Rural Communities: Prince’s Countryside Fund

Earl of Arran Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Arran]

My Lords, one of the advantages in speaking for four minutes somewhat late in the debate is that you do not have too long to bore your Lordships by being too repetitive. Much of what I am about to say has been said, and I shall be very brief in my repetition.

I, too, begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Gardiner on securing this debate which is timely and topical. I am also grateful to have the opportunity to express publicly the appreciation of the rural community for the remarkable support always given by His Royal Highness. The countryside has never had a more determined champion. I recall only too well those desperately dark days in 2001 when foot and mouth ravaged livestock. I saw at first hand the anguish and fear that gripped farmers in the south-west. It was the Prince of Wales who gave £500,000 to help farming help charities, matched by the Duke of Westminster, which was the catalyst for a fund-raising effort that saved many farmers from ruin and, indeed, suicide.

The help that he has given has always been of the most practical sort, whether it be his Pub is the Hub campaign, his affordable rural housing initiative which I know did much to inform the work on the excellent commission on affordable rural housing by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, or his farmers’ marketing initiatives that from Dartmoor to the Highlands have helped hill farmers to increase their incomes by better marketing of their produce.

The Prince’s Countryside Fund is his most important initiative for the countryside, which is the result of two things. First, he has a unique knowledge of agriculture, particularly of the smaller family farmer and of rural communities. I suspect that few people in this country have sat around more farmhouse kitchen tables than the Prince of Wales—be that with his own Duchy of Cornwall tenants, or as he has travelled the length and breadth of this country. I declare an interest in that my wife is a member of the Prince’s Council which advises the Duchy of Cornwall on rural matters, and she is also a farmer.

Secondly, it is the Prince’s extraordinary power to bring people together that has enabled him to create this alliance with some of the biggest food retailers and food companies—a group not known for co-operation. They have come together because they shared Prince Charles’s belief in the need for a vibrant farming sector and thriving rural communities. They recognise the link between the two and the value that that has to the millions who visit the countryside. They recognise, too, that with the uncertain future we are facing with climate change, we need farmers to farm as long as it is done in a sustainable way so that we are not overly dependent on imports. Already, the fund is making a difference, such as funding apprenticeships for young hill farmers in Cumbria and teaching farmers in County Durham to use computers so that they can better cope with the bureaucratic demands made on them.

I can only congratulate those companies that are the founder supporters of the fund, particularly Waitrose whose managing director, Mark Price, who many of your Lordships have already mentioned, is the chairman of the fund’s trustees and, of course, Duchy Originals. I am delighted that the south-west business community is represented through Ginsters Cornish pasties, and that CountryLife butter, made no doubt with milk from the diary farmers of the south-west, is among the supporters. We can now see the Prince’s Countryside Fund logo on the packs and it looks very good indeed.

The fund stands at £1 million, which is an excellent start, but I hope to see other companies recognising the responsibility that they have to secure the future of farming and rural communities. The point was made by my noble friend Lord Inglewood and I, too, urge the banks, insurance companies, estate agents, lawyers, country clothing companies, agricultural suppliers and valuers to step up to the plate. No doubt the hospitality sector can play its part too, let alone individuals and community organisations. While it is encouraging that Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, ASDA and Morrisons support the fund, there are some notable absentees among the big retailers. Surely nothing could say more about a company’s support for British farming than its decision to back this fund.

Our countryside is a fundamental part of what makes this country what it is. We depend on it for our food, leisure and increasingly, for the management of carbon and water. As concrete steals across the western world and disease and climate change remain a constant worry, agriculture suffers. Food and its scarcity assume ever increasing priority. For too long agriculture has been neglected by those in power. This must change. The Prince’s Countryside Fund shows how that can be done. Let us congratulate the Prince of Wales and do all that we can to support this fund.