Rural Economy

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to debate this important issue. I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, for stimulating this debate. I need also to declare a number of interests. I farm in Northumberland; I am a trustee of Clinton Devon Estates in Devon; I am chair of the Waitrose farm on Leckford Estate; and I am a member of the NFU and the CLA, along with other various interests.

I will not try to duplicate the comments already made by noble Lords, which I fully endorse. I particularly endorse the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, on the importance of education and the role of FACE—Farming & Countryside Education—and how important it is to ensure that young people have a good understanding of farming, food and the countryside.

I want to comment on three specific issues regarding the rural economy. First, it is difficult to define. The rural economy does not have a ring-fenced border: it merges into urban and city economies. For rural businesses and enterprises to succeed there needs to be a recognition that rural, urban and city are interdependent. Too often in the past—and it is still a serious risk today—government policy, and therefore government spending, has been focused on cities and urban areas without appreciating that an inclusive policy that embraced the hinterland would be more effective.

City deals are a current vehicle for stimulating economic growth and I understand why. However, there are very few parts of England that are more than 15 miles from a city in this densely populated country of ours—although that is not quite so true of Scotland and Wales. Rural areas have suffered in the past through urban-centric policies. The rural development agencies, with few exceptions, struggle to embrace the rural economy. Having been established initially to deliver urban regeneration, they remain committed to that cause. I worked closely with them on the sustainable farming and food strategy during the 2000s.

The local enterprise partnerships are now crucial to this issue. They, too, in the main, are primarily focused on urban and city areas, so we need, with the help of Defra and the Minister, to ensure that they firmly embrace rural issues and the rural economy within their remit. With their expanded role to help and administer rural development funding they need knowledge on their boards of the rural areas they cover. They need appropriate consultation mechanisms to ensure that they are spending funds wisely. The LEPs need to develop strategic plans that see the integration of rural and urban within a single plan, as I said at the beginning. To present the option to businesses looking to locate into an area with either a rural or an urban location would be a step forward.

The rural areas of Britain have so much to offer in terms of quality of life, the working environment, parking and so on. I ask that the Minister satisfies himself that the LEPs have strategic plans that they implement and that recognise the importance of rural areas.

My second point is one that has already been made and will be repeated, I am sure, a number of times this afternoon—that is, the importance of agriculture within the rural economy. I continue to hear lots of comment about: the relative value of energy generation and how that could dwarf the value of agricultural output; the importance of tourism and how that could put farming into the shade; and that diversification away from agriculture and other business activities contributes far more to the rural economy than agriculture does. All these things could be true; we definitely need a diverse rural economy. As the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, said at the beginning, the more diverse the better. We need to create employment and wealth to sustain rural communities and maintain rural services. We need affordable rural housing, as has been mentioned already. We urgently need high-speed broadband in every hamlet.

I want to give an example of what is possible. In the farm from which I took my title, Kirkharle, which is where we started farming in 1971, I employed two young men. Latterly it was farmed by contract and no one was employed directly. Through the development of rural business help and a retail visitor centre, 13 businesses are now established on that holding, employing about 30 people; so it can be done. The legislative framework within which rural businesses operate is also important; the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, referred to that. I congratulate the Minister on departmental progress in that area. There is still much more to be done.

I stress that agriculture is the platform on which to build our diverse rural economy. Mention has been made already of the dreadful experience in 2001 of foot and mouth disease, when the whole rural economy was shut down. Farmers have buildings; they have housing plots, with planning permission; they live near to villages. They can be the engines for enterprise and innovation through diversification as well as contributing to the nation’s food security through efficient food production.

My final point is to stress the importance of the work my noble friend Lord Cameron is engaged in in seeking to rural-proof government policies. We need to go further than has been the case to date, to ensure that impact assessments undertaken for new legislation include not just the impact on business, as they do now, but specifically the impact on rural business. That is very important.

I have already apologised to the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, for the fact that I need to leave to go to a long-standing engagement. I apologise that I will not be able to hear the rest of the debate, but I will read Hansard with keen interest.