Contribution
My Lords, I hope the Minister listened with great care to what my noble friend said. I declare an interest as a partner in a small farm. I was walking the fields only yesterday, looking at the disastrous effects of the fact that we have had practically no rain. It is not much more than a year ago that I had to look at the disastrous effects of having too much rain. We are an organic farm, and therefore we have looked after the soil very carefully and suffered less than others during that period. But many farmers were not able to get a harvest or plant because the weather was so bad, and they therefore lost two years.
I believe that we have a real problem of diversity here. We often talk about diversity as if it is about race or ethnic minority, but it is so interesting that no member of the current Cabinet represents a rural constituency or is, as far as I can discover, a country person at all. There are 9 million people who live in the countryside and who are hardly represented at all. To be perfectly fair, the shadow Cabinet does not have, as far as I can find out, anybody who is a country person of the sort we are talking about. This is something that has happened to our society, and we who are country people find it extremely difficult. Therefore, I want to say to the Minister, who is known for his generosity, that it is crucial for this Government to show that they are listening to and thinking about this section of the community.
The seat that I once represented is now represented by a Labour Member. She must find it very difficult to appeal to many of the people who voted for her because it does not appear that the Government whom she supports have really understood how the countryside works—in other words, what agriculture is. I could, of course, make a great statement about the terrible situation of the IHT changes, which were rather peculiar given that no previous Labour Chancellor has ever thought them a good idea. I could make all those arguments, but I want to tone down what I might have said to one single concept: Governments can get the support of the nation only if the nation feels that they understand it—not just bits but the whole of it. The introducer of the previous amendment, who I am afraid is just leaving—I was going to be polite about it—rightly talked about the Bill having to represents both sides of industry. I ask that the Bill also represents different parts of industry, and one of those parts is the rural agricultural scene. My concern is that this has not been looked at through the eyes of the countryside.
It may be that, when the Government do that, they do not want to make any changes, but it does not seem possible for the Government to convince people that those changes are not necessary unless they have done what Amendment 133 asks them to do. All we ask is that the Government look in detail at the effect of the Bill on the agricultural industry.
In ending, I want to say something true and really serious. We are entering a period in which food security will be crucial. Climate change means that we will have less and less opportunity to import from wide areas of the world. I remember, when I was Minister of Agriculture, being interviewed by the cleverest man in Europe, Peter Jay, who said, “We don’t need a Minister of Agriculture because we’ll always be able to import food from somewhere else”. How madly wrong that was. Climate change will mean that we find it more and more difficult to fill our shelves at home. Nothing undermines a Government more than two or three days of people being unable to eat what they want to eat.
Therefore, I say to the Government that I hope that this is a helpful amendment—and, if the Government say that they will not do what it asks, that says something to the 9 million people who live in the countryside and, even more, to the many people who keep food on our plates. No farmers, no food. If farmers are to do the job properly, the Government have to recognise that the weather that farmers deal with, which has always been the thing that is different about agriculture compared with any other industry, is now going to be a difference that is made very much worse, as we have worse and worse examples of more extreme weather. In general terms, the Government—unlike other parties—have been extremely good on climate change and I ask them not to let themselves down on this but to say, “Yes, we will look and see exactly what these provisions will do for agriculture—and, if we find that they need alteration, we will be able to come back with the facts”.