Upland Farming

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) for raising a subject of such importance, and indeed for his kind words. It is a very great privilege to have my first opportunity to stand at the Dispatch Box dealing with a subject of such importance. I apologise in advance for the fact that I am not accustomed to doing so. I am normally barracking Front Benchers from the Back Benches, and it is rather difficult to adjust to facing forward.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, upland farmers are the most powerful symbol of our most fundamental values. Their presence is a living reminder of the formation of the British landscape, with the relationship between humans and soils reflected in the very shape of our fell sides. The uplands are the creation of those farmers. As he said, it is their work that we are celebrating and from which we are benefiting, whether through tourism, ecology, poetry or painting. We see their legacy in the shape of every field and the angle of every dry stone wall. It is their children who support our schools, and it is they who support our rural roads and shops. The lifeblood of our rural communities depends on the upland farmer, and that is as true of Exmoor and my hon. Friend’s constituency as it is of Cumbria, the North Yorkshire moors, Northumbria, Dartmoor, the Yorkshire dales and the whole Pennine ridge.

Upland farmers face three unique challenges. As my hon. Friend said, those are, first, economics and incomes; secondly, bureaucracy; and, thirdly, environmental management. I would like to respond briefly to each of those in turn. First, I can absolutely reassure him that the Government understand the serious issues around farm incomes. The average income for upland farmers is about £23,900, but many farmers in our constituencies operate on incomes that are considerably lower. In my constituency, there are upland farmers on incomes below £16,000 a year.

We looked specifically at the data for my hon. Friend’s constituency and for Exmoor, and we found that the number of commercial farm holdings fell from 603 in 2009 to 510 in 2013. Now, there will be many reasons for that, some of which are to do with economies of scale, and some of which are to do with changes in agriculture, but I feel, and I think he will feel, that that is 100 families whose history, heritage, knowledge of the landscape and investment in the soil have been lost forever.

That is why I am proud that the Government have introduced some serious reforms to the way the basic payment scheme operates. For example, from 2015, we are equalising the payments for lowland areas and severely disadvantaged areas. The direct payment rate on moorland has almost doubled. That sounds like normal Government jargon, but it is not—it makes an enormous difference. Effectively, it means that lowland farms will lose a certain amount, but it will be a relatively small amount compared with the benefit for upland farmers. DEFRA estimates that the SDA rate will increase from about €200 to €245 per hectare, and the moorland rate will nearly double, from €35 to nearly €70.

That should make a significant difference to upland incomes, but the Department needs to be careful to study this. We must be sure that we look at incomes in the round. We are looking not just at the basic payment scheme, but at all the other forms of support and environmental incentive provided to these farmers. More needs to be done, and we must monitor the impact of the changes to be sure that they remain flexible and that we are attentive to any problems.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Can the Minister answer a question asked of me time and again by my farming constituents in north Northumberland, many of whom are upland farmers? How would the Government support our farmers if the nation votes to leave the European Union in 2017? That is a real concern, and there is a fear that there is no understanding in DEFRA of how the issue might be dealt with.

[Rory Stewart]

It is a great privilege to take a question from my hon. Friend, and I congratulate her on her maiden speech. As the representative of Berwick, she represents the epitome of the middleland—that wonderful junction between England and Scotland—and the upland farmers right the way along to the Kielder forest. It is vital that, whatever happens in the vote on the European Union, the Conservative party—indeed, all parties in this House, I hope—and this country continue to provide deep support for farmers. We will be able to do that only if we take some of the arguments my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset made and bring the public along with us. It would be dangerous, whether we remain in the European Union or leave it, if we ended up vesting our responsibility in the EU. We must take responsibility ourselves; we must say we believe in the support farmers currently get from Europe, and, whatever happens in the vote, we must continue to provide it, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend mentioned and that my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) raised in her question.

The second issue my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset raised concerned complex structures and bureaucracy, and I congratulate him on a most astonishing range of acronyms. It was a fantastic list of what we are all struggling with day by day. I am glad, however, that DEFRA has taken a number of steps to try to recognise how frustrating that bureaucracy can be. We hope that the new countryside stewardship scheme, which he mocked in his inimitable style, will provide a simpler, more robust method of delivering what we all want. We can see this, for example, in one issue that he raised: under-grazing and over-grazing. The countryside stewardship scheme is much more flexible at addressing that exact issue.

The third issue my hon. Friend raised—I am going to face the House rather than Mr Speaker; I apologise, I am learning my role here at the Dispatch Box—relates to the unintended environmental consequences of what we are doing. He used a very good example: the contrast between what is happening in Exmoor and what is happening in the North Yorkshire moors. He pointed out that differential growing rates mean the stopping of burning on Exmoor leads to much more growth of foliage and, in fact, damage to the environment. He is following a very distinguished tradition. That was pointed out by Charles Darwin in his seminal work, “The Origin of Species”. He stated that removing grazing and allowing grass to grow actually reduces the number of species on a given area of land. In other words, allowing that kind of understocking and not having burning in place may result not just in damage to farm incomes, but environmental damage.

That is why Natural England has, I am very glad to say, introduced flexibility around burning regimes. It has proposed allowing larger burn areas and more frequent burn rotations than would be found on sporting estates in the northern uplands. That will of course be key to farmers who do not want to be looking at a fell side that they will see as returning to wilderness and scrub, but it will also be vital for species such as the heath fritillary. I challenge my hon. Friend, if that is not happening on the ground, to please come back to us so we can look at it again, but Natural England has introduced those changes.

I would like to conclude by summarising some of the essential steps that I believe we now require to ensure that we have sustainable upland farming and sustainable upland communities.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) referred to rural isolation. I hoped the Minister would try to address that issue and where we are on income brackets, so that those who feel isolated can be reassured that there is a future for them in the uplands.

[Rory Stewart]

Rural isolation is a serious issue. Upland areas are, almost by definition, the most sparsely populated areas in Britain. People are trapped by barriers of distance. Traditionally, those are barriers of communication and barriers of roads, but increasingly they are barriers of technology, such as lack of access to superfast broadband. In addition, if one looks at an individual upland farm, one will find that the number of people working on that farm has decreased dramatically in the past 60 years. Farms that might once have employed two or three people no longer do so. Increasingly, that means that life in the uplands, if connected to the fact that the number of farms is falling because farms are getting larger, is increasingly lonely. As we know, an auction mart can provide an important way for farmers to meet each other.

That is not to say that we should be portraying upland farmers as victims. They are, as we all know, incredibly resilient and confident individuals who have chosen the life they love deeply and of which we are deeply proud. However, we need to be serious about the fact that isolated lives can be challenging: challenging for education and healthcare for farmers and their children, and challenging in terms of being able to diversify. We talk a great deal about getting people online, but if there is no broadband connection on one’s farm it is pretty difficult to diversify.

All these issues about isolation are important reasons why keeping incomes up through agri-environmental schemes is necessary. However, finding other kinds of infrastructure investment that we can put in place, whether it is for better roads or better broadband, will also be vital to the long-term health of those communities and the long-term life of the whole area, including those very species we want to protect. The whole idea of the countryside stewardship scheme is predicated, of course, on the existence of those countryside stewards, and as my hon. Friend pointed out, in this case the countryside stewards are the upland farmers themselves.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on his contribution today; he has always made good contributions from the Back Benches and is now doing a fantastic job at the Dispatch Box. He mentioned the importance of broadband. I was on Hall’s Fell Ridge on Blencathra this weekend, looking down over his constituency, and I thought about the similarities between the upland farmers there and some of the upland farmers in my Macclesfield constituency, which is on the other side of the Peak district. Does he agree that it is vital to get these roll-out plans clearer, so that farmers can plan ahead to see whether they will be in the roll-out plan for the 99 percentile, or if they are not in that plan to have options to roll out into community-based solutions, which he knows quite a lot about from his own experience?

[Rory Stewart]

It is great to take a question from my hon. Friend. He is, of course, not just a fantastic local constituency MP but somebody who knows a great deal about this specific subject and has championed the outdoor industries, the uplands and the connection between the two, so he knows a great deal about diversification.

The point my hon. Friend made, which in grisly jargon terms we could call a point about transparency, is absolutely central. It is very important that rural communities know when they will get broadband and what kind of broadband they can get, so that they can make the relevant plans. There may be areas where broadband delivery may be more difficult, in which case people need to look at private sector providers or focus on the possibility of satellite or point-to-point wireless connections.

I will conclude my response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset. I say a very strong thanks to him for raising an issue that matters so much; in fact, this rather crowded House in the middle of an Adjournment debate is a testament to how much this issue matters to so many of us here.

We need to have a much more open conversation, and we need to recognise that one size does not fit all. That means that we need to learn from all parts of this House and from all hon. Members about what is working and what is not working in their constituencies. We need to be better at being challenged on issues such as burning on Dartmoor.

Natural England should be empowered to be much more flexible. We do not need a 300-mile screwdriver operating from here in Westminster to tell people what to do; such a situation should be resolved between a Natural England official and the farmer on the ground in Dartmoor. We ourselves must assess and reassess relentlessly the regulatory methods that we are putting in place; we have to free farmers to farm.

The contribution of my hon. Friend is vital in the process of championing the uplands. I am really pleased that this debate is one of the earliest Adjournment debates of this Parliament. His contribution is also vital in holding people such as me to task, to ensure that we listen, learn and act.

I will finish by speaking personally and saying that I find almost nothing in our landscape as precious or as moving as the contribution of upland farmers over countless generations. We owe it to our ancestors and our descendants, to our landscape and to our rural communities, to give upland farmers the support they require to do their essential work. I pay tribute to the work done by many, many people in this Chamber over the years in supporting upland farmers, but this evening I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate.

Question put and agreed to.