Food Security

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Jeff Smith.)

18:59:00

Pope Benedict said that “food security is an authentically human requirement. Guaranteeing it for present and future generations also means safeguarding ourselves against the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources.” It will not have escaped your notice, Madam Deputy Speaker, or that of other Members of the House, that I represent a rural constituency with a preponderance of agricultural employment. Many of my constituents are employed in agriculture, horticulture, the food industry and related jobs. Lincolnshire boasts some of the best growing land in the country. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Lincolnshire is responsible for 30% of the nation’s vegetables, producing 19% of its poultry and 20% of its sugar beets, not to mention 90% of its ornamentals and flowers. I mention that last section because horticulture—the ornamental sector—is an important employer in my constituency. By the way, Lincolnshire, as hon. Friends from further north in the county will know, also processes 70% of the UK’s fish. Horticulture and potato crops use 6% of the farm area in greater Lincolnshire, and Lincolnshire has a total agricultural output of more than £2 billion, representing 12% of England’s total agricultural output. The critical point in all this is the quality of the land. Again, it will not have escaped the notice of the House that much of that land is alluvial. The silt, and the peat further inland, makes it prime growing land. Grade 1, 2 or 3a land predominates in the Fens. Other Lincolnshire colleagues in the House tonight will recognise why that matters so much not only to the local economy and to local society, but to the national interest. Food security is not merely an indulgence; it is critically important to the common good.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate and for being such an eloquent champion on the issue of food security. My constituency, like his, has a large rural community, and when I speak to farmers it is clear that food security is national security. The previous Government did a great deal on this issue, from the farm to fork summit to the food security index. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to see more from this Government on food security—for instance, legally binding food security targets?

With the perception for which my hon. Friend is already becoming known in the House, she anticipates the next part of my peroration. She represents an area that I know well; it is glorious, and I know now too that it has a glorious new Member of Parliament. The point she highlights is that over recent events, particularly the pandemic and the war in Europe, food security has gone from being a marginal matter—one that people like me raised regularly, but that was seen as rather self-indulgent, because people know I represent an area of the kind I describe and they felt I was merely championing those domestic interests—to a matter that goes well beyond the domestic to one of profound national importance. Recent events have shown us the salience of economic resilience. We need to be sure that not only in times of crisis, but in other times, we can withstand the shocks that are the inevitable consequence of human circumstances and human frailties. Making our country more resilient in those circumstances has become a national imperative. I am delighted to say that, in what I hope we can all agree is a post-liberal age, the issue of food security, far from being marginal, has become mainstream. The Minister is an old parliamentary friend, having shadowed me—with great style, if I may say so—when I was a Transport Minister. I happen to know that he shares my view about salience; I therefore anticipate his response with enthusiasm bordering on glee.

Will my right hon. Friend undertake to continue to share his insights into food security with the Labour party, which has no particular history in that respect? Indeed, its Front-Bench team consists of a Secretary of State from Croydon, a Minister of State from Cambridge and a couple of others from Hull and Coventry. They know little of country ways; they know little of the importance of food security. I hope that my right hon. Friend, in his charming and constructive way, will ensure that the Labour party, and particularly its Ministers, learn from his great knowledge.

I will hear nothing negative said about Cambridge, given my connection with King’s College; I have never knowingly been to Croydon, so I cannot comment on it. What is certainly true is that this goes beyond party politics. My right hon. Friend is right to emphasise that any responsible Government would recognise that the salience of the matter has changed, as I have set out. We have been through some difficult times in recent years, and they have concentrated minds in a way that might not otherwise have happened.

I will happily give way so that the hon. Gentleman can make one of his rare interventions in the House.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. The issues that he has outlined also apply in my constituency, where agriculture is really important: it creates some 3,500 jobs in the factories. I live on a farm—I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union—and I well understand farming issues. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the strategy that he hopes to see here at Westminster must encompass all the regions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? If we work together with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we can make a food strategy that works for us all. Does he agree that that is the best way forward?

This is a kingdom-wide priority, as I have made clear, so the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the issues in his part of our United Kingdom. However, I will return to Lincolnshire, if I may. Over 90% of fens farmland is grade 1 or 2 quality. That is interesting in itself, given that grades 1 and 2 cover about 21% of all farmland nationally, while grade 3a covers a further 21%. Disturbingly, since 2010 my region has lost 3,232 hectares of best and most versatile farmland —the greatest absolute loss within a single region. Worse still, the county that I represent is being targeted for large-scale developments, which are invidious in the light of my point that the common good and the national interest are served by protecting our food security. In Lincolnshire alone there are currently applications for large-scale solar developments equivalent to the size of 62 Hyde Parks, totalling 9,109 hectares or 1.3% of the total land across the county.

I know that some of those proposed developments are in the constituency of my hon. Friend, to whom I am happy to give way.

In setting out our concerns, my right hon. Friend speaks not just for South Holland and The Deepings, but for the whole of Lincolnshire. Just before the general election, a written ministerial statement set out several provisions and thoughts about the problems that he describes. It specifically mentioned Lincolnshire and the issue of geographical clustering. Does he share my disappointment that the new Labour Government have not committed to those provisions and those statements?

I anticipate disappointment, but I would not go so far as to say I share it. My hon. Friend has been a resolute champion for his constituents in respect of both food security and resisting developments that they simply do not want. If we believe in the devolution of power and in empowering communities to have a greater say in their futures, we cannot simultaneously snuff them out when they disagree with Government priorities—ignore them and disregard their perfectly proper concerns. That is something that my hon. Friend would never do. Where I disagree with him is that I have hope. There are those who will say that the new Minister is not up to the job, but I do not agree: I have worked with him previously, and I know that he is a diligent and decent man who will take these matters very seriously. I would not want to entirely write off the prospect that we will make an argument that is sufficiently persuasive to affect Government policy, even if we cannot change it entirely.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that in a situation where there are competing priorities between environmental stewardship, food production and house building, there needs to be clarity from the Government about how they evaluate and prioritise the relative distribution of the high-quality land that my right hon. Friend has spoken about? Without some real teeth around what food security means through national security legislation, there is a wide range of interpretations that leave the cause he is speaking to in a vulnerable position.

This is why the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies) was so powerful, because, as my right hon. Friend has just said, there are competing imperatives. Energy security and food security must not be allowed to contradict one another; both can be pursued with the right approach and with a sensitive treatment of where different applications are located. My argument tonight is that that sensitivity—that precision—is not currently prevailing. Indeed, the scale of the applications we are talking about in Lincolnshire alone is over 2,000 acres in some cases, eating up vast swathes of highly productive agricultural land. Once that land is eaten up, one suspects it will never return to agricultural production. There is a myth about wind turbines. Those who have been in this House for a long time and those who followed my career even before they became Members of this House, as I know many did, will remember that I have been campaigning against onshore wind since the time I got to this place. That is not only because of the aesthetics of onshore wind—as all men and women of taste would acknowledge, they are grim—but because the concrete used to anchor the wind turbines will never leave the ground, even when they have ceased to serve their purpose. Nobody seriously believes that there will be a commercial interest in removing that concrete, which will fill valuable growing land—spoil the soil, if I can turn a phrase that might last and make an impression on you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and on others too. The issue is the Government taking forward their priorities in a way that is consistent but, as I said before, also sensitive to the imperative of food security alongside that of energy security. There are 14 solar applications in Lincolnshire constituencies that are nationally significant infrastructure projects—by definition, those are large projects. In other words, more than 50% of nationally proposed solar plants are in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire or Rutland, which cannot be sensible. Of course we should be pursuing renewable technologies, but surely solar belongs on buildings. Every large commercial building, every warehouse—they are springing up everywhere —every office block and many more houses could accommodate solar panels and deliver solar power, yet we are allowing developers to make applications on the best growing land in our country, often for no better reason than their own self-interest. I cannot accept that this Minister believes in that, or that he is going to allow it. When he responds, I hope he will say that he will not. There is another threat facing my constituency, and it has an effect on food security too. That is the immense number of pylons that are proposed—87 miles-worth of huge pylons, along the whole of the east coast, neither wanted nor needed by local people. I say “not wanted” for self-evident reasons, but they are not needed, either, because there are better ways of transmitting power. As Lincolnshire county council has argued, the offshore grid is a much more suitable way of transmitting power. Pylons are yesterday’s technology, yet we face the prospect of them filling the big skies of Lincolnshire. We either care about the glory of our landscape or we are careless of it.

I know that my hon. Friend cares about it deeply.

On pylons, my right hon. Friend will perhaps recall that on the final day before the election, I held an Adjournment debate on National Grid’s Grimsby to Walpole proposals, and the then Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, Justin Tomlinson, said he would like to see a review. Does my right hon. Friend share my hope that the new Government will follow that decision and instigate a review?

I was in the Chamber when my hon. Friend held that debate; I rushed there when I saw his name on the screen, as I so often do. He was right to highlight the National Grid decision-making process, and to play his part in that discussion, as have I and other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne. I am more hopeful than many that we can persuade National Grid and Ministers to look at other options. Undergrounding is a possibility in the fens, for example, where tall structures have a disproportionate impact on the landscape, but as I said, I think the offshore grid proposed by the county council is perhaps the best way forward. The last Government published for the first time in 2021 a UK food security report; I hope that this Government will take forward that type of work on a non-partisan basis. They committed to assessing our food security at least every three years, and hosted the Farm to Fork summit in 2023. I hope that this Government will continue in that vein. The public procurement of UK food is also a pressing priority. I have never really thought that any Government of any colour—and I have been in quite a number of them—really got the issue of public procurement right. I was always told not to say this with civil servants in earshot, because it is like speaking in front of the children, in a way, and it is rather rude, and I had some very good civil servants, but I always felt that civil servants were putting impediments in the way of our using procurement as a tool to deliver national priorities. Procurement could be used more intelligently to bring about better ends; food procurement is a really good example of that. Why on earth are public bodies not prioritising British food? Why is it that any number of public sector organisations, from the health service to the prisons, from schools to this place and local authorities, are not buying British? Surely we should be buying British to support our country and the jobs that go with food production. I do hope that my “Backing Britain, buying British” campaign will gain support across the Chamber, and when I produce the badges, which will be coming out shortly, I will ask the Minister to wear one with pride.

I see that the hon. Gentleman is gagging for a bite already. I give way to him.

Last week I was privileged to attend the Royal Welsh show in my constituency of Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, one of the biggest constituencies in England and Wales. I spoke to many farmers, and top of their list of concerns was the power imbalance between producers and retailers. Will the right hon. Gentleman agree with the Lib Dem manifesto, which called for a strengthening of the Groceries Code Adjudicator to ensure fairness in the supply chain, thereby protecting producers and guaranteeing food security?

I do not make a habit of saying kind things about Liberals of any description, but I am going to say something quite kind to the hon. Gentleman because he is right to draw attention to that code. When I was a Minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as it was, I was instrumental in arguing the case for the Groceries Code Adjudicator. I met the first adjudicator and brought the second, the current incumbent, to my constituency to meet a group of farmers and growers during the last Parliament. The hon. Gentleman is right about the strength of that role, which just proves something that not everyone here will know: even Liberal Democrats sometimes get it right. In summary, I believe that now is the time for food security. Now is the time, building on the last Government’s beginning—it was a belated beginning—to make food security a central tenet of the new Government’s priorities. I know the Minister enjoyed good relations with farmers and growers during his period as a shadow Minister—that has been reported to me by my constituents and others—and he will have heard this argument made by them, and not only by us representatives in this place. It is really of vital importance, in the national interest and for the common good that we no longer allow our valuable agricultural land to be used for all kinds of other purposes, and so compromise this country’s food security, making us more dependent on imports, more vulnerable, increasing emissions, increasing food miles and damaging local economies. That is not the way forward. Let us make food security matter.

I call the Minister.

19:21:00

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is very good to see you in your place. I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) not only for his very kind words and warm welcome, but for his customarily thoughtful speech, and not least his very comprehensive account of his wonderful county of Lincolnshire and the huge contribution that it makes to our food production. I also thank the other hon. Members who made very thoughtful contributions to the debate. I cannot tell the House how delighted I am to stand at the Dispatch Box on the Government side of the Chamber for the first time as Minister for food security and rural affairs. The very title is a clear statement of this Government’s commitment to rural areas, and as has been said, this Government absolutely recognise that food security is national security. That is why we need a resilient, secure and healthy food system that works with nature, but also supports British farmers. This Government are offering a new deal for farmers to boost rural economic growth and strengthen Britain’s food security, and we will set out more details in due course. Frankly, climate change is one of the most significant threats to our food security. We have seen it this year in the extreme weather events that farmers are having to deal with. It is absolutely the case that taking the difficult decisions now to address climate change will enhance, rather than threaten, our food security. We have to face up to the challenge of an energy transition to achieve that, and in doing so must plan how we will use land in this country to ensure a proper balance between food security, restoring and preserving nature, and clean energy. I was interested to hear the observations from Opposition Members after their 14 years of opportunity to do the things that they are now keen to do, but we will pick up on many of their suggestions. Certainly one of the key ones will be to publish a land use framework; that was promised by the previous Government, but there were many delays, and we are now picking that up. It will work in tandem with our spatial energy plan. I can assure the House that communities will quite rightly continue to have a say on proposals for their area. It is important for this Government that where communities host clean energy infrastructure, they should directly benefit from it. However, we will not get into a position where the clean energy that we need does not get built and the British people end up paying the price. Credible external estimates suggest that ground-mounted solar used just 0.1% of our land in 2022. The biggest threat to nature, food security and our rural communities is not solar panels or onshore wind; it is the major climate crisis, which itself threatens our best farmland, food production and, indeed, the livelihoods of farmers. The Government will absolutely proceed on the basis not of hearsay and conjecture, but of evidence. One of the Government’s five missions, which I am sure people have heard much about, is our commitment to making Britain a clean energy superpower. That is part of a wider ambition to deliver on existing net zero emissions targets. Farming has a big role to play in contributing to net zero; 70% or so of UK land is used for agriculture, and farmers are custodians of the natural environment. They absolutely work hard to manage their land responsibly while providing the food we all need. I am glad that there is now consensus around the need for farmers to produce food. There was a curious period a few years ago when it seemed as though food production had somehow been forgotten. I can see the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings nodding wisely because he knows to what I refer, and I am pleased that we have all moved on and can agree on the notion that food production is so important.

The previous Government, albeit belatedly, changed planning guidance to give additional protection to grade 1, 2 and 3a land of the kind that I described. Furthermore, they said that when an energy developer expressed an interest in developing a site—of solar panels, for example—any assessment of the soil should be entirely independent. Those seem to be perfectly reasonable policies—reasonable enough for a reasonable man to accept.

The right hon. Member tempts me into a level of detail that I am afraid I am not prepared to go into this evening. We are examining all these issues and will come to a considered position. We want to get the balance right and that is what we will do, because the transition to more climate-friendly practices does not need to come at the expense of food production or farm profitability. In our view, net zero can absolutely support economic growth, including by accelerating the uptake of innovative technologies to increase productivity and efficiency in the agriculture sector. That, in turn, will support net zero food production, the efficient use of land and nature recovery. Our intention is to work closely on that necessary transition with not just the farming industry, but all stakeholders involved. We will work with farmers to ensure that we avoid imposing unnecessary costs, and—this, I hope, will be welcome to many in the sector—we absolutely guarantee that we will protect farmers from being undercut in trade deals. The right hon. Member, as I rather anticipated, mentioned solar in particular. As with all major infrastructure projects, there is a rigorous application process, and food production is rightly considered in it. I point hon. Members to the decision letters on these solar projects, which are available on the Planning Inspectorate website. That is the normal procedure in planning decisions. All the documentation will be found there, not just the final decision letters. I hope that makes it clear that all objections, relevant evidence and points raised throughout the planning inquiry are addressed and given weight in coming to a planning decision. I appreciate that the decision letter is a long, complex document, as indeed it should be, given the important issues raised. There is a limit to what I can say, as I am bound by the planning propriety guidance, which is clear that during the legal challenge period, planning Ministers and officials cannot comment on the decision, summarise it or interpret it.

Does the Minister see any merit in legislating for a food security target?

That is under consideration, and we will come back to that in due course. I note that, where appropriate, solar projects can be designed to enable continued livestock grazing. There is also a science of agrivoltaics developing, in which solar is integrated with arable farming in innovative ways. Solar energy can be an important way for farmers to increase their revenue from land less suited to higher-value crop production. There is also evidence that solar can improve biodiversity. We recognise that, sadly, confidence among farmers is at a record low, but this Government want to change that. We look forward to working closely with farmers to strengthen food security, progress the energy transition and boost rural economic growth. I thank everyone who has contributed to an interesting and informed debate. As ever, most importantly, I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, and not just for securing the debate today. I am sure the debate will continue, and I look forward to conducting it in the same constructive manner in which we have started it tonight. Question put and agreed to.

19:29:00