It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I do not often agree with him, but on farming I am pretty much on board with him. I pay tribute to Minette Batters, who has done a wonderful job as president of the NFU, and good luck to Tom Bradshaw, who is taking over. I pay tribute to the NFU as an organisation, with which I work extremely closely. Before I carry on, I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Before I first got this job back in 2010, I set up a quarterly meeting for Dorset farmers, starting with south Dorset farmers. In those days, two or three attended. Now the meeting has gone to about 50 or 60 farmers who meet every quarter to discuss all the farming issues. I am grateful to several Ministers who have come down to talk to them personally at my request. What is rather alarming is that the issues they raised back in 2008, 2009 and 2010 are in many cases still relevant today. When I ask them, “Have things improved?” their answer, on the whole, is no. They are amazed, as am I, that food security is now something we all talk about. It had not been talked about for an awfully long time, and hon. Members have already noted that food security has been ignored for far too long. Now, we have another war in Europe, and the world is in a terrible state. Food security, not least for these islands, has now become a prominent issue, as it should be.
What my farmers say is that we left the EU to reduce red tape and to get out of the common agricultural policy, and it is an extremely good thing that we did, but they are now asking for common sense—not targets, not overly environmental eco-zealotry and not forcing issues on to farmers that turn them to growing wild flowers.
There is a place for wild flowers, but why does this country of ours look so beautiful? Why do so many millions of people come to this country and go to Scotland, Ireland and Dorset? It is because the countryside is absolutely stunning. In most cases, who has done that? It is the farmers. They are tired, as am I, of being attacked left, right and centre for doing all these things it is claimed they are doing when in many cases they are not.
I want to touch on a few issues from my farming group. The first is the Poole harbour catchment area. The Minister is listening intently, and I am glad that he is. I hope he is aware of the issue we have at Poole harbour. I know that the Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) is actively involved in trying to get that across to Government. We understand that nitrate leaching into Poole harbour is a problem; we have no issue with that. Where we have an issue is that the tool the Environment Agency has used to measure it has now been changed. When it did the first test, to everyone’s delight the test was way below the level they thought it would be, so what has the Environment Agency done? It has moved the goalposts, with no consultation at all with the farmers. They did not have much faith in the Environment Agency, and they now have even less.
I touched on quangos in an intervention on the shadow Minister. I remember that Lord Cameron, as he is now, said back in 2010 that we would have a bonfire of the quangos. There is a place for such organisations, but they have become extremely powerful. They are implementing policy that does not ring true with the Government’s direction of travel. Natural England and the Environment Agency are now doing things that, if I am hearing those on the Front Bench correctly, I cannot believe they agree with. We have no issue with trying to reduce nitrates into Poole harbour, but there is no way as we understand it—we had the water company come to talk to us—that it can gauge the volume of sewage going into the rivers. We know it is happening, but the actual volume is almost impossible to gauge.
Tenant farmers have been mentioned, and I entirely concur with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale from the Liberal Democrats that some tenants are feeling extremely vulnerable. We are hearing stories of land being taken back in hand to take advantage of environmental schemes, and in some cases rents are being increased significantly. Others are experiencing problems with land agents employed by landlords. The Rock review has been mentioned, and I urge the Government to look at it and enact many of its excellent recommendations.
My next topic is slightly off farming, but it relates to it, and that is the reintroduction of beavers. There has been a report of a beaver being released illegally in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. That is causing concern. I believe that reintroduction has been experimented with in Scotland to a large degree. If we are to re-wild, I suppose there is some sense in putting beavers in large rivers, but there is no sense in reintroducing beavers into small chalk streams, or any other form of stream in Dorset. Beavers dam rivers. They would be protected, no doubt, by every organisation that would want to protect them. Farmland would then flood. As has been proven in Scotland, beavers do not hang around and say, “This is my home.” They breed and move elsewhere and do the same in other rivers.
As I understand it, they had to be culled in Scotland, because they broke out of the area given to them. Can the Government please look not only at the illegal releasing of beavers into rivers, if that is happening—it has not been proven yet—but the legal release? There is an emphasis on re-wilding. While we all want to see wild animals, there is a proper place and location for each species.
Next is the move from stewardship schemes to the sustainable farming incentives. We have heard about that from many Members tonight. It has been promised by DEFRA, but we are yet to see a clear mechanism or process for how it will work, and we receive questions on it every single week. As we have also heard from Members from all parts of the House, farmers are there to produce food—and to look after the environment, of course, but not to the detriment of food production, which is so important right now.
Mental health has been touched on. The Farming Community Network in Dorset reports an ever-increasing number of farmers suffering from mental ill health. I have to say that the Poole harbour catchment area, to which I have referred, is not exactly helping their mental health. That is not all the Government’s fault; I am not necessarily banging on the Government’s door. World events over which the Government have no control are also putting pressures on food production. I certainly understand that, as I am sure does everyone in the House. Mental health is a problem in the farming community, and a lot of that is because of the rules, regulations and other things imposed on them, when all they want to do is produce food and look after the countryside.
Lastly, tuberculosis has been touched on. It is a major problem in the south-west that particularly affects the dairy industry. Culling has proved to work. Rather than our talking about stopping the culling of badgers, and introducing other species, may I suggest that all wild animals have to be culled? If they are not, their health deteriorates. Foxes, deer and badgers do not have any predators in today’s world. We do not want to wipe them out; we simply want them controlled. It is pure common sense. As I understand it, were the Opposition to win the election—God forbid—they would stop the badger cull. I am interested in whether that is true; perhaps the shadow Minister can tell us.
The British farmer is without doubt the best in the world. I ask the Government to continue to do the best that they can to ensure that rules and regulations are sensible and, above all, to ensure that common sense prevails.