Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and to participate in the debate on this group of amendments. Noble Lords will know of my interest in my family business, which is on the register.

I speak as someone privileged with “boys’ land”—they say this of the silts around the Wash. This land is ideal for arable farming, and we grow a diverse range of crops, from bulbs, in which we are prominent, to cauliflowers and potatoes. My neighbours are engaged in a great variety of different cropping, and this diversity —together with the marketing and distribution facilities —has encouraged field-scale horticulture similar to that in the Netherlands. It has also led to large-scale investment in protected cropping indoors and not exclusively under glass. I admit that this experience colours my thinking as to how we can raise productivity and harness modern techniques of scientific agriculture. It also colours my thinking about the role that the occupation and use of land plays in allowing a lively and prosperous industry.

I spoke in Committee on amendments covering tenancy issues and, in particular, about the value of cropping licences. I explained the background to my conviction that a dynamic farming and growing industry depends on having a lively market for land occupation to make this land readily available to up-and-coming farmers and growers. Schedule 3 is the product of the dialogue between the Government and the Tenancy Reform Industry Group, where different parties to this issue are seeking to find consensus on landholding issues.

Consensus must be the right way to seek to change something as complex as this. I might add that it seems to me that this whole Bill is about establishing a consensus on a path for agriculture into the future. It is with this in mind that I cannot support the wish of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, to remove Clause 34—and, with it, Schedule 3—of this Bill. I believe that Schedule 3, which his amendments seek to remove, delivers on the Government’s consultations in England and Wales and, indeed, on many of the recommendations from TRIG.

The Bill is not a root-and-branch reform of tenancy legislation. It is not intended to be. Listening to this debate, I am very much aware that many noble Lords are impatient for more changes. However, these modest key and agreed changes, which form Schedule 3, will help to modernise agricultural tenancy legislation and, more importantly, play a part in giving this key industry the flexibility to adapt to change, and this is why they should remain in this Bill.

Having said that, I hope there can be consensus on further issues that the UK and Welsh Governments will wish to discuss with TRIG to see what other actions will lead to a thriving tenancy sector. In turn, this will require further consideration by Parliament and legislation. However, as it is, Schedule 3 makes considerable changes now, and they should be supported.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, although I declared my agricultural interests earlier, I should specifically declare that I am, and have been, a landlord, as a freeholder and as a trustee of let agricultural land, as well as having been a tenant, both of family land and, until recently, some land belonging to a third party. What I found interesting and remarkable about the speeches on the amendment is that, while a number of speakers have taken varying stances, they almost all seem to be coming from the same general place on the map—as I do and hope will become apparent.

It is helpful when thinking about these matters to start from the original economic rationale for the landlord and tenant system. Landlords provided fixed equipment and the tenant the working capital. The parties negotiated around that and the farm business was put together as what might be described as a form of joint venture. The reality in days gone by was that the landlord’s negotiating power was frequently stronger than that of the tenant. This point was graphically drawn to the attention of the House by the late Lord Williams of Mostyn in his final speech on the Bill reorganising the composition of this House, some 15 or so years ago, in what I consider to be the finest speech that I have heard in this Chamber. The imbalance over the years has led to a series of specific pieces of legislation to introduce rules for fair trading—something that we have just been considering in a different context—into this marketplace. That is as it should be.

Too often, the debate is conducted in black and white terms, when it is in reality shades of grey. Landlords range from hard-nosed financial institutions and Dukes to widows, orphans and charities—for example, the National Trust, which interestingly is not always popular among its own tenants. Tenants range from huge farming companies to smallholders. Their circumstances are wide-ranging. There are good and bad landlords, and tenants who are exemplary farmers and some who are chancers and incompetents. However, both sides, whatever characteristics they have, ought in a free society to be treated even-handedly within the legal framework surrounding whatever arrangement they wish to put in place. While this may, to a degree, depend upon one’s perspective, the landlord is not, in granting a lease, conveying away his freehold or emotional and other commitments to the land. It is not the re-creation of some form of copyhold system.

A tenant, particularly when he also obtains a farmhouse, is acquiring more than a mere business asset but a home, and making a considerable investment in someone else’s property. This must not be forgotten. Questions around bare land may be different. On top of that, both parties may be investing substantial sums of money, and all this must be taken into account. There is a perhaps an understandable tendency, at least superficially, to treat tenants as good and landlords as bad. That is not, by any means, universally the case. I speak from first-hand experience on which it is unnecessary to elaborate further here.

The conclusion that I have come to when thinking about these matters over the years is that perhaps the best way to make a mess of the landlord and tenant system is to rewrite it on the hoof on the Floor of Parliament in an ad hoc manner. Rather, as a number of speakers have said, those in the industry should, from time to time, review the matters to find a middle way that, as far as possible, represents a compromise acceptable to all those involved. That will need to be led by some entity or organisation like the Tenancy Reform Industry Group, TRIG. Failure to do that will not only wreck a system that must adapt anyway to completely new circumstances as the output of farming changes but, as many speakers have said, but properly ensure fairness on all sides. It is certain that if changes are made in an ad hoc, incremental way, real injustice in all kinds of unexpected places is likely to result. I am old-fashioned enough to think that it is a matter that Parliament should do its best to avoid.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I have enjoyed listening to the debate, but I share some of the noble Baroness’s observations on it. Perhaps it is the lateness of the hour. There is scarcely enough time to consider a topic as significant as this. I think I would have enjoyed the debate more if it had not been in the Public Bodies Bill, but it is clearly not an appropriate topic for this Bill, so I am going to address my remarks purely on those grounds. I think the House may well discuss methods whereby the scrutiny of church affairs could be brought back to this House in some way, but that is a matter for the House authorities. It is certainly not a matter for the Public Bodies Bill.

There are three reasons why the Government cannot accept this amendment, and they have been said. The first is that the Church Commissioners fall outside the scope of the Bill. They are not a non-departmental public body but essentially a non-governmental body and a charity under the scrutiny of the Charity Commissioners.

The second reason is the historic relationship between Parliament, government and the Church of England—perhaps we have seen why this separation of the estates is so important in the nature of the debate that we have had this evening. Since the enabling Act 1919 set up the Church Assembly, now the General Synod, it has been accepted that Parliament does not in practice legislate on the internal affairs of the Church of England without its consent. The mechanism laid down in that Act for legislating on the Church of England included the constitution of the Church Commissioners through synodical measure. There are, of course, methods by which Parliament can put pressure on the church to act, but the noble Lord’s amendment seeks to return to a position in which Ministers would have a direct power to intervene in the governance of the commissioners.

The third reason is that the commissioners’ board of governors, of which the right reverend Prelate is chairman, as trustees of a charity, are under a fiduciary duty to manage their assets in the way that best enables them to achieve their charitable purposes. It is therefore for them to determine how best to do so, including by deciding whether to dispose of particular assets. It is not a matter for Ministers to regulate in the case of this or any other charity. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Inglewood]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I must say that when I moved the amendment I had no idea what direction the debate would take, but I did not anticipate that it would move in the way in which it did. I particularly thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for arguing the case that he did in the way in which he did, and I thank my noble friend Lord Deben for his counter point. In a way, it drew a lot of the argument into the open and made it clear that these issues are perhaps not as clear as we all like to think they are at first blush. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester asked me whether I would withdraw the use of the words “money laundering”. I shall do so, although what I actually said was “a form of money laundering”, and I bracket those words with “the philosopher’s stone that turns base metal into gold”.

I will make one technical point and then one more general point. The technical point is that the Church Commissioners are not completely charitable. The point of the 1943 measure is that they hold certain funds that include the bishops’ palaces, which are not held charitably—and I base that not on my own inadequate legal knowledge but on Halsbury’s Laws of England in the Library of the House. The relationship between the Charity Commissioners, the Church of England and its assets is perhaps not as straightforward as any of us quite think.

I will also make a point that no one else has made this evening but which I feel has something to do with this. In religious matters, enthusiasms gain prominence from time to time—we have seen this in a number of areas, such as the Reformation and the iconoclasm of Byzantium—in which so enthusiastic do people become about a particular way of looking at things that they perhaps feel that they can ignore everything else in the pursuit of it. My sense as an individual, as one of the foot-soldiers in the Church of England, is that there is currently a great movement against the kind of things that I was talking about. I hasten to add that I hope your Lordships noticed that I never said that bishops should live in bishops’ palaces; I said that if bishops ceased to live in bishops’ palaces, proper and legitimate steps should be taken to look after the heritage interest that they represent. I added in parenthesis that I had a personal preference in that direction, but that is quite different. I am concerned that, if we have a kind of cultural revolution, as we have seen from time to time in churches, the Red Guards should not destroy all the things that matter in effecting the changes that they want to see.

It is ultimately for the Church of England to decide what it wants to do but I believe that we all have a legitimate interest in the assets of the Church of England and that society as a whole has a legitimate interest in what happens to them. After all, these particular buildings are listed and the civil authority is not simply decoupled from them.

It is late. We have had a lot to think about, and I hope that we shall continue to think about it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.