Baroness Minette Batters, former president of the NFU, spoke to delegates at a packed South West Chicken Association conference about her tumultuous period leading the NFU.
Working with four prime ministers in six years – and three of those in just one year – would be difficult for anyone leading an industry body, but Minette Batters seemed to take it in her stride.
But speaking at the SWCA conference on 29 May in Exeter, Batters told delegates the political and international drama of the past few years made campaigning for British farming incredibly difficult.
“It has been,” she said, “so painfully hard to move the dial.”
Few in the industry would doubt her effectiveness or impact during 2018 to 2024, but Batters – now a cross bench peer in the house of Lords who has been tasked with leading Steve Reed’s profitability review – feels her job is far from done.
Although Brexit is done, we are “still halfway through transition,” with many loose ends, including crucially a trade deal with the US, not yet tied up.
Profitability review
The review of farm profitability she is conducting will allow her to speak to all government departments, something she is particularly keen to do as at the NFU she only dealt with Defra.
Batters message was that while there was plenty wrong with the way the food industry worked – much of the risk being on producers for example – she wanted to communicate all the positive things food and farming could bring.
“I can go and have a massive whinge-fest and they will shut the door and say thank goodness she has gone.” Instead, she says, “I really hope we can project what value we can create for GDP in 10 years’ time.”
She urged the industry to contribute when the call for evidence is issued later this year. “When I have a call for evidence it will go out to the whole sector, and it is your chance to outline the blockages and the solutions. Do feed in.”
One “sadness” of the political and international drama of the past few years, says Batters, is that the excitement of being involved in food production is getting lost.
“What poultry sector has done globally is massively exciting. Don’t let’s lose sight of the opportunities.”
While much is uncertain, she believes the future is good for British poultry. However, she believes in order for poultry to thrive, planning needs to be made easier – and that food security needs to be considered alongside environmental considerations.
Planning
“When Natural England is looking at anything, whether it is triple irrigation in Norfolk or slurry storage, the only question they are having to ask themselves is does this have an impact on the environment, but they don’t have to ask whether it is strawberries, whether it is poultry, whether it is dairy, whether it is arable.”
Batters made the point that “Producing our food does impact. Of course it does. We can be net zero. We can not produce anything, not emit anything, job done! But we just export our environmental conscience abroad. But we need to be producing more. That is the key point.”
She said: “Ideally Natural England would have the metrics on food as well so they can look at it through both lenses.”
We cannot afford to food production, she said. “We need more poultry production. It is an area for growth. We should not be reliant on importing any eggs. We can produce enough here. We’ve got all of retail very committed. And then in the broiler sector, there is an enormous opportunity for poultry production. But we need bigger sheds. We can’t keep going with what we’ve got.”
It feels as if the planning system is currently making it as “difficult as possible.”
News hooks
Addressing a packed hall of delegates, made up of chicken producers from across the south west, Batters talked through all the challenges of her tenure at the NFU and all the politicians she had worked with.
When she first took office, Batters said she quickly realised this was not a normal time for the country or indeed the world. “We realised we were going to have lots of news hooks”, she says.
Theresa May was the first prime minister she worked with. Her big idea was to have a ‘Green Brexit’. Their first meeting was in 2018, when May was attempting to work out how to deliver on the result of the referendum and minimise the economic fallout.
May told Batters she had “no idea SPS rules were so complicated.” It was at this meeting Batters first realised the UK had left the EU without understanding implications, even among those at the highest levels of government.
May thrashed out the so-called Chequers deal, supported by Michael Gove who was then secretary of state at Defra, which included provision for an SPS agreement, but May could not get the deal through the house of commons, and out she went, and in came Boris Johnson as PM at the tail end of 2019, promising to ‘get Brexit done’.
Covid
“2020 was the most extraordinary year,” Batters said. She travelled to Washington in January 2020, with Gail Soutar, the NFU’s chief international trade advisor. The trip was to speak to officials at USDA and explain why the UK was opposed to importing chlorine washed chicken and hormone treated beef in a trade deal. Getting a deal was a key priority of the new Johnson government.
“We told them, we know it is safe, but this is about values.” The USDA team asked about whether leaving the EU would mean a more liberal approach. “We told them our ambition is to raise standards above EU, and they were aghast.”
The meeting was not a success, but on top of that, Batters was disconcerted by the empty airport. “It’s this Chinese flu,” the cab driver mentioned. Heathrow was still heaving, says Batters, but the rest of the world was shutting down.
Food security
Batters reflects on how during the height of the covid panic, when children were out of school and supermarket shelves were stripped, she got a text message from a government minister, who she declines to name, who told her “We will give you as much money as you need as long as we don’t run out of food.”
That prioritisation of food security did not last. Thinking moved on. As did Boris Johnson.
Batters’ next had the pleasure of working with Liz Truss, whose short tenure as prime minister was in the autumn of 2022. “It was 49 days sheer hell,” said Batters.
Before she was elected by conservative party members, the NFU held hustings with both Truss and her competitor Rishi Sunak. Truss, confident of her victory, did not engage with the process and made no promises. Sunak however made a series of pledges including protecting UK farming in any trade deals and pledging to host a food security summit.
When Truss was ousted and Sunak became the third prime minister that year, Batters jumped on the pledges and held him to his word, securing the food security summit at number 10 in the spring of 2023.
She says it was the promises the NFU extracted at the hustings that led Sunak walking away from an enhanced deal with Canada that year, due to the inclusion of hormone treated beef.
What now?
Now in the house of Lords, it’s harder than ever to change things, she says. “In the House of Lords you don’t move the dial at all. You can slow things down or sometimes stop them.”
Problems remain in Britain’s trading relationship with Europe. There is still no trade deal with the US. Batters mentions she recently sent a message to Keir Starmer, urging him to keep agriculture out of any deal.
How will this be resolved? Batters believes ultimately the UK will pivot back to a closer relationship with the EU. Her instinct, she says, is that Trump will make chlorinated chicken and hormone treated beef a key condition of any deal on principle, and the UK will end up walking away. A closer relationship with Europe will then be the natural direction of travel.