My Lords, I am the fifth member of the Select Committee which, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, produced Hungry for Change, to speak on this group of amendments so far. I commend to the Minister the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, which covered so many points.
This part of the Bill is headed “Food Security”. As the noble Lord said, there are two meanings of that. The first is the household food security so well described by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I support what she said; she is renowned for her expertise in this area. The second area of food security concerns food coming into this country. That was part of the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, who quoted a figure on how self-sufficient we are. Again, there is a dichotomy here. There is our total self-sufficiency in food and the self-sufficiency in food produced by the UK for consumption or use in the UK. Instead of the rather low figure of about 60% for total food, we are 75% self-sufficient in homegrown food.
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We need to be very careful about trying to be totally self-sufficient in homegrown food. That would be a total disaster. I draw your Lordships’ attention to paragraph 458 of our report, which I quote:
“Another point that was raised by Henry Dimbleby was that trading is crucial for ensuring resilience in the food system ‘because it protects us from bad harvests’. The Government also argued that many products cannot be produced in the UK, and that supply would fail to meet demand for year-round access to certain foods.”
That is absolutely right. We have a problem: we eat a lot of foods that we cannot produce in this country. We can grow some more vegetables—the amount will be limited, given our soil and our climate—and a limited amount of more fruit but, under present traditional farming methods, we will never grow enough to be self-sufficient.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts talked about the problem of the future water supply. What he said leads me to be convinced that I am right to support Amendment 162. He mentioned the dire situation in 20 years’ time—I think that it was described as the “jaws of death”—with regard to the water supply. Under the Bill, that is only four reports away. That is an inadequate response to the crisis that we face. Amendment 162 says that we ought to produce a report annually. I would prefer that, although I would be equally happy to support three years, but five years is far too long.
The situation is changing and technology in agriculture is improving so rapidly that what we are used to today will not be the same in a few years’ time. In a few years, we will all be used to vertical farming and meat-free protein, and what we know as traditional farming will
have suffered a revolution because so much can be produced in cities and laboratories that will be healthier, cleaner, more environmentally friendly and just as delicious, we are told, as what we are eating now. Given all the changes that are coming and the pressures at the moment, the Government need to produce a report more frequently than every five years.