13:01 Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire) (Con)

The Minister also referred to energy and waste reduction. He may not be aware that over the past few weeks I have tabled questions to every Department about food waste and only the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been able to give me any figures. Almost every other Department has said that it does not collect those statistics. I suggest that the Government start leading by example and collecting those statistics. The Government talk about spending £10 million on anaerobic digesters as demonstration plants, but that ignores the fact that many are already in place and running, based on renewable obligations certificates. We now find that the Department of Energy and Climate Change proposes to renege on those certificates and there will be no grandfather rights for existing plants. However, DEFRA proposes more regulations on the size of store that will need a licence—another difficulty for anybody who wants to set up an anaerobic digestion plant, even though this country is already way behind in that area and needs to improve.

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13:25 Alistair Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con)

I just want to clarify that the company to which I was referring in my speech was indeed Biogen, because it has contacted me—as I am sure it has my hon. Friend—to express its great concern that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is proposing to renege on its agreement on renewables obligation certificates. That means that the financial deal that the company entered into, and on the basis of which it made its original investments, no longer necessarily holds. Those investments would never have been made on that basis, and certainly none will be made in future.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, in what might be the sting in the tail of this crafted speech, for illustrating what my constituents are doing. In that way we come full circle, to some of the problems that they are facing and how, despite the Government’s intentions, as set out in their paper, their actions do not always ensure the ends that they seek. They say one thing, but are doing things that make life more difficult for those whom they want to encourage. My hon. Friend has picked out a perfect example of that. I commend the Ibbett family and Andrew Needham at Biogen for all they are doing to pioneer renewable energy in that way.

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14:11 Jim Fitzpatrick

The hon. Gentleman suggested that “Food 2030” represented an acknowledgement by the Government that we had got it all wrong before. That is not, of course, the case. What “Food 2030” says is that the world has moved on. We have experienced the food price spike of 2008, climate change has been taken more seriously and population change has featured, among other factors. “Food 2030” is the first major food strategy document in, I believe, 60 years, a period that encompasses a good deal of Conservative as well as Labour Administration time.

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