My Lords, what a pleasure to follow a succession of speakers with whom one agrees almost entirely. I added my name to Amendment 231 as an expression of solidarity with all the amendments in this group, which come to the heart of one of the major problems of the Bill. Okay, we are doing away with cross-compliance from the CAP grants most farms have taken advantage of, and moving to a system where a proportion of farms—perhaps a high proportion—will take advantage of, for example, tier 1 schemes. They will be an improvement on cross-compliance if they work properly, because each one will be tailored to the specific circumstances of that farm. That ought to be an advantage, as it ought to be possible to get the best benefit from the particular and unique circumstances of every farm that takes part.
However, the main problem is that there will be some farms—we do not know how many, but they may be large, efficient farms—that decide not to take part in ELMS because they think they can make a profit in the new environment without doing so, without doing all the fiddly things the Government are insisting on through ELMS. Those are the farms where there is a huge risk of a severe loss of environmental benefit and a severe deterioration of everything good that farms give that people have been talking about—ponds, hedgerows and everything else. I do not think we have had an answer from the Government yet on how they are going to deal with that particular problem. These amendments seek to do it by setting up a system of regulation—if I have understood them properly—that will insist that all farms undertake certain basic minimum things.
The Minister has said on at least two occasions in Committee that under the new system there will be no compulsion, and everything will be voluntary. I am very worried about some of these big, supposedly efficient but environmentally inefficient enterprises that might undermine the whole thing.