Rural Communities: Prince’s Countryside Fund

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I declare an interest as both president of the Countryside Alliance and a small hill farmer living in a rural community. I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, for having the foresight to put his name down in the ballot for this debate. However, I have to upbraid him with the fact that this debate could have been sustained over five hours and we could all then have had the run of our teeth. We have all had to curtail what we would have liked to say because of the time restraints.

The first thing I want to say is: God bless the Prince of Wales. He is much criticised but thank goodness we have an heir who does not spend his time in waiting without giving a lead when he sees that something is seriously wrong. Something is seriously wrong because the greatest national asset that we possess—our countryside—is being eroded and falling away before our very eyes. I also say how lucky we are that supermarkets, which are so often criticised, have a leader in Mark Price, who has been instrumental in what has been done here. Both he and the Prince deserve great credit for bringing together such an impressive team of business leaders who also care about the countryside.

I do not know where we went wrong but somewhere along the line we stopped explaining to people why the countryside really matters, not just to those who live or work there but to every one of us. During the recent Labour leadership election campaign, I am sorry to say that not one of the candidates in any of the literature I received soliciting my various votes made any mention whatever of the countryside, yet all those people eat and drink, as do every one of us, and every mouthful they take is the direct result of the skill and effort of someone somewhere in the countryside rearing or growing that food, and living for the most part in a rural community. It seemed from the various addresses that there was very much concern about climate change, but the truth of the matter is that if the world population goes on growing a worldwide food shortage is likely to be the earlier of the catastrophes that strike us. Yet we seem to think that, as a rich nation, all we have to do is go out and get our food from somewhere else, and as a result year after year we produce less and less of what we need; I think that the present figure is down to some 41 per cent only.

Rural communities are suffering. The Prince provided us with figures at the launch. Last year farmers in the uplands made an average loss of £3,000 each, and even in the lowlands an average grazing livestock farm made a profit of £1,500, yet they produce superb food and work so hard. We need farms first of all for food. We need them now and will need them even more in the future. Then we need them above all for the landscape, which would not exist if farmers did not do what they do. Without those rural communities, living, working villages would be replaced by scrubland and ghost villages, shuttered and empty outside holiday times.

I agree with every noble Lord who has spoken in this debate, particularly those who spoke about housing, broadband and rural services such as post offices, shops and pubs. All those things are necessary but above all rural people need once again to have control over their way of life. However, in the long term the most important and urgent need that we have—I hope that the Prince’s Fund may be able to help with this—is for education. We are bringing up most of our children in this country with a layer of concrete between them and the earth. We must take the countryside into classrooms and we must get classes out into the countryside so that the next generation will understand better and value more what we have on our doorsteps, which, in my view, as I said, is our greatest national asset.

The countryside matters not just for food, recreation or its different way of life. Each of the leadership candidates spoke repeatedly about the need for change, but at least as important is the need for continuity, which nobody mentioned. The countryside is our continuity. The well loved places, the tranquillity, the feeling of going out there but feeling at home and finding our roots is what gives us a sense of belonging. The countryside is all our yesterdays. Unless we act now, it will no longer be there for the children of tomorrow.