Environment Bill

Debate between Tim Farron and Julie Marson

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

The Select Committee Chair is absolutely right, and I completely agree. We have to find a mechanism to make sure that we reward those who maintain the beauty of our landscape.

I have often been in places such as Barbondale, Dentdale, Langdale, Kentmere, Longsleddale and other glorious bits of my part of the world. I almost feel compelled to express envy of the hill farmer I am with in his or her glorious environment, but often the response is a slightly sad look that says, “I can’t eat the view.” It is all very well having a beautiful place, but if those who work there make a pittance, what good is it to them? That is what is happening in the uplands, where people are steadily moving away as farms fail and close. The Government’s plan to offer early retirement to farmers offers no mechanism to get young people in to replace them, and just in the last few days, the only agricultural college in Cumbria has closed.

I am desperate to ensure that the ELMS rewards farmers for landscape value, but there is currently no effective mechanism to do that. That should be added, which is why the amendment matters. I am also concerned about what the Bill means for the status of some of the beautiful parts of the United Kingdom. UNESCO awarded world heritage site status to the lake district just a few years ago. The report that resulted in the award of that status gave as much credit to the farmers as it did to the glaciers. These are managed, crafted landscapes, and we should reward the farmers who provide them.

There are many bad things about our not being in the EU, but one good thing is that we do not need to borrow EU measures. We do not need to borrow the plan for funding ELMS through the mechanism of income forgone. We should be rewarding farmers for the value of what they do, not paying the pittance they were paid in the first place.

In the time left, I will speak to amendment 29. Local nature resource strategies are a good idea. They are welcome, but they are weak, and they will not be worth the paper they are written on if they are not material to the considerations and decisions made by local planning committees. If we are to protect our green belt, whether it be in such places as the constituency of the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), other parts of the ring around London, or indeed a very rural area like mine, we must not put planners in a situation where they have no power to prevent developers from damaging the countryside or, as is the case in a place like mine, to prevent developers from delivering up to 50 houses without having to deliver a single affordable property.

Nine out of 10 planning permission applications get passed. More than a million planning applications for homes have not been delivered. Planning is not the problem; planning is the protection for our communities and our environment. That is why this amendment is important to try to undo and mitigate some of the Government’s attack on our rural communities.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and it is a real pleasure to speak in this debate. It was over a year ago that I made my maiden speech specifically so that I had the opportunity to contribute to the Second Reading of this Bill, so it is a pleasure to be back here again.

It is worth reflecting on the context of where we are now, because in the intervening time, the pieces of our country and the world have been almost thrown into the air, and we still do not quite know where they will land. The pandemic makes the Bill even more important than it was over a year ago. It is fair to say that all of us have had time to reassess priorities. We have considered our priorities in life—our quality of life, our family, our health and our friends—and this Bill has become even more important, because many of us, with the roads quiet and having limited time to get out, have reflected on the importance of our natural environment and what is around us. Our appreciation of nature and the need to focus on species loss and the things that make our environment unique to our localities are even more important than they were.

With respect, I must disagree with the shadow Secretary of State’s characterisation of this as not being a landmark Bill, because it is a landmark Bill. It is a bold Bill. I particularly reject the characterisation that it is a mark of a Government or, indeed, any Member on the Government Benches not caring about the environment, because it absolutely is not that.