Speeches by Eagle.

“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…”

“Some of it is about access in poorer areas to food that is affordable. Some of it is about education, as you were talking about, and teaching people how they can cook from scratch. There is often not much time to cook from scratch. Breaking the junk food cycle is also important. Some of that is about incentivising food…”

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

“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.”

“Food price inflation is caused by a range of things. It is tracking above overall levels of inflation. We know that the bottom 20% of the income distribution spend much more as a percentage—I think it is nearly 15%—of their income on food compared with the top 20%, who spend 8.6% or something like that. Therefore, ther…”

“I have a feeling, and this is ahead of any decisions that might be made, that peer-to-peer advice is really important. There is a real skills and onward training issue in farming and agriculture that we probably need to be more coherent on, especially as agritech and the big changes that are coming up have to be taken …”

“Yes, on environmental improvement.”

“Our big landscape recovery schemes are the things that will deliver a lot of environmental improvement. They are whole catchment areas, involving many different landowners. We are looking to see what we can do to increase involvement in them. There is a certain amount of money that can be redeployed when schemes come t…”

“I want to be much more transparent about how it is going as we are going along. We are working on what we can do to communicate that in real time.”

“I know you are keen to get on to fishing, Chairman.”

“Yes, let’s see how it goes.”

“We have to farm more sustainably. We will increase productivity and results if we can improve soil health, for example.”

“There are ways to do it, which I am currently considering.”

“Absolutely, yes. Some of the constraints we have are in our IT. It was ever thus. If you look at the distribution of what has been bought with these schemes in the past, we have over-bought various things, such as herbal leys.”

“You heard me talk about the distribution of the current scheme, where 25% of the funding has gone to 4% of farmers. That is not a distribution that will help deliver our environmental improvement requirements and I do not think that it is fair. Therefore, I am looking to see what we can do to have more of a focus on sm…”

“I am unaware of that particular case, but, given that we are doing trade deals, we are doing our best to protect our domestic producers in the best ways that we can. I cannot really comment on the Rotterdam butter until I know more about it, but I am happy to find out.”

“Yes.”

“There is massive potential to grow, not only with respect to our food production and food manufacturing. Let us not forget that area of food production, because it is many more jobs. It is the largest manufacturing sector in the country. The potential for change, with adoption of new agritech, new farming methods, prec…”

“If I could put it this way, the Department I am now in looks at the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. I cannot think of anything more important. Politically and economically, it is not seen as being as important as that, simply because the percentage of GDP and the number of people employed is muc…”

“We are where we are on that because of the new systems that were created to purchase public goods. I am fairly astonished, but not surprised, at how complicated the system that I am now having a look at has become in that short time. We have to look much more at deliverability and simplification, to see how we can stab…”