Farming on Dartmoor

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) for not just securing this debate and making such a powerful speech but leading the charge for us all in Devon in relation to Dartmoor over the last 12 months. It has been a joy to work with the other three Dartmoor Members of Parliament, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), whose representative on earth, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), is with us this afternoon. All of us have been working together to bring about a better outcome for our farmers and commoners.

I will make a few quick points. It will be difficult enough to balance all the competing interests on Dartmoor. First, there is the importance of access for recreation and leisure, especially post lockdown and given the mental health issues about which we all know very well. Secondly, there are the legitimate rights and interests of landowners—we have heard a bit about that from my right hon. and learned Friend. Thirdly, there are the interests and needs of the farmers and commoners whose families have been farming Dartmoor for generations, and other moor communities. Finally, there is the need to protect and see flourish nature and biodiversity for the long-term sustainability of often overlapping and sometimes competing interests. All of that would be difficult enough to balance if all stakeholders were collaborating and pulling together, working hand in hand towards meeting a set of common goals, but sadly we have not seen that collaborative approach in recent years. Especially in the past three months, it has been very far from that, and Natural England’s heavy-handed, clumsy approach has caused alarm and distress among farming communities the length and breadth of the moor and more widely. My right hon. and learned Friend covered that in some detail.

If Natural England accepts that the situation has been badly handled and now wants to work more collaboratively with other stakeholders, that is hugely to be welcomed and we should look forward, not backwards. However, from my conversations with hill farmers in recent weeks, including two yesterday, it is clear that there has been a breakdown in trust. I will not say that it is irretrievable, but it is serious. I therefore strongly support the call for an independent process to get to the bottom of how we get the balance right and protect the moor without damaging beyond repair the long-established practice of farming on the commons. I hope the Minister will confirm that DEFRA will embrace and facilitate the independent process that all parties appear to have agreed at the meeting on 4 April. It is important that Natural England becomes a trusted partner once again to enable long-term solutions to be found by consensus.

Whatever the Minister says in his response, it is clear that time and space must be given for any changes to be made. I grew up on a dairy farm not far from Dartmoor, and my father milked Channel Island cows—Jerseys and Guernseys in the main. In those days, there was a premium for Channel Island milk—the Minister is probably too young to remember that—because it was creamier, so the Government paid a bit more for it. I remember the horrible day when the letter came from the then Ministry of Agriculture saying, with little warning, that the premium was going to be removed. I remember my late mother being in tears for days over that, wondering how we would survive. Although the premium was taken away in just a few short months, it took my parents three to four years to change the herd to Friesians, which as most farmers know give an awful lot more milk, to enable them to recover the lost income. It was a tough few years while we transitioned.

Farming is not like manufacturing widgets: farmers cannot just flick a switch and increase or reduce production levels overnight. If we are going to ask farmers to reduce stocking levels, once the case has been made, there has to be time for transition. If possible, the existing agri-environment agreement should be left in place while the independent process is carried out. Many of the five-year HLS agreements are coming to an end over the next six months or so, so we would like them to be left in place if possible. I hope the Minister will talk long and hard with his officials about that. If that is not possible legally, I strongly support the “one plus four” proposals that were discussed at the 4 April meeting.

Whatever happens, the process must be evidence based. The farmers need to see Natural England’s workings. What is it basing its assumptions on? It must be related to Dartmoor, not to moorlands further north—I am sure they are wonderful, but Dartmoor is its own complex ecosystem, so we need statistics and evidence gathered from Dartmoor.

Finally, I hope that out of the stress of the past few months—it has been stressful for many of our constituents—an exemplar for the future will emerge. We were promised that, once we left the EU and the common agricultural policy, our support for farmers would be less bureaucratic and more tailor-made and farmer-friendly. Perhaps the jury is still out on that, but if in the months ahead genuine dialogue is undertaken with all the interested parties and agreement is reached about the long-term benefits to nature and communities on Dartmoor, that model could be built on for other communities. This has been a crisis, but out of it can come an opportunity. I urge our widely respected farming Minister to play his part in making that come about.