Dairy Industry

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Hart

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I might press on now and not take quite so many interventions, because I will cover many of the points that are being made. I fully accept, however, that people will wish to write their press releases soon, so I will try to be as generous as I can.

The industry recognises that overproduction is a problem and affects price. That is a given. The industry also recognises reduced demand as a result of changing buying habits in China and of Russian sanctions. As a consequence, we are in for what one newspaper described as a long period of low prices, without any indication of what those low prices might bottom out at or of how long is “long”. Analysts are already pointing to considerable uncertainty.

There are those, although not—I am glad to say—many of them, who think that all of that can be dealt with through efficiencies in farmers’ production methods. As we have touched on, however, the short notice that people get about their milk prices cannot necessarily be offset by instant cost reduction measures or alterations to milk production methods. Some such alterations might take one, two, three or even more years to take effect, while the price reduction has an instant effect, so that is a simplistic way of addressing the problem.

An additional problem, which I suspect many Members who represent more isolated parts of the UK feel, is that there are limits to the diversification programmes that farmers can enter into. It is not always possible for people to open a suite of holiday units or a farm shop, because they might be two or three miles off the beaten track, have significant planning problems to overcome or be on a tenanted holding, the landlord of which may have a different view of the sort of developments that can be undertaken.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I represent the county with the smallest population, where the point that he is making is particularly apposite. Does he agree that it is utterly important for the Government to provide better guidance on how our co-operatives and producers can come together to get a better contractual relationship with the people who are buying their milk?

[Simon Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for a contribution that I will add to my list of questions for the Minister. He has put his finger right on a problem that particularly affects the more isolated parts of rural Britain.

That all leads conveniently to the issue of supermarkets. The milk price public battleground always centres on the role of retailers, in particular the better known ones. Some 50% of British milk is not traded globally. We talk about global influences, but we must not forget that the other 50% of our milk is not traded globally and that its price is a straightforward consequence of the relationship between UK-based retailers and the processors. The retailers cannot escape criticism by blaming it on the Chinese or the Russians. A lot of the price is about straightforward UK contractual arrangements between two important parts of the chain.

What can the Government and the processors do? There are some long-term proposals and ideas. They are nothing new, and no one in the Chamber will be unaware of them. We must—this is an easy expression to use—continue to strive for and identify new markets. Of course—that is stating the bleeding obvious, some people might say. It cannot be done in a hurry, and it cannot necessarily be done by Government alone; it has to be done by a combination of processors and Government. Identifying and exploiting new markets is of course critical, but it will not solve the problem facing my constituents in the next few weeks.

National Parks (Planning Policy)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Hart

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend second-guesses one of my recommendations. Although elected councillors sit on national park planning authorities, I think members of the public feel that those authorities are still somewhat out of the reach of the normal democratic grasp. That might be an ill-founded belief, but I think that national parks are a law unto themselves and there is no way for people to penetrate the system.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I disagree with him on one point. Northumberland national park is equally as good as, if not better than, Yellowstone or anything else the Americans have to offer, and it is consulting on the £10 million Sill project. Northumberland proposes to create the project with a number of local partners, and it is specifically considering the economic benefits, which surely makes the point that some national parks are considering the wider impact of what they are trying to do.

[Simon Hart]

I am grateful for the third intervention on this point. My hon. Friend is right, but the 1995 Act, which I will quote in a minute, prescribes in law the requirement that where there is conflict between economic and ecological factors, a national park planning authority has to give precedence to the ecological consideration. Whether Northumberland national park is keeping to the letter of the law is a matter for it, but a simple solution would be to adjust the 1995 Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

It is almost worse than that, because the arrangements favour those who can afford planning consultants and who have the patience, energy and money to unpick a system that, as we will see in a minute, seems almost to have been written by people who never learned English—not in the same place I learned it, at any rate. The planning system should be simple, not complicated or expensive, at the point of use.

There is a perception—I believe it is based on the truth—that the affordable housing subsidy, which is not unique to national parks, raises almost no money. In 12 months in my area, it raised eighty thousand quid, which is not enough to build a garage, let alone to meet an affordable housing target. The subsidy is stalling development and putting developers off undertaking valuable work, which is having an impact on jobs in the building trade in the areas affected. Worst of all, the subsidy is causing the affordable housing project to dry up, so affordable housing targets are being missed by miles in many national parks. This is one of those rare polices that fails every test it is set.

I wrote to the Minister about the affordable housing subsidy, and I hope he will forgive me for reminding him of his reply of 3 July 2013, which I shall quote for my own personal amusement:

“Where there is a disagreement about the viable level of affordable housing contributions, applicants have a right to appeal. If a section 106 agreement has not yet been signed, the applicant may appeal against non-determination of the planning application. If a section 106 agreement has been signed, applicants may apply for a review of the affordable housing element and, if necessary, appeal. This review must be on the grounds of viability only and evidence will be required to support the case.”

I hope the Minister will forgive me, but that is enough to suck the life out of almost any sane person. If that is the obstacle people are set when making a perfectly reasonable challenge to the level of affordable housing contributions, it is no wonder people lose the will to live.

[Guy Opperman]

Many of us applaud the Minister’s Herculean efforts to simplify the planning system outwith the national parks. Would it not be appropriate to call for such a simplification in this case, so that all our constituents can utilise the planning system?

[Simon Hart]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Of course, the easiest way to make a start on that is to scrap the affordable housing subsidy altogether, because it is failing to achieve anything it was originally set up to do. It has a perfectly worthy objective, but at the moment it is having the opposite effect from the one it was designed to achieve.

I want to finish on the Environment Act 1995—not, perhaps, an Act that is uppermost in all our minds, but I shall, none the less, quote from it. National parks have two designated purposes: to foster the economic and social well-being of local communities and to conserve and enhance the park’s natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage. So far, so good.

However, where there is a conflict—we touched on this in an earlier intervention—the Act states that greater weight should be attached to the conservation purpose:

“In exercising or performing any functions in relation to, or so as to affect, land in a National Park, any relevant authority shall have regard to the purposes specified in subsection (1) of section five of this Act and, if it appears that there is a conflict between those purposes, shall attach greater weight to the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the area comprised in the National Park”—

that was possibly written by the person who wrote the letter I referred to earlier. To the rest of us, those words mean that, if there is a conflict—there will, almost inevitably, with every application anybody makes, be an environmental and economic conflict—national park officers are bound by the 1995 Act to err in favour of the conservation element. Even if the conservation downside is tiny, and the economic upside is huge, officers are bound by the letter of the Act to take decisions that could, in some cases, be bad for the economic and social well-being of the communities they are there to serve, although I do not, by the way, blame officers for interpreting this part of the Act in the way they do. However, economic considerations are crucial; they are definitely crucial in my national park and, I suspect, in everybody else’s too. At the moment, however, they are not getting the proper airing they deserve.

That leaves the Minister with three solutions to chew over. First, he could scrap the affordable housing subsidy altogether—I think he will probably just let that go through to the wicketkeeper—or he could at least make a distinction between rural and urban developments. The affordable housing policy tends to favour urban developments and to put rural ones at risk, and he could explore that.

Secondly, the Minister should merge the national park and local authority planning functions, thereby saving a vast amount of public money and applying greater consistency to the planning process, which ratepayers will appreciate. If that is not possible, he should make provision for national park decisions, taken by an unelected body, to be called in and reviewed by the local authority planning body, which is, of course, democratically electable. That should be a free service. If somebody puts in an application that gets a perverse response, there should be a localised system of appeal to support the area’s ratepayers. I can see no obstacle to that suggestion.

Finally, the Minister could amend the 1995 Act to give economic and social criteria the same weight as it currently gives environmental criteria. That recommendation is simple, cheap, deliverable, practical and logical, so it will probably never happen, but, none the less, I put it to the Minister that he could consider and perhaps discuss it, although I realise he cannot make up policy in Westminster Hall.

I hope my comments have been fair to national park planning officers, who have a devil of a task in trying to satisfy their various customers. However, I also hope I have alerted the House to the fact that all is not well in the national park planning system, and there are great frustrations. People are trying to do their best as part of our economic regeneration and recovery, but, sadly, they see national parks as an obstacle to that progress, rather than an asset. I hope the Minister can give us some encouragement in that regard.

Veterans (Mental Health)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Hart

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman]

I entirely endorse that point. Although it is incumbent upon Members of this House to raise the profile of this issue and to try to disseminate information about the types of health care support that exist, it is also incumbent upon the relevant health trusts and authorities to ensure that in future a degree of information is passed down the net to individual GPs and action teams, particularly those teams dealing with alcohol abuse, so that the organisations in the regions are able to support the veterans who are out there.

I have worked with a charity called Veterans in Action. It involves some constituents of mine in Northumberland but it also involves servicemen and women who are based in Lancashire and all over the country, who are attempting to do various things. For example, they have a pilot project with the Lancashire Drug and Alcohol Action Team that involves meeting up with GPs to work with them and trying to do exactly the sort of thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has outlined.

However, the worry is that, although individual groups in our constituencies are all doing very good work to provide a degree of assistance to veterans, there is no overarching body providing global support. What often happens, therefore—for example it has happened with Veterans in Action, which was set up in my constituency and is now working throughout the country—is that the individual soldiers effectively get fed up with the process and decide to provide support themselves.

I supported what the previous Government did. They were working to do a great deal more than had previously been done. Successive Governments have improved care for veterans over time. But the “Fighting Fit” report and the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) have clearly taken things to the next stage and a better level.

I will digress slightly, because in my constituency I have the Albemarle barracks and the Otterburn ranges, troops from my constituency are serving on a regular basis in Afghanistan with the 39 Regiment Royal Artillery, and the Ridsdale ranges provide all the weapons that are tested before the soldiers use them. I also have a large number of constituents who have served in the forces. For example, many Falklands veterans live in my constituency and have come to see me because of the experiences that they have suffered and the lack of support that they have experienced. That was under a different Government and, frankly, I am not here to criticise any Government. However, there is no question but that the degree of support given to the Falklands veterans was limited compared with the support that we are giving to the veterans who are returning from Afghanistan now. Things have got better.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), I wanted to say that in the 30 years following the Falklands conflict—it is rather timely to make this point, this year being the anniversary—more soldiers were reported to have committed suicide after the conflict than had actually died in the conflict itself.

Falkland Islands

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Hart

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman]

I entirely agree, of course. We could get into a detailed and lengthy historical analysis of the origins of Argentina and its various provinces, as well as of the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands. It is worth remarking, however, that the ninth generation of the people of the Falkland Islands was recently born on the islands. Although the population is immigrant, that is also true in Argentina, and I will come to that at a later stage.

Returning to my point about sovereignty, it is not up to the House of Commons or Great Britain to give the Falklands away; it is the inalienable right of the Falkland Islanders to decide where sovereignty lies. That will not change today, tomorrow or for however long they choose to remain part of Great Britain.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend agree that, if there were greater and less aggressive integration between the Argentine and Falkland Islands populations, whether at the education or business level and over a period of 30 to 40 years, or perhaps longer, the hostilities would dissipate to some extent?

Rural Bus Services

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Hart

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman]

As always, my hon. Friend makes a telling point, and I endorse entirely what she said.

Certain organisations are stepping into the breach, and I would like to support the work of Adapt, which has stepped in to provide an essential public service but has gone further than traditional countryside bus provision. It targets those who need the service by operating a dial-a-ride scheme, picking up local residents from their home. The service has proved extremely successful and invaluable to those with young children and to the elderly, who felt that their access to buses was limited under the old, more traditional provision. I totally endorse the dial-a-ride system as the way forward for traditional rural bus services that are failing to provide.

I want to finish with two particular points, which relate to what the Government can do for us, touching first on integration and secondly on the degree of control that Government and local councils have over bus services. I represent a constituency that is entirely in Northumberland, but Durham is below me—it is good to see my neighbour in the Chamber, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass)—Cumbria is to the west, Newcastle is to the east, and the bus services have to integrate. I also have Scotland to the north and, although we do not have an awful lot of bus services to Scotland, there should still be a degree of integration.

The sadness is that there is no integration between individual bus services operating in one county and the next—that must come from the Government giving guidance. We have the bizarre situation of the bus companies literally not talking to each other, let alone planning individual services with each other.

To go further, we rightly have a degree of competition, with bus companies able to provide local bus services, but we can have the bizarre situation of two bus companies competing for the same journey, with the result that neither can make a profit or provide a service and we end up with no bus company in that area. The Government must be able to find some way to enforce a degree of integration when the ultimate contract is awarded to a bus company, so that the parties and partners work together and not against each other.

[Simon Hart]

To reinforce that point, I have an example for the Minister. If I am a concessionary pass holder in Wales, I cannot use my pass in England, but if I am one in England, I can use my pass in Wales—there are one or two exceptions in north Wales and the border counties. That situation displays a ludicrous lack of foresight. If the Minister can square that with the Welsh Assembly, he would be doing an even better job than he is doing at the moment.

[Guy Opperman]

I am grateful for the example. We could all provide examples of our bus companies and the respective counties in charge of bus services not working together. There are good examples: we have a partnership in Northumberland with the Newcastle system, which works very well, but it is an isolated example, sadly. I urge that degree of integration. Surely that is localism in its purest form—the degree to which local organisations talk to each other, rather than existing in a silo, which has been the case for so long.

I finish on the point I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth. The Local Government Association is in broad terms seeking greater control of bus companies. We have the Government as the ultimate provider, which is passed down to county councils, and the county council then abrogates the responsibility to individual bus companies. The bus company then runs the show. It can stop a service, or do whatever it likes with it. The Government must give guidance to the local authority so that it works with the bus company, and the company does not stop a service just because it does not like it after the contract has been awarded.