Speeches by Eagle.

“Yes.”

“If you are asking me whether we will do that here, the answer is no. We have our environmental improvement legal requirements. We have moved to a system where we are paying for public goods and the provision of improvements in soil and nature, as well as farming more sustainably. If we were to switch back that would be…”

“There is—and there is no getting away from it—a power imbalance between those who are buying food and those who are selling it. The smaller the farm, the larger the power imbalance. If one looks at dairy, the statutory instrument took two years to co-develop with the industry, including with dairy farmers and their rep…”

“They were all very well behaved when I was there.”

“If you look at the structure of farms by the land that they own and the size of the companies that run them, there are very large farms at the top that produce a far larger percentage of our food than the land percentage that they are farming. There is then a very long tail of family farming businesses as well. We have…”

“I agree with you. Nature recovery can and does support food production. We have to change the way we have done things in the past, not only to deal with farm pollution, which is really important. The more we deal with other greenhouse gases, the bigger the percentage farming pollution will become if we do not tackle it…”

“Yes, I do.”

“We have to look to see what we can do. This is part of the resilience issue. We have this paradox of having flooding and drought at the same time. My colleague Minister Hardy is looking to see what can be done with respect to shifting water resources around, so that they can be where they are more needed. That is more …”

“Yes, but it supports almost like collective organisations to try to sell, and only 20% of the horticulture sector uses them. We have to start looking at the particular needs of the horticulture sector. Some of that is with respect to energy, some of it is with planning issues for glasshouses and polytunnels, and some o…”

“Given what you have just read out, it sounds like there is a great deal of chance to improve them. They also are not surprising because of the huge uncertainties and change that the farming sector—and by that I mean the wider agricultural sector—has been through in the last few years. It continues to face some degrees …”

“If there are things that you want to draw to my attention that would make it easier for farmers who access technology in that way to interact with our grants, I am more than happy to hear what you have to say about it.”

“No. It was a legacy EU scheme that we do not intend to continue. It creates producer organisations, which only 20% of the horticulture sector actually uses. We need to support the horticulture sector in a different way than using an old EU scheme. The horticulture sector has its particular issues and I am very interest…”

“But it probably was a Minister—I do not know; I was not there—who decided to increase the number of things that you could apply for from SFI ’23 from 23 to well over 100.”

“I would like them to improve.”

“I do think, by the way, that there is an issue if we are talking about access to healthy food, particularly in very obvious areas of food deserts and deprivation. There is a real issue that we all have to think about around the positive correlation between poverty and obesity, which has come about as a result of the wa…”

“It is a two-way thing with civil servants. They give you advice and information; you ask questions. Then it is up to the Minister to decide what needs to be done, in accordance with whatever the manifesto commitments or values of the political party that happens to be in that Department at the time are, and in accordan…”

“Far be it from me to have any such view about that. They can make their own observations.”

“Thank you, Chair. It is a great pleasure to be here. I am looking forward to a good session today. I am Angela Eagle. I am the Member of Parliament for Wallasey. I am the Minister of State for farming, fishing, rural affairs and various other bits round the side. I will leave my colleagues to introduce themselves.”

“Also, those representations are not done in a vacuum that excludes animal welfare.”

“I think that is more for me to say. All I can say at the moment is that we have robust discussions. I am given all the advice and information that I request and I do not think that I have any problems with officials giving me candid advice. You have to ask the right questions as well sometimes.”