Agriculture Bill

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

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

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, my interests are as recorded in the register. I fully support Amendment 144, in the name of my noble friend Lord Carrington, to which I was happy to attach my name. I am very concerned about the gap in support as the current basic payment scheme is unwound and access to the new ELM scheme becomes available, as planned, in 2024. As I said at Second Reading, this is fraught with risk. The delays caused by indecision on Brexit and then the impact of coronavirus mean that the ELMS pilots are just under way. Meaningful conclusions will take a couple of years or more to interpret. The design of the schemes, and the value of public goods that we hope will be delivered by this brave new model for supporting the management of the countryside, must be promoted to farmers and land managers with confidence. We need the evidence from the pilots and there is no slack in the timetable to experiment or for systems to fail and be rerun, which is why many of us are deeply concerned about the Government’s reluctance to change the current seven-year transition plan. At Second Reading, I suggested that the Government should be willing to extend the period to eight years.

Under the current plans, there will only be three years by the time the Bill becomes law to draw conclusions from the pilots and then launch the ELM scheme to the entire farming sector. Tens of thousands of family farmers are not prepared for the scale of the change that the Bill will introduce. It is the most fundamental change in support, and the greatest cultural change, that any farmer in Britain today has ever faced. At present, there is no way farmers can prepare for this change because, for obvious reasons, there is no information available on the basis of which they can begin to consider their future plans and make decisions.

This change in policy is a unique opportunity to facilitate restructuring of the sector, but this cannot be rushed. Every farmer needs to consider the impact of the change on their individual business. As a result of the scale of this challenge, it is inevitable that there will be a capacity problem. The quantum of qualified consultants who are trusted and able to provide 30,000 or 40,000 farmers with informed advice in good time to make considered decisions will be an enormous challenge. To ensure that the potential benefits which the ELM scheme can deliver, and which will hopefully be realised, will require careful consideration by each farmer and land manager.



If ELMS is launched in 2024 as planned, there will be a deluge of applications and the capacity of the RPA and Natural England to cope with the volume will be stretched to the limit. The possibility of every farmer who wishes to participate in the ELM scheme being able to do so in 2024 is unrealistic. For all these reasons, the Government need to think very carefully about the timetable. This amendment is designed to help smooth the impact. Limiting the dismantling of support from the BPS to a total reduction of 25% until the ELM scheme is available is a sensible approach.

I restate what I said at Second Reading: I reassure the Minister that I am enthusiastic about this bold change in policy and genuinely believe that we can lead the world in delivering a wide range of crucial outcomes from the management of the countryside, provided that the policy is well designed and land managers are appropriately incentivised. It would be a disaster if such an important change in policy was rushed through and we failed to engage appropriately. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that the department will adopt the timetable proposed in this amendment. It would be very much appreciated by farmers and land managers and would ensure a greater chance of achieving the desired outcomes.

Very briefly, I have considerable sympathy with the purpose of Amendment 149 tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. Smaller livestock family farms, both in LFAs and in the lowlands, are the most vulnerable to these changes. They manage some of the most precious landscapes in Britain and are a crucial part of rural communities. The choice of taking a hard-nosed commercial approach, resulting in many being forced out of business, or a more sympathetic view that would require some special care and support to help those farming businesses adjust to change is a no-brainer, otherwise the impact could be disastrous. The Minister is aware that I chair the Prince’s Countryside Fund. We have supported over 1,000 such farmers through the Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme, with considerable success. It is essential that these crucial farming families are given appropriate support to ensure that they can adapt their businesses, not just to survive but to prosper in this brave new world.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will not detain you long. I have every sympathy with the impatience of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to get on with improving our biodiversity. However, I do not think it is feasible to bring this forward from seven to five years, so I am afraid that I cannot support that, however much I am keen for the things that we all hope for to take place.

I agree very much with my noble friend Lord Caithness. The more I have listened to our proceedings, the more respect I have for farmers—I had a great deal of respect for them before—and I can imagine what it is like facing these changes with all the uncertainty that we have just been talking about. Having been not in farming but in retail for most of my working life, I can imagine the concerns about the future. I would also say, however, that we always work to deadlines. If we extended things, we would be in a similar position, so I cannot support any extension as discussed—very eloquently—by many noble Lords.

I have put my name to Amendment 147 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, principally to emphasise my concerns over any reduction in animal welfare. I have no doubt at all that British farming has the highest standards of animal welfare in the world and I do not think for one minute that that will be negated by anything in the Bill, but I wanted to underline my concerns on that.

Again, I give my support in as far as upland farms, and to some extent some livestock in the lowlands, are some of our most precious guardians of the countryside and are really threatened by some of these measures. I urge the Government to look at this; I am sure that they will.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have great joy in very warmly supporting this amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Whitty. The future economic prospects for Britain and the great changes to our way of living and our society that may become necessary only emphasise the urgency of what he is talking about.

I live in rural Cumberland, right up in a valley, where an unwelcome social development is becoming very obvious. Farming, and hill farming in this instance, is increasingly done by elderly people who find it more and more difficult to cope. Consequently, the land gets bought up and concentrated in the ownership of a few people, very often living far away.

Therefore, my noble friend’s amendment has wider implications and challenges beyond what he is specifically talking about. I think it would be nothing but good for British society if more young people who wanted to become involved in farming had that opportunity. Too often, you hear of people who would like to be in farming but cannot afford to get into the system as it has emerged, and who are looking for small, manageable farms.

It is also true that, as we are taking a balanced diet and all the rest so seriously, we may need to concentrate far more on a variety of farming which lends itself to producing varied diets and to the self-sustaining approach to agriculture. For these reasons, I am very glad to support my noble friend.