Sustainable Livestock Bill

Clause 1(3) has the requirement that"““The Secretary of State must ensure that policies in relation to negotiations and other activities at international level, including at the European Union, are consistent with sections 1(1) and 1(2).””" As the Minister said, he would not be in a position to ensure that. I submit that it is not open to anybody in the Government or the House to ensure that various policies are consistent with what is going on in the European Union on matters about which we do not have the final say and are subject to qualified majority voting. As I understand it, there is a discussion at this very time on whether the EU budget should increase by 2.9% or higher next year, but the House has no final control of that. Clause 1(3) is rather like saying, ““The Prime Minister shall ensure that the UK contribution to the EU budget does not increase.”” We do not have the power to do that, just as my hon. Friend the Minister has no power to ensure that EU agriculture policy is as we would wish it to be. It is relevant in that context to mention a very helpful report by Friends of the Earth that shows how EU subsidies currently encourage unsustainable practices, which is obviously at odds with the Bill. Friends of the Earth has calculated that some £700 million of English taxpayers' money was spent on propping up factory farming through the common agricultural policy in 2008. Its report states:"““Small farms are losing out to factory farms—the most damaging link in a chain that connects the food on our plates to forest destruction…UK factory farms also contribute significantly to the UK greenhouse gas emissions and undermine rural livelihoods.””" The Friends of the Earth figure of £700 million is"““based on the best available information and calculated on the basis of subsidies””—" British taxpayers' money that goes to the EU and is then recycled for the purpose of subsidising parts of agriculture—"““for cereal production…Export subsidies which largely go to companies and processing industries…Untargeted direct payments which are increasing money being received by the intensive pig and poultry sectors…Historical payments that award the biggest payments to the farms that produced intensively in the past…Dairy payments that are based on historical production quotas””" and"““Lowland grazing livestock untargeted subsidies that do not support extensive models adequately and therefore continue to support the increasing tendency to intensify or exit the farming sector””." The CAP was last reformed in 2003. We hope that a more substantial reform is about to take place, but I will believe it when I see it. The reform is the one we were promised when Mr Blair gave away a large part of our rebate on the basis that the CAP would be reformed. The next few months will be decisive in determining whether we will get anything significant in return for giving up that rebate, but the early suggestions are that we will not get anything like what we are looking for in that revision of the CAP. I predict that because the word ““sustainable”” is rather trendy at the moment, there will be a lot of guff about sustainable this and sustainable that in the CAP reforms, but economic sustainability, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North and others mentioned, will probably be omitted. A proper recognition of, and reference to, economic sustainability has been missing in this debate. I take the view that the CAP is not only environmentally unsustainable—indeed, it undermines environmental sustainability—but economically unsustainable. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will make those points in his typically tough and uncompromising fashion when he goes to negotiate CAP reform. I am sure he will tell the French that although we agree on certain aspects of defence, we need to go a lot further before we agree on support for the agricultural sector. Interestingly, the Bill contains quite a lot of material that is relevant, or could be relevant, to the second Bill on the Order Paper—the Public Bodies (Sustainable Food) Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), who has a long-standing interest in improving the quality of food available in this country. Last night she introduced me to somebody from ““The Food Programme,”” and we were talking about that Bill. I am sure that if the hon. Lady were to seek to participate in this debate, there would be sufficient scope for her to make some of the points relevant to her Bill under the umbrella of—