Farming and Rural Communities

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the opportunity to take part in this important debate. I declare an interest as a farmer in Northern Ireland.

I have been very interested in some of the discussion so far. I know and appreciate that the Minister has agriculture, farming and rural communities at heart. But we must grasp the nettle here and start recognising that the farming community provides the food on our table, provides society with jobs and is the one economic base in this country consisting of price takers, not price makers. We do not have the opportunity to set our own price for products—that is done by others. If I go and buy a product in a shop, that price is set and I have to pay it. When we produce our milk, beef, sheep or wheat, we have to take whatever price the next part of the food chain gives us. We do not have that opportunity.

I was very interested in the assertion by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, around compulsory purchase. I will give an example. Some of my contribution is about Northern Ireland but some of it is broader. In Northern Ireland at that moment, 85 kilometres of new dual carriageway is being developed on the A5 road. Farmers and landowners have had that land vested for months and have not even got an offer of a valuation for it. Is that fair or reasonable? Those farmers cannot plan for their future. They do not know whether they will have the use of that land this summer to produce their food stocks. They have no idea; that is totally unfair.

I have talked to other farmers in a similar position who lost their land six years ago by vesting for a road scheme and who still have not got a penny. It is totally unfair and unreasonable. How would anybody here like it if their vehicle was impounded by the Government, used for their purposes and not paid for?

We must recognise the significant input that the farming community and rural communities make to the economy. I was taken by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and the issue around health. I come from County Fermanagh, where we have one state-of-the-art hospital. It has been open for only 12 years but we have theatres and beds in it that have never been used because we cannot get the health professionals to come and live in the rural areas. There needs to be a change in attitude, policy and direction.

I have listened to some of the issues around financial support for the farming community, but it is not always financial support that the farming community wants; it is support in government policy as well. One aspect I will highlight is that where there are opportunities to improve animal housing—livestock housing—and to build modern, state-of-the-art housing, we in Northern Ireland are broadly not permitted to do that if we are within 7.5 kilometres of a European-designated site. That prevents us doing it. It does not matter what level of audits, surveys and assessments are carried out. If we are not meeting the targets, we cannot even replace it with housing that would be much better for the environment and have far lower greenhouse gas emissions. We are still not permitted to do it. Farmers need those types of policies, not just financial support.

Clearly, living in a rural area can be difficult for services. We have mentioned health services. I know that in one village—it has changed now, to be fair—we had one bus service per week, from the main town in Enniskillen out to that village and back on the same day. If you missed that bus, you had to wait a week to get the next. That is going a bit far, but your Lordships understand what I am saying. A good level of services is just not provided in the rural areas.

I know there is a climate change debate this afternoon and I do not want to encroach on that too much, but sometimes I believe that there are people and communities in this society who would rather we imported all our goods instead of producing our own, because that might mean we can hit our climate change targets more easily. That is not the case for me. I want us to produce them locally and to a better standard than others.