Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 Committee Report

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I join in the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who chaired our committee with great diligence and hard work and also a certain amount of tolerance, because there were some quite significant areas of disagreement within the committee on some of our recommendations.

There is always a debate about what to call these reports. In this case, I personally believe that the countryside is at a crossroads. As we know, British farming has been shaped by the common agricultural policy for 40 years now, as has pretty much every aspect of our environment. Depending on the decisions that we make in the next few years, our countryside could be very different in 20 years’ time. It is about much more than Brexit. Our overall rural policy is not, and never has been, driven by Brussels. The shortcomings in this area are entirely home grown and can be laid at the door of successive Governments. Although I have some serious reservations about rural policy-making, I want to place on record my admiration and support for the Minister, who fulfils his role as rural advocate with enthusiasm, commitment and great knowledge. Nor do I take issue with the civil servants who work for Defra.

However, pretty much all the evidence the committee took demonstrated that something is seriously wrong with rural policy-making, and that these problems are widespread and deep rooted. This has led me to believe that they are less about policy and more about culture, leadership and structure. The committee spent some time discussing the issues of rural policy-making and rural proofing. Indeed, many of our witnesses used those terms interchangeably. This did not help debate, and there is a clear distinction. Rural policy-making is about proposals aimed specifically at rural areas—housing, transport and broadband provision, for example. Rural proofing, on the other hand, is about looking at all legislation and policy through the prism of the countryside to see whether different interventions need to be made to make something better in the countryside.

I will give two examples. Last year, I was involved with the Bus Services Bill as it went through this House. It was heralded as a great breakthrough in the provision of public transport, yet it made not one mention of rural services. When it came, the draft guidance contained just a few lines. After pressure from this House, that was somewhat improved. If rural proofing is as effective as Defra claim in its response to the committee, how on earth did we get a Bus Services Bill which simply ignored rural areas?

My second example is the National Citizens Service, created by the Government last year. During the summer I went to Ipswich to have a look at how the scheme was working. It was an inspiring experience and I am confident that it was very positive for the young people involved. There is a “but” coming: the take-up from the south-west of Suffolk was very poor. Why was that? Because the whole programme has been set up to be delivered on county lines. People who live in the south-west of Suffolk cannot get to Ipswich. Cambridge is only just over the border, but they cannot use it. It is not the policy that is the problem here: it is simply that nobody thought about rural public transport when they set it up.

For rural proofing to be effective, it needs to be embedded in every department. It also needs central oversight and leadership from one department which can reach right across government activity—from health to highways and pensions to potholes. For that reason, I support the recommendation that this activity be carried out by the Cabinet Office, where a small team could build up real expertise in spotting rurality issues and work with the sponsoring departments to put them right. Rural policy making, on the other hand, probably needs to sit within one department. I have never understood why the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government does not include rural communities. Instead, rural policy sits with Defra, alongside farming and the environment, and it is not well served by that, particularly at a time when the department’s focus has to be increasingly on Brexit-related agriculture, fishing, and post-CAP and environmental frameworks.

I live in a very small village and like to look at the census. About 100 years ago, the village was about the same size as it is now. However, virtually everyone in the village worked on the land in some capacity. Now, there is not really anyone who works on the land. Important as the successor to the CAP is, its direct impact on rural communities will actually be pretty modest. Housing, social care, health, public transport and broadband are what matter to rural communities. Not a single one of those is delivered in any way by Defra. It would therefore make sense to move rural communities to HCLG, where it would sit with local government, which is responsible for delivering so much in the way of rural services. It would also be helpful to see rural areas in the context of their neighbouring towns and cities, where the jobs and services are often provided, as well as to see urban areas in the context of their rural hinterlands.

I am not surprised that the Government have rejected this recommendation, but the committee was right to make it. Who knows? It may even happen one day. But for now it puts down a marker that all is far from well. No matter how much the Government protest, if they look at the vast amount of evidence our committee received, they should admit, in private at the very least, that they have much to do if they are to restore the confidence of their key stakeholders.

As I was rereading the Government’s response over the weekend, it struck me that it is pretty much all framed in terms of inputs: how much money is going in, how many people are here, and what mechanisms exist. However, I did not see any focus on the outcomes. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has already pointed out, the Social Mobility Commission has highlighted how the limited social and economic opportunities in rural areas mean that the worst-performing areas are now rural, which we would never have believed.

The Suffolk Community Foundation has done some ground-breaking work in gathering evidence about rural poverty and inequality and the failure to get services. It has produced two reports, called Hidden Needs. I commend them, not so much out of interest in Suffolk, which I recognise is not for everyone, but because it is a good example of how getting into the nitty-gritty of communities can identify some of the problems they now face and, crucially, how you can improve them.

As we have heard, the successive reorganisations have left a gap in evidence and analysis, which is operating to the detriment of rural areas. One of the most telling pieces of evidence was from Hastoe Housing Association, which told us that communities of under 3,000 are no longer monitored for delivery of affordable housing. In other words, there is no data available for rural communities in one of the areas which is most important to their sustainability: affordable housing.

Last week there was another example. The consumer group Which? reported that cash machines are being closed at a rate of 300 per month, and rural areas are particularly badly affected. LINK, which oversees the provision of cash machines, disputes both the number of closures and the impact, but how can we know what is going on if the Government have moved away from ensuring independent analysis and evidence-gathering?

In any event, across the piece, from a wide range of stakeholders, our evidence suggests that community rural stakeholders are far from content with Defra’s performance, and government should listen.