Leaving the EU: the Rural Economy

Robert Courts Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I have the luck to represent a very beautiful constituency, but it is incumbent on all of us to remember that although the countryside is beautiful, it is not a living museum or a frozen Constable painting. There are real jobs and real livelihoods in the countryside, and they are extremely important.

In the very brief time available, I would like to make one point. The Minister will no doubt remember the pioneering flood alleviation work at Honeydale farm in my constituency, which she visited with me. I recently visited Littlestock brook in Milton-under-Wychwood, which is engaged in a similar scheme. A partnership of local landowners, the community and the Environment Agency are working together on upstream flood storage in the Evenlode valley. The measures include tree planting and the re-routing of streams to follow their natural watercourses. I make this point for one very good and clear purpose: there is an economic as well as an environmental benefit to the scheme. Fruit trees create fruit and wood that can be harvested by the local community. The scheme enables local sustainable businesses to create jobs and money.

Littlestock brook is essentially an open-air laboratory. I mention it because of the way the common agricultural policy is funded, which makes it very difficult for such small community endeavours to gain the funding they need. The CAP tends to favour very big schemes and very big landowners. Leaving the CAP gives us a golden opportunity to rework the policy, so that it works for all, and so that landowners in our communities can easily access the funding they need, without environmental schemes being tacked on as an afterthought. As the Secretary of State said, these environmental schemes can be part of the policy from the very beginning.