Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 Committee Report

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I make a couple of declarations of interest: I am a director of Anchorwood Developments Ltd and a board member of the Marine Management Organisation. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on his chairmanship of the committee, on the report and on the excellent work that he has done over the years in this area. It is very good that he took on the role of chairman of the committee, and I thank him.

I had almost forgotten about the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, but it was a landmark piece of legislation 12 years ago, followed by the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Marine and Coastal Access Act, which I think was passed the year after that. This trilogy of legislation has been very important for our environment and now is absolutely the right time to consider it again. It is not so much that it is deficient but, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, time has moved on.

I live in rural Cornwall. We do not feel sorry for ourselves. We are not there as a charity part of the country. We are proud of being rural and believe that we contribute a great deal not just to the national economy but the social fabric of the nation. I was on a Local Government Association working party on the rural economy. A statistic that struck me was that non-metropolitan England had a greater proportion of GDP than metropolitan areas. Clearly, not all of that is rural, but we should be aware that this is not an economic backwater or hinterland.

Some really important messages came from the report. One, as other noble Lords have said, is that government intervention in this area—whether we think that that is good or bad—has declined. The Commission for Rural Communities and the rural advocate disappeared—during the coalition Government, I must say. I dealt regularly with the rural communities policy unit as the predecessor to the right reverend Prelate on the Rural Coalition. They were very committed people in that unit and it was quite effective—perhaps not as effective as the CRC; it did not have the independence, power and research ability—but even that disappeared.

I remember the role of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, looking at rural proofing some years ago. He brought a number of noble Lords with him to departments—I think it was a Cabinet Office or a No. 10 exercise—to find out what was happening. I was staggered. He managed to keep a straight face, but when he was in front of non-Defra departments, so often there was the response, “What’s rural proofing?”, or, “Yes, I’m sure we do something in that area”, but it was very diluted and unfocused. I was very pleased that the committee came up with recommendations about that.

Rural Britain—rural England—has suffered many pressures recently, and several of them have been recognised. On the subject of rural buses and roads, I was out this morning cycling. I left at 5.46 am. I noticed that all down my very rural road, yellow markings had appeared. I am delighted to say, as a compliment to local government and the Government, that they were to replace potholes with actual surface, which is starting to happen, but only just in time before those roads get even worse.

I was really pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, mentioned housing, because rural housing is so important. We have had a crisis, which continues, because of the broadening right-to-buy legislation passed when the Conservative Government took effect post 2010. There is still suspicion by landowners that if they donate land at agricultural value to housing associations, other people will benefit financially in the long term as they come out of affordable housing services.

And, of course, there are Defra budgets. We know that Defra, along with the former DCLG, is always the department hit first in terms of budget cuts. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about protecting the Defra family, but when your budgets are cut by some 18% to 20%, you have to streamline your overheads. That, too, leads to a slight undermining of the independence of non-departmental public bodies within that area.

Biodiversity is such an important part of the report. We know that in Britain biodiversity is getting more difficult. We have increasing challenges from climate change. I know that the Minister is very concerned about invasive species—these are all threats to the fabric to our rural communities.

One thing that noble Lords have not mentioned, which I was very pleased to see in the report, was national trails and their funding. These are a fantastic means of access to the countryside, used by so many for tourism and exercise. That access through those national trails is crucial. Are there ways in which, as the report suggests, maybe through sponsorship or other means, we can make sure that what is truly a national treasure—our national trails—are kept?

The report says that certain areas are getting better. We now have a 25-year environmental plan, which is an important strategy, primarily for England. I hope that Scotland and the other devolved authorities will be able to go along with that in a parallel fashion. It is key that that plan has a statutory basis to it as it is developed. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what the next concrete step is to make many of those important aspirations take effect, as that affects rural communities so much.

We have moved on to the concept of natural capital. Dieter Helm, whom I would describe as the Government’s favourite guru, has moved out of energy into natural capital—and they are still digesting his energy report, because he has some big asks there. On the rural side and natural capital, it is excellent, and we all applaud it; but we have to remember, as other noble Lords have said, that those concepts have not really been tested to destruction in any way, and putting values on a number of the areas of the natural environment is very difficult. But we look at that with optimism and hope that it happens.

We have a Secretary of State who champions the environment very strongly—let us be clear about that—and all the areas of biodiversity. I also benefit from having broadband fibre right to my house, which is increasingly permeating rural communities, although I suspect that a number of Members of this House do not have that yet, and probably not in urban areas either. But that is improving.

What we welcome from these Benches is the report’s suggested removal of rural affairs from Defra. As noble Lords have said, the challenges for Defra over the next few years are huge, in terms particularly of Brexit, fisheries legislation, farming and agriculture, along with the environmental area and all those other streams. Some 3,000 pieces of legislation will have to be brought on to the UK statute book. I am sad to say that the track record, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, shows Defra having not performed and having retreated from this function. It naturally fits within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and clearly needs to go there.

The issue in the report that is most important for our future, on the environmental side, is—as my noble friend Lady Parminter and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, have said—the need for tough environmental enforcement post Brexit. That is a key challenge. There is zero doubt that government departments take notice of European Commission threats of infraction proceedings in the European Court of Justice, and that has made a very significant difference in terms of our enforcing environmental legislation in the past. We are starting to see that on the clean air side and in other areas as well. We also need to strengthen the biodiversity duty, as has been said.

On rural proofing, from my experience of having accompanied the noble Lord to departments on the issue, I think that that has to be done within the Cabinet Office. That is the natural way for it to go.

On the need for a long-term funding strategy for national trails, that is something that I really appreciate myself, and I know that visitors to the south-west do as well.

This is an excellent report. I hope that the Government will take forward its many and diverse recommendations, which over time, when the consultations finish, could be much strengthened. However, given the governance gap on environmental enforcement, we will need a robust, independent organisation, with teeth, post Brexit—that is absolutely clear.