Agricultural Land: Protection

Debate between Polly Billington and Laura Kyrke-Smith

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Laura Kyrke-Smith]

I agree that supporting smallholder farmers is absolutely essential.

There is too much to say in the time we have available tonight, but I will pull out three particularly important ways to help set up our farmers for success. First and foremost, we have to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of British farming. The environment land management schemes have been unclear, difficult to navigate and poorly tailored to different contexts—in the case of Ledburn farm, to the heavy clay land. As a result, the uptake has been low, but farmers remain in need of that support and we have to find a way to make it easier to access. Equally, farmers are forging ahead and finding ways to diversify their income, but there is much more we can do to support that—for example, by making it much easier to change the use of existing farm buildings, or to develop lower-grade agricultural land, if it creates renewable energy sources or affordable housing for farm workers.

Secondly, we have to promote and support farmers to roll out sustainable farming practices that address challenges such as soil erosion and low land productivity—for example, by supporting the farmer clusters that have become increasingly prevalent across Buckinghamshire, which bring together farmers to help explore best practice and to share ideas for enhancing natural habitats on their land.

Thirdly, we need to invest in the next generation of British farmers. This means ensuring that we give the profession the status that it deserves in the first place, and that we start educating children about it at a very young age. That means creating pathways into the farming sector—for example, through investing in specialist technical education and expanding agriculture apprenticeships. It means making it not just attractive but affordable to live in rural communities and to pursue a career in farming, particularly in places such as Buckinghamshire, where there is far too little affordable rural housing and services. As a result, the pull to towns is too strong. In short, we can put all the necessary protections in place for quality agricultural land, and I am confident that we will, but without a thriving farming sector to safeguard that land, they will have little impact.

My constituency has suffered from the absence of a coherent strategy for our land—where and how we protect it, where and how we use it, and where and how we develop it. Recent Governments have left nature depleted, farmers deeply uncertain at best and out of business at worst, and communities frustrated by haphazard house building without access to green spaces, infrastructure or services. Under this Government, the future has to look different, and we have to start with clear principles. Alongside the NPPF, the new land use framework will surely help to ensure that we get the right balance between food production, nature and economic growth.

We need more predictability. Of course external shocks will happen, but the role of the Government is to be a steadying force. It is great that we have got to work quickly on the first steps—whether planning reform or setting up Great British Energy—and I think we can look forward to a steady, focused roll-out.

Finally, we need a good deal of pragmatism and an acceptance that getting the right balance between development and environmental protection is not easy, and there will be compromises, but it is necessary. We have to find a way both to build the homes and infrastructure of the future, and to protect and regenerate our agricultural and nature-rich lands, because ultimately one cannot exist without the other.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

rose—