Tag: Tim Farron

The speech made by Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 14 December 2022.

Let me first thank you, Mr Gray, and thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) for this very important debate.

I will pick up where my friend the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) left off and say that no policy of trying to tackle food poverty in this country will get anywhere if it does not look at how we produce our food and the amount that we produce, so let us talk about our farmers and the difference that they can make. We have a 14% rise in food prices—it amounts to much more for the poorest people. I agree with everything that hon. Members have said in the last few minutes about the heartbreaking reality of children not having enough food to be able to study and to maintain their health. It is utterly outrageous that in the fifth richest country in the world, we are in this situation.

However, the United Kingdom produces only 60% of the food that it eats. It is a decision of the Government to allow that to be the case, or rather it is the absence of decisions that would have solved that problem. The Government are moving towards the new farm payments scheme. Many or all of us probably support the principles underlying that scheme, which is about public money for public goods. But this month, farmers will see a 20% cut in their basic payment, and that is without most of them having access to anything new to replace it. We see new incentives in order to give landlords financial support for turfing out their tenants and so reducing the amount of food that we produce. This Government now have a farming policy that actively encourages the reduction of food production in this country. That does two things: it pushes up the price of food, and it pushes Britain on to the international commodity markets to buy food elsewhere, pushing up the price of food for the poorest people in the world. That this Government have a farming policy that actively encourages us to produce less food in this country and to push up the price of food for the poorest people in the world is morally reprehensible. I can tell the House, representing, as I do, Cumbria, the lakes and the dales, that Britain’s farmers are determined to feed Britain’s people and to tackle the food poverty that exists in every community. On their behalf, I beg the Government to change tack and allow them to do so.

The speech made by Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 14 December 2022.

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I offer huge congratulations to the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) on securing this important debate and on making a brave and moving speech. I thank him for what he said.

The right to work is a frustrating issue. I find myself unable to get into the Government’s head on many parts of the discourse in this place about migration and how we treat refugees and asylum seekers, but the right to work is one area where the Government may be able to be pragmatic. I will make the case for that more fully if I have time at the end of my contribution, but to put it very bluntly and crudely, there are great left-wing and right-wing arguments for giving asylum seekers the right to work.

There are good bleeding-heart liberal reasons why we should care for people who are asylum seekers, as giving them dignity and the ability to integrate is a kind thing to do, but if the Conservatives, and the newspapers to which they tend to bow down, are really bothered about the cost of the asylum system, the answer is to allow people to pay their own way. There it is—I have solved the problem in one fell swoop: allow them to work, pay taxes and contribute to our society. That would be such an easy thing to do and I have a slight sense of hope from the Minister for Immigration, who was in Westminster Hall the other week responding to a debate on a related issue, that there may now be a little strain of pragmatism in the Home Office. I will continue to push for that, and I hope and pray that it might come to the fore.

Margaret Ferrier

Allowing refugees to work lets them integrate into their new communities faster. It could help tackle modern slavery. According to the campaign, Lift the Ban, it could hugely benefit the economy to the tune of £97.8 million per year in net gains for the Government. Does the hon. Member agree that allowing asylum seekers to work is beneficial for both them and the UK?

Tim Farron

It really is, and I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point. She is absolutely right, and I completely agree with her. It is worth bearing in mind the fact that some of the Government’s tough posturing on asylum seekers contributes towards modern slavery. For instance, the nonsense about deporting people to Rwanda—what will that do? Will that stop people coming to the UK? Nope—it will stop people claiming asylum when they get to the UK, and then they will end up in the black economy, involved in modern slavery, forced labour and exploitation.

The objections to giving asylum seekers the right to work, or allowing the UK to make use of their talents—let us put it that way—are bogus. Fundamentally, they focus on the nonsense of the pull factor. Let us deal with that, first and foremost. The idea that the UK is being swamped by asylum seekers is nonsense. The massive majority—up to 90% of refugees—remain in a country neighbouring the place they have fled. Of those who find their way to Europe, four times more asylum seekers are in Germany than are in the UK, and there are three times more in France than the UK. If we were briefly to put the UK back in the EU for league-table purposes, we are 17th out of 28 when it comes to the refugees we take per capita. We are neither overwhelmed nor swamped.

The extent to which we are is because of a broken asylum system, where we fail to triage people’s claims, and leave them rotting for months, even years, without an answer. That is absolutely outrageous. Yes, the cost of having people in hotels is huge, and it is entirely down to Government incompetence, not down to us being swamped by people seeking to invade and exploit us—and all that nonsense.

I have been to Calais, I have been to Paris to talk to displaced people from Calais, and out to some of the Greek islands where refugees first arrive in Europe. I talked to those who are seeking to come to the United Kingdom. First, they are a small minority. Secondly, when I dug down and asked why they wanted to come to the United Kingdom, their answer was family ties, and cultural reasons—particularly if people come from a country that was once part of the British Empire, and for whom this is the mother country. If that is the case, this is a place that people will seek to come to—but they are a relatively small minority.

With regards to all the hostile environment argument the Government comes up with to try to punish and dissuade people from coming here, there is no law that is dastardly enough even to remotely compete with the biggest “protection” this country has from asylum seekers—the small matter of being a flippin’ island. It is hard to get here—really hard. There is nothing that we could do that would be able to match that bar to coming here, which is probably why we are 17th on the European league table, and have nowhere near the numbers of France and Germany.

It is worth saying that there is one pull factor. There is a pull factor about Britain—it is our centuries-old reputation. That is something that makes me proud. When one listens to people who are heading here, they are not saying, “I want to cream off the taxpayer.” They are not saying, “I want benefits,” or “I can get free NHS treatment.” They are not even aware of those things. They are aware of Britain’s reputation as a place of sanctuary. These are people who have been persecuted because of who they are, what their beliefs might be or what ethnicity they might be. They see Britain as a place where they can have a family in peace and quiet, and earn a living.

Carol Monaghan

It is also because Britain may well have had a colonial footprint in the country that they are coming from, so they have a feeling of affinity with Britain.

Tim Farron

That is absolutely right. They probably speak English, or have been taught it, so there is a sense of Britain being the mother country. The reputation of Britain as a place of religious and political liberty—a place of freedom—where people can live a quiet life is the pull factor. No amount of ridiculous legislation from this Government or any other will scrub out several centuries of having that reputation—a reputation we should be proud of.

I spent a little time in the constituency of my neighbour and friend the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell), who is a Conservative MP—I will not say “but a decent human being”—and a decent human being. I went to one of the places where asylum seekers are being kept, and the people supporting them spoke highly of the hon. Member and his work supporting asylum seekers in their casework applications to have their cases heard. I came across people who had obviously gone through enormous trauma in the places they had fled, particularly those who fled through Libya, which is a place of terrible persecution and awful deprivation for those who have to pass through it to get to the Mediterranean. Many of them have post-traumatic stress disorder, and the mental health impact on them of having to wait for months on end is utterly intolerable. Many were not there because they were on antidepressants and simply could not get out of bed. My experience of meeting those people and seeing the talent they had made me think, “What a waste it is that that talent is not allowed to be deployed.”

Let us consider: why should the Government give asylum seekers the right to work? Why should the Government give the UK the right to benefit from asylum seekers’ talent? It is simply because they will pay their way. If we are worried about the cost of asylum seekers to the taxpayer, we can stop worrying about it by giving them the opportunity to work, so they will be less of a burden and, by paying tax, will actually be contributors. We should think what it would mean for their mental health and dignity, which is important, and for their ability to develop their English and fit in more. As others have said, over three quarters of asylum seekers will be granted refugee status or granted asylum in this country.

Christian Wakeford

I rise to intervene because while we have been speaking, there has been an incident in the channel. Forty-seven people have been in the water and unfortunately several have died. That shows the dangerous lengths people go to to come here. It is not just for economic benefit and migration; people are taking a serious risk for cultural and familial reasons, and all the reasons we are talking about in this debate. We are a proud, tolerant country that should be accepting and trying to abide by that. Unfortunately, I feel that in the rhetoric we are hearing if someone said, “Build a wall”, I would not be surprised, so we need to overcome that and show compassion now more than ever.

Tim Farron

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I know I have gone on for longer than I should, and I will wrap up in a minute. What he said was obviously heartbreaking, and it is a reminder that the reason why all the channel crossings happen is the lack of safe routes. If we allow people to apply when they are on dry land, they will not make ridiculous journeys like that. It is a minority of people who are fleeing who come to this country and, because we are protected by that body of water, people have to do dangerous things to get here. That is not a decision people take lightly. They take it because they are desperate and they see the United Kingdom as a place of safety for them. Giving asylum seekers the right to work will absolutely lessen the financial burden on the taxpayer. It will give the Government a defence for the many people encouraging them to be even more beastly because they are allowing them to share the cost of the system. It will help with integration, mental health and, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly pointed out, workforce issues. One of the major reasons why our economy is in recession is that there are parts of the economy where there is more demand than we can meet—that is an outrage.

Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)

It is really disheartening to hear about those deaths from the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford). While the moral and economic justifications are obvious, allowing asylum seekers to work would, conversely, deprive the Government of propaganda that says, “Asylum seekers are a drain on the country and a detriment to our society”. We all know how much the right-wing mainstream media love to fall back on finger-pointing and othering the poor, the vulnerable and especially refugees. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) will agree that allowing asylum seekers to work would give them the opportunity to provide a better standard of living for themselves and their families and improve their participation, engagement and contribution in UK society.

Tim Farron

I completely agree with everything the hon. Lady has said.

In conclusion, I want quickly to make a point about workforce in my community. There is a stat I often reel out—I did it yesterday in the main Chamber—that comes from a survey of Cumbria Tourism members. The lakes is the second biggest visitor destination in the country outside London. We have 20 million visitors a year and a relatively low population, so workforce is an issue. Some 63% of tourism businesses in the lakes report operating below capacity because they cannot find the staff. I am not saying that giving asylum seekers the right to work is the only answer, but it would contribute and help us economically. There are good self-interested reasons for the country to do this, but it is also the right thing to do morally.

This is about leadership. The rhetoric and discourse from the Government on asylum in particular—how we treat those who come to us for sanctuary—are a failure of moral leadership and show a lack of courage. They say there are two forms of leadership: one is where the leader sees the direction the crowd is travelling in and goes down to the front and says, “I agree”, which is not leadership, by the way; the other is where the leader has the courage to make the case. Leaders should lead and make the case. There is a strong, hard-nosed conservative argument for doing this, as well as a bleeding-heart liberal reason. Would the Minister agree to look into the mechanisms that would need to be employed to give asylum seekers the right to work or, to flip it the other way round, to allow the United Kingdom to make use of the talents of those who come to us for sanctuary?

The speech made by Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, in the House of Commons on 30 November 2022.

It is an honour to serve under your guidance, Sir George. I want to pay a genuine and heartfelt tribute to the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), who has successfully secured this debate on a hugely important and significant issue for us all, particularly in communities such as mine.

Animal diseases pose an enormous threat to UK farming, trade and rural communities. We are in the midst of the worst outbreak of avian influenza that we have ever seen. H5N1 has stayed with us all year round for the first time ever, and it is more virulent than previous strains. Yesterday, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee heard evidence on this; I am grateful for the work it does, and many of its members are here today. There have already been more than 140 confirmed avian influenza cases in poultry and captive birds in the UK—in previous years, getting to double figures was considered to be bad news. The fact that we are well into three figures is terrifying.

As of 20 November, 1.6 million birds had been culled directly because of bird flu on farms. Half of the free range turkeys produced for Christmas in the UK have been culled, as we have heard. British farmers are under immense pressure, both emotional and financial. Poultry farmers often rely on the Christmas trade to pull their annual income out of the red and into the black, but that Christmas trade has been wiped out in an instant, and the small independent farmers, particularly in Westmorland, are bearing the brunt of it, fearing that their businesses will be wiped out completely.

It is not just avian flu that we should worry about. The UK faces real threats from bovine tuberculosis, new diseases such as African swine fever and, of course, diseases affecting domestic pets, including rabies. These outbreaks do not just threaten our food security, trade and farming; they also threaten our natural environment. All birds are being culled, not just those sold for meat—the great skua population, for example, has declined by between 55% and 80% in the UK this year. The species has immediately been placed on the red list, and its population will not recover for decades. If the Government do not intervene effectively, the ecosystems and food chains we rely on—the very fabric of Britain’s countryside —will be changed forever.

A report from the Public Accounts Committee this month found that the Animal and Plant Health Agency has been

“left to deteriorate to an alarming extent.”

It said that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had “comprehensively failed” in its management of the agency’s Weybridge site. That is the site where the science happens—surveillance testing, disease tracking and so on.

We have seen what the consequences of inaction and not learning from the past can be. The foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001 devastated communities in Cumbria, not just financially and economically but socially and emotionally. A friend of mine who passed away just a month ago was among those 20-odd years ago who were involved in the large-scale culling in the Rusland valley. It broke him—and 20 years on, it continued to live with him.

A year after foot and mouth happened, I remember the children of Kirkbie Kendal School doing a play they had written themselves about the emotional effect the outbreak had on them. One of them likened it to Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach”—waking every morning and thinking, had the disease got closer to them? Had it hit their valley yet? Those people are adults now, and the impact on them, on all of us and on our shared memory is huge. We must never think that animal disease outbreaks only affect animals; they have a huge impact on human beings as well.

Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the contribution he is making, particularly on the impact of foot and mouth in Cumbria. I was one of those schoolchildren in Cumbria at that time. Given the closeness of Cumbria and north Lancashire to the Scottish border, does he share my concerns that, while we are housing birds in England we also need to see the devolved Governments following suit when it comes to biosecurity?

Tim Farron

I absolutely agree that this needs to be a whole-UK project. I thank my friend and neighbour for her contribution—not least for reminding me how much younger she is than me. If we had an outbreak of foot and mouth on the same scale today, it would have an economic impact of £12 billion. As I said, there are impacts that are not quantifiable but even more devastating.

What do the Government need to do? I will briefly suggest three things. First, they should support our farmers through the current crisis. As the right hon. Member for Maldon rightly said, the compensation scheme is not fit for purpose, and the Government must bring it into the 21st century. The legislation that it was built on was introduced in 1981. It is practically prehistoric —like me. Farmers are able to receive compensation only for birds that are alive when the flock is seen by a vet.

Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)

As the representative of a constituency that has a large number of intensive poultry farms, and as someone who has kept a backyard flock and been the financial controller of a poultry farm, I have seen at first hand the difficulties of trying to house poultry. Most importantly, I have seen the difficulties that the farming industry faces when trying to insure against avian influenza. It used to be possible to obtain insurance, because the disease was an unlikely event—it was a peril that insurers would happily insure against—but now it is almost impossible. Does my hon. Friend agree that taking preventive action—

Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)

Order. If the hon. Lady wants to make a speech, she should indicate so. Interventions should be brief.

Tim Farron

I agree with my hon. Friend, and am grateful for her intervention. The uninsurability of flocks is a reminder of why the compensation scheme must work and be effective.

In 1981, avian flu had a low pathogenicity. It did not kill the poultry, so farmers could get a vet to confirm an outbreak and command a cull before the livestock was dead. That is the crucial thing. Now, the disease has a high pathogenicity. Turkeys are dying within four days. The legislation was introduced to incentivise farmers to take their birds to be culled, and it is no longer serving that purpose. The Government must therefore intervene to correct the compensation scheme accordingly.

Secondly, the Minister should take evidence-based decisions. Earlier, I mentioned that the Animal and Plant Health Agency is where the science happens. It is vital that our approach to the disease outbreaks is based on science. Scientists think that avian flu probably lasts for around six weeks after death, so why do farmers have to rest their sites for 12 months? Why are some being told to strip six inches of soil off their free-range paddocks? Farmers are ordered to move their bird flocks indoors, but it takes longer for avian influenza to spread among a flock if they are kept outside on the ranch.

Thirdly, I ask that the Government ensure that they properly prepare for future outbreaks. I expect that the Minister might say that the Government are investing £2.8 billion to redevelop the Animal and Plant Health Agency. That is welcome, but the programme is not due to complete until 2036, and the Treasury has not yet agreed to fund it.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Maldon for bringing forward the debate. It is a huge issue for farmers in my patch, for rural communities across the board and for the infrastructure of our natural environment across the UK. Action must happen now.