Queen’s Speech

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Inglewood

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, like others, I congratulate the two noble Lords who made their maiden speeches in this debate. I will start my remarks where the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Clark of Windermere, concluded on day one of this debate on the gracious Speech. I refer to the controversy surrounding Newton Rigg College near Penrith, where I studied myself. As chair of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, I considered it inappropriate publicly to man the barricades on this matter; rather, I have been busy behind the scenes, including keeping the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, up to date with my concerns. However, now that the Cumbrian campus has publicly been placed on the market, with a view to unilaterally expatriating the proceeds to Yorkshire, I feel free to express my personal feelings and anger, shared by so many other Cumbrians.

Together with the chief executive of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, I was a witness at a hearing of the other place’s EFRA Committee on 23 March this year. In the same session, there were two witnesses from Askham Bryan College, neither of whom was either the chair or vice-chair of the governors. The committee’s questioning was skilful and forensic, led effectively by the honourable Member for Brent North, Mr Barry Gardiner. My LEP colleague and I spoke relatively little. I left the hearing stunned by the college’s evidence and its inadequacy and shortcomings, and was more or less completely bemused by it all. Since then, I have revisited the evidence, which was recorded, and have given it careful thought. It correlates with what I know has been happening on the ground and with Askham Bryan College’s behaviour, which has been evasive, disingenuous and inconsistent, including gagging its employees.

As noble Lords will know, FE colleges are charities, but they are not required to register with the Charity Commission; rather, their principal regulator is the Department for Education. None the less, their charitable purpose is paramount. However, in the face of what appear to be considerable financial difficulties, Askham Bryan College’s prime purpose seems to have morphed into one of preservation of itself to the exclusion of everything else, in a manner which specialist legal advice—which I have seen—suggests may be unlawful and certainly seems to me to disregard a number of the Nolan principles.

All this is very similar in a number of respects to what happened some years ago in the case of the Kids Company. That was a real scandal, and this is equally so. It is as simple as that.

I conclude with three pleas. First, I say to the Minister and the Government: this FE college is part of the nation’s system for delivering education and training, and the Government are the college’s principal regulator and guardian of the public interest. Their prime concern must be the integrity of the system and proper administration of the provision of FE, skills and training to everybody in this country, not just to those in Yorkshire. They should not emulate Pontius Pilate and weakly stand by wringing their hands. They should take a grip.

I say to your Lordships: one of our roles as parliamentarians is to identify abuse, bring it to public attention, place it under public scrutiny and stamp it out. As I have said, the EFRA Committee’s hearing on 23 March has been recorded and is available. I urge your Lordships to view it and form your own conclusions. I believe that something very wrong is going on.

Thirdly, I would say through the House and via Hansard to the media—I speak as an ex-Minister in the then DNH who had considerable involvement with the media, as an ex-chairman of the Communications Committee of your Lordships’ House when we produced an important report on investigative journalism, as chairman of a local newspaper group for more than a decade and now a director of Full Fact and the Public Interest News Foundation—that you the media, both local and national, because this is not a parochial issue, are part of the wider system of checks and balances in which our system of government and administration is set. I know a scandal when I see it. Go out, investigate, form your own conclusions and then tell truth to power. That is what you are for.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, has withdrawn, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow.

Spending Review 2020

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Inglewood

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, looking across the northern business landscape, as I do, from the perspective of chair of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, the prospect is not cheerful. But the spending review is a start—a real start—on the road to employment and prosperity, which are two sides of the same coin.

Having said that, it is far from a complete solution by itself. Levelling up is hugely important and welcome, and infrastructure projects will play a part—albeit a relatively straightforward and visible part—of a much larger, more complicated and less obviously visible process of dealing with the consequences of Covid-19 and the implications of the end of the Brexit transition period. Whatever the latter may bring, there is agreement across all ranges of opinion that there is going to be real economic turbulence and upheaval, likely in many cases to be exacerbated by the existential implications of Covid having taken focus away from both its problems and its opportunities. As I have said on a number of occasions, if you are in a shipwreck, saving your baggage is low on your list of priorities.

My concern in these remarks, based on my own observations and experience, is the plight of small businesses—one-man bands, family businesses with an employee or two: that part of the economy. They do not have sharp-suited, smooth-talking lobbyists in Whitehall and Westminster. Present initiatives do not appear to be reaching them as hoped. These businesses and families are the bedrock of this country. Many have been ruined or enormously damaged financially; they are frightened by what lies ahead and their morale is low. They need the economic equivalent of what the National Health Service is giving Covid patients; they need genuine, relevant assistance and support, based on actual experience and a pragmatic understanding of the real world, not academia, think tanks or governance and administration—and they need it now. The impact of what is happening will last for years, if not decades, and the survivors of this unprecedented chapter in our history will be the launch pad for the next stage of recovery. The cure for the public finances must not be allowed to kill them, because each and every survivor is part of the future, and we need every one.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

save-line3The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, has withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Inglewood

3rd reading & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 1st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I do not think we have the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, do we? No. Then we will go on to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, we have had a very interesting, worthwhile and civilised series of sessions, discussing our individual, and the Government’s, visions, ideas and plans for the future of rural Britain and agriculture. Clearly there are disagreements, but overall there is a degree of consensus, which I personally much welcome. However, while I do not wish to be the bad fairy at the christening, I do wish to point out that this is an enabling Bill, and without the measures that follow, nothing can result. It is about that that I wish to comment and, at this point, I reiterate my interest as declared in the register and note the agricultural organisations with which I am involved.

I feel I have no alternative but to tell the House that I fear the emperor may have no clothes. I have had no information not in the public domain, and I know that some confidential information has in fact found its way into the press. However, I am quite clear that a number of those who are committed to working closely with the Government and Defra on these matters, and who will not fail to continue to do so—people who come from the practical world of agriculture and the environment—are very concerned that the department is simply not grounded in reality. Farming and land management have to be grounded.

In particular, there are real anxieties about the ability of the Sustainable Food Initiative to act as a bridge between the basic payment scheme and ELMS because, quite simply, there is not enough money. It is as simple as that, and those who say it understand these things. Equally, there is no confidence that working IT systems either will or indeed can be put in place in time. After all, we have been there quite recently. Failure in these respects will certainly lead to significant numbers of farms and rural businesses going bust.

The Minister, as many have said quite rightly, has conducted the proceedings in a genial and constructive manner admired by all around the House, but we must not forget what is happening behind the proscenium arch and curtain in front of which he delivers his lines. If I am right—and, unusually for me, I hope I am not, but I fear it is possible I may be—all that we have been discussing over the past few weeks will turn out to be an agreeable hallucination that will turn into nightmares or worse for many in rural Britain, particularly smaller businesses. Perfectly decent enabling legislation is quite capable of metamorphosing into appalling public administration. Let us all hope and pray that it will not happen in this instance, but the potential for it to do so is clearly there.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I think we can now call the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. Is the noble Lord there?

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Inglewood

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, although I declared my agricultural interests earlier, I should specifically declare that I am, and have been, a landlord, as a freeholder and as a trustee of let agricultural land, as well as having been a tenant, both of family land and, until recently, some land belonging to a third party. What I found interesting and remarkable about the speeches on the amendment is that, while a number of speakers have taken varying stances, they almost all seem to be coming from the same general place on the map—as I do and hope will become apparent.

It is helpful when thinking about these matters to start from the original economic rationale for the landlord and tenant system. Landlords provided fixed equipment and the tenant the working capital. The parties negotiated around that and the farm business was put together as what might be described as a form of joint venture. The reality in days gone by was that the landlord’s negotiating power was frequently stronger than that of the tenant. This point was graphically drawn to the attention of the House by the late Lord Williams of Mostyn in his final speech on the Bill reorganising the composition of this House, some 15 or so years ago, in what I consider to be the finest speech that I have heard in this Chamber. The imbalance over the years has led to a series of specific pieces of legislation to introduce rules for fair trading—something that we have just been considering in a different context—into this marketplace. That is as it should be.

Too often, the debate is conducted in black and white terms, when it is in reality shades of grey. Landlords range from hard-nosed financial institutions and Dukes to widows, orphans and charities—for example, the National Trust, which interestingly is not always popular among its own tenants. Tenants range from huge farming companies to smallholders. Their circumstances are wide-ranging. There are good and bad landlords, and tenants who are exemplary farmers and some who are chancers and incompetents. However, both sides, whatever characteristics they have, ought in a free society to be treated even-handedly within the legal framework surrounding whatever arrangement they wish to put in place. While this may, to a degree, depend upon one’s perspective, the landlord is not, in granting a lease, conveying away his freehold or emotional and other commitments to the land. It is not the re-creation of some form of copyhold system.

A tenant, particularly when he also obtains a farmhouse, is acquiring more than a mere business asset but a home, and making a considerable investment in someone else’s property. This must not be forgotten. Questions around bare land may be different. On top of that, both parties may be investing substantial sums of money, and all this must be taken into account. There is a perhaps an understandable tendency, at least superficially, to treat tenants as good and landlords as bad. That is not, by any means, universally the case. I speak from first-hand experience on which it is unnecessary to elaborate further here.

The conclusion that I have come to when thinking about these matters over the years is that perhaps the best way to make a mess of the landlord and tenant system is to rewrite it on the hoof on the Floor of Parliament in an ad hoc manner. Rather, as a number of speakers have said, those in the industry should, from time to time, review the matters to find a middle way that, as far as possible, represents a compromise acceptable to all those involved. That will need to be led by some entity or organisation like the Tenancy Reform Industry Group, TRIG. Failure to do that will not only wreck a system that must adapt anyway to completely new circumstances as the output of farming changes but, as many speakers have said, but properly ensure fairness on all sides. It is certain that if changes are made in an ad hoc, incremental way, real injustice in all kinds of unexpected places is likely to result. I am old-fashioned enough to think that it is a matter that Parliament should do its best to avoid.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkeharle, has withdrawn, so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.