Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Greaves

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I enthusiastically added my name to the amendment proposed so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I also enthusiastically support the whole amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, who is an expert in this subject.

What the noble Lord, Lord Judd, is really talking about is not just agricultural workers, but the future health and prosperity of villages. In much of south-eastern England, villages have effectively been turned into dormitory settlements for some time. The same process, particularly together with people retiring, is happening in the rest of England. If we really want viable, thriving, multigenerational communities that can support schools, shops and so on in villages throughout England then we have to have housing that ordinary young people can occupy when they get together, get married and so on, otherwise they will be forced out into the towns and lost for ever, and the villages will become older and older. We see that process happening all over the place.

Not everything that Baroness Thatcher’s Government did was a disaster, but one of their great disasters was the right to buy in rural areas. Every village used to have its own little council estate, as well as little cottages that provided for young people and what I call ordinary people—working-class rural folk. They have almost all gone; a few places were lucky and were allowed to except themselves.

Some 46 years ago I became the chairman of the housing committee in Pendle. In one village there was a little settlement of two rows of cottages owned by the water board, which had let them go derelict. It was going to demolish them because they were of no use to it anymore. I managed to get the council to buy and renovate them. By working with the parish council and the WI in that village, we made sure that they were available to rent for local people. Then came the right to buy. I am still proud of the fact that, as a result of what I did, that wonderful little settlement still exists and was not knocked down but, unfortunately, it is all now owner-occupied and selling for extraordinary high prices by east Lancashire standards.

Something has to be done about this. I believe that a new generation of rural housing to rent at affordable prices should be an absolute priority for a Government. Having said that, this issue is not for this Bill, but for other action by the Government, but Governments of all kinds have not taken this seriously for years.

The only other thing I will say on this is that the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, refers to seasonal workers. There are a lot of people going around now saying it is dreadful that people in this country are too lazy, too fat or whatever it is to pick strawberries, plant cabbages or whatever they might be required to do. I do not think that is the problem at all. The problem is that, for young people setting off and making their lives, seasonal work by its very nature is not attractive. They want qualifications and training, as in this amendment, and jobs—not jobs for life, because they have gone, but nevertheless skills and qualifications that will lead them to a secure career and the ability to get jobs throughout their lives. Going to pick potatoes in potato-picking season simply does not do that.

I believe that the future for seasonal work is to reduce a large amount of it by introducing far more robots and mechanisation into the countryside. That may be what the parts of the Bill concerning productivity are all about, I do not know; perhaps the Minister can tell us. I also believe that if that happens, it may be possible to turn some of that seasonal labour—I say some of it; perhaps not a very high proportion—into permanent full-time jobs. Perhaps that would be not for the farmers themselves, but for the contracting companies providing the labour and the machinery to do different things at different times of the year. That is the kind of strategic approach that we want.

I do not know whether the noble Baroness’s strategy thinks along those lines, nor whether the Government are thinking about a strategy for this, or whether they are just panicking about the fact that fruit will go unpicked this year, next year or whenever, but that kind of strategic view is what is required. It is a very good reason to pass the amendment so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I can be reasonably brief because my noble friend Lady Jones introduced her amendment so comprehensively. I also support the amendment from my noble friend Lord Judd.

A new British agricultural policy requires a new sort of agricultural and horticultural workforce that is more highly skilled, with differential skills but nevertheless better skills and qualifications recognised, and with a more permanent existence. We certainly do not require a reliance on gangmasters and seasonal workers imported temporarily from overseas.

It has been a mistake to rely so heavily on overseas labour for our agricultural workforce. It has been a mistake to cut back on agricultural and horticultural training. It has been a mistake to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, which I strongly opposed at the time. It has been a mistake not to use the powers introduced in legislation in my time at Defra to enforce proper standards where there are gangmasters. There are some decent gangmasters, but the Covid episode has shown that many workers in this sector, both agriculture and the processing industries, are treated appallingly and housed in terrible conditions, which in some cases has thrown up problems with the spread of Covid. There have been a number of mistakes and we are not starting from a good position.

The new form of agricultural policy throws up a lot of new challenges that will need flexibility, higher skills and better management, but we have a chance to rectify this. The terms of the amendment set out a framework for a much more substantial strategy to recognise and update the skills of the workforce that we will require. Without it, we will not deliver a brave new world of English agriculture or a better impact by agriculture on our environment and our countryside. I strongly support the amendment; indeed, I regard it as an essential part of the Bill and of our future strategy.

Public Bodies (Abolition of Environment Protection Advisory Committees) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as a shortly-to-be-retiring—I regret—member of the board of the Environment Agency. In that context, I thank the Minister very much for his remarks about the performance of the agency staff during the great difficulty of having four or five serious flood instances in different parts of the country at more or less the same time, which is, thank God, a pretty unusual event. I think that the agency delivered.

I also need to inform the Minister that to some extent I am here to represent my noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury, who is chair of the Environment Agency and who apologises for not being here today. Much of what I say reflects his views although, as I am retiring from the board, I can also make my own remarks.

I welcome the changes. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already referred to the rather lengthy proceedings that the Minister had to undergo in his previous capacity during the passage of the Public Bodies Bill, which he no doubt recalls without great nostalgia. The order concerns the sole part of the Bill to which I did not object. That is because, in this instance, a statutory structure is not necessarily the best way to carry out partnership, share information and mobilise members outside the agency. It is important that the work of the advisory committees is recognised. The people who have served on them have given stalwart service and have tried to represent the interests involved in delivering environmental and fishery outcomes but also to feed back information from the agency to those bodies.

However, there are probably better and certainly more flexible ways to do that which are more nimble and able to move with the times. I have some slight sympathy with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, of the more advanced forms of social media— I am not entirely in front of the curve myself on that—but, in this area, the social media used in their broadest sense are a useful means of communication about flooding but also in more day-to-day environmental problems in mobilising those who are interested from public agencies, private citizens and organisations. The response time for using social media is much faster than with more traditional methods of communication.

When Defra consulted on that, there was not a huge number of responses. Of those who responded, those for and against were more or less in balance. There was a distinct negative balance in the north-west—as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will be pleased to hear. That is not necessarily because they are more stroppy in the north-west. The agency has therefore taken steps to address the situation in the north-west, including a proactive use of social media. I think that it is true to say that most organisations in the north-west are now satisfied that the new forms of consultation will be an adequate replacement.

In my own area, which is the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, the Environment Agency has developed from a situation a few years ago where it was not seen as the most user-friendly organisation to having much more constructive relationships with organisations involved in these fields. For example, people will know that fishermen are not necessarily the easiest people to engage with, particularly if one is from a public body, but the relationship between the agency and the organisations involved in fisheries in the south-west has become very positive on the salmon, trout and coarse fishing side. We have for some time had a fisheries forum. That will be built upon and the relationships at different, more local levels will replace the rather centralised operation of the advisory committees. The situation is similar with the rivers and the river trusts in the area. Indeed, I am aware that in some areas the river trusts are taking on some responsibilities from the agency.

The abolished committees, while they were useful, are likely to be replaced by something more positive that will deliver the environmental outcomes that we all seek, whether it is on the electronic consultation and social media side or, possibly more importantly, the overall engagement. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, also objects to some of the conceptual terms in there, which I do not entirely dissent from. However, there is a degree of empowerment here. Bodies on the ground are taking responsibility in keeping the agency informed and being guided by the agency in dealing with incidents. For example, on rivers where there are not major flooding incidents, it takes first-line responsibility. That is quite important.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I wish to make it clear that it is not the process that I object to, it is the words used to describe it.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I probably share that view. However, the reality is that it allows more people to be engaged and to take responsibility. To that extent, I share the objectives of the Government. The only note of caution I introduce is that the processes of engagement, empowerment and partnership—all abstract terms but in day-to-day terms they mean talking to people a lot more and in a lot more detail and probably for longer than sending out signals from the centre—are time-consuming and therefore staff resources-consuming and, to some extent, money-consuming.

In other words, the big society—if one was to call it that—is not costless. In some ways, it may be more costly than more centrally directed activities and institutionalised responsibilities. At the worst end under the old system, a member of staff might well worry about the advisory committee a month before it is due to meet and write appropriate papers and probably get a decent outcome. However, this requires a year-long engagement with the bodies that are represented on those committees. So, from the point of view of agency staff resources, this does not really save money. I know its primary aim is not to save money but to come up with a better system but, nevertheless, the Explanatory Note suggests that some of the formal money will be saved. It will not be saved. It will be deployed in a more effective way and there will be, if anything, more pressure on staff than under the old system. Subject to that caveat and the fact that we will at some point review these proceedings and changes to see if they are working, I support the Minister in these orders.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

I echo everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has just said. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has raised some extremely important issues and hit some serious problems at the heart of the Bill. I am not sure that his solution is the right one, but it needs discussion. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, in not in her place because she made the important point that the meaning of the phrase “public health” has evolved over the years. The core Public Health Act 1936 was about the role of local authorities in relation to public health and what we now call environmental health.

In the 1974 local government reorganisation, public health functions were split. Half went to the health service, the other half remained with local government, and the phrases “environmental health” and “environmental health officers” were largely invented at that time to distinguish the new environmental health service from what had previously been public health. Of course, in two-tier authorities environmental health is a function of the lower-tier authority.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made a very important point. We have some amendments coming up, probably in a few hours’ time, when we will discuss this, so I will not say a great deal more about that now except to make the basic point that it is very important indeed that environmental health functions, which already rest with unitary authorities but in county and district areas will rest with district authorities, are properly integrated with the rest of the public health function.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, the things that environmental health officers and departments do are astonishingly varied. If a problem is clearly a public health or environmental health problem, they will find the expertise, go out and get expert advice if it does not exist within that authority, and tackle it. It is a very important function indeed. However, at the national level, environmental health, as defined in the Local Government Act 1974, rests with the Department for Communities and Local Government, not with the Department of Health. It probably ought to rest with the DCLG because it is very clearly a local government function, but again, at the national level, the Government need to take action to integrate it into the new, very important public health functions of the Secretary of State.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has said, I have an amendment in this group that is precisely the same as his, except that it was directed at a different point. My noble friend has made a strong case for this particular dimension of addressing environmental health issues, but there is also the wider issue of the lacuna in the Bill, as has been touched on. There is one major shift that the White Paper, the post-pause White Paper and now the Bill are driving for: the shift of public health, including environmental health, to local authorities. However, the Bill itself reflects very little of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, in response to the group of amendments before last, referred to the fact that work was being done on it and said that she hoped this would see the light of day fairly soon.

The establishment of Public Health England as part of the department-cum-executive agency is hardly reflected in this Bill at all. The issues that relate to the respective role of the local authorities, to which my noble friend Lord Greaves has referred, are not reflected in this Bill at all. We have a major shift, going back to pre-1974, that makes public health the responsibility of local authorities. We have a recent history in which all the expertise in environmental health departments has been seriously squeezed because the requirements are mostly non-statutory. EHOs have been diverted on to other issues. We are coming into a further famine of local authority funding. The local authorities will be receiving this new public health responsibility at a time when their total resources are being squeezed and restricted and other priorities are impinging.

Before this Bill completes its course, we need greater clarity on how public health and environmental health responsibilities are to be carried out; what the structure of them is going to be; what the co-ordination among local authorities, and from the centre to the local authorities, is going to be; what the exact role of Public Health England is going to be; and, frankly, at least some broad indication of how that is being resourced.

[Lord Greaves]

The noble Lord raised the question of funding. Does he agree that this will perhaps be exacerbated in two-tier areas because the ring-fenced public health funding will go to the top-tier authorities, whereas the environmental health functions will remain with the lower-tier authorities—which indeed are extremely squeezed on their funding because this is what we call “other services”, which are not regarded as a priority—and finding a way of getting some of that funding down to the lower-tier environmental health authorities is a question that needs to be looked at?

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene now to ask the Minister to say, when he is winding up, what happens if the local authority does not do what it is supposed to do? It is not impossible. In fact, there is a great variety, as we sit here today, in the performance of local authorities. They are managed by elected members, who want to please their electorates, so there are all sorts of arguments for thinking that not every local authority is going to be very enthusiastic about these additional objectives.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

I entirely accept that. However, in my experience, not all housing associations are the same and some do this better than others, which is inevitable with any type of organisation. In a sense, if there are housing associations or social landlords that do not do it quite as well as the organisation in which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is involved, that is an even more important reason why tenants should be able to go to the housing ombudsman as easily and quickly as possible.

Like my noble friend, we on these Benches would have preferred that this proposal from the Government was not in this Bill. It seems to go back to a local government ombudsman system that, as noble Lords have said, used to exist in local government but that, frankly, was not necessary and in some cases was harmful. There is no doubt whatever that on some occasions councillors used to find reasons not to pass complaints on or tried to persuade people not to pursue them. I always took the view that unless it was clearly vexatious I would automatically pass it on, even on one occasion when it concerned a complaint against the borough council about a housing matter in which I had been closely involved. I was chairman of the housing committee and I still said, “I will pass it on because it is right and proper that it gets dealt with”.

At Lancashire County Council, on one occasion I made a complaint against the education authority. Shortly after, I went to a reception of important people at county hall in Preston. As soon as I walked in the room, the then education officer came bounding across the room and at the top of his voice tore a strip off me for daring to question the reputation and organisation of that education authority. He then marched back to the other side of the room. I was much younger and a bit more timid than I am now but I still marched after him and, in an equally loud voice, tore a strip off him and told him that he was undermining democracy. In a sense, I should not have had to be there as part of that system. The people involved should have been able to go direct.

Along with other noble Lords, I think, around the Chamber, we have had quite a few discussions with members of the Government, particularly with Grant Shapps, who I believe is in charge of the housing parts of this Bill. We came to the view that we might win the argument but would not win the process of this legislation of removing these parts of the Bill or of putting in an amendment along the lines of that proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, which I would otherwise strongly support.

To help the Government, in these discussions we are looking for some compromise that at the very least provides a backstop so that, if any of these designated persons are not helpful and try to resist or are just incompetent in passing on a complaint, the tenant can nevertheless go direct to the housing ombudsman. It is a slightly messy process and it is not as good as now, but it can work and at the very least would maintain their right to go direct to make the complaint, even if someone else tries to persuade them otherwise or to block it.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, does not the noble Lord accept that if a tenant has reservations about their circumstances, which may be very personal, it is not just a question of whether if they go to them they may be rebuffed, but that they would be seriously inhibited about going to their councillor or their tenants’ panel, or possibly even their MP, in the first place? We should take that into account.