Rural Affairs
Roz Savage Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
The gravity of this situation was brought home to me by a letter that I received recently from a South Cotswolds constituent, a farmer near Sherston whose experience vividly illustrates the challenge our agricultural sector faces. He manages a 200-acre farm, a combination of owned and rented primarily arable land, with a small field of Brussels sprouts, where I spent a day helping with the harvest last Christmas. I am no farmer, but that day spent in the mud and drizzle gave me some inkling of just how hard our farmers work and how dedicated they are. Despite their best efforts, their financial reality is stark. Last year, with an above-average harvest and a favourable crop price, they made just £34,000 before even paying themselves anything. This year, with falling crop prices, they anticipate a loss.
The recent Budget proposals have cast a long shadow over our farming communities, adding to an already vulnerable situation. The changes to agricultural property relief threaten to force the sale of farms that have been in the same family for generations. That Brussels sprouts farmer faces a potential inheritance tax bill of nearly £239,000, a sum that could be paid only by selling off part of the farm that has been in his family for three generations.
The Liberal Democrats have long recognised that food security is national security. We understand that environmental stewardship and food production are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing goals. It is in line with this that I have introduced my private Member’s Bill, the Climate and Nature Bill, which would help to support farmers, to support nature and to support us. Our farmers are not just food producers: they are the guardians of our land, regenerating soil, restoring wildlife and enhancing biodiversity.
Many people think that the climate crisis is the cause of the nature crisis, but many believe—rightly, I think—that it is the loss of nature that is contributing to the climate crisis. The Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, in the South Cotswolds, is now starting to pioneer the idea of zero dig, knowing that when we regenerate soil it sinks more carbon, mitigating climate change; it holds more water, mitigating flooding; and it yields more nutritious food, improving human health.
I call on the Secretary of State to heed the voices of our farmers. We need to work together to create a future in which British agriculture is strong, resilient and sustainable—a future where our farmers can produce the food we need while nurturing the land we love.
Water Companies: Regulation and Financial Stability
Roz Savage Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. Clean water is a fundamental human right, so the exploitation by our water companies at the expense of the British taxpayer is deeply offensive to me and to my South Cotswolds constituents. It adds insult to injury that the same companies now expect taxpayers to foot the bill for improvements they should have prioritised over CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends. Since privatisation, shareholders have extracted a staggering £85 billion from the water and sewerage system in England and Wales. In my constituency, where the River Thames rises, Thames Water pumped sewage into the River Coln in Fairford for 3,391 hours—the equivalent of four and a half months—in 2022. Incidents that are meant to be exceptional happen on average more than three times a week. Dog walkers no longer feel comfortable walking their dogs along the riverbanks after one dog jumped into the water, got sick and died two days later. Across the constituency, sewage is flooding into houses and gardens and schools. That is simply unacceptable.
We need an ambitious, long-term, financially and environmentally responsible vision for our water industry as an essential—literally vital—public good, and that vision must be orientated towards good, clean water. Back in 2013, I was campaigning for the London super-sewer, paddling around under Putney bridge and looking appalled at the tampons and other solid waste coming out of an overflow under the bridge. It has taken more than 11 years to open even the first section of the London super-sewer. The best time to fix this crisis would have been 30 years ago, but the second-best time is now.
I am not letting water companies off the hook for a moment, but I would like to say that the vision must embody a holistic approach to water management. Housing developers can capture rainwater to reduce run-off. Farmers have a key role to play in keeping agricultural contaminants out of our rivers. We need action to stop forever chemicals from plastics and pharmaceuticals getting into our rivers and streams.
In short, we need to stop the incessant pollution of our natural world. Water connects everything. Clean water nourishes all life, while dirty water pollutes everything it touches—from otters, kingfishers and crayfish to our pets and ourselves. We need to put nature back at the heart of our decision making, as called for in my Climate and Nature Bill. The Liberal Democrats propose transforming water companies into public benefit companies—no more excessive bonuses and no more prioritising shareholders over customers. We would also like to see local environmental groups given a voice on water company boards. Some countries have even granted legal personhood to rivers, including the Whanganui river in New Zealand, the Atrato river in Colombia and the Magpie river in Canada. Potentially, we could have a person representing the river itself sitting on a corporate board.
The time is now to take bold steps to improve water company governance, invest in our infrastructure and protect our precious water resources for generations to come.
Farming and Food Security
Roz Savage Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to the House. I also thank my hon. Friends for their contributions to this important debate on food and farming.
It is an absolute honour to address the Chamber as the newly elected Member of Parliament for South Cotswolds. It is a new constituency, formed from parts of the former Cotswolds and North Wiltshire seats. The hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) continues his service in his constituency, while James Gray served North Wiltshire for 27 years. Although Mr Gray’s and my political views may differ substantially, he was a dedicated constituency MP, and I hope to follow in his footsteps in that regard at least.
The Cotswolds has a well-deserved reputation for natural and architectural beauty. It always gladdens my heart to see the soaring, slender spire of St Mary’s church in Tetbury, the elegant honeystone buildings around the marketplace in Cirencester, or the awe-inspiring arches of Malmesbury abbey. We have beautiful villages, including three category winners of the Wiltshire Best Kept Villages competition: Ashton Keynes, Seagry and Hankerton. We have vibrant communities, thriving businesses, and visionary innovators and inventors. King Charles had the good taste to choose Highgrove, near Tetbury, as his country home, and his gardens are well worth a visit; I am still waiting for my invitation to join His Majesty there for an organic cream tea.
South Cotswolds is a rural constituency, characterised by a rich agricultural landscape, with a proud farming heritage and a plethora of fabulous farmers’ markets full of tempting goodies. Eighty-seven per cent of the land within the Cotswolds area of outstanding natural beauty is dedicated to agriculture, and we have more than 750 farm holdings in South Cotswolds, employing over 2,000 people. Our beautiful landscape is a diverse mix of crops and grassland, and livestock farming constitutes a significant sector, with cattle, sheep and pigs. I can recommend Cirencester livestock market as probably the best place in the constituency, if not the country, to get a gargantuan farmer’s breakfast that really sets you up for the day—if not for the entire week.
The Cotswolds is known for our traditional farming practices—most of the farms are family run, and often have been for many, many generations—but there is plenty of innovation too. Earlier this year, I hosted an event at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, where we heard that many farms in the region are embracing sustainable and regenerative approaches, focusing on soil health, wildlife conservation and local food production. The “Royal Ag” itself is leading the field, so to speak, with zero dig farming methods. However, not all is rosy in the Cotswolds garden. Our farmers are frustrated by the absence of a long-term strategy. They need to plan 20 or 30 years ahead, beyond the next electoral cycle. They need a clear vision of the future, a vision that can survive changes of Government.
We need to attract more young people into farming. Last year, I “helped” a couple of farmers to bring in the brussels sprout harvest. As I stood in a muddy field on a grey December day, they told me about the problems they had had in recruiting young people into farming. Thirty-eight per cent of farmers are 65 or older, and only 15% are under 45. Astonishingly, it seems that not many young people enjoy being out in the middle of a field in all weathers, doing hard physical work for very little money! A significant number of them do, but the main obstacle is gaining access to land. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State imply that he would be working to encourage more younger people into farming, making it easier and more rewarding for them to help to feed our country high-quality food that has not travelled halfway around the world.
On the south-eastern edge of my constituency, a really exciting initiative is under way at the marvellously named Crapper’s landfill site, which is leading on sustain circles. This concept aims to meet 80% of a community’s food, housing, jobs and energy needs within a defined radius around the community, increasing self-reliance and resilience. The idea is being pioneered with a plan to position pressurised plastic greenhouses on old landfill zones, using the methane emissions from the decomposing rubbish to heat the greenhouses. It aims to grow enough fruit and vegetables to feed Royal Wootton Bassett, Brinkworth and Malmesbury. We need more creative projects like this.
Elsewhere in Wiltshire, a proposal for a massive solar farm on 2,000 acres of mostly agricultural land has sparked debate about how we choose to use our land. We need to stop thinking, “Housing here, renewables here and food production here,” and to look at more creative ways to make our land multi-layered and multi-purpose. It is becoming clearer than ever that we need an integrated strategy, not least because building more houses will increase rainwater run-off and increase the burden on an already overloaded sewage system.
In my constituency in the last year alone, the Fairford sewage treatment works pumped untreated sewage into the River Coln for 3,391 hours, which equates to over four and a half months. Incidents that are meant to be exceptional are happening on average over three times a week. Across the constituency, sewage is flooding into houses, gardens and schools. It is flooding out across fields, where cattle consume it, get sick and die. I urge Thames Water to upgrade the Fairford sewage works as a matter of the utmost urgency, and Ofwat to make sure that it does.
For me, the cleanliness or otherwise of our rivers is personal, and I would like to share a little background. I am not from anywhere in particular. My father was a Methodist minister, and my parents moved house for the first time when I was two years old. They continued to move house with annoying frequency thereafter. My father’s excuse was that he ran out of sermons after a certain number of years, so we had to move house so that he could recycle them. I am all in favour of recycling, but I think he presumed a higher degree of attention, and a longer span of memory, than the typical church member has. Sadly, my parents are no longer around to see me take my seat in this House, but I know they would have been proud. Above all else, they believed that their job was to serve the community as exemplars of God’s love, and I am honoured to follow in their footsteps—but I digress.
Since I have been old enough to choose where I live, I seem to keep coming back to the River Thames. I took my first oar strokes on the Thames in Oxford, and rowed out of Thames rowing club in Putney for several years. I lived in Fulham, Putney, Brentford, Kew, Richmond and Windsor before moving to the Cotswolds. The River Thames rises in my constituency as little more than a trickle just outside Cricklade, gradually gathering tributaries, including the highly polluted Coln, to become the magnificent Father Thames that flows past these Houses of Parliament.
The Thames has been a constant thread throughout much of my adult life, so I care passionately about water issues, and about climate and nature more generally. This is a passion that led me, in my 30s, to spend an inordinate amount of time alone in a tiny rowboat in the middle of various oceans as I rowed solo across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian, using my voyages to raise awareness of environmental issues and our growing ecological crisis. Along the way, I gained some really impressive callouses, four Guinness world records and, hopefully, some highly transferable skills in navigating shark-infested waters, which may possibly stand me in good stead in my new career.
Like many who care about our environment, I sometimes despair, but in closing I would like to say that what gives me hope for the future is the public spirit, the energy and the goodness that I see in action in the South Cotswolds. When the Government are telling us that there is no money and councils are struggling, I see our communities coming together, using their creativity and resourcefulness to work out how to make a little go a long way, sharing resources, looking to their neighbours, donating time and skills and looking out for each other. We have fabulous organisations, including the Cirencester Pantry, Heals of Malmesbury, and Community Fridges in Purton, Malmesbury and Tetbury. It is so inspiring to see people coming together in mutual support.
People of the South Cotswolds, you inspire me and you humble me. I am so grateful to my constituents for trusting me to represent their interests and those of this country. I commit to doing my absolute best to rise to this challenge with unwavering determination, integrity and dedication.