Queen’s Speech

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will address the issue of agricultural training. Some 12 weeks ago, I heard that Newton Rigg College, a prominent agricultural college in the north-west, was being systematically run down by a predator college—Askham Bryan College, in York—behind a wall of limited financial reporting. We were witnessing the appalling betrayal of a 125 year-old historic county land-based educational institution by a team of Yorkshire accountants to pay off Askham Bryan College’s escalating debts.

It turned out that Askham Bryan College, which was in financial difficulty and had an overstretched policy of acquisitions, had, behind closed doors, been methodically stripping Newton Rigg College of its student body, assets, equipment, reputation, apprenticeships, land bank, excellence, high-quality staff and national reputation. Those who have been responsible for this outrage should hang their heads in shame as they now proceed to sell off its assets through estate agents Savills in a grand fire sale.

It was only when documents were leaked that we finally learned of the duplicity involved in this whole disgraceful affair. I say to those who are interested in feasting on our tragedy by destroying Newton Rigg College’s assets: we do not want you. What was once a viable institution, paying its way, has been driven through neglect into financial difficulty and ruin by Askham Bryan College.

Askham Bryan College’s only interest has been the value of Newton Rigg College’s £12 million 1,000-acre land bank. To it, it is no more than a saleable asset that it acquired for nearly nothing in 2010 and that it is now proposing to use to pay off the substantial debts incurred on its operations in York. Its claim to have invested millions is totally misleading: it includes student income raised in York from students in Cumbria; money spent on a farm and other projects, in part grant-aided, which was used to boost its balance sheet; and over £3 million in rents, which it received from the new University of Cumbria.

These transactions have all taken place in the name of a charity, thereby enabling them to hide Newton Rigg accounts from public scrutiny. They claim to be open and transparent. This is not true. The financials governing Newton Rigg’s relationship with Askham Bryan’s operations are seemingly opaque and clouded in secrecy. There is no one in Cumbria who knows the full truth, although the whole story is now beginning to unravel. They paid almost nothing for the whole Newton Rigg property estate in 2010, which they now hotly deny with a play on words and dates. When questioned on this deal of the century transaction, they always respond in their press releases by referring to post-2011 transactions. Well, we are not fooled. We now want our assets back, so that we in Cumbria can rebuild what they have destroyed through a combination of commercial greed and incompetence.

Last month, after considerable struggle, we managed to secure a parliamentary Select Committee inquiry. The inquiry exposed their hollow case, as MPs rendered them speechless when they were confronted by hard questioning. What we now know is that Askham Bryan, after discounting for grant aid, seems able to account for only a few million of net expenditure on Newton Rigg. We are still working on the figures. Reports suggest that they want up to £12 million in their asset fire sale. I await with interest their similarly discounted expenditure figures. We are witnessing a huge profit on the back of incompetence, and Cumbria is paying the bill. My noble friend Lord Clark of Windermere, who will follow me in this debate, will advance an alternative approach later. Askham Bryan needs to listen to him; he has a convincing case to make.