Rural Economy

Lord Plumb Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Plumb (Con)]

My Lords, I have the pleasure of congratulating, thanking and supporting my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury. He opened a debate of great importance to all of us about investment in rural areas. Much was said earlier about the speech made by my noble friend, Lord Bamford. Many of us will never forget his maiden speech. He started, “I am an engineer”, and went on to describe how he makes things. I am a farmer, and I grow things. The pioneering spirit of the manufacturer and the farmer are why today we can claim agriculture as a huge success.

Living in the countryside is not always the idyllic life often shown in pictures or stories. Even the most sophisticated methods of husbandry cannot remove the risk of seasonal changes, as we witnessed this year. The demand for land in rural areas increases as the population expands—and they are not making any more. Land becomes scarce and expensive. We need it to grow more food for a growing population. The scale of the challenge is enormous. More needs to be done to remove obstacles to increased production from less land, and to get greater access to new markets while protecting the environment and preserving village life. More needs to be done to understand the implications of volatility, get better value out of science and technology and drive domestic growth.

The Minister may agree that we need a policy framework to help the economy which is right for consumers and producers. The most recent reform of the CAP was unnecessarily complicated. I have been involved in reforms of the common agricultural policy since 1973, and I can honestly say that it is more complicated than before. We need subsidiarity and to retain the emphasis on protecting the environment and the countryside as a whole. Of course, we need less red tape. The Minister may like to tell me whether the reduction of red tape since the report came out has changed very much. We need greater freedom to increase production. Declaring policy is one thing; the implementation of that policy is another. It still seems that the image of rural occupation is less important than industrial employment.

Land occupation is changing as farm size increases, and it is increasing rapidly. There are 3.7 million people involved in agriculture and food. The food industry cannot exist without the farming industry. Our colleges and universities are full of young people, enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who want to get into the countryside. They want to work and to produce. Many organisations are helping, not least the Prince’s Trust. I am often asked how in this changing world I would define the small farmer. I always answer, “It’s a chap about five feet tall”. It is the size of the business and the size of the production area that matter, not the size of the farmer. Often people say, “I haven’t heard ‘The Archers’ lately”, or perhaps, “We like ‘Countryfile’ on a Sunday evening sharing with us the wonderful views of our hills and valleys, and Adam and Matt are such charmers”. So how can we educate more urban dwellers to understand rural development and country living? It is insulting to say that farmers have created a degraded, horrible landscape. The countryside is obviously a diverse place, and it is neither wild nor natural. To keep a healthy industry, we need the birds, the bees and the butterflies, the hedgerows, the tracks, the fields and the crops in a land which is often described as “Farmageddon”. They are all there under the good management of today’s generation, which is the one thing that embraces the conservation challenge encouraged by Natural England’s scheme. Agriculture can make a much larger contribution to the economy given the investment it contributes.

There are three things I wish to mention briefly: education, the Arthur Rank Centre and rural crime. Many noble Lords have mentioned the importance of skills, which is second to none. Education starts with schools. There is an organisation called FACE—Farming & Countryside Education, which helps in schools. It is not very big. The organisation visited 362 schools last year, representing more than 18,000 pupils and worked with a further 12,000 pupils in 137 schools.

The Rank centre combines a lot of the organisations that support farmers in one form or another. It was started by that great entrepreneur himself. The centre pulls together many bodies and organisations by identifying the needs of local communities. It is a progressive organisation which recognises the many risks of living and working in the countryside. Its leader often reminds us, talking of risks, that Jesus never said, “Blessed are the cautious”.

Rural crime has already been covered by the noble Earl but I hope the Minister can agree that we need an adequate police protection system in rural areas. In many areas lengths of cable have gone off the electric poles, taken overnight. It is quite unbelievable. As the noble Earl so rightly said, £42 million was the cost of that crime last year. Rural theft is an issue of great concern to us and 38% of farmers have been the victims of crime, including arson, criminal damage, poaching and illegal fly-grazing. The insurance company NFU Mutual conducts an annual survey of rural crime. As the insurer covers around 70% of the rural market it provides a useful snapshot of rural crime patterns. Rural theft and its cost is of great significance in country areas. The link between rural crime and serious organised crime should not be underestimated.