Thames Tunnel

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

Obviously, we would want to encourage the use of brownfield sites, where possible, rather than greenfield sites. However, I do think that this should be a matter for the planning authorities and the planning process rather than for a diktat from Defra itself.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, Defra is currently consulting on these sorts of projects becoming national infrastructure projects and at that point the Minister would have the leverage that he currently tells us he does not have. I understand the point that he is making. However, should he not take a lead, for example, from the Mayor of London, who is very happy to interfere and to pass comment wherever he sees fit? Should he not use his influence in this case and listen to what noble Lords have said about the importance of using the river to transport spoil in order to protect our greenfield sites and to preserve the brownfield sites? A meeting would be fairly straightforward and I am sure that Thames Water would want to listen to what the noble Lord has to say.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I would have thought that what I have said has given some idea of where Ministers in Defra stand on these matters. Again, I think that the planning process should decide the appropriate route, how it is done, where to dig the access tunnels and so on. In the end, we want the right solution for London and for the customers of Thames Water to ensure that we can get rid of that waste water and that we do not have, again and again, the kind of environmental disasters that we have seen, on a number of occasions, further up the Thames, with vast quantities of dead fish and other such things.

EU: Common Fisheries Policy

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we can never completely and utterly get rid of discards. We want to get rid of them as much as is possible. That is why we are seeking a reform of the CFP, and that is what we are negotiating to do. However, there are also practical measures relating to net sizes, to which the noble Lord referred, and practical measures relating to CCTV on the boats themselves that can help deal with the problem. It is going to take time and a lot of negotiation with other member states and with Members of the European Parliament, but we are committed to working towards that.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, we very much welcome the Commission’s proposals today to end discards. In doing so, we pay tribute to the campaign, led by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall among others, to gather a petition of over half a million signatories to press for this change. Clearly it is in the long-term interests of the industry for fish stocks to be rebuilt and taken sustainably. With 75 per cent overfishing, a cut in the fleet looks inevitable if this new policy is to work. Can I ask the Minister how this will be managed, particularly in the coastal towns hardest hit? Will the decommissioning payments continue, and will there be extra investment in regenerating those communities?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for paying tribute to the campaign run by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall—to which I pay tribute—but I would hope that the noble Lord would also pay tribute to my honourable friend Mr Richard Benyon, who I think has done equal amounts in terms of his negotiations on these matters. I cannot give the noble Lord specific answers to these questions at this stage, as he well knows, because we are still negotiating on these matters. We have had the proposals from the Commission only today, so I have not read them in detail, nor has my honourable friend Mr Benyon. We will look at those proposals, he will be negotiating on them next Wednesday, and we will come forward with proposals that will be good for the United Kingdom’s fisheries industry, for fish in general and for the sustainability of our fish stocks.

Biological Diversity

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, on the Question that stimulated this excellent debate and on his fine opening speech. The Convention on Biological Diversity is a key plank of the international community's commitment to protect our environment. I was fortunate to attend the 2006 conference of the parties in Curitiba, Brazil, as the UK ministerial representative, and I have retained a strong commitment to this agenda as a result. Last October's conference of the parties to the convention in Nagoya, Japan—as the noble Earl said—was described by the Government as “historic”. None of us can disagree, and it was an important statement of intent from the new Government that the Secretary of State herself attended to take part in the negotiations.

The outcome was positive. The 190 countries agreed a refreshed vision that by 2050 biodiversity will be valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people. The parties also agreed a shorter-term ambition to:

“Take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity in order to ensure that by 2020 ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide essential services, thereby securing the planet's variety of life, and contributing to human well-being, and poverty eradication”.

The five strategic goals are particularly significant in focusing our minds. They are: to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society; to reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use; to improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity; to enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services; and to enhance implementation through participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building.

This is the right response from Governments to the challenges facing the planet—not just for the sake of biodiversity but because of the importance it has for human prosperity and well-being. The national ecosystem assessment, commissioned by the previous Government and published by this one, gives examples of that importance to humanity. It states that the benefits that inland wetlands bring to water quality—here I pay tribute to the speech of my noble friend— are worth up to £1.5 billion per year to the UK. Pollinators are worth £430 million per year to British agriculture. The amenity benefits of living close to rivers, coasts and other wetlands is worth up to £1.3 billion per year, and the health benefits of living with a view of a green space are worth up to £300 per person per year. It is clearly in the public's interest for the commitments made in Nagoya to be translated into action here in the UK. Indeed, they can serve as the benchmarks to test the success of the Government in delivering on their commitment to the natural environment.

I do not want to appear too cynical, although that is the burden of opposition, but while UN conferences meet every two years and agree important words—the noble Earl suggested this—and while we have in the past made commitments, for example, to the IUCN's Countdown 2010 target, targets are serially not met by Governments of whatever complexion and words too often do not turn into action. I have therefore looked at the new White Paper, The Natural Choice, with great interest. It was not published with much of a fanfare. I heard about it via word of mouth. I am sure that is not down to the new shyness of Mrs Spelman, the Secretary of State, to be heard in the media. I am happy to believe that the media had little appetite for something as uncontentious as a policy paper on the natural world.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

It is good news.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

It is good news, as the Minister says from a sedentary position, but it does raise my first question for him. If we are to realise the aims of Nagoya, we need to raise the profile of these issues and their importance with the public. How is the department going to achieve this? A genuine cynic might say it has already done a remarkable job. At the same time that Mrs Spelman was in Nagoya, her department was busy trying to privatise the forests. It is a novel approach, but privatising trees was certainly an effective way of getting the public engaged on the importance of protecting biodiversity.

Returning to the White Paper, I accept that it makes clear that the Government's detailed response will be in a new biodiversity strategy for England, which has been referred to,

“to follow this White Paper”.

Can the Minister assure us that, unlike the water White Paper or the waste policy document, this will not be delayed? Will it be published this month, as the noble Earl suggested? Can we expect Ministers touring the studios to promote it this time? What about the money? I note that over the five-year period Defra will lose £2 billion in cash terms from its budgets. There are around 70 commitments in the White Paper. How much will be spent on meeting them? How much has been committed to fund meeting the new commitments made in Nagoya? The press release the department published at the time suggested new money of £2.6 million over four years for international biodiversity. Can the Minister assure us that that is enough?

In the mean time, there are some other questions to ask in relation to action at home and abroad to address the five strategic goals that I took the time to read out. I very much welcome the renewed commitment in the White Paper to the Darwin initiative. I have been fortunate enough to visit Darwin projects in three continents of the world and have seen the very positive effect on animal and human populations alike. Darwin is part of the UK punching way above its weight internationally on these issues. The world genuinely looks to us to help broker conservation agreements such as the GRASP agreement I signed in Kinshasa in 2005 to protect great apes. This sort of work is the result of remarkable work by civil servants in the Minister’s department. Can he tell us whether staffing and resources in the tiny international wildlife division are being protected?

At home, in my time, I was pleased to insert in the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act the duty for public bodies to have regard to biodiversity loss. Whitehall took some persuading that that was justified and was not a costly burden on services such as the NHS. Can the Minister tell us, in the course of meeting the first of the five Nagoya goals, what bilateral discussions have taken place since October between Defra Ministers, Ministers from other departments and Ministers from devolved Administrations that have included biodiversity protection on the agenda? If he cannot tell me off the top of his head, perhaps he will write to me. How will the Government ensure that action is taken across departments, in devolved Administrations and in all tiers of Government to secure the commitment to halt biodiversity loss?

Finally, the other strategic goals all need biodiversity to be a key consideration in land use. How will this be achieved? I was pleased in my day to agree PPS9 with the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to secure this as a material consideration in the planning system. The planning system is currently going through massive changes via the Localism Bill, which is in Committee today in this Chamber, and measures such as PPS9 will be absorbed into the national framework and the regional tier of planning protection will disappear altogether. Conservation groups have rightly expressed concerns that the Government's approach to growth will damage the environment. In that context, can I ask the Minister how the Secretary of State is getting on with Mr Pickles? They appeared to have a bit of a set-to over waste collection. Have such arguments been consigned to the dustbin of history or is there a danger of them being recycled over the burden that councils, developers and planners will have to bear in playing their part on halting biodiversity loss? Given that the Chancellor said in his Budget speech that planning will now have jobs and growth as the priority, can the Minister give us reassurance that this will not squeeze out biodiversity and the goals of Nagoya?

To conclude, this has been a useful opening debate in what I hope will be ongoing scrutiny by your Lordships' House of the implementation of the Nagoya agreement. The ambition is to be applauded, but it is against the actions of the whole of the Government that the Secretary of State and her Ministers will be judged.

Higher Education: Funding

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the latest estimate of the proportion of higher education courses charging £9,000 from next year; and whether the consequential cost to the Exchequer has been adjusted.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, 139 institutions intending to charge above £6,000 for any undergraduate course in 2012-13 submitted access agreements to the Director of Fair Access. Fee waivers and bursaries that universities plan to make available mean that we will not have firm cost estimates until students have received their loans late in the 2012-13 academic year. We believe that fee loans will be significantly below an average of £9,000. We will closely monitor the situation but currently expect the cost to be broadly within the Government’s estimates.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Back in December when we voted on this, we were told that the assumed average fee was £7,500 and that £9,000 would be charged only in exceptional circumstances. The House of Commons Library tells us that if the average fee goes up by just £400, the extra cost to the taxpayer through loan subsidy and underwriting will be £340 million. Therefore, I will try again with the Minister. It is clear that with more than two-thirds of universities saying that they will charge the maximum fee, £9,000 is not exceptional. If the assumptions were wrong, who will pay the extra cost? Will it be the national debt or students' prospects through fewer places?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as the noble Lord rightly said, we made the assumption in December of an average fee of roughly £7,500, with a 90 per cent take-up by students. However, it is up to higher education institutions to decide what application they should put in, and for the Office of Fair Access to look at that and make recommendations. As we made clear, there will be a number of bursaries and waivers, so we think that the average figure will come down well below the maximum of £9,000. I remind the noble Lord also that merely because a university puts in an application to charge £9,000 for one course, this does not mean that all courses will cost £9,000. I am afraid that the noble Lord will have to wait and see. As my right honourable friend Mr Willetts said in another place, we see no reason at the moment to amend the broad estimate that we put before the House last autumn.

Higher Education: ERASMUS Scheme

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, ERASMUS is an important scheme to gain valuable work experience and language skills. Applicants to that scheme are not the only group who would like a fee waiver from 2012, as more than 70 per cent of universities will be charging the maximum fees of £9,000 per year. Has the Minister seen the outcome of the High Fliers Research study published today, which finds that more than half of current final year students would not have gone to university if they had faced fees of £9,000? Given those findings and the consequences to the Exchequer of higher than budgeted fees, how will the Government square extending access with deficit reduction? Is it time for another pause to go to listen to the public?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord takes us slightly beyond the Question on the Order Paper. We have on a number of occasions debated the whole question of the reforms that we are bringing in; we will have further debates on them in due course, and I look forward to taking part in those debates. This Question is about ERASMUS, which is a much narrower point than the one that the noble Lord is asking about.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

9: Schedule 1, page 15, line 18, leave out “Commission for Rural Communities.”

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Norwich and the Bishop of Exeter for adding their names to the amendment. I will be brief, because I know that noble Lords want to cover a lot of business this evening, including some Divisions. I am grateful also to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for the letter that I received a couple of hours ago, which sets out some of the detail on these issues. That will also allow us to speed things along.

It is clear from the Minister’s letter that already 12 members of staff have moved over from the Commission for Rural Communities to the rural communities policy unit that is being set up in the department. Whether or not that move anticipates Parliament in respect of the passage of the Bill through both Houses, it is clear that the Government's mind is made up on the future of the commission. I will not unduly frustrate the Government and Parliament by holding out for the commission, even though I was the Minister who created it in the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. However, I will speak up for an independent rural voice appointed by, and with the authority of, the Prime Minister, that will report on what is going on in rural England and will do so without fear, favour or special interest, on the basis of having travelled the length and breadth of rural England to understand what is going on on the ground: a voice that will be able at times to tell the Government what they do not want to hear.

I am relatively confident that the Minister will respond by saying that there are plenty of other independent rural voices—I think that that is what he said in Committee—and that there is a very fine Rural Affairs Minister in the form of Richard Benyon MP, and I do not necessarily disagree with that. He will say that they will do the job and that in any event the coalition represents swathes of rural England and so MPs can also represent that voice. However, I guarantee your Lordships that, should a party with a much more urban basis of representation return to government, the Minister’s party would clamour for an independent rural voice to tell the Government what they did not want to hear about the effects of their policies on rural England.

As I said, I am sure that Richard Benyon is doing a good job. However, I had his job as Rural Affairs Minister and I have to say to the House that it would be very hard for anyone in that job, as a member of the Government, to go out publicly and tell even “Farming Today”, at that ungodly hour of the morning, that the Government had got it wrong. It simply does not work like that. Ministers cannot go out publicly and say, on the record, that the Government have got it wrong.

I have no doubt that the Rural Affairs Minister is holding bilateral meetings around Whitehall, as did I and my successors. However effective those meetings were, they were not quite as effective as when the rural advocate, who is also the chairman of the Commission for Rural Communities, came to see me about the work that he did travelling around the country and looking at what was going on on the ground. That is another aspect of what the rural affairs Minister cannot do. That Minister is tied to whipped votes and has to go to the Commons of an evening, doing his bit as part of the government payroll. He is not able to get out and about and to understand what is going on as effectively as the current rural advocate, Dr Stuart Burgesss, who has done a fantastic job, or his predecessors or anyone else who acts as an independent rural voice. The Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Countryside Alliance, the National Farmers’ Union, the National Trust and the Rural Shops Alliance are all perfectly fine parts of our civil society. They are doing a fine job, speaking up for their interests in rural England, but in many ways they are specific vested interests, so nor do I see them providing the independence that we want in a rural voice.

I put it to the Minister that I shall be happy to give ground to him on his wish to abolish the Commission for Rural Communities if he can continue to give this country what it has had since the days of Lloyd George—that is, an independent rural voice that speaks, by appointment, with the authority of the Prime Minister in telling us what is really happening and telling us the truth regardless of fear or favour from the Government. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

I do not accept that point. There are outside bodies that can offer advice to the Government and we will listen to that advice. We will listen to Parliament and to the various committees in the other place and in this House that will offer independent advice and make their points, just as pressure groups will offer advice and make their arguments. However, within government, we believe that this can be done more effectively within the department, with the appropriate Ministers and their teams responding to those matters. With that in mind, we believe that there are sufficient safeguards.

If one took the right reverend Prelate’s point to its logical conclusion, one would need an independent body to discuss almost every issue. It is right that these should be matters for the Government. There is appropriate expertise among Ministers and appropriate knowledge and interest. That is why I have set out the position of my honourable friend Mr Benyon in another place and why we have brought some of the staff from the CRC within the department. We believe that will be sufficient to meet the task.

However, as I made clear to the noble Lord, Lord Knight—this was his concern—if an independent advocate was needed again, we would of course be prepared to look at that issue if the change proved not to be as effective as we believe it will be. I think the noble Lord was looking at the individual advocate rather than the CRC as whole. That is what is behind this debate and why I am trying to give him that assurance. I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, we have had a useful debate that, with the exception of the last speaker—the Minister—achieved unanimity. He spoke a great deal about the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and that the clue is in the name, but if you take “rural affairs” from the title the department becomes “Def”—and there were times when the Minister was not listening to what the debate was saying about an independent and impartial voice for rural England.

I am not seeking to frustrate the clear determination of the Government to get rid of the Commission for Rural Communities, much as I regret that decision and do not support it, and I do not want to test the opinion of the House now. Those of us who have spoken in the debate will look carefully at the Minister’s words and the reassurances that he has attempted to give. No doubt we will discuss among ourselves how we wish to pursue the cause of an independent and impartial voice for rural England in the future. If he wants to engage with us, we would welcome that in trying to further the reassurances he has given us. Then perhaps we will be able to have the independent and impartial voice that Members of your Lordships’ House wish to see continued.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Judd, speaks, I think that it will be useful if I intervene to prevent a debate that otherwise might go on for some considerable time. I think that we can forestall that debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere—my noble friend, if I can put it that way, in that we come from the same part of the world, support the same football team and are looking forward to seeing each other at Wembley on 3 April this year—that I always listen to him, as do my colleagues in government. Indeed, we always listen to other people, so it is not just the honeyed words of the noble Lord. We have listened to the words of everyone throughout the country, even—dare I say it?—to our local newspaper, the Cumberland News, and the vox pop in it, to which he referred.

I am grateful for what the noble Lord said and for the kind words about what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said when she made her Statement on 17 February setting out a series of announcements concerning our forestry policy in England. I stress that these amendments relate purely to England; I think that there are others relating to Wales, which we will leave to one side for the moment. As she put it—I repeat her words—they,

“will allow for more measured and rational debate about the future direction of forestry policy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/2/11; col. 1155.]

She said that because—dare I say it?—despite what the noble Lord said, we were not getting a measured and rational debate on forestry as a result of misunderstandings behind what had happened. My right honourable friend announced that the consultation on the future of the public forest estate would be ended, and she has done that. This was done because it was quite clear from those early responses to the consultation that the public and many MPs and Members of this House were not happy with what we had set out.

As stated in the announcement, an independent panel to consider forestry policy will be established and, in due course, we will let the House and another place know further details about it. It will report to the Secretary of State this autumn with advice on the future direction of forestry and woodland policy in England, the role of the Forestry Commission and the role of the public forest estate. The panel will include representatives of key environmental and access organisations alongside representatives of the forestry industry. Its membership and terms of reference will be published shortly. I ought to make it clear that, although it will include a wide range of representatives, we hope that all those appointed will be appointed for their knowledge and expertise. We also hope to keep this body small so that it can be properly focused. I think that all noble Lords know the danger of allowing bodies of this sort to grow like Topsy. I confirm that the panel will have an independent chairman.

My right honourable friend also announced that the Government will support the removal of all those clauses from the Public Bodies Bill. I was very grateful to the noble Lord for not reading out all the amendments that are being taken as part of this group, but we can take it as read that they will go through in due course. As a result, there will be a number of other amendments that I think noble Lords will not wish to move because they relate to clauses that will no longer be there. We can take it that forestry is, as I put it on another occasion, purely in relation to this Bill, a dead parrot, other than forestry in Wales, and will not be debated. That means that we will remove the Forestry Commission’s regional advisory committees, which are the subject of the lead amendment.

The noble Lord also asked what we are intending to do about the Home Grown Timber Advisory Committee. He will remember that we had a debate about it earlier in Committee and that I referred to it as a dead parrot because it had not sat since 2005. It was while the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, was chairman of the Forestry Commission that it ceased to have any members. I ought to be careful about this, but I should remind the noble Lord that it was his statutory duty to have such a committee and to have members of such a committee, but he decided that there would no longer be members of the committee and that the committee would no longer meet. When he comes to answer, he may assist the House by advising us why he decided that it was no longer necessary to abide by his statutory duty to have members of that committee or even to have the committee. The simple fact is that that committee has not met since 2005. As I said on that earlier occasion, it is a dead parrot, along with all the others. It is up to the noble Lord to make the case for it. If the noble Lord wants to put a case for preserving that committee at Report, I will always look at the advice that he puts before us and I will listen to his arguments as to why we should resurrect or resuscitate that dead parrot. The noble Lord, however, made it quite clear by his actions in 2005 that he did not want it, so I do not quite see why now, in 2011, he would want to revive it—unless, just possibly, he has some mischievous reason of his own, which I would never suspect that he possibly could. Anyway, we will look at that in due course, if the noble Lord wants to bring it back at Report.

We will, as I said, remove all those clauses relating to Schedule 1 and to Clauses 17 and 18 and there will be a series of small consequential amendments. My noble friend Lord Taylor has put his name down to do that—regional forestry committees and all the others will come out. I make it clear that everything that the noble Lord wishes for the moment has been dealt with. I should also make it clear that the withdrawal of the forestry-related provisions for England from the Bill does not affect the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy proposals in relation to restructuring their arrangements for the delivery of their environmental policy, including policy on forestry in Wales. That is for another day and will be for those who will respond on these matters.

The noble Lord asked why we can sell 15 per cent. The previous Administration used these powers to sell land and I have referred beforehand to the fact that under the noble Lord’s watch, when he was chairman of the Forestry Commission under the previous Government, some 25,000 acres were sold without any protection whatsoever. We make it clear that, should we be selling any, we will make sure that there is appropriate protection offered in terms of access, the environment and biodiversity. Of course—as I think we have made clear—we will not be selling anything in advance of the panel reporting back to us. That is why we suspended those sales, having completed the sales that we had inherited from the previous Labour Government.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I have a brief question for the Minister. When I was a Minister working with my noble friend, we were selling some forestry land, but we were also acquiring land. Does he intend to continue to acquire land on behalf of the Government and the state?

[Lord Henley]

Decisions will be made as appropriate. The point is that the previous Government—I will mention the figures again—sold something of the order of 25,000 acres without any protection. I accept that they bought some back, but they did not buy back as much as 25,000 acres. One has to recognise the fact that not all the land that the Forestry Commission owns is appropriate to belong in the public estate. That is why the previous Government, among whom the noble Lord was such a wonderful ornament, sold off land, or instructed the noble Lord, Lord Clark, who is about to intervene, to sell it off, as he did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief, but first perhaps I might follow the right reverend Prelate’s comments by saying that I have been puzzled from the very beginning of this Bill. I find it extraordinary that the New Forest has been protected by primary legislation dating from 1877 through to 1970, yet essentially a process of statutory orders can overtake and indeed overrun those original primary Acts. Therefore, my first question is how such Acts can be so easily set aside and whether one should reconsider the way in which consultation on legislation takes place.

My second and only other question concerns the impact of the Localism Bill. Those of us who care about the forests have now established that this legislation was very unwise. However, I am not clear whether that Bill will insist that decisions on forests are taken at the most local level. The regions where the feeling is greatest are the ones that are most closely related to the forests on which they depend. That is probably where the decisions should be taken, rather than statutory proposals being made centrally.

Let us bear in mind the lessons of this Bill—the deep lessons of how the British public hold forests as very dear and very important—and let us make sure that, when the Localism Bill emerges, there will be no attempt to go back to central control over the future of the forests.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, to save time, I shall spare your Lordships my musings on my ramblings around the Forest of Dean which I enjoyed over two days last week. However, like the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, I want to ask a question about the Localism Bill. When I was the Forestry Minister, I was pleased to agree with my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper—when she was at the Department for Communities and Local Government—planning policy statement 9, which protected biodiversity in forests. In the context of the changes to the planning system that are also in the Localism Bill, how will those protections to biodiversity, which I know the Minister holds dear, be retained?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask one question on Scotland. Before anyone jumps up and says that this legislation does not affect the forests in Scotland, I acknowledge that it does not. However, as the headquarters of the UK Forestry Commission are in Scotland, the legislation could, as I understand it, have a significant effect on Scotland. The original proposals involved a substantial loss of jobs at Silvan House in Corstorphine. Now that there has been a U-turn and the Forestry Commission is to continue with its responsibilities for forests in England, will all the jobs held by people who are administering and dealing with the English forests be retained at Corstorphine in Edinburgh? As I understand it, no announcement has been made about a U-turn on the jobs. It was announced that 150 jobs would be lost at Corstorphine in Edinburgh, but that would seem a strange thing to do in the light of the announcement of a policy U-turn. It seems that the jobs in Edinburgh will still be necessary to carry out the tasks that have been done very well for many years.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

That is probably a belated intervention on the Minister if he wishes to answer it. One of my questions concerned what would happen to the board and whether and how it would be reconstituted.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, specifically on that question on the board, if the Minister is minded to comment further, it would be interesting to know, if the board is to continue, what sort of remuneration it would have for what purpose, if the Minister is now to be much more accountable and have that proper oversight.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

If the Minister wants to pick up those points now, perhaps I can come back to my points later.

[Lord Freud]

We want to move to the new arrangements as soon as we can. The details of the arrangements for the agency will be elaborated on, but our intention is basically to leave the CMEC structure unaffected. The accountability point is much more political. I imagine that it would delight any Opposition, and slightly worry any Minister, to be directly responsible for what this very important agency does. That is the key difference. There is direct accountability for what is happening across these Dispatch Boxes and, of course, those in another place. We think that that is right, given the very many millions of parents and children affected. The figure is not quite 10 million on my count but it is getting on for that. For that reason, it is vital that there is direct political responsibility.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I wonder if I might assist the Committee. We are in Committee and we try to enable as much discussion and latitude as possible. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, may not be aware that the procedure is that, once the Minister has concluded his answer, and then the person moving the amendment seeks to sum up and decide what to do with the amendment, the Minister should not then be subject to further questioning. Naturally, the Minister has wanted to assist the Committee as much as possible but the noble Lord has trespassed a little far on our usual procedures. I invite the Minister not to comment further. However, I am sure that, like all Ministers—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, used to do when she was a Minister—he will be pleased to consider constructive discussions between now and Report.

--- Later in debate ---

My final question is the one that I started with. Is this just about doing the same thing in a different, perhaps better, way: and will the Minister tell us which of the existing functions of the Commission for Rural Communities will not be performed in future? That is the crunch point. I beg to move.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I was very pleased to put my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I pay tribute to him for the way in which he is scrutinising this Bill, and in particular the arm's-length bodies in the Defra family, as we lovingly call it. My interest in this is as the midwife of the Commission for Rural Communities. I was the Rural Affairs Minister responsible for the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill, and for the creation of the Commission for Rural Communities in 2005.

For noble Lords who are not familiar with the subject, I will give a potted history. In 1999, the Countryside Agency was established out of the Rural Development Commission and the Countryside Commission. It was ably headed by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who also served as the rural advocate. Just prior to my taking over from Alun Michael as Rural Affairs Minister, Stuart Burgess was asked to take over the rural advocate’s responsibilities. At the same time, the recommendations of the review carried out in 2003 by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, were being implemented through the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill that I was pleased to steward through Parliament. The Bill took English Nature, a rural development service within Defra and the Countryside Agency, and created from those three bodies Natural England. A small element around rural advocacy was retained as the Commission for Rural Communities.

After some searching around the real estate of government, it found a home in Cheltenham, which was where the Countryside Agency had been. On the longest day of 2005—23 June—we debated at length in Committee primary legislation that would create the Commission for Rural Communities. It is ironic that five years later, on the shortest day of the year, we are now debating its demise. Currently it has just over 60 staff based in Cheltenham, and a budget just shy of £6 million. As we have heard, its closure was announced in June. Looking through the local press cuttings, it is notable that the Member of Parliament for Cheltenham, Martin Horwood, said back in June:

“There hasn’t been any obvious consultation and I think it leaves questions unanswered about how important independent roles are going to be fulfilled”.

I think that the Liberal Democrat Member for Cheltenham puts his finger on the need for independent advocacy and independent rural-proofing, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, echoes his questions about how those functions will now be performed if the Commission for Rural Communities is allowed to go.

When I was thinking about this debate today, I also noticed a fine article in the Daily Telegraph—not a paper that I normally peruse with great interest—of 2 July this year by Geoffrey Lean, who is easily the longest-serving environment correspondent writing in any of our national newspapers. He has been following these issues for a considerable number of years. I think it is worth quoting some of the things that he said in that article. I know that it may not be the most popular newspaper today among the government Front Benches but in an article headed “The countryside will be the poorer” Geoffrey Lean says:

“Think about poverty in Britain, and the mind jumps to grim inner-city estates. But deprivation can be just as great amid some of the loveliest landscapes. About one in five rural families live beneath the poverty line, a rate increasing three times as fast as in the cities”.

He goes on:

“The commission’s job was to tackle this. It could, perhaps, have done so more dynamically—and it could have sold itself better—but it did make a difference ... It produced regular State of the Countryside reports—the last, as it happens, comes out next week”—

this was written in July—

“keeping a focus on rural poverty. And it persuaded the last government to stump up £180 million to maintain village post offices and enable them to provide banking services, and to propose a 50p tax on all phone bills to finance rural broadband. Now, a coalition of two parties that traditionally represented the countryside is betraying it. First to go was the broadband tax, scrapped in George Osborne’s Budget. And now Ms Spelman has killed off the commission”.

He finishes:

“This will save money—but not a great deal. The £3.5 million a year won’t help much towards the £750 million reduction in the department’s budget demanded by the Chancellor, and seems outweighed by the cost to the countryside … So who will speak for the countryside? The Conservative and Lib Dem backbenches, perhaps? But many of the Tory knights of the shire have retired behind their moats, leaving the party more Bullingdon than bucolic, while their coalition partners seem cowed by power. The NFU, and the Country Land and Business Association, are effective, but represent sectional interests as, in a different way, does the Countryside Alliance. And the much diminished Campaign to Protect Rural England has disbanded its rural policy team”.

Finally, there is a quotation in the article from Tim Farron:

“’The role of somebody outside government to look at rural policy and decisions taken by all departments is very, very important’”.

I could not say that better. I apologise for reading to your Lordships from the Daily Telegraph at such length but I think that Geoffrey Lean makes a really good argument.

It is true that at times the Commission for Rural Communities has not pulled its punches—sometimes, I am afraid, at the expense of the Government of whom I was proud to be a member until May of this year. I found a cutting from the Times—this must have been before the paywall was invented because it is dated 6 June 2008—on the report by Stuart Burgess as the rural advocate. The report states bluntly:

“Rural issues are given little recognition in keynote speeches, only passing reference in policy papers, and rare places on platforms of major economic and regeneration conferences. Urban-based officials and organisations are rarely challenged to upgrade their understanding and commitment to the substantial rural part of the national economy”.

Stuart Burgess and his lean team of staff based in Cheltenham did an admirable job in holding us to account. It is great to see the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in his place as a schools Minister. Stuart would regularly come to see me, encouraging me to ensure that the rural schools group established by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, was allowed to continue and to ensure that I attended it and listened to what it had to say. He was also keen to ensure that we properly rural-proofed what we were doing in education, that the presumption in favour of keeping rural schools would be retained, and that things such as the academic broadband network that schools are able to take advantage of could be piggy-backed to help to tackle the rural broadband issues that the Commission for Rural Communities was so keen to advocate.

I have a document from the commission dated 11 May 2010 which lists some of the successes of 2009-10 alone. They relate to areas such as affordable rural housing, fuel poverty, climate change, transport, digital communications, health, post offices, financial inclusion and market towns. There is a whole list of areas where the commission has been active, has been reporting and has been challenging the Government to do their job. That should be allowed to continue. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will be assertive and perhaps even put it to a vote and challenge the government on this, if not now, then at some future point. This is a commission that the Government can and should be proud of and should allow to continue.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that I have given sufficient reassurance to the Committee—I think that it is fairly obvious—that we are committed to rural people and rural communities. The department will continue to do all it can for them, but we will also continue to pay tribute to the commitment of, and quality of work undertaken by, the CRC, midwifed by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, some years ago. However, I think that its time has come—

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords—

[Lord Henley]

I will give way to the noble Lord when I have finished that sentence. It is my right to decide when I give way. I pay tribute to the work of the Commission for Rural Communities during the past four years, but I think that its time has come.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

Will the noble Lord also pay tribute to the work of the rural advocate and address the points made by all speakers in this debate about the importance of having a voice for rural England that is independent of government? Does he think that that role should continue, even if the other functions can be absorbed within his rural policy unit?

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord looks for an independent rural advocate. I do not think that we will be short of any number of independent rural advocates or that they necessarily need to be government funded. He referred in terms of environmental matters to Geoffrey Lean. There are many others who will offer us advice and make their views known, as will the noble Lord himself, this House and another place. I can assure the noble Lord that we will not be short of advice. I therefore hope that my noble friend Lord Greaves will consider withdrawing his amendment.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

I shall raise just one other point. The way in which this is listed suggests that the equivalent advisory committee for Northern Ireland is also abolished in the same paragraph. Both agriculture and environment are devolved matters in Northern Ireland. I do not quite understand why they are therefore on the agenda for abolition in the Westminster Parliament when the Northern Ireland Assembly is surely the body which should decide whether that body should continue to exist or otherwise. That is a relatively minor point, but it is important for the farming community of Northern Ireland. I hope that the noble Lord will give us an indication of why we are dealing with that committee here. I beg to move.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Whitty. I, too, am a former Minister at Defra, although we did not manage to coincide: I came after my noble friend moved on to other things. The points that he makes in his speech and through his amendments are important. On looking at the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances, I see that the intention is for it to become a committee of experts working directly to the department. At one level, the difference between having it as a non-departmental public body or having it internalised within Defra looks fairly finely balanced, if the same people are providing advice on the same sorts of things to the same Ministers. Indeed, I note from the website that the secretariat to the NDPB is within Defra anyway. On all those levels it might not make much difference. I would be interested in the Minister’s response as to how much financial saving might be made in terms of these changes to these two committees so that we can judge whether that is part of the motivation.

In the end when I looked at it and tried to understand why these changes were thought necessary for Defra, like my noble friend I concluded that it must be something to do with the arm’s-length nature and the independence of the scientific advice. In that respect, this is a very important principle around whether or not that scientific advice should be independent of any other interests within the department. My experience from a year within Defra is that there are considerable, highly vocal, well organised interests that exercise Ministers and it is helpful at times to be able to have that independence.

By way of illustrating it, I refer to a story not from this country but from India around what happened to the vulture population, which collapsed by about 95 per cent in a very short period. As a result of having very few vultures to feed off the carcasses of cattle that were left out for the vultures because of the cultural issues in India around cattle, there was a population explosion of feral dogs in India—about 5.5 million more than usual—because they had this free food to sup on. And as a result of more feral dogs, more people were getting bitten. It is estimated that just under 50,000 more people died of rabies in India because of this explosion in the feral dog population. Meanwhile, others suffered from leopards attacking urban areas because the leopards expanded in population in order to pursue the dogs. In the end people were obviously concerned as to why the vultures had died. It came down to the improper use of chemicals—of diclofenac, the anti-inflammatory drug that was being fed to cattle by farmers, perfectly innocently, but which caused instant renal failure within the vulture population. It is the most extraordinary example of how an ecosystem can work and have an impact on a human population as well as on biodiversity, and indeed it is a fantastic example of the importance of biodiversity to us wherever we are in the world. But it is equally an important example of how agricultural vested interests should be kept separate from analysis of chemicals and pesticides.

I am not suggesting we might have that scenario playing out here, but you never know. I put it to the Minister, in using that example, that independent scientific advice at arm’s length is lost at a cost. If he could tell us what the saving is, if that is the motivation, then I am sure we would be very grateful.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, my noble friends have set out very well the argument against the abolition of the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances and the Advisory Committee on Pesticides.

I compare the proposed abolition of the two committees with the recently announced cancellation of the Food Standards Agency. To a non-scientist like me, such abolition can only mean that in future people’s diets in schools and elsewhere will be more controlled by the burger manufacturers. Ours is the second most obese country in the world after the United States of America, but that situation looks like it will only get worse rather than better. If the Government’s intention in abolishing the committees is to have less government and to allow the industry to take its course, there will clearly be a risk that the manufacturers of these products—nasty or otherwise—could populate any committees that the Minister may create with academics who are funded by their companies. There is a great danger that we could end up in a similar situation to the one that both my noble friends have outlined.

The independence of such committees is absolutely fundamental. I hope that the Minister can give us confidence that their scientific independence will be preserved. As I have said, the precedent of the Food Standards Agency is extremely important. People will probably only get fat and die sooner without the FSA, whereas the abolition of these two committees will probably have a much more urgent effect. However, a similar principle is involved. I look forward to his comments.