain wetlands in order to reduce floods. We should be encouraging farmers to be involved with anaerobic digesters. I remember arguing that case when I was a county councillor 20 years ago. I asked why on earth why we in this country did not have anaerobic digesters, as that was so obviously a better solution than many of the other forms of disposal. Yet the industry in this country is still in its infancy.