Brexit: Farming Tariffs
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, domestic production in eggs is around 86% of UK supply. The noble Lord mentioned questions of lower quality. We remain committed to high standards of food safety and animal welfare. Existing UK import standards will still apply. The level of tariff applied does not change what can and cannot be imported.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, can we assume that the Government are aware also of the serious dangers posed to agriculture by EU tariffs on our exports in the event of a no-deal Brexit? If, for example, our beef exports were to suffer the current EU tariff of 80% to 90% or our lamb industry were to export through a 35% to 40% tariff it would kill those two industries dead and undermine the agricultural economy of large swathes of our countryside.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the Government take this very seriously. It is one reason why we have said that British farmers will have a higher level of certainty than anywhere else in Europe vis-à-vis total funds in farm support until the end of this Parliament. We have also provided farm support under Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 under the current CAP. However, we expect it to be one of the consequences of no deal that the EU’s most favoured nation tariff regime would apply to UK exports, which we think would cause disruption. It is why we have brought forward the tariff regime that we have and it is why we need to work to ensure that we do not have a no-deal scenario.
Brexit: Food Security
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I declare my interests as a farmer and my short reply to my noble friend is—yes to all three. It is very important to recognise that the UK’s current production-to-supply ratio is 60% for all food and 75% for indigenous-type foods. This is why we have a very strong domestic supply and other sources. We have excellent food in this country, which we are exporting to the degree of £22 billion last year—and, yes, we should buy British.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
Are all sections of government and all departments in Whitehall signed up to the principle that we will never import food into the UK that is produced by methods that are illegal for UK farmers?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I have confirmed that a number of times at the Dispatch Box and I will do so again. On the specific issue of hormone-treated beef, the UK has transposed EU Council directive 96/22/EC. On chlorine-washed chicken, we already have provisions through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We have a very strong record, in this country and abroad, for environmental protection of our food and high standards of animal welfare. That is how we are going to trade around the world and we are certainly not going to compromise that.
Brexit: Food Security
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
There are a number of ways in which we must address food waste. Each household is wasting a huge amount of food, on average something like £700 a year. The Government have set up a pilot scheme which they are supporting with £15 million of additional funding. This is because already 43,000 tonnes of surplus food is redistributed from retailers and food manufactures every year. We think a further 100,000 tonnes of food, equating to 250 million meals a year, is edible and should be redistributed. Wasting food is an unconscionable thing, and we want this pilot scheme to work in order to reduce it.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, would it not be possible for the Government to set themselves a target bracket of nutritional self-sufficiency which ensures we are neither too dependent on imports nor, at the other end of the scale, too dependent on our own productive capabilities and our own unpredictable weather? Such a bracket would be very useful as a target for the Government.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I think there is a distinction between food security and self-sufficiency. Clearly, given the weather in our country, and indeed disease, I think the most important thing is that we have a wide range of sources for food, because that is how we will get food security. With 75% of indigenous-type foods produced in this country, we produce excellent food and drink—it is one of the largest sectors—and we should be proud of it, and of course I encourage the consumption of British food and drink.
Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 Committee Report
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Cameron of Dillington
That this House takes note of the Report from the Select Committee on the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 The countryside at a crossroads: Is the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 still fit for purpose? (HL Paper 99).
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, from the moment we started our inquiry it was obvious to us that the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, known as NERC, has undoubtedly been overtaken by events during its 12 years of life. In our report, we start by looking at Brexit. In terms of the environment, the big difference here is going to be the disappearance of the threat of large fines from the European Commission, which I am told can have Ministers quaking in their boots. I read the other day about a 2014 EU fine against Italy under the waste directive. There was an immediate £40 million fine, followed by further £40 million fines for each six months of non-compliance. That does tend to make things happen.
Our committee was totally on the side of the Secretary of State in his desire to create a new environmental watchdog that is truly capable of holding public bodies to account, and we wish him well in his efforts. The only nuance where we might disagree with him is that we would hope to see the new body financed by more than one department, preferably including the devolved Administrations, thus making it very clearly an independent non-departmental public body.
On Natural England, created by NERC, our main message was that, as well as a 44% budget cut over 11 years, which might be expected in the age of austerity, it became clear to us that Defra was controlling more than just the purse strings of this so-called NDPB. A non-departmental public body should exercise a degree of political impartiality and be independent from its funding department. But we heard how Natural England has been overcontrolled by Defra and finds it hard to act as that vital critical friend—to speak truth to power or even, in some instances, to decide on its own priorities. This is not satisfactory. As we emerge from the EU, with all the land management challenges that that involves, and as the Government try to bed down their 25-year environment plan, Natural England will have a vital role and will need more funding and more independence to properly fulfil it.
In its response, Defra acknowledges that Natural England should,
“operate independently and … have a distinct voice”,
but it seems blind to the fact that it is currently overcontrolling it. I believe that the problem lies not with the Ministers but rather in Defra’s so-called integrated communications team. All PR departments hate mixed messages, which is why this team feels that it must control the output from Natural England. That is why, although a separate PR department for Natural England seems like a small issue, it is crucial for a truly non-departmental public body. It will not be high on Ministers’ radar but it is something that they alone can grip.
When I chaired the Countryside Agency, I had an agreement with my Secretary of State that—with the crucial condition of no surprises—I could speak up for the countryside, and if she disagreed with me, she could respond in public by saying, “Well, of course he would say that. It’s his job. But we have a wider agenda to work to”. Of course, the department did not like this, but I was free to speak up for the countryside in the same way that Natural England should be free to speak up for natural England.
Turning to Natural England’s planning advice, it seemed to us that this was a question of managing expectations. At a time when both Natural England and local authorities were suffering big cutbacks, both sides had assumed that the other would fill the gap. Even now, with the problem exposed but with hundreds of thousands of planning applications per annum nationwide and the small resources available to both camps, no solution is likely to be perfect. But we felt that, with updated written advice from Natural England and mutual understanding of the resources available to both sides, the situation could be greatly improved. Incidentally, we generally approved of the proposals concerning net gain and natural capital, although we recognised that both policies have limitations and need further work.
Turning to Section 40 of the NERC Act—the duty of all public authorities to have regard to conserving biodiversity—there is no doubt that this is currently ineffective. Hardly anyone seems to even know it exists. But it will be important for the delivery of the 25-year plan. Personally, I do not think that changing the wording will have as much effect as introducing a reporting system. For instance, if local authorities had to report annually, they and others would become aware of the existence of Section 40, and a simple naming and shaming would, in my view, make a big difference, even before penalties for poor performance. It is to be hoped that the new environmental watchdog can take on this responsibility.
Having cantered briefly through the first half of our report, I come to the meat of our concerns: namely, rural communities. Rural communities are in the title of the Act and rural affairs are in the title of the department, but in both cases it is now all smoke and mirrors. I say first that the current Minister and rural ambassador really does understand the problems and has been brilliant at reaching out to rural communities, but he no longer has the back-up of independent research or even, with the abolition of the Rural Communities Policy Unit, a designated team within Defra.
Regarding research, in its response to our report, Defra states that it collects,
“a wide range of official statistics on the economic, demographic and social characteristics of rural areas to inform national level policy formulation across government departments”.
Frankly, that is flannel. That is not the same thing as doing research into specific issues and asking what the problems are and how they can be solved. In its last years, for instance, the Commission for Rural Communities looked into issues such as: how rural interests are being recognised within LEPs; the social isolation experienced by older people in rural areas—I remember that one being very revealing; barriers to employment and training for young people in rural areas, which is of huge importance to our rural young; variations in access to social care—something that is seriously exercising rural local authorities, which have no real help from central government; or, again, rural housing at a time of economic change. I just wish that the Government had a greater understanding of that problem. It may be that the answers to those and similar problems would prove uncomfortable for Defra—or perhaps for the Government—and it may be that that is why the relatively inexpensive CRC got abolished: it did speak truth to power.
The only recent independent research done in this area has been by the Social Mobility Commission, which in its last report at the end of 2017 stated that some of the worst deprivation and poverty is now in rural rather than urban England. Are we surprised? As a department, Defra has always been a reluctant bride to its rural affairs remit. It inherited the Countryside Agency with a budget of £110 million; it soon wound that down and abolished it. The Commission for Rural Communities, which replaced it in the 2006 Act, also had its budget of £10 million wound down; then it, too, was abolished in favour of the in-house Rural Communities Policy Unit. The RCPU, too, was then abolished. This is a disgraceful abandonment of responsibilities.
Defra has never really understood that some 93% of the rural population have nothing to do with the land or fisheries. Thus their needs and their deprivation have, in the last decade or so, been largely ignored by government as a whole. All the evidence we received, without exception, emphasised this, but it was also obvious to us that Defra, with its current workload, was never going to be able to start a whole new area of work. Right now it is overwhelmed: it has to organise a wholly new agriculture and fisheries policy, and it has to implement a new 25-year environment plan. I believe that, of the Government’s 325 Brexit work streams, Defra is managing 64. Statutory instruments are going to be flying like snowflakes. It is doubtful that Defra can cope with this workload, let alone reinstate a whole new rural policy. So I am afraid we took the view that it was simply not going to happen, even if the will was there.
This was why we decided to revert to plan A and ask the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to once again play a greater role in this agenda, as it always did with great enthusiasm in the past. After all, housing is one of rural England’s most serious problems. Communities—villages and market towns—are where most of the solutions lie, and local government is the key delivery agent for the services needed: social welfare, transport and housing. So the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seemed to us to be an absolute shoo-in.
In a similar vein, but separate, there is rural-proofing. Rural-proofing is based on the fact that Defra’s work has little effect on the lives of the 93% of the rural population not involved in the land. The quality of life for those 93% is dependent on the way that government services are delivered to rural areas by: the Department of Health, as a prime department; DWP through jobcentres; the Home Office, through the police; DCMS through broadband; the Department for Transport, which is crucial; and BEIS, since there are actually more manufacturing businesses in the countryside than the towns, et cetera. Every department is crucial. Thus, rural-proofing within each and every department is really important, and it depends on training in all departments to take account of a whole range of rural problems which currently they do not understand. Why should they? They do not understand how population sparsity adds costs, nor the very real poverty that exists in our countryside, nor the lack of opportunity for the young and the growing cost of delivering social care to the elderly, nor the real problems of rural transport for all these groups.
Just last weekend, I was speaking to someone who lived in Hampshire. He did not have a car at a time when he was looking for a job. He went to the jobcentre and was told that there was a job in Salisbury, so he said to the lady who had apparently just come down from London, “Well, how do I get to Salisbury?”. She said, “Take a bus”. He said, “Well, which bus do I take?”, and she said, “Well, the bus to Salisbury, of course”. He said, “Yes, yes, I know that, but do I take the one on Tuesday afternoon or the one on Thursday afternoon?”. Why should London-based civil servants understand these issues? There needs to be a dedicated team continuously training each and every department.
In any case, it is difficult for one department to tell another how to run its affairs, and because Defra no longer has a dedicated team, we were again forced to rethink what was necessary. All the evidence we received indicated that rural proofing has to come from the centre of government, for the authority that that gives and the co-ordination that might be possible. That means a well-resourced team within the Cabinet Office, with enough clout to embed the principles and training for proper rural-proofing within every department.
I realise that it is a hard pill for Defra to swallow to shed responsibilities, even if it does not have the resources to fulfil them, but I will say only this: I have dedicated most of my political life to defending the interests of those who live and work in our countryside. I have tried to highlight the obstacles that prevent the entrepreneurial spirit of my fellow countrymen flourishing. I have consistently drawn attention to the depressing, yet special, problems of the rural young, the rural poor, the unhoused and the rural elderly, of whom there are now more and more. However, in spite of the efforts of the Minister, I believe that rarely have rural communities and their problems been more ignored by their Government than now. Rural local authorities are at their wits’ end. I was at a meeting with the LGA just a couple of weeks ago. Local authorities can see the problems, and they struggle to deliver much-needed social services for both young and old, but they remain largely ignored by central government and, with funding in some areas per head of population often as little as 60% of that of their urban counterparts, they can do little.
“Rural? Oh, that’s a matter for Defra”, say the other departments—but they do not realise that Defra has closed down its Rural Communities Policy Unit. They do not realise that no one is doing the independent research any more. I think that I have said enough. I beg to move.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, I thank all the speakers for their views and indeed for their support of our committee’s views. I also thank the members of the committee for their hard work and for the sometimes quite strong arguments. I am grateful to the clerks and special advisers to the committee for their hard work, and I appreciate the particular wordsmithing skills of the clerks in implementing some of the various and divergent views that arose within the committee. They were very skilful in that particular respect. I also thank the Minister for his response to the debate and I support his positive views on the economic and social potential of our rural areas, in particular the potential of our rural young if only they are given the chances and support that they deserve. I am grateful to him for outlining the various changes that are being made or are going to be made.
In dealing with the various issues that arose, I am glad that the views of our committee on the environmental watchdog have been strongly supported around the House. We look forward to seeing what comes out of the consultation and the Bill on that issue that no doubt will eventually come to this House.
I turn to Natural England, and all the speakers, I think, took on the theme that this is a really important body and will probably become even more so in the future. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, it is also a respected body, which is very important. It needs more government support and the Government should give it more authority and independence—I underline that word. It was good to hear from the Minister about the new communications protocol with Natural England, although obviously that remains pretty vague. We hope that something firm and concrete comes out of that.
On rural communities, again a lot of support was expressed for our view that we need much better, more integrated and detailed research in order to produce solutions. Again, it was good to hear from the Minister about possible changes in that respect. I agree that our suggestion to move rural affairs to MHCLG was a bit controversial and I will not say any more about it. However, if it is not going to happen, I thought that the suggestion of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans to seek more focused work by Defra with the key departments is going to be extremely important.
Rural proofing, on the other hand, as mentioned in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, is different. There was no divergence within the committee on this issue. Without strong and proper rural proofing, in particular the importance of training, especially with the authority coming from the heart of government, the committee believes strongly that rural problems associated with all departments will continue to be swept out of site under the urban carpet. Rural proofing remains a bone of contention between us and it is an important area. Nevertheless, I beg to move.
Agriculture: Gene Editing
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, as I said, this is about different research into different areas, and we believe that this is a force for good for the reasons that I have articulated. It is about advancing our knowledge of pests and diseases and enhancing animal welfare. Whether it is the work at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh on diseases in pigs—for instance, African swine fever—or other research, all this work on gene editing could make a remarkable difference and represent an advance in animal welfare. Those are the reasons we think it is a force for good.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I hope the Government are aware that these techniques developed in the UK could be beneficial to the wider world and its environment. Built-in resistance to pests and diseases means a big reduction in the use of chemicals in the developing world, where it is very hard to train smallholder farmers in the use of chemicals. Are the Government aware that in-built drought resistance could be crucial for sub-Saharan Africa? I hope the Government will encourage our research facilities to become world leaders in these techniques for the sake of the developing world’s smallholder agriculture.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, these techniques will be a force for good, not only in this country but particularly in helping the rest of the world feed itself. Therefore, we should advance this innovation. Certainly, our industrial strategy and our agritech strategy are designed to help agriculture, both domestically and around the world.
Environment: 25-year Plan
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I declare interests as a farmer and landowner, as chair at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and as a trustee at Rothamsted Research.
I have a lot of good things to say about this plan. It is ambitious and sets out precisely what we ought to be doing in many different fields. However, something about it provoked a memory for me of the tombs of the nobles at Luxor, dating from 4,500 years ago. The pictorial stories set out how those ancient Egyptian nobles aspired to live their lives—something which, from all accounts, they singularly failed to achieve. I hope we will not be looking back, in a mere 25 years’ time, wondering why we failed to live up to our expectations. Certainly, our past record does not inspire much confidence, with an ongoing decline in biodiversity and four-fifths of our chalk streams still not classed as fully functioning ecosystems. Furthermore, I worry that this plan is closely linked to the current ministerial team at Defra.
In my first draft of this speech I touched on a series of mild changes that I might have made to the plan, but instead I would now like to focus solely on its long-term execution, and pick up the last words of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. How can we best ensure that this excellent plan will work? Twenty-five years is a mere blip in environmental terms, but it is a very long time in politics. Can we get all political parties and all regions signed up for 25 years? Unlikely, I would have thought. Will even all future Secretaries of State sign up? The way things go, over 25 years that could be up to 12 different people.
There is no doubt in my mind that, when it reaches its final post-consultative state, the key principles of the environmental plan—its prime targets and commitments—must be embodied in primary legislation. It should be like the Climate Change Act 2008, where a framework and targets were set and a body was established by Parliament to report to Parliament. The body should be funded by several departments, because I am always worried about the piper being paid by only one sponsor. The plan already involves several departments—the MHCLG, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education, the Department for Transport and even DfID—so that should not be difficult. I admit that more legislation for Defra during the Brexit period might be a challenge, but an environmental protection Bill is promised, and perhaps the proposed environmental protection agency could be the relevant body.
Is not the quality of life aspired to by this plan even more important to the next generation than, say, the effects of climate change? Perhaps even the noble Lord, Lord Deben, could agree that they are inextricably linked. Is not this plan even more important to our young voters than possibly some of the best-laid economic plans, which no one really believes in? Is this plan not exactly what we need to set out on our own after Brexit, with a high-quality agenda? It is probably not as important to the young as housing, but I bet it comes a pretty close second. For anyone to believe in the plan, it has to be established for the long term by statute and be continually monitored independently. We are told that the young are disillusioned by politicians, because the latter come and go without making any real difference. Let us surprise them, and fix this plan, in whatever final form it takes, firmly in the psyche of our nation.
As the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said, to make the plan really work we need to get most of the people in the UK to sign up to it in their personal lives. We are the environment. We affect it by the way we live and work, and the way that we travel between the two. You can legally enforce certain aspects of the plan and, I hope, the government responsibilities, but unless we all adopt it in our hearts it could be 150 pages of wasted words.
If I have a criticism of the plan as it stands, it is that not enough thought has been given to selling the ideas by appealing to the social and economic aspirations, as well as the environmental aspirations, of people at large. It is the three-legged stool of sustainable development. We need a marketing programme over many years, because we have to inspire people for them to make a difference. There are good proposals to involve urban communities and schools, but it is a pity that we do not yet have the Agriculture Bill to see how we will inspire the land-managing community. We all know that environmental success and the growth of biodiversity will not happen by itself. Farmers, landowners and even householders must be encouraged, not regulated, to positively foster an enhanced natural world—an enhancement that will improve the lives of everyone, socially, economically and, of course, environmentally.
I am coming to the end of my time, so I finish by drawing the attention of the House to the fact that nearly 30 years ago, when I was at the CLA, we tried to promote the case for environmental land management services, as mentioned in the plan. I spent a lot of happy time trying to ingrain the concept of ELMS—as we called them—into the minds of departments, their Ministers and even local authorities. Having read this plan, I must say it was immensely gratifying to see that, after all this time, their day appears to have finally come.
Farm Support
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for introducing this short debate, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner. We will undoubtedly see much change in agriculture over the next 10 years. In that context, I have four points to make.
First—here noble Lords will see I am on the side of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, rather than that of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness—we should change the current system slowly. Anyone looking to alter their customer base or marketplace knows that the first requirement is to ensure that you do not lose your old customers before you have properly embedded your new sales programme. So if farmers are reckoned to become new customers of Defra on Brexit, providing a variety of services, it is important they are given time to change and understand where they might fit into this new marketplace. In other words, the current system of single farm payment should be gradually diminished over, say, five or eight years. It has never been a good system and provides little reward to society, but we do not want a cliff edge.
Secondly, farmers are unlikely to come out of Brexit well. The Brexit discussions will involve multifaceted trade negotiations of all sorts—financial services, cars, steel, whisky and wine, et cetera—with agriculture somewhere at the bottom of the heap. I suspect that France, Germany and Italy will be keener to protect their farmers than the UK Treasury. On the basis that non-EU countries currently have to pay 40% to 50% tariffs on food coming into Europe, this could be seriously bad for UK farmers, most of whose current exports go to the EU. Our only hope is that we can achieve some form of import quotas into the EU—even if on only a temporary basis—as near as possible to our current trading quantities.
Thirdly, post-Brexit trade deals are unlikely to improve matters. Again, these deals will be multifaceted and multicommodity and UK agriculture will be only a small pawn on the chessboard. Bear in mind that cheap food is usually a good vote winner for any Government, so cheap Australian and US beef or even chicken will be knocking on the door along with other products from hotter climes where labour is cheaper and the regulatory regime looser. Our farmers will not be able to compete. Our only hope is to ensure we impose high standards on all food from whatever source and, above all, retain very good traceability on both domestic and international products.
My fourth point is about the opportunities presented by Brexit. It amounts to a question of how much and for what the Government are prepared to pay land managers for services to society. Bill Bryson once said that apart from producing good, healthy food, the unique feature of the English countryside is that the English people love it to death. Indeed, they have much to be grateful for to our farmers and landowners, and I believe that they—the taxpayers—will not mind paying for environmental land services of all sorts. But there must be profits allowable in the scheme or schemes. Cost-price services, as at present, simply will not do. As I have explained, there will not be many other profits around for farmers, so the state must ensure that farmers are properly rewarded for what they do.
My main point, in summary, is that by hook or by crook we must ensure that our farmers can survive on the land. My last speech on this subject focused on harnessing an improved and diversified economy to keep farming households in place in all parts of our countryside. If we lose those households, we risk losing that hugely important and well-loved heritage asset that is the English countryside, created and nurtured by our forebears from Roman times to modern day and, as I say, still greatly loved by our nation. Of course, it changes and will continue to change, but it will always need nurturing by those who know and love its every fold and stream.
Brexit: Farm Support
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the Secretary of State has been very clear that we will not in any way allow animals to come in that are produced to a lower standard using compromised welfare standards as compared with our own very high-quality produce, which is our great British brand. Let us be clear: we do not propose to permit any product to come in that has lower animal welfare standards. We are not going to compromise on that.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, what discussions have the Government had with rural and indeed urban organisations to establish what services land managers can provide to others to best maximise the benefits of the countryside to the whole population, and while doing so to best maximise returns to farmers?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. Not only are we engaging with farming organisations and farmers, we are engaging with non-farming organisations in both the urban and the rural situation. I have an extremely long list before me of organisations that we are working with, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Compassion in World Farming, the Woodland Trust, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, to the RSPB. We engage with so many organisations because what we want in the 25-year environment plan and in our proposals for agriculture is to have a consensus about the way forward on enhancing the environment.
Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, it is a very sad day when we have to bid farewell to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb. Our Henry is a national and international celebrity. If you go with him to Brussels, you get off the train and, 10 yards down the platform, the first person will say, “Bonjour, Monsieur le Président”. It goes on all day; every five minutes someone will come up and say “Bonjour, Monsieur le Président”. Even at night, in shirtsleeves, going out to find something to eat, someone passing in the darkness will say, “Bonsoir, Monsieur le Président”. He is a legend in his own lifetime. Our agriculture, our countryside and indeed our nation owe him a huge debt for a life of immense contribution and service. So thank you to our Henry, from the depths of our hearts. I could go on far longer, but I want to contribute to this important debate.
I was not a Brexiteer, but we must all move on. As the well-chosen title of this debate would indicate—my thanks to the noble Earl for that—we have an opportunity now to put in place a system for managing our countryside that is fit for the 21st century. The first question we must ask is: what is our countryside for and how can we pull together the various policy strands? Having an environmental plan separate from an agricultural plan is not a good idea. Any vision for our countryside has to include agriculture, the environment and rural communities. They are all interlinked.
The next question a department for food has to ask is: how much food do we need to produce from our own resources? Both too little and too much are risky. The Government need to establish some achievable long-term parameters. A shortage of food would be an easy way for a Government to fall. As I have said before in this House, we are only ever nine meals away from anarchy, so we need to work out the levers to keep our farmers producing. As our post-CAP costs inevitably go down, especially rents, some farmers will be able to produce at world prices. Others, particularly in the uplands, will only be able to farm if they and their households can supplement their agricultural income.
This brings me back to my first question: what is our countryside for? There are services that society will want to buy from our land managers: landscape, improved access opportunities for leisure and health and greatly improved diversity of habitats and species—all of which I know British voters would support. But another lever for keeping farmers producing is to create more diversified jobs, so that they and their households can survive on the land. Of course, creating rural jobs is equally important to the 96% of rural dwellers who are not farmers. This is vital for all our countryside, and a department for rural affairs must pursue this agenda with gusto, which we have yet to see. We need better broadband, the promotion of tourism and the facilities and training to make our rural economy hum.
We have an opportunity here to make a difference to wherever rural deprivation exists or will exist. We need a range of schemes promoting rural diversification. Let us take ex-CAP money to help farmers and others to find new sources of income and employment. What I love about my fellow countrymen is that, of those below the poverty line, compared to their urban counterparts, more than twice as many are self-employed and avoid state aid. They would rather get out there with their entrepreneurial flair and, through a variety of probably part-time jobs, earn enough to survive. But they need help: business advice, careers and planning advice and, above all, grants for projects, building conversions and marketing and so on. A whole new comprehensive diversification scheme is required.
I will stop there, but I just repeat that this is an opportunity: we can make our countryside hum economically, socially and environmentally. I have not even touched on the new possibilities for the nutritional health of our nation that any department for food should be thinking about.
Rural Bus Services
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this matter before the House.
We can take as read the importance of public transport to the carless in the countryside—the poor, the old, the young, the disabled, and so on. Without public transport they cannot access work, food, doctors, medicines, education, training, banks, lawyers, accountants, cash machines or just meetings with family and friends.
Equally, we are all aware that the deliverers of public and private services are cutting back the number of outlets they have in rural England. My local paper has just announced eight more bank closures; our local police station has just been closed; post offices are getting fewer; there is another wave of court closures coming; small rural health centres are threatened; jobcentres get fewer, as do small local pharmacies and so on. It is clear that the candle of rural life is being burnt away at both ends because, just as all these services are getting further removed from their rural customers, at the one end, so the provision of public transport is being diminished at the other.
I wish to make two points. The first is about rural-proofing and joined-up government. Any department or local authority cutting back on local services must rural-proof their policies. This means understanding the consequences for the carless, who I have described, who can no longer reach the services being “rationalised”.
The decision-makers in both central and local government must analyse what local public transport exists and ensure that the local transport authority is aware of the importance of the transport assumptions that they, the rationalisers, have made. Equally, the LTA, when examining its local transport grid and assessing its priorities for subsidy and support, must take account of the assumptions that have been made by the local health authority, the local courts and so on. I could even suggest that if one department or local service is saving money by closing a particular outlet, maybe it ought to contribute to keeping going the bus services to the surviving outlets on which it has, or at least should have, based its assumptions. Just because you are saving money, you have no right to thrust extra costs on to others, including the LTA. That is my main point.
My second point is an optimistic look into the future. In 15 or so years’ time, driverless cars will have changed the way we get around. For a start, regular bus routes could be served by cheap to run driverless mobility pods, as we will learn to call them, with automated mechanisms both in the vehicle and along the route. Then it is likely that fewer people will own a car. There will be a new agenda for motoring. Like an Uber taxi, one will order a cheap driverless car to turn up and take you wherever you want whenever you want. You will not have to park it. It will park itself, if it needs to. You will not be responsible for maintaining, licensing or insuring the vehicle.
The ramifications for the rural agenda here are enormous and the LTAs should soon start thinking about the sort of service they can offer and maybe even the fleet of cars they might need to own. I will say no more about that but leave it as food for thought.
I will end with a story of my time at the Countryside Agency. I was meeting a group of Yorkshire parish chairmen and somehow the conversation drifted to the problems of the disaffected rural youth who could not get into towns to join youth clubs, football clubs and so on because there was no evening bus service. Trying to bring a rather taciturn chairman into the conversation, I asked him when the last bus went from his parish to Harrogate. He looked at me blankly and after a moment he said, “1987, mate”. It rather killed the conversation.
Sadly, the direction of decline since then has done nothing to alleviate his concerns but, hopefully, automatic vehicles will offer a bright new future to the next generation of rural young.