Speeches by Reed.

“We are pushing that very hard. I gave a commitment to the NFU president on precisely that just yesterday.”

“I am very optimistic. I recognise, first of all, what you have said about this and the previous Government. That is a very important agenda. It is very important for my ambitions to make the farming sector more profitable and that farms can get higher yields from the crops that they are growing. The way that we have ma…”

“It is due to be published after the summer recess, is it not?”

“I will give you a response, but my colleague here, who has some professional expertise in that sector, might have something to add to it. We are looking at food labelling as part of the food strategy. That is a piece of work that we are carrying out with stakeholders from right across the food and drink sector without …”

“Those are all very sensible things to look for in it. I have not seen it, so I cannot answer those questions, but any sensible strategy has an implementation plan attached to it so that we know what needs to change in law and when it will change. Those companies that are being required to carry out this testing need to…”

“—but it will do that within the rules. The rules are very clear. The regulations are very clear. My intention is that Thames will follow the regulations and the rules as they apply to everyone else.”

“No, not that aspect of it. It is for it to look at who it wants to bring in as a potential investor to resolve some of the financial challenges of its own making that it is dealing with at the moment—”

“It is a private company. It is for it to—”

“We are engaging regularly with the EA over the state of the weather. Of course, we have not had rain for quite a long time this early in the year. That is worrying. We are not at the point where there is a drought yet, but water companies are required to have drought plans that they refresh every five years. Those plan…”

“I will bring in my colleague here in a moment, who I am sure will have a more detailed response to give you than I do. Of course, I had the opportunity to meet some of the businesses in the beautiful town of Rye when you invited me down there, and to hear their frustration at the extent of the water outages, the lack o…”

“Yes, those are in scope.”

“Sorry, David will comment on that. On your points, Baroness Batters has a small team that she is working with, and they are doing a lot of outreach work into the sector. It is hard to think of anyone who is better networked in the farming sector than Baroness Batters. Six months is enough time to get a piece of work do…”

“I will invite Emily to comment on the Natural England point. Is that in your remit?”

“You make some very fair points there, and I am happy to have conversations with my colleagues in MHCLG who are leading on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. As I was saying in my earlier comments about the land use framework, we want to support agricultural land being able to produce as much food as it can, and then…”

“Your point on unfair contracts is exactly the point that I was making about milk. It is not fair that the producer of origin should be forced into a contract, where, if there is a spike in costs, as happened, say, with the energy increases, the producer bears the cost of that and it is not shared fairly. I do agree wit…”

“There are lots of problems in the supply chain, and it is unfair to point to just one part of it. Supermarkets want to support the producers of origin, because they need those producers to be successful businesses if they are going to keep supplying the products that the supermarkets want to sell. There are problems in…”

“A key part of making farms more profitable is making sure that the supply chains are fair, and the Groceries Code Adjudicator has an important role to play in that. I am going to ask my colleague Emily to say something more about this, but, in the way we are working through these issues, we have already secured agreeme…”

“Yes, absolutely. We lack the kind of water infrastructure that this country needs to secure water supplies into the future. At the end of the price review period, we secured investment that will be worth £104 billion over five years, which includes funding for new reservoirs as well as other infrastructure. We get more…”

“The piece of work that Baroness Batters is doing is akin to the piece of work that Sir Jon Cunliffe is doing on water, or that Dan Corry did for me on regulatory reform and streamlining regulation so that it is more effective. I have found the best people I could find to lead a piece of work. They are all engaging outw…”

“To an extent, that is right. Having operated in both sectors, I do not think that you can entirely transfer one sector to the other, either way round. They both have strengths. They can both learn from each other. I do not think that one is right and one is wrong. What I want to see through the public sector, and parti…”