Farming and Rural Communities

Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Bellingham. I very much agree with his comments about inheritance tax. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Roborough on introducing this debate and take this opportunity to thank him for the help and advice that he gave me when I came to this place just over a year ago. Having been born and brought up in central Leeds, before moving to central London for university and then living in six London boroughs, I am acutely conscious that many of the other speakers in this debate have much more experience of agriculture and rural affairs than I do, so I will keep my contribution relatively short.

The point I would like to add, which I have yet to hear, is on the importance of a vibrant rural economy in getting people from welfare into work. To take a step back, the Government are rightly committed to getting the employment rate back up to its pre-Covid level of 80%, by getting 2 million people from welfare into work. This was outlined in their Get Britain Working White Paper before Christmas and more recently, a fortnight ago, in their Pathways to Work Green Paper. I very much welcome this objective and commend the Government for their ambition.

The focus of such plans, and often the focus of similar think-tank plans in the welfare-to-work agenda, is often on towns and cities. I note that, as we speak, the Work and Pensions Secretary is in Barnsley to launch the first of nine “Get Britain Working” trailblazer programmes. However, rural communities are often overlooked in this debate. While the problem of worklessness is undoubtedly an issue in urban areas, it is also an issue in rural areas. My noble friend Lady Coffey has already touched on the important issue of rural poverty. The latest data show that rural inland areas have economic inactivity levels of 19.6% and that rural coastal communities have a rate of 21.9%. This compares to 21.5% nationally. Given that rural areas often have fewer job opportunities than their urban counterparts, we must not forget rural communities in the welfare-to-work agenda.

Recent research by the Jobs Foundation—a charity of which I am president, as declared in the register—called Two Million Jobs, looked at the whole welfare-to-work agenda across the country and focused on four areas: a city, Sheffield; a town, Loughborough; a coastal area, Hartlepool; and a rural area, Pembrokeshire. When we looked at Pembrokeshire, we saw the incredibly important role of farms in the area in providing local jobs. We also saw the hospitality and tourism industry in Pembrokeshire and the local oil refinery—Pembroke refinery, run by Valero—which has a fantastic scheme to get people from further education into high-quality jobs. All these businesses are vital to the Pembrokeshire jobs market and will be the employers that ensure that the Government can get the employment rate back up to 80% across the country.

In our national mission to get 2 million people into work, it is therefore essential that the Government’s economic and planning measures are geared towards helping rural businesses to thrive, so that they too can play their part in getting Britain working.