Speeches by Lowe.

“Are you? You are giving me lots of aspiration—”

“I hear all that. I declared my interest as an active farmer, and I have to tell you that my experience of DEFRA is a very poor one. Most farmers would agree with me that DEFRA is not fit for purpose. Your rulebook mutates like a virus. Half the time you shut your schemes within 24 hours because you have got it wrong, a…”

“You say that, but at the beginning you said you were driven to improve an outcome-based sort of situation, which I agree with; that is what you need. However, I read, as you say, three pieces of legislation increasing the complexity of the regulatory landscape. Then I read that DEFRA is largely reactive to “short-term……”

“Do you think they are setting them correctly?”

“Is that what you are telling me?”

“Is this a long way of saying, “We don’t need to start with a clean sheet of paper?””

“I would like to go back to the beginning, please. I read the NAO Report entitled “Environmental regulation”, which concluded that DEFRA’s largest environmental regulators, the Environment Agency and Natural England, face several challenges to regulating efficiently and effectively. These include the constraints of the …”

“I should declare that I am, among other things, an active farmer and therefore come into regular contact with the bodies that these fine people run.”

“And now you are talking about diversity in the countryside, as I saw this morning in The Daily Telegraph. I think you have got better things to concentrate on, frankly.”

“It is not always evident, I have to say. I do not think that the farmers would agree with you.”

“How, then, can we be assured? As a farmer, we fill in countless forms. We are asked for data all the time, which we still have to fill in, I guess because once Governments have a Department that asks the questions, it churns out the same questions every year, even though you already have arable area aid claims and load…”

“We do need to make sure that we look after that.”

“This is a question for Philip and Marian. Given my somewhat hackneyed view of DEFRA, and my experience of it over my 40 years of farming, the question is this: what do you need from DEFRA to work more effectively together? What do you need, Philip, and what do you need, Marian? Tell the Committee what you need that you…”

“The question was about food production, though. Are we prioritising it enough?”

“Can you reassure me that that is the case?”

“Very quickly, may I underline what the Chairman says? I am very concerned. You say that you put food production at the top of your agenda. I do not agree; I do not think that you do put food production at the top of your agenda. I watch in horror as farms are rewilded. I watch grade 1 land being given over to beaver re…”

“Thank you.”

“I think the headmaster would say, “Could do better.””

“It was in 2006.”

“It took you five years.”