Agriculture Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

We do indeed. I shall speak to Amendment 222 in my name. I feel, at this precise moment, like having a rant about the inadequacies of rural broadband, but I shall restrain myself. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for supporting Amendment 222.

The community infrastructure levy was introduced in 2010. Some local planning authorities apply it to new agricultural buildings, but some do not. Agricultural buildings are often required for things such as housing livestock or storing grain, and new buildings are often driven by changes in regulations on animal welfare or food safety standards; or, they may enable business growth or productivity. These things will be important in the new agricultural world we are envisaging in the Bill. New agricultural buildings, however, are not like commercial buildings or housing developments, which are built by investors for immediate profit by selling or letting. Farmers have to stump up for the CIL payment, which can be tens of thousands of pounds, for loans they have taken out to construct a building, and they add to the servicing costs of loans—a direct cost on the farm business.

We are, in the Bill, seeing an environment where farming businesses will need to invest in an innovative way to improve their competitiveness and productivity. The CIL charge for new farm buildings risks inhibiting such investment. It is even more complicated in the current position, because some planning authorities, as I said, choose to levy the CIL on new farm buildings, and some do not, so there is an uneven playing field across the country, for a farming industry that supplies national and global firms. I can imagine the conversations with the supermarkets if you tried to tell them about your CIL charge when they are pressing down on costs across industry as a whole.

We need to bear in mind what the CIL was intended to do; it was a charge to fund local facilities, infrastructure and services to meet increased pressures that new developments often cause. Agricultural buildings are often large in size, so they attract a higher CIL, but low in impact on community infrastructure and services. Cows do not really need social services or want enhanced transport routes. Agricultural buildings are clearly defined in planning laws, so there is no danger of this becoming a creeping extension to any exemption, and there is clear evidence that imposing the CIL discourages investment in these farm businesses. So, this amendment would enable the Government to help farm businesses when they are facing what will, by all accounts, be very uncertain times as a result of the major changes in the agricultural support system. I hope the Minister might see his way to supporting this amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support what the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said about less than five years being far too short for average farm tenancies if we are to succeed with a comprehensive agri-environment scheme. I also agree with him that accepting half a loaf now may not lead to the other half appearing; I think we all ought to understand, in this House, how that works. I am very grateful for Tony Blair’s willingness to accept half a loaf all those years ago.

My interest in this group is in Amendment 242. I am not an agricultural tenancy specialist; I come at this from an education point of view. Subsection 11(3) is an odd bit of legislation. It abolishes a large chunk of Part 1 of Schedule 6 to the Agricultural Holdings Act, which is full of definitions—I cannot, for the life of me, understand how we can do without them, but presumably it all fits in with the rest of the Bill. The bit that we are left with is a restatement, effectively, of one bit of Part 1 of Schedule 6, which governs the interface between the successor to a tenancy and that successor going off and learning their trade at an agricultural college. But it says that you are allowed only three years, and a lot of modern level 6 courses in agricultural colleges now last four years, because they—quite rightly—incorporate a year’s experience.

Today, I listened to the Universities Minister, Michelle Donelan, urging universities to be much more flexible and offer structures that are part-time, modular and akin to continuous professional development over many years. Looking to the future, therefore, the answer is not my amendment, but to remove the time restriction from this clause entirely. A successor to a tenancy ought to be allowed to have been studying their craft, and it ought not to matter where and in what pattern they have been doing that, particularly when we are currently urging such institutes of education to offer a much wider variety of ways in which agricultural education can be obtained. We ought not to be stuck in the past in this clause.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge [V]]

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about connectivity. The problem is not just in rural areas; it is here too, in suburban Middlesex. However, I am even more relieved that the noble Baroness spoke to Amendment 222 before I did, because she is much more eloquent than I am, and it is something I support.



With regard to the community infrastructure levy, it is of interest that, since 2009, only one local authority has carried out a viability assessment on whether agricultural buildings can afford to pay the CIL. This assessment concluded that the local authority should pay the farmer to build a new farm building.

At a time when the Government are looking at all sorts of innovative ways to cut out red tape and so forth in the planning area—I may have concerns about them if they impinge on environmental interests—we should make sure that we give those in the agricultural industry a fair deal on these properties. After all, they will not be used for profit in the same way that an extension would be, or in any other ways. I support what the noble Baroness said, and I hope the Minister will take note.