Rural Affairs

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is traditional to say nice things about somebody who has just given a maiden speech, but that was a genuinely outstanding maiden speech. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) on the grace that he showed to his predecessor, and his clear and obvious expertise on, and passion for, his constituency. I will pass on the offer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), who I am sure will jump at the chance to go on a zipwire anywhere, but especially in the hon. Member’s patch. I am sure that my right hon. Friend’s diary secretary will be delighted with the commitment that I have just made on his behalf.

The hon. Member for Cannock Chase claimed to have the most beautiful constituency in the country. We will let that pass for the moment. I represent Westmorland and Lonsdale, which covers the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales—a vast area of the United Kingdom that is utterly beautiful. We are now the second largest constituency in England. I know that it pales into insignificance besides some of my highland colleagues’, but all the same, is it a place that I am very proud to represent.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for leading this really important debate. I welcome the new shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to her position. I was thrilled and excited by the awesome picture painted of life in rural communities before 4 July, but just to bring us all back down to earth, I will remind us of what life was really like. Over the last five years, livestock farmers in my constituency and elsewhere have seen a 41% drop in their income. Look at our rural communities, and the evaporation of the long-term private rented sector, replaced by Airbnbs—unregulated, unintervened on, and unprevented. Second home ownership is gobbling up our villages and killing off rural communities. It is no surprise that at the last general election, the Rural Services Network calculated that if rural England was a separate region, it would be the poorest in England.

The Secretary of State will seek to be less disastrous for rural communities than the Tories who went before him. That is not a very high bar to clear, but looking at the Budget, I am concerned that he may not find that as easy as he thought. Let me say a thing or two about the Budget, in particular APR, BPR and the changes to inheritance tax. Some 440 farmers in my constituency will be affected by the APR and inheritance tax change. It is important to remember that very large numbers of people live on significantly less than the minimum wage, yet have a property that, on paper, is worth enough for them to be clobbered by the change.

While 440 farmers will be directly affected, hundreds of tenants will be indirectly affected, because when a landlord has to rearrange their business, perhaps to try to avoid paying inheritance tax, it will be tenants who end up losing out, however the landlord restructures their estate. I was pleased to hear the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs confirm at the Hexham northern farming conference last week that the Government will bring in a tenant farming commissioner. I congratulate and thank them for doing that, but the position will not be up and running before the policy has been introduced. Tenants will be evicted from their land. In our communities, we will see lakeland clearances as a result.

The policy has been sold as one that attacks the wealthy. No—the wealthy will find ways around it, just as we are finding with business property relief. I cite the case of the owner of a family-run, very famous, wonderful holiday park in the central lakes in my constituency. He is a father in his 90s. The business is not worth millions in terms of cash flow or profits, but to pay the death duties, the family will have to sell out to another big corporate. Big corporates and big equity houses will buy up farming and non-agricultural family businesses. When it comes to farming, land will pass into non-agricultural use, and the house will be turned into yet another second home. That will be devastating for not just family farms but rural communities as a whole.

[Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)]

Family farms are a key part of the fabric of our countryside, as farmers in my rural constituency tell me every day. They have spent all weekend trying to get my attention just to tell me that. What really worries me about the changes to inheritance tax in the Budget is that they will directly and disproportionately affect small family farms. Does my hon. Friend agree that that will have a devastating effect on small farms, and on our food security?

[Tim Farron]

I think it will. Many farmers earn less than the minimum wage, and although they own property worth an awful lot of money, it is worth nothing to them, really, because it is their business. As a consequence of the changes, someone will own that farm, but it will no longer be a family; it will be some huge estate, or a private equity firm. The Government must listen on that issue.

I will turn my thoughts to funding elements in the Budget. I have found a very rare creature: a Brexit benefit. Leaving the common agricultural policy, and moving towards environmental land management schemes—set up by the previous Government, adopted by this one, and supported in principle by the Liberal Democrats—was an opportunity to make things better for farmers and our countryside. However, the previous Government botched things completely by failing to fund the projects properly, and by taking away basic payments at a regular and dependable rate, and not replacing them quickly enough with a new payment under the environmental schemes. That has massively reduced our ability to feed ourselves. The agricultural policy of the last Conservative Government, which has, so far, been adopted by the current Government, is absolutely insane, in that it disincentivises the production of food. That is ridiculous, and I hope that the new Government look actively at putting it right.

The effect of the £350 million underspend by the previous Government was not felt in the pockets of the big landlords, who were able to get into the schemes relatively easily; it was smaller family farms that suffered, yet the Budget speeds up the rate at which we are getting rid of the basic payment, which is deeply troubling. A reduction of at least 76% in the basic payment for those still in the system will be devastating for their businesses. People do not know what to do next; they may end up backing out of environmental schemes and farming intensively in order to pay the rent and keep a roof over their family’s heads.

It is worth bearing in mind the impact that the measures will have on the mental health of farmers. Let us put ourselves in their position. A fifth or sixth-generation tenant farmer or owner-occupier might see that they could lose the family farm because of the Conservatives botching the system and the Labour Government’s cliff edge. Do not put people in that position. Give them time to move into new schemes, rather than kicking the legs of the old system from underneath them.

Let me say a word about trade deals before I talk about other important rural issues. The previous Government absolutely threw British farmers under the bus in the deals that they cut with New Zealand and Australia. We must of course be pragmatic about relationships with the incoming Administration in the United States, but in any deal with the US, I urge the Secretary of State not to do what the Conservatives did in their deals with Australia and New Zealand. Protect British farmers and protect our values, please.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman and I shared very similar concerns about the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. We feared that imports would swamp the market, but fortunately that has not come to pass; it has all been swallowed up by an ever-voracious Chinese and south-east Asian market. New Zealand lamb producers have actually reduced the size of the flock per capita. What we worried about has not come to pass, and we should be grateful for that.

[Tim Farron]

Well, I think it has come to pass, to a degree, in the sense that we allow equal access to our markets to those producing animal products—meat and other food products—who have lower standards than British farmers. That is just not fair; it is not a level playing field. The American market is far bigger, and my great fear is that doing a similar deal with Donald Trump will do much more harm to British farmers. I hope that the Secretary of State will be mindful of that.

Let me move on to other issues that affect our rural communities. In a constituency such as mine, the average house price is 14 times the average household income. We have a 7,000 household-strong waiting list for social rented housing. I mentioned earlier the collapse of the long-term private rented sector into Airbnb, which has a huge consequent impact on lives. I can think of a particular couple—she was a teaching assistant; he was a chef—who were kicked out by the landlord, who wanted to go with Airbnb. As a result, they had to take their two kids out of school, give up their jobs and leave the area completely. There were hundreds and hundreds of such cases, and the previous Government did not intervene until it was far, far too late.

The impact of the housing crisis in rural communities across our country is not just deeply upsetting and devastating for families, but damaging to our workforce. Sixty-six per cent of lakes and dales hospitality and tourism businesses are operating below capacity because they cannot find enough staff. One in five care jobs in Cumbria is unfilled because of a lack of permanent workforce.

Another matter that the previous Government refused explicitly to tackle, and which I hope this Government will tackle, is the scourge of excessive second home ownership in Britain’s rural communities. People own those bolthole homes but barely live in them. The excessive number of second homes in our communities means that we lose our schools, our bus services and the very heart of those communities. Will the Secretary of State consider doing what the Liberal Democrats have proposed for years by making second home ownership a separate category of planning use, so that planners have the opportunity to protect their communities?

On health, so many of the issues that we face in rural communities relate to distance from care and people’s ability to get where they need to be in time. That also means that we have efficiency issues. A GP serving a huge acreage may not be very efficient with their relatively small list, but we desperately need them. Will the Government consider our proposal for a strategic small surgeries fund to keep vital GP surgeries open in rural communities?

We must also bear in mind that some of the longest and most unacceptable waiting times for cancer treatment are in rural communities. We very much welcome the £70 million for radiotherapy that was announced just before the Budget—much to Mr Speaker’s chagrin—but will the Secretary of State bear in mind that 3.5 million people in the country, most of them in rural communities, live in radiotherapy deserts? Half of us will have cancer at some point in our lives, and half of those people should receive radiotherapy treatment, yet barely a quarter of them do. One reason for that is that communities such as mine are just too far from that treatment. Will the Government ensure that some of that money goes towards providing satellite units in Kendal and other parts of rural Britain.

On public transport, it is right to say that the Government have made a poor decision in increasing the bus fare cap. That will have a huge impact on low-wage workers, particularly in rural parts of the country. Frankly, a £3 cap—or even a £2 cap—is a fat lot of good if there is no bus to use it on. I encourage the Secretary of State to devolve to local authorities the power to run their own bus services, and not to enforce local government reorganisation in order to achieve it—just give them those powers now.

I am coming to the end of my remarks, I promise. On broadband, the new Government—and the previous Government—have made good progress on Project Gigabit, and we ought to be grateful for that, but they must be aware that there will always be places that the project will not reach, including four in my constituency: Warcop, Hilton, Murton and Ormside. Those places are in deferred scope and, currently, are likely to get no service whatsoever. Will the Government consider de-scoping those places so that they can access vouchers? That would allow B4RN, our wonderful local not-for-profit broadband company, to step in and do the job.

You will be delighted to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this is my final point. It is worth pointing out that under the Conservatives, 45% of water bill payers’ money went into the pockets of shareholders in dividends, into bonuses or into debt financing. Meanwhile, half a million instances of sewage dumping in our lakes and rivers happened each year. We welcome some of the Government’s proposals to clean that up, but without radical reform of the industry—which they are not proposing—that problem will not be solved in a long-term way.

In conclusion, our rural communities have been taken for granted and deeply damaged by a Conservative Government; our memories in rural Britain are very long, and they will not be excused that failure. We also see a Labour Government whose early start is not promising for our rural communities. As such, we in the Liberal Democrats have made a deliberate choice to be the voice of rural communities. We will take up that mantle with humility and passion, because a Britain that cannot feed itself is a Britain that will fail.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Chris Kane to make his maiden speech.