The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss used a visit to several food manufacturers in Cornwall this week (12 and 13 July 2018) to unveil new figures that showed food and agricultural exports in the first quarter of 2018 were up for the fourth year in a row.

From January to March 2018, £175 million worth of food and agricultural goods were exported from the region around the globe, up £10 million on last year.

In 2017, nearly £700 million worth of Cornish food and agricultural goods were exported around the world, and the Chief Secretary hopes that this figure will be bettered this year:

Food manufacturers in this region have made a flying start to 2018 and it’s hugely encouraging to learn, once again, that food exports are up for the first quarter of this year.

Exporting boosts the earnings of a business, and the wages of local workers, it also enhances the reputation of Britain and Cornwall around the world.

I want to see more people abroad enjoying a taste of Cornwall, like the magnificent clotted cream I’ve seen made during my visit.

It is so important that local traders in this part of the world have the opportunity to increase their trade and create jobs and I’m here to learn how we can help them do this.

While visiting Cornwall, the Chief Secretary was hosted by groups of businesses and also visited several food manufacturing factories.

The government is delivering for the South West, and the region now has the second-lowest unemployment rate of all UK regions. And this year alone employment has increased by 37,000, with a record high 2.8 million people now in work.

Since 2010 the government has worked hard to make sure businesses in all regions of the UK can start-up and scale-up. By cutting corporation tax we have helped encourage this, with 1.2 million more businesses starting up since 2010.

A major simplification of the way we regulate farming has been proposed in an interim report published today by Dame Glenys Stacey, Chair of the Farm Inspection and Regulation Review.

The interim report sets out the problems with the current system of regulation, largely borne out of the requirements of membership of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It finds that farmers and regulators alike are exasperated by the demands of regulation, which are unduly precise and inflexible. As we leave the EU, there is an opportunity to rebuild trust between the regulating authority and the farmer, which would maintain high standard on farms and support farmers to comply.

The way we regulate now exasperates responsible farmers and regulators alike. Some of our regulations are unduly precise and inflexible. Tightly-drawn European regulation can have adverse consequences for farm businesses and lead to a lack of transparency in the food chain. It inevitably sours relationships between the farmer and the regulatory authority. Inflexible regulation can lead farmers to hide their mistakes and naturally, that undermines any trust between the regulating authority and the farmer.

The Review estimates 150,000 farm inspections are carried out each year by multiple agencies such as the Rural Payments Agency, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, Natural England and local authorities to meet the strict criteria of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

The report discusses the opportunity to use a single field force to conduct more meaningful farm inspections, as part of a more flexible, proportionate regulation. A simpler and more targeted regulatory system would be an immensely powerful tool in achieving the government’s environmental objectives and supporting farmers to uphold standards.

Farming legislation has evolved and accreted in a piecemeal way over many years. Farmers face an unduly extensive and complex array of regulatory requirements. Some of those requirements seem illogical as well as inflexible, bringing farming regulation into disrepute.

The interim report also recommends better use of technology such as satellite imagery to check compliance. This could maximise the information gathered ahead of any inspection to support comprehensive visits for farmers and regulators alike. The Review is due to complete its work by the end of this year and will publish a final report with recommendations.

Dame Glenys Stacey, Chair of the Farm Inspection and Regulation Review said:

Farmers have long been frustrated by the way farms are regulated. As we leave the EU and as government sets out new expectations for farming, we have a unique opportunity to transform the way we do things.

This interim report sets out a direction of travel for farming regulation. We do not suggest piecemeal adjustments. Instead we think more radical change is necessary, to make the most of the opportunity we have now, and to best enable farmers to produce and market food while also meeting the other expectations government has of farming.

I do encourage all farmers and land managers who are frustrated with regulation, but resigned to how things are, to read our report and to think that things could be and should be different.

Secretary of State Michael Gove said:

Dame Glenys makes a thorough and compelling case for fundamental changes to the existing inspection and regulation framework. The regulation on farmers under the CAP has imposed an extra bureaucratic headache on farmers, with no room to recognise innovation or good intent.

The interim findings of this independent report will be a key consideration in the plans for our future Environmental Land Management Scheme, for which an effective regulatory regime is crucial. This will work to enhance the excellent work farmers to do manage and protect the environment.

The independent review was announced in February to simplify the way farmers and landowners are regulated as we leave the EU. The strict requirements of the CAP mean that many inspectors are currently not able to use discretion or exercise their own judgment.

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) is launching a new competition aimed at the private sector and academia, to seek innovative solutions and approaches to accessing, disabling and/or irreversibly destroying chemical and biological weapons munitions, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and bulk agents on the battlefield.

The competition is aimed an non-traditional defence and security innovators and DASA will be particularly interested to hear from those in allied technology areas such as the oil and gas, mining sectors as well as those which have experience in handling hazardous materials.

With an initial £500,000 to fund multiple proof-of-concept proposals at low Technology Readiness Levels (TRL), it is anticipated that an additional funding of £1.5 million may be available depending on the outcome of the initial funding phase.

It is joint funded by the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defense, and will operate under an existing memorandum of understanding between both nations.

The competition will formally launch at an event in London on 26 September 2018.

If you are interested in attending please register your Expression of Interest by 5pm on 12 September 2018. Places are limited and we reserve the right to limit attendance if needed. If you are accepted to attend the event, you will be sent full details and an agenda.

Details about the competition can be found here.

Any queries regarding this competition, should be sent to accelerator@dstl.gov.uk

Thank you very much indeed Madam President, and may I once again thank and congratulate Sweden for picking such a good menu of themes for us to discuss in the Security Council. I was here in 2007 when we had the first climate change debate in the Security Council and I think this is already shaping up to be a very worthy continuum in that theme and it’s obvious that there’s lots of common ground. Thank you to all of the Ministers who have taken the time to come and be with the Council today and share these very interesting and compelling and very sad stories.

The Earth is known as the blue planet but many of you have given descriptions of how some of the most iconic, geographic features on the planet are being irredeemably affected by climate change. That’s an important warning to us all and hopefully out of this meeting we can find a renewed sense of commitment to take action. I particularly welcomed what his Excellency, the Iraqi Minister said, about joint cooperation with neighbours to try and solve some of the resource problems that flow from climate change. But I think like many speakers, it was your presentation Ms Ibrahim about your people that was most compelling.

I think you very graphically set out the link between development and security and what it means on the ground for ordinary families and how much they are vulnerable to developments like terrorism because of the incredibly stark and unfair choices that they face. So, thank you for bringing that to the Council’s attention and for the United Kingdom, we will work as hard as we can with Sweden and other partners to try and help the UN come up with answers to address the points that you and the Ministers have made. It must be considered as a holistic issue throughout the UN system so I think we very much welcome Madam President some of the ideas that you and the Netherlands have been setting out. The interplay between climate and security is not an abstract, theoretical risk – if we don’t manage climate change, we will threaten lives, livelihoods and economies across the globe. With migration, that will begin to impact on all of our economies, even those that are not directly affected by climate change.

One figure that really struck me was the one that I have heard from the World Bank which estimates that 720 million people are at risk of being pushed into poverty by climate change by 2050. So, that’s not only a shocking figure in itself, what it means is that it would be reversing much of the progress that we would have had in the first quarter of the 21st century. So, we’re working against ourselves if we don’t take action to do something about this. That is in addition to the fact that there will be other consequences of conflict and instability that arise from climate change.

My Prime Minister, Theresa May, has gone on record as saying that there is a clear moral imperative for developed economies to help those who stand to lose most from the consequences of man-made climate change. We have pledged 7.7 billion dollars in international climate finance to try and help alleviate the problem. I think the actions and solutions that we agree on in the Security Council need to take into account all the risks that we face today and how they might interact to address potential risks in future. I think the Council has, if I may say so Madam President, been quite good about reflecting in recent resolutions these points, particularly on Lake Chad, Somalia and the Sahel. Of course, the task now is to have effective implementation. For our part in the United Kingdom, we have committed to champion a greater focus on building resilience to climate change and this is for the Secretary-General ahead of his 2019 Climate Summit. We will be collaborating with a range of actors, including governments, aid agencies, regional bodies and the United Nations to launch what we hope to be genuinely transformational actions to build climate resilience.

As I’ve already said, we completely agree with you that we need an improved understanding of climate related risks. We ourselves have been working on climate risk assessment and were one of the first countries to conduct a national climate change risk assessment and we will support other countries in doing theirs. We have worked very closely with experts in China, India and the US to look at complex, systemic risks including how climate change interacts with security. We will, with the Chinese, develop a framework to monitor climate related risk continuously and we hope to launch that later this year. So there’s lots of good work happening in which I think we can all reinforce each other and make sure that we build on all this progress rather than duplicate it.

I think I’ll just conclude by saying you know we’ve always known, particularly in the UN, about the interdependence between security and development and stability and issues like human rights. That in itself is not a new concept and indeed the Charter alludes to it. But, I think it is true to say that it is now all intensifying as the world becomes more complex and above all it’s exemplified by climate change. And it was given a very moving guise by Ms Ibrahim’s testimony today. So I hope we can all go away from here with renewed determination to put right some of the problems you have all highlighted.

Thank you.