Queen’s Speech

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has explained in his usual robust and graphic manner the plans to close Cumbria’s agricultural college—proposals that have resulted in widespread anger, right across the county. I continue to pursue that discussion on Newton Rigg, with its 1,000 acres of land, including a state-of-the-art dairy training farm and the National Centre for the Uplands—the only hill farm in the whole country owned by an agricultural college.

Askham Bryan College in York, which acquired Newton Rigg for just £1 about 11 years ago, has found itself now in dire financial straits and is on the verge of bankruptcy. It is hoping to avoid this by putting Cumbria’s Newton Rigg up for sale, expecting a windfall of £12 million. The young people are having their land-based college stolen from them.

But it does not have to end in tears: there are solutions. First, the Government must step in through the Education and Skills Funding Agency and sort out Askham Bryan’s debts. This may involve spending money—but far less than if they do nothing and let the closure of Newton Rigg and the asset sale proceed.

With Askham Bryan and its staff and students safeguarded, the assets of Newton Rigg, including the two farms, should be transferred to a Cumbrian educational trust to be held in perpetuity for the people of Cumbria and their future education. Trustees and governors would come from local authorities, relevant interested local businesses, the Cumbrian LEP and educational experts of Newton Rigg Ltd.

Short-term arrangements for further education training have already been made in conjunction with Myerscough College in Lancashire, but this might be enhanced in conjunction with Newton Rigg Ltd, which is working to become an independent FE college as soon as the system allows. It has carefully costed plans for modern apprenticeships, agricultural tech and a rural business village. This vision will take time to realise but will return Newton Rigg to its proper place, serving the people of Cumbria and the north with a modern, rural college providing a wide range of education—agriculture as well as environment, equestrian as well as gamekeeping—and a whole range of rural activities. But be in no doubt that the preservation of the facilities at Newton Rigg is vital to the success of this scheme. The solution is then clear and the cost relatively small—a tiny fraction of what it would cost in the future to set up a replacement college from scratch to fill the gaping hole in the wide-ranging rural education in the north.

We should not be encouraging one failed college to pay off its debts by ruining another college in a neighbouring county. That is indefensible, and one can understand—and I share, as does my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours—the anger of the people of Cumbria.