Today, I am introducing the Government’s landmark Agriculture Bill to the House of Commons. This Bill delivers a new settlement for agriculture and those involved in this vital industry should be in no doubt of this Government’s absolute commitment to them and all those who produce our food and protect our environment.
Agriculture is one of this country’s great industries and nearly three-quarters of land in England is farmed. But despite its scale and importance to our nation, decisions about its future have, for the past half century, largely been decided in Brussels. All the while, our priorities have been overlooked, our productivity stifled, and farmers hindered in their preservation of our environment. These are the legacies of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The CAP awarded subsidies based on the size of individual land holdings, and not the contribution farmers make to our society. The top 10% of recipients received the lion’s share of payments – almost 50% – while the bottom 20% received just 2%. Meanwhile, our farmers struggled with burdensome and inflexible bureaucracy at the expense of our countryside and their own well-being.
Our Agriculture Bill marks a decisive shift and will remove the constraints and burdens of the CAP and replace it in England with a new and fairer system that rewards farmers properly for the work they do to enhance our environment and safeguard high animal welfare standards. And it will do so gradually allowing farmers and land managers time to adapt to our reforms and transform the agriculture sector for the better. Change takes time and the Government is conscious that farmers will need to plan and adapt. The Bill will enable a seven-year agricultural transition in England as we gradually move away from the CAP.
At the heart of the Government’s proposal is a new system for England that pays public money for the delivery of public goods – goods, such as clean air and water, from which we all benefit but the market alone does not provide. The Bill will allow us to invest public money in enriching wildlife habitats, preventing flooding, improving the quality of air and soil, planting more trees and raising standards of animal welfare. The enhancement of these public goods will help manage and mitigate the effects of climate change which is of profound public concern. The Bill will therefore be instrumental in delivering on the Government’s crucial goal to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.
This Bill champions food producers and makes ground-breaking strides to allow for a fairer, more transparent supply chain that will increase productivity and protect producers and consumers from unfair trading practices. It will create opportunities for new entrants who want to farm but have in the past had little prospect to do so. And it will incentivise longer-term thinking and investment while helping farm businesses to become more resilient and productive.
The Bill will also modernise aspects of agricultural regulation and make sure that they are tailored to the domestic market. It will include new UK wide provisions on organics and fertiliser regulations. It will enable new marketing standards to be set for agricultural products in England and reform agricultural tenancies in England and Wales to reflect a more modern and fair agricultural system.
It has always been the Government’s intention to change our agricultural policy once we had left the EU. The Agriculture Bill introduced on 12 September 2018 fell with the dissolution of Parliament last year, but the principles in that Bill had broad support in this House and with our farmers and land managers across this country. We now have a second chance to pass an Agriculture Bill that will set a bold new course for farming in this country for decades to come.
The Government is clear that future policy will respect the devolved status of farming. By bringing back powers from Brussels to Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh, devolved administrations can design policies that meet the needs of their own farmers, foresters and consumers and the challenges of their unique landscapes. The Welsh Government and Northern Irish Executive have asked the Government to extend certain powers in the Bill to Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish Government have chosen not to take any powers in the Bill and have instead introduced the Agriculture (Retained EU Law and Data) (Scotland) Bill in the Scottish Parliament in November 2019.
This is an ambitious Bill which makes the most of the opportunities created from leaving the European Union. It marks the first domestic farming policy in nearly 50 years and the first step towards a brighter, better and greener future for farming and our environment outside the EU.