Small Farms and Family Businesses
Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts(6 days, 14 hours ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, for bringing this timely debate. Let us not beat about the hedgerow: the Government’s Budget proposals are bringing huge stress and deep concern to the farming community, as we have already heard. For many, this is the final straw after years of challenges.
I have become aware of a particularly tragic circumstance in south Norfolk where, due to a terminal cancer diagnosis, if the farmer survives after 5 April 2026, the policy change will have a huge impact on his family’s well-being and fortunes. That pressure puts enormous strain on him, almost wishing him to die sooner, because then the farm will be safe.
What of situations of the unexpected sudden death of a young farmer? The family would not only have lost the primary breadwinner but would probably have an unsustainable farm to carry on farming.
For others considering a lifetime gift, I am hearing deep concerns about the fact that you need to be able to afford to make it. The challenge is what you are going to live off or where you are going to live, because farming businesses have been squeezed in so many ways. In many cases, there is simply not the spare cash available outside funding capital, machinery and living costs.
All of this is affecting the well-being and mental health of our farming communities. The suicide rate among male farmers is three times the national average. Thank goodness, at a time like this, with added worries and pressures, that we have organisations such as the Farming Community Network and the excellent YANA charity in Norfolk ready to provide a listening ear and practical advice.
It is not just farming finances: there are wider implications of this policy change. If small farms have to be broken up or are no longer viable, there is a major risk of multinationals buying up family farms. That is likely to negatively impact the 30 by 30 biodiversity target, as research shows that smaller farms tend to have higher biodiversity.
A second impact, which I am sure the Government will be concerned about, is around community cohesion. Farming families have played, and continue to play, an important and valuable part as community leaders, volunteering in their neighbourhoods as local councillors and churchwardens, and running agricultural and county shows. Fewer farms, fewer people.
So let me dare to ask the Minister whether he will pledge to do two things. The first is simply to raise the threshold on APR. The Treasury’s own figures estimate that a substantial amount of the money raised through these reforms will come from the wealthiest 2% of farm estates. Raising the threshold will not make a great deal of difference in terms of tax revenue. Secondly, please tweak the rules around tax-free gifts made in the seven years before death and exempt people over a certain age, so that farm owners who die in the next seven years have an opportunity to make tax-avoiding gifts in light of the Budget changes. This seems to be eminently sensible and compassionate.
Wendell Berry, the American poet, essayist and farmer, has reflected that the agricultural economy has almost always, from the earliest times, been slanted against the primary producers, the real risk takers, the real workers. Our farming families feed our nation. They provide nature benefits. They contribute to the warp and weft of community life. We need them. We owe them a fair system. I urge the Minister to choose a positive way forward.
High Street Banks and Banking Hubs
Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, for this timely debate. I will speak particularly about rural areas and market towns.
The diocese I serve across Norfolk and Waveney is largely a rural one, but it is one where market towns play a key part in peoples’ lives. Historically places of transaction, they contribute to the warp and weft of community life, especially with their rural hinterland. It is no accident that, in Norfolk, they are fairly evenly spread out across the county, having developed so that livestock could be driven to them for sale and the bonds of extended familial friendship and trust strengthened.
From my internet searching, I estimate that we lost at least 12 bank branches in Norfolk last year. The market town of Wymondham saw the closure of NatWest, HSBC and Barclays within 12 months. The parish church’s treasurer now has a 26-mile round trip to bank the cash collection and cheques. Banks are vital for small rural businesses and charities that deal with cash. Yet, as we have heard, closures are accelerating, and this seems to be a pattern across the UK.
The sad reality is that the withdrawal of banks from market towns has disadvantaged sections of our community, especially those who want to speak to a human and not a robot, those for whom trust is a hard-won necessity, those with sensitive things to discuss and that group of people who are not savvy with the internet or have poor connectivity and so are digitally disfranchised. The negative impact on financial inclusion of closures needs to be borne in mind.
It is good that LINK, the cash machine network, and Cash Access UK have recognised the difficulty of accessing banks in rural communities and market towns and that the whole idea of banking hubs is coming to the fore. As we have heard, there are 31 of them: 21 in England, seven in Scotland, two in Wales and one in County Down in Northern Ireland, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. Their role is, sadly, lagging behind the rate of bank closures. The gaps are there, and I hear that it takes some time to establish a banking hub, so I very much warm to the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that the last branch in town should not close until a banking hub is ready to go, for many people are in great need of reasonable access to cash deposit and withdrawal services.
In the Norfolk rural district of Breckland, there have been eight bank closures since 2018, with a further two announced for the coming months. That is a drop of nearly 60% in the number of local banks. In the market town of Watton, no bank remains. The newly opened community banking hub is a welcome addition, following the closure of all the town’s banks in recent years, and its services are proving popular. It is open five days a week, with a counter service operated by the Post Office where customers of all major banks can carry out their regular cash transactions, but it also offers this banking hub, a community banker service where customers can talk to their own bank about more complicated issues. The community bankers work on rotation, with a different bank available on each day of the week. NatWest, HSBC and Barclays each take one day, so, in a sense, this is an invitation for other banks to take up the other two days. The local vicar, Dave Cossey, tells me that the only drawback he has discovered so far is that the banking hub will not accept partially full bags of cash. This is proving to be a challenge for small charities, and it would be great if that blockage could be removed.
In other places where banking is not in people’s DNA—especially, perhaps, in our economically poorest communities—credit unions bring much. Often run by volunteers, they can help people save cash and receive small, affordable loans. I have two questions for the Minister. What is the Government’s strategy for rolling out more banking hubs and how will government support be given to local authorities, to LINK and to Cash Access UK to enable this to happen? Secondly, I think credit unions have a great part to play. What plans do the Government have to aid their development, particularly in rural areas and our market towns?
King’s Speech
Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Norwich (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a privilege to offer my maiden speech following the first gracious Speech given by His Majesty. I thank noble Lords for their welcome, and the staff for their kindness and guidance. I will need to draw on the wisdom of all who serve our nation in this House.
As Bishop of Norwich, I serve a diocese that has 658 of Norfolk and Waveney’s churches. Many of them are gems of medieval architecture. All of them are treasure troves of memory and places of prayerful watching. Plenty have unique round towers. Each rural church community knows about the hidden challenges of poverty, poor transport and the high cost of housing, but also about the strong sense of community found in our churches and schools.
Since my early years, I have been captivated by our natural world, going on to become an ecologist. This, combined with a vocation to ministry, means that my passions are flying in formation in my current role as lead bishop for the environment. Through a quirk in history, I am also the last remaining Bishop Abbot, with the ruined St Benet’s Abbey in the Norfolk Broads being my bailiwick. I sail there each year in a Norfolk wherry, standing at the bow, anxiously trying to ensure that my mitre is not blown off.
That stunning landscape was created by our forebears’ need for fuel—for peat. Now, as we realise the damage to people and the planet from our dependency on carbon fuels, so ably highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, we must protect and enhance ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon, such as wet fen, reed beds, deep peat soils and forests.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, mentioned in his excellent speech his love of the natural world. I raise him Norfolk’s biodiversity: the peregrine falcons nesting on the spire of Norwich Cathedral; the dancing of swallowtail butterflies over milk parsley in the Broads; the plaintive mewing of the grey seals protecting their pups on the east coast; tending my own honeybees; the great dawn flight of pink-footed geese from their marshland roosting grounds on the north coast; or the soil ecosystems that are so essential for growing cereals for Norfolk’s outstanding ales. Big skies and rich land, chalk streams and broads, forests and heathlands: many are internationally important habitats because of their place along migratory routes, the scarcity of their ecosystems, or the rarity of their species.
Therefore, I welcome His Majesty’s Government’s commitment in the gracious Speech to
“continue to lead action on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss”.
Past UK Governments have been instrumental in seeking and shaping international agreements to protect nature. I saw these in action as a board member of the Northumberland National Park Authority, with its various protected landscapes, and as we dealt with new tree diseases when I chaired the Forestry Commission’s advisory committee in the north-east. While the gracious Speech spoke of holding
“other countries to their environmental commitments”,
the UK Government can do that with credibility only if we are an exemplar ourselves. As His Majesty has frequently reminded us, we must learn again our interdependence on nature and seek to reverse the horrific graphs of decline.
With the care of creation being a strong theme within Christianity—indeed, all faith communities—churches have a part to play. Churchyards should have a rich biodiversity—places for the living, not just the dead. The Communion Forest is a global initiative comprising local activities of forest production, tree growing and ecosystem restoration, seeking to safeguard creation right across the Anglican Communion.
The Book of Revelation notes that the leaves of the trees will be for the healing of the nations. To plant is to hope; to restore is to heal; to protect is to love. I wonder whether seeing again nature’s wonder and its beauty might just rekindle the foundation for a life-affirming, nature-valuing horizon, because we have a long way to go to leave nature in the better place than we found it, as the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, spoke about. This needs cross-party leadership and a commitment long into the future. I look forward to playing my part in your Lordships’ House.