Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking my noble friend Lord Lindsay for securing this timely debate and for an excellent opening speech. In taking part in this debate, I need to declare personal interests; they are rather considerable and I therefore refer noble Lords to the register.

It is a special privilege and pleasure for me to be present at my noble friend Lord Plumb’s final contribution in your Lordships’ House. Important milestones on our journey through life often have aspects of sadness and nostalgia. These are not negative sensations; on the contrary, as with today, they accompany the admiration, affection and gratitude that so many of us feel towards my noble friend as he brings down the curtain on the parliamentary phase of such a distinguished career. I join others in wishing him well.

I felt it was almost a tribute to my noble friend when I saw the NFU’s recent paper, Farming’s Offer to Britain: How Farming can Deliver for the Country Post-Brexit. It opened:

“Farming is Britain’s backbone. It matters to everyone. Leaving the EU creates a defining opportunity for British farming. For too long the success of our sector has been determined not in Britain, but in Brussels”.


I do at some point part company with the NFU, in so far as I find ever more compelling the ancient doctrine of free trade. Even then, I accept that free trade can result in concentrated losses that must be set against the large but distributed gains that free trade bestows. If Britain were to adopt a unilateral free trade policy, as we have done in the past and as other countries have done more recently, the benefits would favour especially the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. It would also favour the poorest and most vulnerable in the developing countries with which we trade.

While I believe that the ultimate aim should be free trade, in today’s complex world, special consideration is owed to our farmers. For nigh on four generations, our farmers have been denied—often for good reason—the one thing that they need: the ability to look to the long term. To a large extent, they have had little or no contact with their marketplace and have been told what to produce and how to produce it. Sensitivity and imagination are now required to assist farmers as they face the biggest upheaval probably in living memory. In the more settled times that one hopes lie ahead, literally nobody knows what our farmers will be capable of when they find themselves operating in conventional market conditions. My own hunch, for what it is worth, is that our farmers can and will rise to almost any challenge put in front of them.

I spent yesterday morning following with great interest on the parliamentary website the Secretary of State for the Environment taking questions upstairs from the EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. A number of the committee members are speaking in this debate. I was not only much reassured by the Secretary of State’s command of his brief, but felt strongly that his instincts in respect of our countryside and rural enterprise are completely in tune with the times that we live in. He highlighted innovation as one of the most important challenges facing agriculture and the countryside generally and I understood him to say that there may be merit in underwriting in part the risk arising from innovative investment, which will be crucial as we aspire to greater productivity.

Many of the historic problems faced by rural Britain are already identified: the skills shortage; the housing shortage and the hugely damaging defects in the planning process; complex and burdensome regulation, which has been spoken about a lot and is the main complaint of farmers and SME managers; the poor quality of connectivity and low-quality broadband; the miserable underinvestment in infrastructure, and high taxation. These shortcomings must be addressed if we are to have a prosperous future.

For any sector to prosper there needs to be investment and, therefore, a willingness to accept risk. I hope that my noble friend the Minister recognises that today’s fiscal regime impacts on margins to the point where investment is becoming less and less attractive. I am among those who believe that Brexit, with all its short-term problems, will open unimaginable opportunities—it is a question of grasping them.

Peatlands

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Greaves, who has been assiduous in pursuing this important interest. I need to declare my interest in that my family leases to Natural England 750 acres of lowland peat bog, or raised mire as it is sometimes called, situated in south Cumbria. It adjoins one of Natural England’s oldest nature reserves, called Roudsea, which is also part of our estate. The total land involved is about 1,000 acres. Much of the remainder of the estate falls under one or other of the numerous designations that will be familiar to your Lordships.

Natural England pays us a decent rent, on time, and relations between us are mostly cordial. Whatever opinion I might venture this afternoon, let me be clear that I feel no animosity towards Natural England personnel and that I would single out the senior reserve manager, Mr Rob Petley-Jones, as being especially approachable and, I would even say, visionary. That said, while they are all experts in their field, I would argue that their field is a narrow one and it is that which contributes to the problems which I want to touch on this afternoon.

As I understand it, until the Great War there was quite extensive exploitation of these bogs; I believe a number of families had turbary rights over them. The experts agree that the integrity of the bog, which the noble Lord has touched on, cannot be restored to pristine condition but that a high enough proportion can. It will therefore be rewetted, restored and preserved in line with whatever European directive deals with matters of this sort. The directive’s authors are specific that our bog is important and merits the expenditure that, in my estimate, runs to millions of pounds.

I am not qualified to challenge this assessment of the desirability of making this bog boggier. However, when I am told something is important, I feel entitled to ask how importance is measured against other desirable things such as education, health, care for the mentally ill, the plight of refugees and much else. Plainly, no one is pretending that the well-being of a raft spider ranks alongside that of a child trafficked into slavery, but what no one can tell me is whether anyone looks at this kind of policy and this kind of expenditure with the independence of mind capable of determining where the balance of advantage lies. Is a totally committed bog buff really the right person to give the Government advice? Can such advice realistically be impartial? What mechanisms are in place to allow Ministers to challenge both policies and outcomes?

When I commented gently to Natural England in passing on the cost of its operation, I was truly shocked by the reply that I need not worry, as it was mainly “European money”. It is difficult to imagine a better illustration of the attitude of so many in the public sector to matters of financial accountability. I very much doubt that our local experts would agree with one bog owner who observed some years ago:

“Many of these sites are cultural landscapes, forged by a subtle interaction between people and nature over centuries”.

Natural England is clear with us that its intention is to obliterate that interaction. Its ambition is to eliminate trees, mainly by drowning them. Its original plan was to remove these trees by helicopter, although that plan was mercifully abandoned. I like to think that the prospect of implementing such an insensitive plan within view of hill farmers suffering the effects of foot and mouth and low farm prices might have contributed to this change of heart. Rural poverty deserves more attention than it gets. It seems to have bypassed many of those who have safe jobs in the countryside and who are more comfortable with high-vis jackets and clipboards. I see scant evidence of policymakers in Brussels losing much sleep over rural poverty in the Cumbrian fells.

The up-to-date position on our bog is that Natural England has already killed some of the peripheral trees that it promised to preserve for amenity reasons and seems very well pleased with that outcome. It is hard to see how destroying perhaps half a million naturally regenerated trees sits with a mission statement of protecting England’s nature and landscape, especially given that no one disputes the fact that Britain has too few trees rather than too many. In fact, the world has too few trees. Natural England will not tell me—it probably cannot tell me—what the impact will be of this destruction and what habitats will be lost. What will the effect be, for example, on our nightjars? How will the destruction of our unique post-war wilderness impact on the safe haven it offers to a range of species seeking refuge from ever increasing human access, dogs and noise? There is no balance to be found in the argument. Who will benefit from these policies and how? The website offers a few bland lines, which itself is a failure of accountability, given the scale of change being imposed. I even understand that the alleged value of peat bog as a carbon store has been challenged by some scientists, and it remains an uncertain field.

It is fashionable nowadays for experts to run things. Experts are wonderful people—we could not do without them—but with every year that passes, I move increasingly to the view of Winston Churchill, who believed that experts should be on tap, not on top.

My purpose in speaking today is not to target Natural England specifically—it does a huge amount of good work, which I see every day. It is just one of numerous agencies that impact on all of us who try to earn a living in the countryside. My purpose is to draw attention to the fact that most if not all quangos, often through no fault of their own, are unaccountable, hugely bureaucratic, frequently conflicted and a cost to the taxpayer. Does my noble friend plan to look at those questions?

Rural Economy

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for securing this debate and congratulate him on its introduction.

I need to declare my interest rather comprehensively today, since much of what I want to say relates to what I do and have done for these past 40 years and more. I have a beneficial interest in a landed estate based mainly in south Lakeland. The estate’s activities include farming, forestry, leisure, minerals and housebuilding. We own and run a racecourse and have a full-time payroll of 250 people, 150 of whom are engaged in extracting, processing and selling slate, more than half of which is exported.

I have intervened on various occasions in debates on this subject. Almost two years ago to the day, there was a debate introduced by my noble friend Lord Jenkin, with his usual authority and command. I joined others on that day in highlighting the role of SMEs and their potential to lead us out of those dark days of recession. Some harsh truths were explored that dealt with the obstacles that lay in the way of recovery. Today, while everyone can agree that a huge amount remains to be done, it is fair to say that the performance of the British economy is not just better; it is better by magnitudes more than any of us had reason to expect on that July morning two years ago. Credit must go to enterprises large and small in rural areas for the significant part that they have played in turning the economy around.

However, since in the past I have been critical of things done or not done by this coalition Government, I feel entitled to offer them sincere congratulations on their contribution to the national recovery that we are witnessing today, and for what they continue to do. Only recently we saw the introduction of the small business Bill, which represents a serious effort to relieve the burden of regulation on small enterprises and provide better access to public procurement opportunities. Two days ago saw the Second Reading of the Consumer Rights Bill, which goes further than the title suggests and, I believe, will be good for business and growth. The Government have helped, and they seem on track to do more for small business and the rural economy. It is in that spirit that I draw attention to those things that still need to be resolved. Some of them, I am bound to say, are defects in our national approach to business and are largely outside the responsibility of government.

There remain some seemingly intractable long-standing problems. Others are probably better qualified to speak about this, but every survey suggests that there is still a long way to go in providing better broadband coverage in the countryside, and there is compelling evidence that this is harming rural enterprise. Some 80% of adults polled last summer said that nothing would have a greater impact on their enterprises than improved broadband provision.

The same could be said about mobile coverage. Visitors that I have spoken to from Africa, India, Australia and America find it beyond belief that they cannot use a mobile telephone when they are in Cumbria, a place that, after all, seeks to attract tourism. I hope that the Minister will respond to those anxieties. When he does, will he tell the House whether he feels that there is enough competition in the provision of these services?

I hope that the Minister will also tell us whether there are discussions with planning authorities—a matter brought up by the noble Earl in his opening remarks—given that planning delays are an obstacle to economic growth in rural areas. It is clear to me that these barriers to rural growth go beyond the well understood and largely quantifiable harm that they inflict. What none of us can say for certain is what effect these barriers have on people who are thinking of investing and are deterred by these structural weaknesses.

I shall touch on some other problems that need to be resolved and fall mostly, but not entirely, outside the scope of the Westminster Government; they are cultural in character. For all my time living and working in Cumbria, both as an individual and as a local councillor, virtually every visitor attraction and every business offering hospitality was underinvested. At intervals you could maybe attribute this to the fiscal climate, but even when credit was plentiful and the national economy was expanding there persisted a culture of low expectations. With any business, but especially with the visitor service and hospitality industries, it has always been self-evident, I would have thought, that even small and regular improvements pay rich dividends. It is gratifying to see at last this is being recognised, albeit slowly.

However, I believe that, as has been mentioned, there is a link between the tax regime, both direct and indirect, and the willingness and ability of small businesses to invest and reinvest. Indeed, the tax regime deserves more study as it applies to the rural economy. As a matter of equity, it may be worth pointing out that under the current local government financial settlement, rural residents will pay council tax that is on average £88.36 higher per capita than will urban residents, but the urban residents will receive £169 more in government funding. I wonder whether the Government might reflect in the next round whether it is fair for the settlement to be driven purely by population density, when you consider the additional costs of essential services that arise as a consequence of rural remoteness.

Low personal taxation is also a great spur to partnership and collaborative endeavour. I well remember that in the punitive days of high taxation it was impossible to work with other partners, as we were all striving to get different outcomes from our business. It is an excellent feature of the new age that we can all work together. My local village, called Cartmel, where we stage our national hunt racing, is also home to the village’s famous sticky toffee pudding, a world-class Michelin starred restaurant, a cheese maker, a meringue maker and a microbrewery. At the heart of all this is the glorious Cartmel Priory, whose vicar is also chaplain to the racecourse. Most of us, including the church, have subscribed to what is called a pop-up village, a collapsible edifice that goes on tour showcasing our various enterprises. I wonder if it is a coincidence that—rather bizarrely, I admit—the New York Times listed Cartmel as one of the 52 must-see destinations of the world. I make the serious point that local partnerships spawned through a communality of interests promote prosperity, and there is much pleasure to be had from taking part in them.

Many of the solutions for a healthy rural economy should remain in the hands of us, the local people. However, there is no escaping the truth that leadership in the countryside is at a premium. Whether it is attracting people to run the local institutions that we enjoy and benefit from, or whether it is drawing people into local government, it gets harder and harder. What is the reason for this? Well, why should they participate? Successive Westminster Governments have reduced local government to a shadow of what it used to be. They bully and harass what is left and send in power-crazed, unelected and unaccountable quangocrats to boss us about and, on a bad day, wreak havoc with our environment. If there is to be sustainable rural prosperity, local autonomy must be established; that would probably take a generation but it would be worth starting.

I also think that Whitehall and the Government should be a little more careful who they listen to. There is a breed of mostly men whom the BBC would describe as business leaders. More recently, these people are describing themselves rather condescendingly as “we business leaders”. They make statements on behalf of business that are certainly unrepresentative of many of my local SME friends and colleagues. There are people speaking on behalf of the CBI who have never made anything, done anything or taken a risk. Many large companies are not just indifferent to smaller ones; they are hostile to them and ruthless in their dealings with them.

I see that my time is up. I am not blind to the risks that lie ahead but I cannot remember a time when I felt so optimistic or exhilarated by my local economy; there is a buzz about the place. I see a bright future for farming. The Minister has dealt with the problems of the CAP, and he does not need telling that farming is a long-term business.

Lastly, Cumbria has the great good fortune to be attracting very significant investment in the near future. Many billions of pounds are coming its way. In short order, solutions must be found to cater for increased demand in all sorts of areas. It occurs to me that there is no precedent for such a combination of events on this scale. I ask my noble friend if it would be worth considering the possibility of inviting these major players to join forces in bringing about some front-end infrastructure investment in their own self-interest. If so, could the Government have a role in brokering such an arrangement?

Forestry

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, we recognise concerns about the future funding of the estate. However, we continue to face very challenging financial circumstances, requiring hard choices to be made across the whole public sector. The Forestry Commission and the public forest estate have had to bear their share of the cuts that we have had to make to bring public spending under control. Nevertheless, we want to ensure that the public forest estate can continue to provide a high level of public benefits. We are therefore carefully considering the estate’s financial needs for the long term. In particular, we want to place it on a secure financial footing for the future by enabling it to generate as much income as possible through its commercial activities without having to resort to unsustainable land sales to make ends meet.

[Lord Cavendish of Furness]

My Lords, like my noble friend, I declare an interest as a forestry owner. Does he agree that the present situation, under which the Forestry Commission is my competitor but also my regulator, is intolerable, and will the new arrangement reverse that situation?

[Lord De Mauley]

That is certainly the intention.