Queen’s Speech

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, brought us passion and poetry, and the noble Lord, Lord Morse, is going to bring formidable financial expertise. I welcome and congratulate them both. I would like to focus on rural communities, for which I had hoped to see more in the gracious Speech but sadly did not. In doing so, I remind the House of my rural and farming interests as set out in the register.

As we know, farming, which of course manages and maintains our landscapes which we all revere, faces a seismic change with a reduction in farm support, the need to find new markets, new overseas competition, potential additional cost burdens imposed by climate change and animal welfare legislation. All of that is against a background of reduced profitability and an ageing population. The threat to the future of the traditional family farm, especially in the uplands, has never been greater and without a government focus to help keep them in business, and help with increasing productivity and diversification, we are going to end up with industrial-scale farming in their place.

We are getting a planning Bill. More houses are clearly needed and some of them have to be built in rural areas. But if we are not to destroy rural communities and their different, special way of life, then that Bill has to show sensitivity to local decisions. New housing in small communities can work well when local people have the final say on where it is to go, how it looks, and if it has a meaningful, affordable element—but not when 200 executive homes are tacked on to a village with no additional infrastructure, adequate transport or suitable roads.

Almost exactly two years ago, a Select Committee of this House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, and containing a number of others, including myself, who have spoken today or are about to speak, published a report on the rural economy. That report recognised the changes and challenges, which are now a reality, but also the opportunities by which the digital revolution, properly encouraged, could transform the rural economy, reverse years of underperformance under successive Governments and improve the quality of life for the nation as a whole. We saw how that could happen ourselves in places where local authorities, planners and a number of rural-minded LEPs—of which there were, sadly, few—could help bring about dynamic new enterprises with locals and newcomers working together yet retain that special and different sense of community.

Our central recommendation was for an urgent, effective rural strategy underpinned by better rural proofing of legislation and delivered through a locally based approach. Two years have gone by and the response so far has been disappointing, to put it very gently. I will give four examples.

In late 2019, the government promised £5 billion for full-fibre broadband everywhere by 2025. In spring 2020, those figures were cut to £1.2 billion and 85%, with no commitment to bring rural areas up to urban standards.

Fourteen recommendations related to the much-hyped UK shared prosperity fund, which was promised way back in 2017. A full consultation was promised in 2018, but no full open consultation has yet taken place.

The first report by Defra on rural proofing has been published, but it deserves no more than three out of 10. In a number of Bills, no such exercise appears to have been performed at all. In others, simply adding the words “and rural” seems to have been considered enough. This was clearly set out in a letter dated 17 March from the noble Lord, Lord McFall, to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, in the respective jobs they then occupied.

Above all, our most central and urgent recommendation for a comprehensive rural strategy was rejected by the Government. Instead, they said that they would be producing their own vision. Two years later, we are still waiting, and I cannot see any sign of it in the gracious Speech. Can the Minister tell us when rural Britain can expect to see that vision become a reality?