Farming on Dartmoor

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Hosie, and to follow all three of the speakers so far. They have all spoken articulately and passionately, and I support pretty much everything they have said. I want to say a big thanks and congratulations to the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) on securing this important debate.

The conflict that has arisen around the higher-level stewardship schemes on Dartmoor common is deeply concerning for everybody involved and for all of us who care about the future of Britain’s vital uplands and moorlands. Our uplands are crucial to our biodiversity and to tackling climate change; they contribute to food production and flood prevention, to our tourism economy and our landscape heritage; and they are crucial to the communities who live there. Indeed, it is the human destocking of our uplands that troubles me even more than the enforced removal of animals entailed in this deeply upsetting stand-off.

Too often, the Government and their agencies take rural Britain for granted—especially those communities and families who underpin life in our uplands. We officially call them less-favoured areas, but they are favoured by God with awesome beauty, immense significance and wonderful people who sustain that landscape beauty with hard work and commitment all year round.

As we have heard, letters from Natural England were sent to more than 20 commoners on Dartmoor at the very last minute—at the very point when the current HLS schemes were running out. The letters, which were received just as farmers had their animals in calf and in lamb, told those farmers that they had to remove their stock by this coming winter—no wonder the commoners reacted with such dismay. Natural England’s argument is that current schemes have not delivered in ecological terms, as if this was all down to the farmers, and nothing to do with Natural England itself. Of course, Natural England is a Government agency, responsible to and ultimately directed by Ministers, and funded—or, crucially, underfunded—by the Government. If HLS partnerships have not delivered on Dartmoor, or anywhere else, for that matter, the responsibility must be shared. The solution must also be based on partnership and patience and not on a Government agency blaming farmers and taking zero responsibility itself.

It is no accident that this conflict has arisen after Natural England has seen its staffing levels in the south-west reduced by around 90% over the past few years. In Cumbria, we too have seen Natural England staffing resources severely restricted. That is perhaps why only half of the farms that could enter countryside stewardship higher tier are able to even contemplate doing so. It is also one reason the Government are inexcusably botching the transfer from the old payment scheme to the environmental land management scheme.

Farmers in general are being sold short. The uplands have all but been abandoned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which knows full well the impact of its painfully slow agricultural transition policy on business viability. The Government’s error in Dartmoor is caused not just by underfunding but by a fundamental misunderstanding—a mindset that says that there is an overriding conflict between farming and nature. That is simply untrue. There is no such in-built conflict. In Cumbria, and, I am sure, in the west country, farmers demonstrate that they can produce food and care for the environment, but if we do not enable them to farm and to maintain their businesses, we will lose our most important partners in the fight to defend and improve nature.

The debacle in Dartmoor could be averted if Natural England and the Ministers to whom it is responsible took the time to negotiate with commoners, create space for respectful conversations and listen. The Minister must surely know that, if the threats in the February letters are carried out, that will be the end of many of those upland farms. Farmers whose families have cared for these commons for generations will be dealt the cruellest blow, through no fault of their own, and will face the crushing reality of being the ones who lost the family farm—all because of intransigence and a failure to treat people like people and to work in partnership to find workable solutions together.

In Cumbria we have seen that, although it can be difficult, progress can be made, but only if we work in partnership. In 2019, “co-operation not conflict” was the theme of a meeting between all players in our world-class uplands in the lakes and the dales. The meeting was led by the Foundation for Common Land and was attended by His Majesty the King when he was the Prince of Wales. The outcome was a clear understanding that when we co-operate we deliver far more. I hope that this Government will heed that outcome and, in doing so, put right the grave wrong that Natural England has done to the commoners of Dartmoor.

This year, the result of partnership working in Cumbria has seen, for example, the agreement that led to the Duddon, Subberthwaite, Torver and Coniston commons coming into a countryside stewardship agreement that ensures 600 hectares of woodland pasture. That shows what can happen when people talk with each other over time, rather than when Government agencies send terrifying letters to commoners who now find themselves on a cliff edge with nowhere to turn.

In considering how we work with farmers to achieve public goods, we need to remember that arresting biodiversity decline is essential but that it is not the only public good that we must secure. Environmental schemes must also deliver on our climate goals, food security, landscape quality, cultural heritage, flood prevention and water quality. To achieve those vital gains, we will need partnership, which is distinctly lacking in this case. People who work for Natural England in Cumbria are good people, but there are not enough of them. That is surely the case with Dartmoor too.

The simple fact is that the Government have let down rural England as a whole. Promises to maintain previous levels of funding for agriculture and our environment have been broken. With basic payments reduced by at least 35% this year but fewer than 10% of farms entering the new sustainable farming initiative schemes, Ministers know that they are making huge savings and not using that money to support farmers, or even their own agencies, to bridge the gap to keep farmers farming and to protect our environment. Farm funding is being hollowed out. It is overcomplicated and riddled with red tape and built-in conflict. The consequence is that farmers from Cumbria to Cornwall will be needlessly put out of business. Or they will do what many are already doing: they will look at the inaccessibility, unattractiveness and restrictiveness of the new schemes and do the only thing they can think of to save their business and feed their families—turn their backs on environmental schemes and increase their stocking levels. I spoke to farmers in Westmorland just last week who are doing that very thing. They are doing it with heavy hearts, but what are they meant to do when the Government have let them down so badly?

The conflict on Dartmoor is tragic but not inevitable. We simply need Ministers to give Natural England the resources and the instruction to manage transitions in partnership, not with threats, and allow time for solutions to be delivered. I strongly urge the Minister to choose co-operation over conflict.