Outdoor Recreation

Debate between James Gray and Simon Hart

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Westminster Hall

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

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, particularly the item about outdoor learning, which has been a lifelong professional as well as personal interest of mine.

If nothing else, the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) has shown that although we are of course delighted to have the Sports Minister here, her place could easily have been filled by a Minister from the Department of Health, the Department for Education or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Chancellor, indeed, could have attended, because most of what has been said this afternoon has shown that, as the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) put it, the issue is to do with investment that brings a healthy return, which the Treasury perhaps even more than any other Department should take seriously.

I want to make some observations, rather than raising concerns, about two areas. First, much as I welcome, admire and champion the adventurous theme of some of the speeches, and the emphasis on fit, active people, I think that the challenge for the Minister is to ensure that outdoor recreation and access to the outdoors is accessible to everyone—an 80-year old as well as an eight-year-old, a wealthy person as well as someone on lower wages, and families as well as individual mountaineers such as those we have heard about. That is a big challenge. There is compelling evidence that everyone gets some health benefits from access to the outdoors. Let us make sure that the Government see it not just as something for the fit and healthy, but something to which everyone can have access and that everyone can afford and benefit from.

Despite widespread support from the Government and non-governmental organisations, and colleagues on both sides of the House, and after all the years of agreement, it seems that there are still areas of barriers and conflict. The world of education is one that I have taken great interest in, and it seems that there is still some confusion, particularly in parts of the teaching profession, between outdoor education and outdoor entertainment. As long as teachers still believe that outdoor activity is a sort of alternative to education, we shall never make the progress we would like. It needs to be seen as just as important an element of a young person’s education and upbringing as work in a classroom or laboratory.

Perhaps the Minister can help us with the fear—sometimes justified, and sometimes not—of the consequences of litigation if something goes wrong when children are taken on some kind of outdoor experience. There is the refrain of “It’s health and safety; it gets in the way, causes added hassle and adds cost to the trip,” but sometimes it is not health and safety that is the problem but the litigation element, which may be a consequence of health and safety restrictions or of breaches, inadvertent or otherwise. The Government can help in those areas, and I hope that the Minister will help us as part of the pan-departmental approach.

The result of what I have described is the charitable sector and private enterprise soldiering on, doing fantastic work in the outdoor recreational arena, sometimes despite rather than because of Government. Many hon. Members have quoted examples from their experience, and in my part of the world we have a competition called Ironman Wales. It happens in my constituency and involves 43 countries. There are 2,000 athletes and 40,000 spectators. It does not happen only on one weekend a year in the county, because there is training throughout the year. It has spawned an enormous triathlon-based industry in west Wales, reaching way beyond the people in Lycra whom we all slightly aspire to look like but are probably never likely to. I restrict myself to the other private venture fitness effort in west Wales—actually, it happens across the UK—called parkrun. Almost everyone can do 5 km on a Saturday morning followed by a croissant and a cup of coffee. I recommend everyone to experience that, as I do, every weekend. The point is that the economic benefit from those events extends way beyond the weekend or day when they happen. It has a 365-day life that brings prosperity and jobs to an area.

In the area of education there are numerous charities involved. We all know which ones they are, but in my part of the world organisations such as the Field Studies Council now have compelling evidence that if children struggle to perform to their maximum capability in traditional classroom scenarios, taking them out of the classroom and educating them in a different, novel, adventurous and intuitive way not only brings them the pleasures of the great outdoors, and brings alive the world of nature that is often denied to them, but has positive benefits for the rest of their development. When they go back into the classroom they find that because they excelled outside, they begin to excel inside. It should not be left to the charitable sector to champion that approach, yet often that is what seems to happen. My plea to the Minister is to grip the Secretary of State for Education and say, “This isn’t just a pleasurable add-on; it is an essential investment that the Government can make, for which there are huge returns.”

Anyone who knows me will know that I am of course also going to ask for recognition of the country sports community’s enormous work and its value to the nation. Angling, which so far has not had a mention, is the biggest participation sport in the UK. I think that there are more than 100,000 jobs, or full-time equivalents, in the industry, and that is not to be sniffed at. It is not a question of what we can afford to do; it is more a question of highlighting the things that we cannot afford not to do.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

We have 10 minutes left for three Back-Bench speeches, so great brevity will be a courtesy.

Rural Communities

Debate between James Gray and Simon Hart

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving us a most interesting tour d’horizon of problems in rural areas. None the less, he has not touched for the moment on one important area—local government finance. Does he agree that the Government’s forthcoming review of local government finance across England should enable us to change the situation—to correct the anomaly whereby the Government spend about £200 per head in rural areas and about £400 per head in urban areas? Surely that is wrong and the forthcoming review of local government finance and, incidentally, of health finance as well should correct that anomaly.

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend is spot-on. He also highlights some of the difficulties that arise from the definitions of rural and urban. In the past, not just the previous Government but probably the Government before them struggled to get a proper definition that enables that anomaly to be ironed out.

We probably all agree, on both sides of the House, that rural people are entrepreneurial, innovative and, above all, patient. They feel that they perform well despite government, rather than because of it. That does not necessarily apply specifically to the current Government. It is just a general feeling on the part of rural people that they have the skill and determination to overcome the obstacles that sometimes the Government inadvertently put in their path.

Rural people are unquestionably the key to economic regeneration and job creation in rural areas. There is the statistic, which some people might say is trite, that if every small or medium-sized enterprise in Wales hired just one person, there would be no unemployment in Wales at all. That is the raw statistic. Of course it is simplistic, but we are not talking about anything that is out of the reach of most people who have aspirations for their business. Such people epitomise the strivers politicians from all quarters always talk about. We refer to them as if they were our friends. They are the people who are there to bring the country out of recession, and that, indeed, is what they are doing. Sometimes, however, I question whether we quite recognise the additional challenges people in rural areas face in running their businesses.

As the shadow Minister will recall, we used to accuse Labour of doing things to, rather than for, the countryside. That is the nub of my opening remarks, from which my questions arise. I hope the Minister will be able to describe to us how he will be part of a re-energisation of rural communities. I hope he will remind rural communities not only of the fact that the Government are on their side, but of how they are on their side.

I hope the Minister will also be able to tell us about the Government’s plans for broadband and mobile phone coverage in not only rural areas, but isolated rural areas. If the Government’s plans for 95% of the country go ahead, as I hope they will, the few people left in the furthest retreats of rural Britain—the other 5%—will, through a fairly obvious logic, be put at a further disadvantage.

Badgers and Bovine TB

Debate between James Gray and Simon Hart

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Westminster Hall

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

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in the debate, Mr Crausby.

To provide some background, last week, at a place called Broomhill farm near where I live in Pembrokeshire, the home of my constituency agent, 11 cattle were reactors to a TB test. Shortly afterwards, it was discovered that they could not be taken away for slaughter because four of them were in-calf heifers. Therefore, those animals, bred with great care and attention by the family, had to be shot on the yard in front of the son and daughter who were aspiring to grow the farm in the way that we are all encouraging them to, and with all the accompanying trauma. We talk about compensation and, yes, of course there will be compensation for the animals concerned, but there will not be compensation for the calves within them, there will not be compensation for the reduction in the milk yield, there will not be compensation for the additional buildings that have had to be put in place over the years for handling, because of the lack of ability to move animals around, and there will not be compensation for the trauma that that family and others have been subject to over a long period.

In a sense it would be nice to be able to say to the House that that story was unusual, but the truth is, as we all know, that nothing at all about it is unusual. Everyone with a constituency affected by the disease has similar tales to tell. Frankly, there have been 60 years of discussion, 60 years of promises, 60 years of let-downs, 60 years of contradictory science and 60 years of politicians taking the farming community to the brink and then back again, as we have seen in the Welsh Assembly. The evidence was clear, the proposals and everything were in place to embrace at long last some degree of control, but what happens? There is an election. The only thing that changes is the election result and the whole thing goes back to square one. Is it any wonder that farming communities around Britain have lost faith in politicians’ ability to deliver some kind of progress—I will come back to that—on the issue? Thousands of cattle have been killed, as the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) mentioned, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted, businesses have been destroyed and families broken up and farmers have left the industry, at times in droves—not solely because of the impact of the disease over so many years, but in part.

If I can bring the debate back to human beings—a little more about the human cost and a little less about the animal cost—we might be going in the right direction. Let us be honest: such an impact on any other industry in the UK and over such a long period would have been completely intolerable, but for some strange reason we have stood back and tolerated it in our farming industry, despite the human and financial costs discussed. The Government are absolutely right to draw a line and say, “Enough is enough,” and to come forward with a consultation process—let us not forget that we are still in the consultation phase and that no final decisions have been taken. It is right for farmers, taxpayers, cattle, businesses and—I say to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who has now left the Chamber for the second time—badgers. It strikes me as odd that during the debate we have almost seemed to be frozen with fear at the prospect of curing a disease which itself has a negative impact on the badger population. As a constituency MP representing a rural seat a long way from Westminster, I find it frustrating that so little attention has been devoted to the welfare of badgers. We seem to forget all that. The idea that we should close our eyes and somehow badgers will live happily ever after is utterly naive and does nothing for the overall thrust of most welfarists and conservationists—as opposed to preservationists—that we should look after the health of the wild animal population as much as that of the husbanded population, and balance between them, just as we should look after those who are charged with the interests of both.

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend is familiar with scenes such as one described to me by a farmer in my constituency. When the farmer turned on the lights in the yard in the middle of the night, he saw what he thought were 30 to 40 badgers, full of TB, staggering around and unable to stand up. Those badgers could not be helped even if we had a vaccine, because they are ill badgers; they need to be destroyed, and the only sensible way to destroy them is by shooting them. My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point.

[Simon Hart]

It is as much a problem in North Wiltshire as in west Wales and other areas represented in the debate.

Someone said to me over the weekend, “Of course the problem isn’t the disease, the problem is the policy.” I have a certain sympathy with that view, formed over the years we have been studying the issue. The Minister mentioned in one of his interventions the legal stranglehold of the European Union—I do not think that you, Mr Crausby, would thank us if we went into an EU debate now, but it appears absolutely correct that the chances of us being able to introduce in the necessary time a cattle vaccination, which is effective and cost-effective, seems unlikely at this moment in the process. That leaves various other options.

As I suspect everyone is, I am rather in favour of cattle vaccination, if only it were so simple. I suspect that the Minister would agree—for no other purpose than to help his blood pressure when attending debates such as this one perhaps—if it were possible to take the problem away with a magic potion which could somehow be administered to cattle or badgers, but it is not that simple. The cattle vaccination is estimated to be only about 60% effective, even if we could start administering it tomorrow. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who spoke about badger vaccination. To be honest, I am sceptical about the practical possibilities. I live in a fairly remote part of west Wales and within a mile of my house are 20 badger setts, which are all in difficult places. They are not nicely situated in the middle of fields but are in quarries, under buildings and in the most awkward places imaginable. The idea that someone would have the wherewithal, the patience, the money, the expertise and everything else required to trap, inoculate and test or whatever frankly makes no practical sense. Of course vaccinations will form an important part of the final eradication of the disease, and the sooner the better—we can all agree on that.

One simple solution, however, is not what is on offer. We must combine testing and stricter or proper monitoring of cattle movements throughout the UK with sensible culling proposals. I am talking about culling where appropriate, under proper supervision and in line with the consultation documents supplied by the Minister. It is perfectly possible to undertake a well-controlled, humane cull in certain areas, as the Welsh Assembly demonstrated before it had the rug pulled from beneath its feet. A combination of things will lead to final eradication. People who think there is some magic pill out there which can be dished out and is cheap, effective and imminent are deluding themselves. We should take much greater notice of the evidence before us than we have so far in the debate.

I suspect that the goal for all of us is something that is easy, effective, cheap and, above, all, imminent. It is absolutely right, legally, morally and practically that the Government wish to consult on the issue, and we look forward to the final findings before too long. However, let us not underestimate—I hope that the Government will not do so—some of the practical obstacles that will present themselves, not only to vaccination, but to the controlled culling that they have set out.

Above all, the Government should not be half-hearted. They have the evidence they need. They have, if nothing else, reams and reams of human examples, which demonstrate to everyone in the House why it is so important to bring the curtain down on this appalling disease. I have been told that the badger is a political animal, and puts the frighteners on hon. Members on both sides of the House when it comes to making a bold, sensible and evidence-based decision. I suggest to the Minister that there is never a bad time to do the right thing, and now is the time to do the right thing. I commend his proposals.

Defence Spending (Wales)

Debate between James Gray and Simon Hart

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman answers, let me say that it is a long tradition of the House that we do not discuss Members who are not present in the Chamber unless we have given them notice that we intend to do so. This particular discussion is not necessarily central to our debate on defence spending in Wales, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman returns to the main topic under discussion.

[Simon Hart]

Absolutely, Mr Gray. I apologise for coming—unnecessarily, as it turns out—to the defence of my colleague.