Public Bodies (Abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities) Order 2012

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, this afternoon we are discussing another public bodies order from Defra. To date these discussions have been friendly affairs, much in keeping with the amicable way in which the Minister dealt with the dodgy primary legislation as it went through your Lordships’ House. I fear that our deliberations today might be slightly less consensual. As we heard, the Commission for Rural Communities was established by the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, following the review led by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins. I was the Bill Minister for the NERC Act and therefore would describe myself as something of a midwife for the CRC.

That does not mean that I oppose the order outright, but it does mean that there are important questions for the Minister to answer. They happen to be the same questions that I asked when the Public Bodies Bill was going through the parliamentary process. As ever, I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, on this occasion for its third report of this Session. Its conclusion is the one that I came to last year and that I know is shared by many in the House. The committee correctly applied the three tests of effectiveness, economy and efficiency, and accountability. As is the way with these orders, it is right that I should do the same.

The Government argue that it is more effective to bring officials in-house, rather than have them at arm’s length, so they will have earlier and greater involvement in the development of policies and programmes across Whitehall. I am afraid that in my experience Defra is not central to the Government’s thinking until there is a crisis, and that rural policy in turn is on the margins of Defra’s thinking. The clue is in the name. It thinks about the environment, then food and farming, and finally rural affairs. There is no sign that this has changed. We witnessed the inability of the department to secure a legislative slot in this Session for the much-needed water Bill. That is the reality of the marginalisation of Defra. To argue otherwise is naive in the extreme.

As the Minister said, the Government are looking to save £17 million over the CSR period by this change to their rural policy function. That is the real reason for this change: economy. I do not argue that savings are there to be made, although it is worth noting that the CRC cost around £600,000 in the past financial year. It is worth diverting some of the remaining cost of the rural policy function to support the continuation of a rural policy adviser who is independent of government.

My main objection to the move is on the ground of accountability. The Government argue that these changes will enable Defra’s Ministers to be held accountable by Parliament for the exercise of rural policy functions. However, we should look at how Parliament is currently being treated. Over the weekend, dairy farmers blockaded milk processing plants to draw attention to the exploitative pricing that is making milk production uneconomic. Two supermarkets have already responded by raising the prices they pay to farmers. The farmers clearly believed that parliamentary methods were not being listened to—and was it any wonder?

Today it was reported that Jim Paice, the Agriculture Minister who does not know the price of milk, had raised the possibility that an adjudicator would be created to oversee a voluntary code for the dairy supply chain. This is exactly what my noble friend Lord Grantchester suggested last week when he moved an amendment to the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill. Coalition Peers were whipped to oppose it—and duly defeated the very proposal that is now coming from the Agriculture Minister. Just one week later, threatened by angry farmers, Defra’s policy is churning, thanks to direct action rather than parliamentary pressure.

This follows a succession of protests that bounced Defra. Its proposals to sell off the nation’s forests were met with huge protests and it backed down. The same happened with national nature reserves and changes to reduce environmental protection in planning law. There was the case of wild animals in circuses. Over Easter Defra suggested allowing the shooting of buzzards—a native species—to protect pheasants, which are a non-native species bred to be shot. Unsurprisingly, that was laughed out of the court of public opinion within days. In these cases, we made what noise we could in your Lordships’ House or in the other place, but it was clear that Ministers were more accountable to 38 Degrees, the National Trust and Farmers for Action than to this Parliament—so much for accountability.

The lack of long-term strategic thinking that bedevils Defra is at the heart of the issue. At the same time, rural England feels the effects of policies and cuts from other government departments. For example, it emerged this month that the rate of young people not in education, employment or training is rising faster in rural areas than in urban ones—and that rural councils, which tend to have older and less deprived populations, receive lower grant allocations, spend less on social care, charge more for home care and allocate lower personal budgets than local authorities serving younger, more urban and more deprived populations. New research finds that social tenants in rural areas will be more likely than those in urban areas to have to move house as a consequence of reductions in housing benefit, yet there are fewer smaller dwellings for them to move into. I know these things thanks to the July newsletter from the Commission for Rural Communities. Its reports often make uncomfortable reading across Whitehall. The independence from government of these reports increases accountability. That is why a letter to today’s Daily Telegraph is signed by the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Wakefield, Norwich and Exeter, the Duchess of Rutland, the High Sheriff of Cornwall, me and other parliamentarians, including my noble friend Lord Grantchester.

As the letter says, there has been an independent voice to government since 1909. It goes on:

“In the current economic circumstances it is more important than ever that the voices of rural communities are not lost and that an independent adviser—distinct from the range of rural pressure groups—exists to speak up for rural interests”.

That is all we ask—not for the expensive retention of the CRC, but for the retention of what has served us well for more than a century, an independent rural champion. What do the Government propose instead? The independent voice will be provided by Defra’s very own Rural Affairs Minister, Richard Benyon, he of the buzzards U-turn. Rural England’s new champion will be inside the tent but, unusually, on this occasion pointing inwards.

The lack of commitment is demonstrated by the facts that Mr Benyon has not delivered the new rural-proofing guidance promised even today on the Defra website for this spring, and that he has failed to deliver a rural statement, referred to by the Minister, by spring 2012, which was also promised today on the Defra website. That is serious for this Committee. Can the Minister tell us in his wind-up what happened to it? Are we going to get it in September, along with rural-proofing toolkit, six months late?

As he says, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee specifically recommends that the rural statement sets out robust structures for incorporating stakeholder input into policy development and implementation. The Minister responded to that by referring to the explanatory document which has already been scrutinised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It then wanted more information, which we do not have, to scrutinise this order.

I ask again what I asked the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in column 765 in March last year. Why not give us an independent rural voice that tells us by appointment, with the authority of the Prime Minister, what is really happening and tells us the truth regardless of fear of or favour from the Government? It worked for Lloyd George, for Churchill and for Thatcher. Is it really too much to ask?

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this, and his team for providing the explanatory document about the different ways in which consultation will take place with rural groups such as the Rural and Farming Network, ECO and its sub-groups, the Rural Coalition, local economic partnerships, the Rural Service Network and the LEADER exchange group. I know that LEADER is an initiative to do with the delivery of the Rural Development Programme for England, but the word made me think. These groups, or leaders of groups, such as farmers, businessmen and local councils, are all stakeholders—to use the Minister’s word—in the countryside.

Who is going to represent the deprived of rural England—those who sometimes go with only one meal a day because they know that they have to spend their money on a car to get to their valuable work, or to have any of form of life there? Who is going to speak up for the countryside’s young, who cannot get a job because they have not got the transport to get to one and cannot get the transport to get to a job because they have not got a job to pay for the transport? Who is going to speak up for the unemployed, the unhoused and others?

The Minister will know that I am in a slightly difficult position. I have been asked by Richard Benyon, the Defra Minister in the Commons, to pool together a group of Peers to help rural-proof the government department’s policies in each individual case, but I still have not quite grasped who is going to do or commission the critical and independent research that will penetrate the normal attitude of most departments to the countryside, which is ambivalent at best. Actually, their attitude ranges from ambivalence to total ignorance and they need spurring on.

Most of us in this Room have argued our best on several occasions for some representation at arm’s length from Government, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of those rural voices that are not normally heard. I hope that the Minister can reassure me on the question of the independent, fearless research that is often critical of the Government, and which departments are, frankly, unable, to carry out. I hope that he can also reassure me on my point about who will represent the voice of the rural deprived.