Rural Economy

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, in our short debate on the 15 October, I was struck by the positivity of most of the speakers for the rural economy and the potential that it offered. In today’s debate, the right reverend Prelate, to whom we are all grateful for introducing this debate so well and so fully, picked up on those ideas of positivity. I so agreed with the phrase that he used: it is time for a strategy for the rural economy. That was the title of the report of this House in 2019, and I was privileged to serve on the committee.

There are undoubted opportunities. The right reverend Prelate reminded us of the gap in productivity between rural and urban areas. It is worth looking at the proportion of gross value added. In England, it is only 16%, whereas in Scotland it is 26% and in Wales it is 28%. Would the Minister get in touch with the devolved Administrations and find out whether there is any potential from up there and over west that could be used in England to improve the productivity and increase the percentage of GVA?

What has changed between now and the debate we had only two months ago? There has been a very significant change: we have had a Budget. The Budget was so beautifully described by Sir James Dyson as

“an egregious act of self-harm”.

The enthusiasm and potential that I thought the rural community had for this Government has been squashed. Small businesses, which the Minister in a recent letter to me described as the beating heart of the high street, were taxed with extra costs, burdens and bureaucracy—the very things that rural businesses do not want if they are going to thrive in the modern world.

A small but very important percentage of people in rural areas are farmers. In our debate on the Budget and small farms the other day, I listed all the extra taxes that the current Chancellor had imposed on farmers. The cumulation of that is the complete lack of confidence in the Government on the part of farmers, and a reduction of the incentives farmers have to plan for the future. It must be a very difficult time for farmers.

Combine that with the fact that climate change is making a third of our clay-based soils in lowland England unfarmable and it is going to have a very large effect on the productivity of farms and the ability to feed ourselves. Food security is one of the things that the Government thought was important before the election. How are the Government going to square the circle of making our food supply more secure, at the same time as berating those who are actually producing it?

In the debate two months ago, I mentioned Project Gigabit, and the right reverend Prelate picked that up earlier. I would add a different aspect to that: the download speed for internet. In rural areas, 5% of the community cannot get a download speed of 10 Mbps, whereas this is only 1% in urban areas. With so much having to be done on the computer now, unless you have a good download speed you are in serious trouble. Could the Minister address Project Gigabit and give us a bit more detail of how she plans to increase the availability of good broadband and social media supply in rural areas?

Another question I asked in our debate two months ago was about the size of Defra staff. Yesterday, I was emailed a written reply. As it is not in the Library, I will quote the first sentence. Our report in 2019 said that there were 60 staff. The reply says:

“It is complex to place a specific figure on the exact number of colleagues in DEFRA who work on Rural policy, given the wide-ranging nature of rural policy and that rural-proofing of Government policy is a cross-DEFRA and cross-Government effort”.


Sir Humphrey would be proud of that.

As the Minister takes her train home for Christmas—I hope she has a lovely, relaxing time—and looks out of the window at all the farms, will she consider that 50% of those farmers earn under £25,000 a year, yet her train driver probably earns three times as much? As she will be on an Avanti train, will she also think, as she looks at the stock farms and the farmers who are working 365 days a year, that these Avanti workers are about to go on strike over rest days?

Farming Families

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the Budget is notable for kicking an industry that is already stressed as it adapts to the new farming regime. It is not just the bombshell announcement of the change in inheritance tax that is causing so much anger and distress in the farming community. Besides climate change, they are having to cope with accelerated BPS reduction, costing a modest-sized arable farm between £30,000 and £40,000 a year in subsidy income; minimum wage and NI increases; carbon tax on fertiliser imports; and now the less-publicised changes to double-cab pick-up tax status. Trade deals are allowing cheaper imports of products of lower standards than they are required to meet. In September this year, average earnings were £651 a week in this country. In agriculture, the average was almost 25% less at £507 a week. While the farming budget of £2.4 billion—a reduction in real terms—was confirmed, it is only for one year, making planning for farmers that much harder.

To meet their net-zero and biodiversity targets, the Government must rely on land manager and farmer engagement. That requires incentives, consistency and trust. The Government have just shattered that and will not get it back. They clearly do not understand that you cannot farm green if you are in the red. The uplands, with their many family farms, are particularly at risk, with few options within the current ELMS. It could be that these farmers decide to sell out to carbon farming, given the payments offered, which would be detrimental to other public goods and to communities, associated employment and businesses, as well as putting food security and nature recovery more at risk.

Many good, well-run family farms, especially those on our less good land, are currently not making any return and are often living on overdrafts. The Budget proposals have already resulted in banks reducing lending facilities and increasing lending rates to farmers. As a very good farmer put it to me yesterday:

“Right now I have no wish to pass the farm down to my children. Growing food is a thankless task, every year we are taking a gamble when we put seeds in soil, and each year the odds are more and more against us. The risk/reward is just not there anymore. I tell my kids to pursue other more rewarding work, where you get paid holidays, sick pay and are reasonably certain of your income”.


The Government are sacrificing the farming industry, all in the hope of raising half a billion pounds in tax revenue—that is 0.3% of the NHS budget.

Rural Communities

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering on securing this debate on the important subject of rural communities.

I was privileged to sit on the Rural Economy Committee of this House in 2019. Our report, Time for a Strategy for the Rural Economy, is only five years old and, having reread it, I find it still very relevant today. We identified several problems that rural areas face in comparison with urban areas, many of which have got worse. It is not surprising that the evidence in the Regional Moorland Groups report, published a month ago and entitled The People’s Plan for the Uplands, shows that 97% of the people who live in these areas feel “abandoned by politicians”.

However, we also evidenced the opportunities that these areas could offer. I follow the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in highlighting the £9 billion to £19 billion in extra revenue that is available. If I were a Treasury Minister again, I would be very keen to exploit that potential.

I will identify some other key facts. In 2021, rural workers’ productivity was 82% of that of non-rural workers, which is a significant productivity gap. If trends continue, rural productivity is expected to decrease to 79% of non-rural by 2040. In 2021, the non-rural economy was six times larger than the rural economy and is projected to grow to 6.5 times larger by 2040. A 2022 report for the Rural Services Network, when reviewing the then levelling-up White Paper, showed that, if rural communities were a distinct region, their need for levelling up would be greater than any other part of the country. The cost of living is higher in rural areas. The rural fuel poverty gap is nearly double the national average.

As other noble Lords have said, there is a shortage of housing of the right type and tenure. The National Planning Policy Framework should include measures suggested by the Rural Services Network in England, which would help increase the delivery of affordable homes that meet local needs in small rural communities. Without an adequate supply of affordable housing and workspaces, it is difficult for rural businesses to flourish.

Since our report in 2019, digital infrastructure has improved, although it is still far from adequate. Can the Minister confirm that the remainder of the Project Gigabit programme will be delivered? Will she place the focus on rural areas, which are still losing out, and redouble efforts to ensure the rollout of networks that will give the full fibre or gigabit capability of broadband connectivity? Without good connectivity, rural communities are being discriminated against and businesses are being made unprofitable.

Many reports have highlighted the unique challenges faced by rural communities and businesses. There is no lack of evidence. What is important for the Government to understand is that businesses, people and communities in rural areas are faced with the aggregate multiple impacts of all these issues. It is this that makes me stress the importance of our report’s first recommendation and title: the need to have a comprehensive rural strategy.

Will the Government commit to developing a specific, tailored rural strand within the Government’s economic growth strategy, with buy-in across Whitehall departments, including the Treasury? Such a strategy should include measures that will help diversify rural economies, raise productivity and attract quality job opportunities. Such a strategy will be more effective if all government legislation is thoroughly rural-proofed and has a place-based approach to reflect the diversity of the countryside and the capabilities and knowledge of those who live and work there.

I end with three further questions for the Minister. Given that farming is still an important component of our diversified rural areas, when do the Government intend to publish their land use strategy? In 2019, Defra’s in-house rural policy team comprised about 60 staff. What is the number today? Finally, can the Minister tell us what rural areas, if any, will benefit from yesterday’s inward investment summit?

Flood Prevention: Farmers

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, as we have just experienced the wettest 18 months since records began in 1836, we are all grateful to the right reverend Prelate for raising this matter and giving us the opportunity to debate flooding and farming. Agricultural land in England is increasingly at risk of severe flooding, as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, just told us from personal experience. Currently, 74% of our total flood plain area is agricultural land, including 60% of our best and most versatile land. Last winter, the number of flood warnings on England’s best farmland hit a record high of over 1,000, exceeding the previous record by one-fifth.

Climate change is a significant driver of flooding. It is also responsible for increased and prolonged droughts. It is expected to make UK summers drier and hotter, and winters wetter and warmer. The hottest decade on record concluded in 2023, yet our weather is 12% wetter than the 1961 to 1990 average. So, although flooding is an important subject, we must be aware how interlinked the environment is and be conscious that, in proposing a solution for one thing, we do not adversely affect other problem areas. Currently, it is easy to forget that the south and east of England, where much of the water-intensive horticultural industry is located, is under most pressure from drought. It is predicted that we will use 5 billion more litres of water a day in 25 years’ time than now. Can the Minister confirm that the Floods Resilience Taskforce will also consider droughts, which are more damaging environmentally?

Both flooding and drought represent huge risks for English farmland and are likely to become more regular and severe, increasing the pressure on agricultural land. Both are part of the bigger problem of providing a sustainable drainage and water resources management system in this country. The Government, through ELMS, are supporting farmers, but the Minister will not be surprised that I recommend that more urgent attention should be given to soil, and in particular soil organic matter, which can be part of a solution to both problems. A 1% increase in soil organic matter per hectare adds 200 tonnes of water storage per hectare on average, but of course this will vary by soil type. This is because organic matter can hold 10 to 20 times its weight in water. This also increases a soil’s resilience to drought by allowing it to hold more water. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project has estimated that the around 18,000 cubic metres of water storage provided by 27 leaky dams located in optimal locations across 1,100 hectares could equally be achieved by increasing soil organic matter by just 1% across only 80 hectares.

Although arable land presents the greatest capacity for improvement, the value of grassland to flood risk mitigation, carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and biodiversity should not be overlooked. Grass leys, especially deep-rooted cultivars, introduced into arable rotations can improve soil quality and therefore have the same benefits. They do not need to be grazed, given the associated costs of having livestock on a holding if it is not already present. Indeed, research has suggested there are greater benefits from an ungrazed simple grass and clover ley. Permanent pasture has a higher organic matter content than arable land, which could be optimised in some locations through the adoption of an agroforestry system based on about 80 trees per hectare. It should be noted how important it is to get the stocking rates at the right level, as they are key to avoiding compaction and minimising soil organic matter loss. Research has also suggested that mixed grazing with cattle and sheep can be more beneficial than cattle or sheep alone. Mixed grazing improves sward quality due to diversity of height and species.

If the Government want farmers to help solve drought and flooding problems, the solutions not only need to be balanced with their possible consequences for food production but must pay farmers for storing water on their land, as it is a public good. Furthermore, if policy requires changes in farming practices, it will involve a learning process and planning. The costs and challenges of transitioning to new methods of farming should not be overlooked. If support is insufficient to encourage adoption then farmers will consider alternative ways to survive, such as intensifying production or, as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said, growing the wrong crops on the wrong land. In most cases, that will result in poor outcomes for the environment.

Given the critical role of finance in funding solutions, can the Minister confirm whether her department will return unspent money to the Treasury? I asked her this previously and got no reply. Does it intend to restore to real-terms levels, and preferably increase, the nature-friendly farming budget? I join others in asking what has happened to the expanded farming recovery fund announced by the Conservative Government. This was supposed to deliver support payments of up to £25,000 to help farmers recover from flooding earlier this year. Who is eligible? When can farmers expect a payment? Dragging their heels, as the Government are on this, does not give farmers any confidence that they have any thought for them or care about them.

Wild Atlantic Salmon

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the statistics given by my noble friend Lord Douglas-Miller are horrifying. We are now at the point where every fish needs protection. There are a number of issues here and I want to focus on just one, which is by-catch.

Regrettably, this iconic fish is currently not listed on the ICES working group on by-catch of protected species road map. We know that some salmon are caught in commercial fisheries and that there is risk of potential significant damage, but because of the lack of by-catch monitoring for salmon, it is difficult to quantify the actual damage being done and how significant it is. However, it is known that most by-catch comes from pelagic and gill-net fisheries. Sadly, to date there been no attempt to quantify the by-catch of wild salmon by these fisheries.

This Government, working with the devolved Administrations, must push as a matter of urgency the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, ICES and the regional fisheries management organisations, first, to access fishing effort data from pelagic fisheries and gill nets provided at fine temporal and spatial scales; secondly, to increase monitoring at sea and onshore, with specific requirements for minimum data collection; and, thirdly, to recognise the importance of different species. These can be difficult to identify, especially when a specimen may be a small, immature salmon crushed in among hundreds of tonnes of a target species. To address this, environmental DNA data collection should be mandatory to improve the detection of salmon in by-catch and expand our understanding of their migratory pathways.

Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first opportunity I have to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Harlech, on her ministerial role; I wish her well in that. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee for their work, and particularly the noble Baroness for so skilfully arranging this debate on Back British Farming Day.

I support the ambition behind the 30 by 30 policy in its aim to increase the spatial scale and connectivity of habitats, as these are key components of the nature recovery that this country needs. The criteria for contributing to 30 by 30 in England is based on three pillars: purpose, protection and management. As the report points out, while these are laudable, greater clarity is urgently needed in what these mean in practice.

Some people are calling for more land to be designated. I am not a great fan of designations. Protection should not be conflated with designation. This concern was reflected in the report, at paragraph 56:

“As the Committee heard in oral evidence: ‘just because [the area is] an SSSI, that does not automatically stop the decline in rare and threatened species we have on the site’”.


Indeed, the very designation of some land as an SSSI has caused its deterioration, because academic theory supplanted the practical land management that helped to create it. Experience shows that bottom-up, farmer-led and land manager-led projects are more successful than top-down directives in protecting and recovering nature.

So 30 by 30 is a huge opportunity for Defra to engage with environmental farmers groups. This would involve engagement with land managers and farmers across different management systems both in the lowlands and uplands. Good management practices would also extend the focus of nature recovery across a wider scale of catchment and landscapes than currently provided by the focus on designated areas alone. Every bit of the country can and should play its part—yes, even urban areas. It is good news that the Victoria Tower, part of this Palace, hosts a nest of peregrine falcons.

However, farmers face great difficulties at present. In paragraph 114, the committee states that:

“We heard that farmers in protected areas could struggle to find the time and resources to develop an understanding of what natural capital options are available on their land and that this may lead many to disengage with the process.”


How sad that would be. Does the Minister agree that using organisations such as the Peakland Environmental Farmers, co-ordinated by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, is an example of where such a collaboration could help farmers achieve these outcomes? Will the Government follow recently produced guidelines by the IUCN on human-wildlife conflict and co-existence, to help formulate strategies where different valid views are held?

I turn to what I consider an important omission from the report. How does 30 by 30 sit alongside the importance of food security, which is one of Defra’s five strategic priorities? This could be enhanced, and a lot of land could be made available for benefitting nature, if the Government would give their full support to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. The Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs, in a recent letter wrote:

“We are now considering how to take forward the regulatory framework outlined in the Act and will share our plans with key interested parties soon”.


Can the Minister give us a more definitive timescale, as this has so much potential to help food security and biodiversity?

On the marine side, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in asking why the Government do not stop fishing vessels from damaging our marine environment and wildlife. Free of the EU common fisheries policy, we have the power to prevent damaging fishing activity taking place in offshore marine protected areas. This power has already been deployed in a number of MPAs around England, but harmful practices, such as bottom trawling, are still allowed to take place in most of them.

Last year, fishing vessels equipped with bottom-towed gear were active in the UK’s offshore marine protected areas for over 33,000 hours, adding up to nearly four years. Oceana tells us that just 10 vessels, none of which were UK vessels, were responsible for over one-quarter of this damaging activity. EU legal challenges over the existing bottom trawling restrictions and the closure of the sand eel fisheries should be faced down. There is a genuine risk that the Government, as they seek a closer relationship with the EU, will use the sand eel win as a concession. Furthermore, the ban on mostly EU-registered bottom trawlers operating in all protected waters should be completed, and vessels of all sizes restricted from fishing forage species that local wildlife depend on.

This will also have significant benefits for climate action, with evidence showing that, globally, bottom trawling contributes roughly the same amount of emissions as the aviation sector. My view of the marine designations is similar to my critique of the terrestrial ones: protection is offered to a specific species or characteristic, rather than management of the whole water column. This can lead to a situation in which, for example, an animal is protected but its habitat is not, so the latter is able to be bottom-trawled, ruining the habitat for the animal being protected. Our current approach might explain why we are not getting the recovery outcomes that we want or expect to see in the marine environment.

At this morning’s National Farmers’ Union breakfast for “Back British Farming Day”, the Secretary of State had warm and encouraging words for farming and the environment. We will soon find out whether he can transform these into action. It is unsurprising, given the transition to a new farming scheme, with initially poor communication around its rollout and apprehension among farmers, that there is an underspend of over £350 million in Defra’s budget. Can the Minister confirm that HMT is trying to claw back at least £100 million of this? Research by the RSPB has estimated that this would mean 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland funded in England.

The ELMS budget has already experienced real-term cuts because it was not tied to inflation. The NFU and environmental NGOs have been calling for it to be almost doubled. Can the Minister confirm that Defra is also being asked to plan for cuts of up to 25% to meet the new Chancellor’s spending cuts? The opposition to the Secretary of State’s promises will not be from farmers but from his own Chancellor. Without sufficient resources at this critical time, there will be no chance of meeting the ambitions not only of 30 by 30 but of the legally binding targets set up by the Climate Change and Environment Acts. That is a much more serious problem for farming, the environment and food security.