Leaving the EU: the Rural Economy

David Rutley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Scotland has a rich and varied agricultural heritage, including the grain-producing lowlands in the east, and beef and lamb production in the uplands. It is no surprise that Scotland has a number of world- beating brands, including Scotch beef, Shetland lamb, Stornoway black pudding and Orkney Scottish island cheddar. On my last trip to Scotland, I met representatives from key industries and trade bodies that are vital to the Scottish rural economy, including NFU Scotland and Scotland Food and Drink. I was given a guided tour of Paterson Arran, which has grown into one of Scotland’s best-known independent food companies, with a turnover of almost £24 million in 2015. I was also fortunate to be shown around the Glenmorangie bottling plant in Livingston. Scotch whisky is a phenomenal global success, accounting for about one fifth of all UK food and drink exports, worth £3.9 billion in 2015.

On working with the devolved Administrations, I regularly meet my ministerial counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and I look forward to welcoming them to London for further discussions next week. I am determined that we secure a deal on leaving the EU that works for all parts of the UK and recognises the contribution that all corners of this country make to our economic success.

Leaving the EU is DEFRA’s biggest focus, as it is the Whitehall Department most affected by the EU, but alongside this, the day-to-day work of DEFRA continues to focus on achieving the right conditions for a thriving rural economy. Although much of rural policy is devolved, in August 2015 we published the rural productivity plan for England to set the right conditions for businesses in rural areas in England to prosper and grow. Across the board, Government policies will help rural communities: having an industrial strategy that works for all areas; delivering 3 million apprenticeship starts in England by 2020, including trebling the number in food, farming and agri-tech; and building more homes and providing better access to services.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an important point. Does she believe, as I do, that the huge opportunities for rural diversification will strengthen our rural economies and communities? Not the least of those opportunities are outdoor recreation and other activities, which can create meaningful experiences for people, that will help the rural economy, as well as physical health and wellbeing?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Reconnecting with nature and the outdoors is incredibly good for wellbeing. We expect and anticipate that the success of rural tourism will continue as we seek to become a more outward-looking nation.

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[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

There is an active and interesting debate going on about farming and agriculture in our rural communities. I was reminded of just how active on Friday, when I had the privilege of visiting the Plant House farm in Prestbury to find out more about dairy industry issues. We had a wide-ranging debate that completely captivated us for an hour and a half. I barely had time to see the new milking parlour, which had been the underlying reason for the visit, and the wonderful cakes on the kitchen table went untouched. Such are the sacrifices we make—unbelievable.

I recognise that this is a time of uncertainty for farming, but it is also a time to define new opportunities. The Prime Minister was clear today that although we are leaving the EU, we are not leaving Europe, so we need to define ongoing trading relationships with the EU. There are in her ambitious strategy new opportunities in broader markets, which will have positive implications for all industrial sectors and benefits for UK farmers as well.

Some may want the relative certainty of the common agricultural policy, but few would argue that it is a perfect system—far from it. It is quite the opposite. For too long, it has had all the hallmarks of a system created in the 1950s. It is over-bureaucratic and designed for the needs of 28 states, not the primacy of the UK national agricultural interests that we need to have in mind. Brexit will bring us a huge opportunity, so the passing of the CAP will not be mourned. We will create a better approach. The Prime Minister has already said that there are going to be protections for pillars 1 and 2 of the CAP until 2020.

Like the wider UK economy, the fundamentals of the UK agriculture sector are in good shape. We can compete with the best in the world, so we must now look forward to realise the opportunities before us. Like the wider economy again, though, it is not all about Brexit. Brexit should be a spur to action to tackle long-standing challenges and realise opportunities that have been with us for some time. I mentioned rural diversification in my intervention on the Secretary of State; we must realise those opportunities. That is particularly true for tourism and the visitor economy, which will be pivotal. Outdoor recreation also has a part to play in that particular debate.

We need to help young people to build careers in farming and develop their livelihoods in agriculture. I am impressed by the work I have seen done by young farmers clubs in and around Macclesfield, and by the enthusiasm that they bring to agriculture. As the Secretary of State develops her Green Paper and thinks about her 25-year DEFRA strategy, will she please not forget the other opportunities outside Brexit, such as rural diversification and, of course, the prospects for young farmers, who are pivotal for future success?

Flooding

David Rutley Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My view is that our procedures are working, with the gathering of Departments on Saturday to make sure that we had the right preparations in place for the emergency services, the Environment Agency and the Army. The Cobra system that we have to co-ordinate them when we have an emergency, as we have had for the past few days, has worked very effectively, and we have been able to mobilise people on the ground. I am interested in what works, in what is effective and in how we protect the maximum number of people and the maximum number of homes from this extreme event.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I, too, pay tribute to the emergency services. As an officer of the all-party groups on mountain rescue and on mountaineering, I pay particular tribute to the mountain rescue workers who have put in a huge amount of work to support the communities affected.

Given that tourism is such a vital part of the local economy, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that every effort will be made to support local businesses and communities in the run-up to Christmas and during the Christmas season in these very difficult circumstances?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Mountain Rescue has been a fantastic support, particularly in some of the remoter villagers across the north of England, especially in Cumbria. I pay tribute to it for its round-the-clock work. It has been absolutely fantastic.

I agree with my hon. Friend about rural tourism, which is already worth £10 billion to the economy. It is really important to get things up and running again, which is why I am working with my colleagues the Transport Secretary and the Energy Secretary to make sure we get transport and power up and running, not only so that residents can enjoy the area, but so that people can visit it.

Upland Farming

David Rutley Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Rural isolation is a serious issue. Upland areas are, almost by definition, the most sparsely populated areas in Britain. People are trapped by barriers of distance. Traditionally, those are barriers of communication and barriers of roads, but increasingly they are barriers of technology, such as lack of access to superfast broadband. In addition, if one looks at an individual upland farm, one will find that the number of people working on that farm has decreased dramatically in the past 60 years. Farms that might once have employed two or three people no longer do so. Increasingly, that means that life in the uplands, if connected to the fact that the number of farms is falling because farms are getting larger, is increasingly lonely. As we know, an auction mart can provide an important way for farmers to meet each other.

That is not to say that we should be portraying upland farmers as victims. They are, as we all know, incredibly resilient and confident individuals who have chosen the life they love deeply and of which we are deeply proud. However, we need to be serious about the fact that isolated lives can be challenging: challenging for education and healthcare for farmers and their children, and challenging in terms of being able to diversify. We talk a great deal about getting people online, but if there is no broadband connection on one’s farm it is pretty difficult to diversify.

All these issues about isolation are important reasons why keeping incomes up through agri-environmental schemes is necessary. However, finding other kinds of infrastructure investment that we can put in place, whether it is for better roads or better broadband, will also be vital to the long-term health of those communities and the long-term life of the whole area, including those very species we want to protect. The whole idea of the countryside stewardship scheme is predicated, of course, on the existence of those countryside stewards, and as my hon. Friend pointed out, in this case the countryside stewards are the upland farmers themselves.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on his contribution today; he has always made good contributions from the Back Benches and is now doing a fantastic job at the Dispatch Box. He mentioned the importance of broadband. I was on Hall’s Fell Ridge on Blencathra this weekend, looking down over his constituency, and I thought about the similarities between the upland farmers there and some of the upland farmers in my Macclesfield constituency, which is on the other side of the Peak district. Does he agree that it is vital to get these roll-out plans clearer, so that farmers can plan ahead to see whether they will be in the roll-out plan for the 99 percentile, or if they are not in that plan to have options to roll out into community-based solutions, which he knows quite a lot about from his own experience?

[Rory Stewart]

It is great to take a question from my hon. Friend. He is, of course, not just a fantastic local constituency MP but somebody who knows a great deal about this specific subject and has championed the outdoor industries, the uplands and the connection between the two, so he knows a great deal about diversification.

The point my hon. Friend made, which in grisly jargon terms we could call a point about transparency, is absolutely central. It is very important that rural communities know when they will get broadband and what kind of broadband they can get, so that they can make the relevant plans. There may be areas where broadband delivery may be more difficult, in which case people need to look at private sector providers or focus on the possibility of satellite or point-to-point wireless connections.

I will conclude my response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset. I say a very strong thanks to him for raising an issue that matters so much; in fact, this rather crowded House in the middle of an Adjournment debate is a testament to how much this issue matters to so many of us here.

We need to have a much more open conversation, and we need to recognise that one size does not fit all. That means that we need to learn from all parts of this House and from all hon. Members about what is working and what is not working in their constituencies. We need to be better at being challenged on issues such as burning on Dartmoor.

Natural England should be empowered to be much more flexible. We do not need a 300-mile screwdriver operating from here in Westminster to tell people what to do; such a situation should be resolved between a Natural England official and the farmer on the ground in Dartmoor. We ourselves must assess and reassess relentlessly the regulatory methods that we are putting in place; we have to free farmers to farm.

The contribution of my hon. Friend is vital in the process of championing the uplands. I am really pleased that this debate is one of the earliest Adjournment debates of this Parliament. His contribution is also vital in holding people such as me to task, to ensure that we listen, learn and act.

I will finish by speaking personally and saying that I find almost nothing in our landscape as precious or as moving as the contribution of upland farmers over countless generations. We owe it to our ancestors and our descendants, to our landscape and to our rural communities, to give upland farmers the support they require to do their essential work. I pay tribute to the work done by many, many people in this Chamber over the years in supporting upland farmers, but this evening I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate.

Question put and agreed to.