Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it is a very sad day when we have to bid farewell to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb. Our Henry is a national and international celebrity. If you go with him to Brussels, you get off the train and, 10 yards down the platform, the first person will say, “Bonjour, Monsieur le Président”. It goes on all day; every five minutes someone will come up and say “Bonjour, Monsieur le Président”. Even at night, in shirtsleeves, going out to find something to eat, someone passing in the darkness will say, “Bonsoir, Monsieur le Président”. He is a legend in his own lifetime. Our agriculture, our countryside and indeed our nation owe him a huge debt for a life of immense contribution and service. So thank you to our Henry, from the depths of our hearts. I could go on far longer, but I want to contribute to this important debate.

I was not a Brexiteer, but we must all move on. As the well-chosen title of this debate would indicate—my thanks to the noble Earl for that—we have an opportunity now to put in place a system for managing our countryside that is fit for the 21st century. The first question we must ask is: what is our countryside for and how can we pull together the various policy strands? Having an environmental plan separate from an agricultural plan is not a good idea. Any vision for our countryside has to include agriculture, the environment and rural communities. They are all interlinked.

The next question a department for food has to ask is: how much food do we need to produce from our own resources? Both too little and too much are risky. The Government need to establish some achievable long-term parameters. A shortage of food would be an easy way for a Government to fall. As I have said before in this House, we are only ever nine meals away from anarchy, so we need to work out the levers to keep our farmers producing. As our post-CAP costs inevitably go down, especially rents, some farmers will be able to produce at world prices. Others, particularly in the uplands, will only be able to farm if they and their households can supplement their agricultural income.

This brings me back to my first question: what is our countryside for? There are services that society will want to buy from our land managers: landscape, improved access opportunities for leisure and health and greatly improved diversity of habitats and species—all of which I know British voters would support. But another lever for keeping farmers producing is to create more diversified jobs, so that they and their households can survive on the land. Of course, creating rural jobs is equally important to the 96% of rural dwellers who are not farmers. This is vital for all our countryside, and a department for rural affairs must pursue this agenda with gusto, which we have yet to see. We need better broadband, the promotion of tourism and the facilities and training to make our rural economy hum.

We have an opportunity here to make a difference to wherever rural deprivation exists or will exist. We need a range of schemes promoting rural diversification. Let us take ex-CAP money to help farmers and others to find new sources of income and employment. What I love about my fellow countrymen is that, of those below the poverty line, compared to their urban counterparts, more than twice as many are self-employed and avoid state aid. They would rather get out there with their entrepreneurial flair and, through a variety of probably part-time jobs, earn enough to survive. But they need help: business advice, careers and planning advice and, above all, grants for projects, building conversions and marketing and so on. A whole new comprehensive diversification scheme is required.

I will stop there, but I just repeat that this is an opportunity: we can make our countryside hum economically, socially and environmentally. I have not even touched on the new possibilities for the nutritional health of our nation that any department for food should be thinking about.