My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I shall speak only briefly on this group of amendments in order to probe my noble friend the Minister on when we will have the Government’s response to the recent consultation on the activities of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. There was overwhelming support for keeping the existing levy, and I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that I do not think that farmers would welcome another levy in addition to the existing one. Support for the levy is fairly overwhelming at 66%, but it is important that we review the purposes for which it is used.
I want to place on the record the difficulties that abattoirs and auction marts are experiencing at this time because of Covid-19. I hope that we appreciate those difficulties and sympathise with farmers who, as sellers, are still not allowed to enter the auction mart because, as I understand it, the restrictions are still in place. Only the buyers are allowed to do so and if I was a livestock owner, I would find not being there very worrying. I would be interested to see the Government’s response to the consultation. I do not think that I have missed it—the website sets out only the responses that were submitted to the consultation.
Looking ahead to when we discuss other amendments to the Bill, I hope that part of the levy will be used for marketing and for export. I am sorry to raise my Danish connections again, but I have been hugely impressed by how the Danes use their levy, which is raised from livestock and other producers and then quite substantially matched by funding from the Government, to run marketing centres. I think that we are learning from that because we opened a marketing centre in Beijing and saw an immediate incremental rise in our exports of those parts of the pig that we do not like to eat. With those few words, I shall wait to hear my noble friend’s response.