Water Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, some of the issues covered by Amendment 9 have been discussed in the previous group. I do not entirely disagree with the Minister’s response on common carriage, in terms of how water gets delivered and having as broad a range of potential new retailers as possible. However, the outcome seems to be that if you have de-averaged prices, you have discrimination between users. Whether all the structural amendments—some in this group and some in the previous group with the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne—would be necessary to prevent that, the Bill ought to enunciate that principle. At the end of the day, we do not want a market where the easiest route leads to suppliers cherry picking and to a two- or three-tier market for the final delivery of water to businesses, public authorities and so forth—the non-domestic retail market.

In one sense, Scotland shows us what the benefit to business, and the knock-on effect to the domestic side, has been. It has been not in differentiated prices but in better service, in driving water efficiency both in the delivery and use of water, in better means of dealing with waste water, in better water treatment in specialist cases and in disposal of water and waste. If you put competition wholly on the price side, you will not get those advantages. It will be easy for a supplier, on the supply side, to have a more accessible or more cheaply accessible source of water at the upstream level to bring to its business consumers or, on the demand side, to have a group of businesses and other institutions taking advantage of its terms because they are all fairly close together and all have similar requirements, and therefore there are economies of scale in actually supplying that institution.

I do not think that the Government envisaged—and nor did we on this side—the increasing competition in the retail sector as being primarily about wholesale price. Reassuring noises have been made about Ofwat having the ability to ensure that de-averaging does not take place. The natural drive of the market, however, is likely to make it quite attractive. Unless Ofwat has a clear line, which this amendment would give them, that the wholesale price and therefore the retail price of wholesale water would not be differentiated by location, we will get some differentiation of outcome. We will get cherry picking and we will get distortion. It will hit particularly the more remote rural areas and rural businesses in those areas; it will hit particularly businesses in rundown parts of the inner city, where not many of them are inclined to negotiate deals with the company; and it will hit businesses where it is difficult to see how a new arrangement would work.

Unless there is an overall presumption that there should be no de-averaging then it is quite easy to see how the market would end up with that. It may be that Ofwat’s powers would be exerted to prevent that, but this Bill does not require Ofwat to do so. The terminology that de-averaging would exist only if there was an “overall benefit” to consumers makes it quite difficult to assess. You have an example of de-averaging which clearly might benefit the immediate consumers who are benefiting from that de-averaged price, but how do you then assess its effect in the short and medium term on consumers as a whole? It is quite a difficult judgment for Ofwat. If the outcome the Government want is that which has been delivered in other quasi-utility markets—largely it has been—why not actually tell Ofwat to deliver that? Surely it would be easier.

I hope that the Government take this slightly more seriously. It will not necessarily unravel their whole approach to competition in this Bill. It is simply giving Ofwat an explicit duty that will deliver an outcome the Government say they want. The Government should not fundamentally object to this amendment. It may require a bit of back-up along the lines the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has suggested already, but it requires at least the principle to be reflected in the Bill. Otherwise, we will get cherry picking and we will get discrimination, which is unlikely to drive the kind of efficiencies that we have been praising the Scottish system for delivering. I beg to move.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have intervened in Committee, I declare an interest as a farmer with abstraction licences. Even though I come from Somerset, my farmland is not yet flooded. However, if the current rains continue, it is unlikely that I will be able to say that on Report.

I want to back up the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who said that she could not understand why we had only a week between Second Reading and Committee. This is a very complicated Bill and I am not certain why that particular protocol has been broken on this occasion. I have never had an explanation of it. Maybe I have missed some explanation somewhere, but I think it is wrong. I hope it is not a precursor to a Commons-style approach to Bills, where arguments and the length of discussion are ridden over roughshod.

I strongly support Amendment 9 and the whole question it addresses. It is very important that de-averaging does not take place. I would have supported the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, in his amendments to ensure there are no detriments or de-averaging if I had understood that that was their intention. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that he was not entirely clear what the amendments intended; personally, I could not understand them at all. Anyway, I would have supported the noble Earl had I known.

Water, like Royal Mail, should be covered by a universal service obligation that is amendable only with the permission of Parliament. Water should be a universal right—although clearly there can be exceptions, as with Royal Mail. For instance, I believe that a postman does not have to deliver to a household where he is permanently attacked by a savage dog. The water equivalent of that might be a blatant leak in a householder’s garden where the water was going to waste; there could be exceptions.

It is very important, particularly in rural areas, that de-averaging does not happen. I have heard the view expressed that de-averaging is bound to happen with the introduction of competition, especially if that competition eventually moves on to cover domestic premises. I personally hope that it will but obviously we should go softly, softly. I do not see competition as incompatible with de-averaging. It is possible to invest efficiently in the overall infrastructure and still charge your customers competitively, based on an average cost per litre, once the overall infrastructure is in place and the supply of water adequate for the demand. That obviously means we must manage the supply, the overall abstraction and the demand—preferably through universal metering but we have yet to come to those debates.

For the time being, I strongly support the thinking behind Amendment 9. Neither remote nor very remote properties should have to pay more per litre than their urban counterparts. I sincerely hope that the Minister was right, when replying to the previous debate, to say that Ofwat has the power to prevent de-averaging. I sincerely hope that it will use those powers.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. Briefly, I am very supportive of the way the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, set out the principles and concerns on this. He echoed many of the points made by my noble friend on the previous group of amendments. My amendments focus less on the principles and more on the mechanisms of charging. To limit the amount of your Lordships’ time taken in Committee, I intend to pick that up in the context of Amendment 43, on restricted access, and of Amendments 99, 100 and 102, which fit more neatly into Clause 16 and the charges scheme—which I know my noble friend will address when he reaches his group of amendments, led by Amendment 44. I could discuss them here but I think it would assist the Committee to refer to the charges scheme at that point.

In closing, I urge the Minister to take very seriously the concerns on this issue raised across the Committee. As has been pointed out, he mentioned at the conclusion of the debate on the previous group of amendments that Ofwat has powers it can take to protect customers in this context. The Bill also gives Defra the option to issue charging guidance. Given the importance of this, as Members from all sides of the Committee have highlighted, I hope that due account will be taken of those views and that Defra will give serious consideration to the issuing of charging guidance in this context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, it seems strange to be talking about possible water shortages and abstraction reform in one of the wettest Januarys since records began. I remind noble Lords that January is named after the Roman double-headed god, Janus. If one head is pointing to the climate change extreme of floods, the other is undoubtedly pointing to drought.

I am not certain that either this group of amendments or the previous group totally grip the issue of likely water shortages and the much needed reform of the abstraction regime, which should be put in place as soon as possible. One of the lessons of the disaster of the Somerset Levels is that we should not wait until disaster strikes before taking action and rushing through reforms. At one of the side meetings last week, which many noble Lords attended, we heard that improvements in water supply and demand take a long time. We heard, for instance, how the mere extension of a reservoir in Essex took 20 years to arrange—10 years to prove the case and 10 years to get the planning through. Equally, universal metering, on the demand side—which of course is worth several reservoirs and is not dependent on rain—would also take a very long time to achieve, particularly if we are to bring consumers along with us, which is very important.

To avoid the likely dire situation that we will have in the future, we should use the Water Bill to ensure that disaster does not strike some time in the future. The dire situations relate to population increases, more demand for energy—energy is a huge user of water, as I am sure many noble Lords know—and more droughts, which are very likely. All these factors require greater flexibility in the management of our abstraction regime.

There are parallels with the energy industry. Some of us were dealing with the Energy Bill at the end of last year and tried to ensure that in the next 10 or 20 years’ time there would be a sufficient balance of supply to demand within the energy industry. All the time, we were aware that 10 years ago no one had looked carefully at this balance of supply and demand. We are quite likely to face power cuts in the next couple of years—as many noble Lords are aware—because of this lack of forethought in the past decade.

During the passage of the Energy Bill, my noble friend Lord Oxburgh, who I am sorry to see has left his place, tabled an amendment to establish a council of wise men who would look at the energy industry in the long term, see what was needed and ensure that the right precautions were in place. If the water industry had a group of wise men now, they would be telling us to put a road map in the Bill to take us as speedily as possible towards overall abstraction reform in universal metering and not to wait until the next decade, which seems to be the form, to put this in place.

I agree that abstraction reform is a serious issue. There will undoubtedly be winners and losers in the process whose interests must be given voice in the democratic process. However, I am fearful that Amendment 104, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will come to in a minute, might put an even greater brake on the introduction of reforms than the long drawn-out process seemingly currently envisaged by Defra. If I have misunderstood Amendment 104, I look forward to being corrected. In the mean time, I strongly support Amendment 96 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter.

[Lord Crickhowell]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, asked if it was right to discuss the possibility of drought in the middle of floods. I can assure him that it is absolutely right. My experience in the NRA was that, whenever we had a flood it was almost immediately followed by a drought, and whenever we had a drought it was almost immediately followed by a flood. It was an almost invariable rule, so I am sure that he is right that we should be addressing these issues.

When speaking to my noble friend’s previous amendment, I said that the one area to which I might want to return was reform of the abstraction licensing regime. I spoke about it in some detail at Second Reading and I do not want to repeat what I said then. It was one of the central problems that we had to deal with in my time in the NRA.

I disagree with the noble Lord who has just spoken when he says that the Government should get this issue into the Bill and that it is very urgent. My understanding is that the Government are getting on with the kind of review and detailed discussions with just the sort of people that he suggested they should be meeting. However, they have pointed out that the issue is extremely complicated and cannot be rushed. While I, perhaps on the basis of experience, have always been one of the first to criticise the timescale on which some government departments operate, I have a good deal of sympathy with the need to take adequate time on this. This view was reinforced by the fact that at one of the briefing meetings, the representative of—I think—Anglia Water told us that it was undertaking fairly basic research into the resources available in the region. It was suddenly brought home to me that we do not know a great deal about the availability of ground water resources in many of our regions. We know how much water is going down the rivers, but we still need quite a lot of information before we have the kind of policy that we all want to see.

While we must get on with it, I am not sure it is right to think that we can put into this Bill the requirements that will follow the result of this important inquiry and examination. However, my noble friend Lady Parminter is right in thinking that there should be safeguards in the Bill so that when the results of the review come through, we can be certain that the necessary steps and measures are taken. I am not sure how that should be drafted or whether the noble Baroness has got the drafting quite right, but I sympathise with her desire to write safeguards into the Bill so that we are not left with a great gaping hole when we get the results of the very important review that is under way. I will therefore listen with great care and interest to what the Minister says in reply to this debate.

Water Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer in possession of two abstraction licences. Also, not to be totally outdone by the Minister, I must own to having several fields that frequently lie under water, particularly this month.

On the whole, I think that this is a good Bill which is much needed to ensure that our watercourses, our water supplies, our water environment and our water management safeguards are all in good condition to face the future. Water, although not very highly valued by most people in this country—particularly in one of the wettest Januarys for years—is in fact the most valuable commodity on the planet. Ask any scientist looking for signs of life in the universe or any African farmer struggling with climate change, and you will find that water is indeed the key to life.

There is much good in the Bill, but to my mind it is lacking in ambition—a point on which I shall expand. My main point is that, even if the Government are right to proceed on a softly-softly basis, I for one should like to see more enabling clauses that permit the water industry to make more competitive and environmental progress without having to wait for another water Bill, which, after all, is unlikely to come along for a decade or so.

Let me run through various aspects of the Bill to show what I mean. First, retail competition for commercial customers is a good idea. As many noble Lords have said, it has been beneficial to more than half the businesses in Scotland, even if most of them ended up staying with their existing supplier. The reforms in Scotland have also resulted in household customers benefiting from the thought processes that such non-domestic retail competition has provoked in the water companies, but surely the end game must be to have retail competition across all water customers, commercial and domestic. I am therefore surprised that it appears we have to wait for another water Bill before such household competition can be introduced. There ought to be some enabling clause in this Bill to allow progress on this front, as and when it becomes appropriate.

Having said that, I for one would want to ensure that any future competitive structure was to the benefit of all customers and did not lead to de-averaging, and thus the unfair exploitation of rural and remote rural customers. I am told that competition can happen without de-averaging. Equally, it is important that water-saving activities by retailers do not result in anti-competitive activities by wholesalers. In other words, the Bill before us lacks the “no detriment” provisions of the Scottish legislation which protect both customers and the environment.

Moving on to the next lack of ambition, I think that there is a total absence of foresight over the question of metering. Southern Water, which covers the most metered area in England, believes that 100% metering would result in a 12% saving in water. That is a gigantic amount of water to remove from the system day in, day out. This could be the most environmental part of the Bill—if only it were there. Furthermore, the current voluntary-only metering actually puts the price up for those not metered and thus has proven negative social implications. I realise that if there was a universal tariff for every litre of water used, some poor households with large families, and others, would find themselves worse off under 100% metering. However, with transitional tariffs, social tariffs and even block tariffs and the like, and with the meter in the house and not at the end of the garden, it is perfectly possible for everyone to benefit from 100% metering. There is absolutely no doubt that the environment would win hands down—I repeat that there would be a 12% saving.

Furthermore, 100% metering results in retail water companies having a better and more direct relationship with individual customers. So metering is good for the environment and should also be good for customers. However, there appears to be nothing about metering in the Bill. At the very least, as I have said, there should be an enabling clause for greater incentives for water suppliers to work towards 100% metering—if that makes sense for their customers. The Government need to show some leadership in this field. For instance, the current barrier of having to prove the existence of a water-stressed area before promoting metering is totally unnecessary.

Moving on, I will touch on abstraction. Again, so far so good: upstream transfers—good, in my book; the flexibility of buying water from farmers’ winter storage reservoirs—good; and the free surrender of unused water company abstraction licences—very good. The latter unused licences have been hanging over the proper economic and environmental management of our river basins for far too long, and I am glad we are finally gripping that particular problem.

However, looking deeper at future plans for abstraction, I read the Defra consultation document Making the Most of Every Drop with interest. It is rightly ambitious in its proposals and I would go with either of the two main proposals that are in it. This is an important subject as water becomes more and more valuable to a growing British population, who are subject to ever more extreme climate events and yet possesses an admirable desire to protect their environment. However, I worry about the timetable. Why, as the consultation suggests, do we have to wait until the 2020s before implementing any changes? This would seem to be unnecessarily cautious. What guarantees do we have now that anything is going to happen at all? Again, why can we not have an enabling clause in the Bill or, at the very least, a time limit by which any new scheme has to be introduced? I urge the Government to be brave and to grip this issue firmly to bring about reforms as soon as they can.

So far, my comments have been largely about saving water and benefiting the environment, but I want to cover two other areas. The first is Flood Re, which I think is a good scheme and will work well. While I suspect that many of us would prefer it to cover band H properties and even SMEs, I recognise that the more it covers the greater will be the cost to ordinary householders, so I support the boundaries as currently proposed.

However, I am not sure that the cut-off date of 2009 can be quite so easily defended. We have to bear in mind that a large number of people outside the Westminster bubble, who bought houses in good faith which were built after 2009, would have been unaware that an Act would be introduced in 2014 which would make it impossible for them to benefit from a government flood insurance scheme. After all, those houses were built with the approval of local government through its planning system, and it is quite possible that central government even encouraged those people to buy them through its Help to Buy scheme. It therefore seems grossly unfair to impose on largely unknowing householders a retrospective date of 2009 for a scheme introduced in 2014. I think that people will be amazed to find that they are ineligible, so it would be better to set a date in the future, or at the passing of the Act, rather than holding the line on 2009.

My last point has not been mentioned so far in the debate but it came up in Committee and on Report in the Commons. It is to do with the protection of water supplies and the environment from fracking. I am very much in favour of fracking. I wish to see the multitude of boreholes necessary for a successful industry to be able to come into being in this country with the minimum of fuss from the public. One of the great concerns of the public is that their water supplies will be contaminated by stray gas concentrations from the fracking process. The industry assures us, and I believe it, that this is virtually impossible. All I can say is that, in that case, the public liability insurance bond will not cost them very much.

Meanwhile, the Minister in the other place assured us that such a compulsory insurance bond was unnecessary because the Environment Agency already has powers to make the polluter pay in the case of any required pollution clean-up and that, anyway, rigorous financial tests would be carried out on the fracking companies which would ensure they were as safe as the Bank of Scotland, so no government bailouts would ever be necessary. Quite apart from the fact that not all the companies currently involved in fracking exploration have totally pristine balance sheets—in fact, in some instances, it is very much the opposite—I do not believe that the public have confidence that the Government will not have to step in to protect water supplies and the environment. So why not insert a clause into this Bill which reassures the public that the companies will take on their own liabilities through an insurance bond—as they say, it should not cost them very much? I believe that that would go a long way to reassuring some potential objectors and thus help get the fracking industry off the ground, which I am keen to see.

Finally, by way of summary, I believe that this is a good Bill, but it is slightly lacking in ambition to really to get to grips now with all the problems that the water industry will have to face in the future.

EUC Report: EU Freshwater Policy

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, there is no doubt that water is a valuable commodity. Sadly, we cannot yet control the amount that falls from the sky. Speaking as a farmer in the south-west of England in 2012, I can only say, “I wish!”. But, even after so much rain, we still do not value our water enough in this country.

I believe that we have now reached the stage where the UK needs to introduce compulsory metering. I realise that in some old blocks of flats it is difficult to achieve, but it is not impossible, even if special support funding might be required to disentangle the pipes in all the nooks and crannies, in some instances. But until everyone is on a meter, not everyone will value the water they use. In the UK, we currently use 160 litres per head per day, whereas in Germany, where they have universal metering, they use only 110 litres per head per day.

To go to the other extreme, in India, where until recently the belief was that water should always be provided free by the state, the result was that in some villages you could only get water from a tap for eight minutes per day. However, now they are charging for water, and the service has begun to improve. The Indian Government have at last understood that it is the poor who suffer most from cheap water. The rich can afford private bore-holes or other independent schemes. But the Government have now realised that it is best to put the right price on water and introduce other social measures where help is needed. The lesson learnt was that using water, one of the heaviest commodities around, to transfer wealth, did not make sense.

Back in the UK, although the circumstances are obviously very different, there are parallels with India. If, as at present in the UK, you have voluntary metering, only those who reckon to pay less will apply for a meter. Thus the rest end up sharing a greater overall cost to be averaged out between them. Often this means, as in India, that the poor end up paying more for the water they use than they should do. If we were to introduce metering we could perhaps even go one step further and apply the increasing block tariff method. This is a scheme that is counter to normal economic practice, whereby the more you buy, the more you pay per unit. China, Singapore and several countries in the Middle East and even in the EU now use this method. It is particularly effective for industry, especially for the electricity-generating industry, which can be a huge user of water unless the right capital investment is made. This scheme encourages the right capital investment. The trick is to get the charges and the percentage increase at the right level to encourage good practice without being overly punitive.

Going back to India for a moment, one of the major ongoing problems there is the established right of farmers to take water from the aquifers largely for free, without much control over the quantity. As a result, India removes nearly 100 cubic kilometres of water more from its aquifers than the recharge rate every year. I realise that in the UK, agricultural abstractions amount to only about 2% of all usage, but nevertheless, if we could develop a more flexible system of abstraction licences that looks to future needs, it could be beneficial to industrialists, generators, farmers, environmentalists and domestic consumers alike.

That brings us to Australia, where they are solving the considerable problems in the Murray-Darling river basin by changing or transferring from riparian or historical abstraction rights to tradable rights. It is a sort of water quota system that gives both long- and short-term flexibility to all parties: you can sell or buy, as well as lease, the right you have or need. This, incidentally, includes the Government, who buy entitlements to give to the environment. It means, for example, that in a drought, when water suddenly becomes expensive, rice growers reduce their irrigation or even their total production that year, but survive by selling or leasing their entitlements which, of course, are very expensive that year. Often it is agriculture that sells to mining or electricity-generating interests. Some farmers have actually sold their total allocation but survive on annual licences as and when needed. Municipalities buy excess entitlements and when they have enough for safety, they can rent some back to farmers on a flexible basis. Of course, it is important that the market is properly controlled and regulated, and above all, what is needed is a water trading system for the future, not the past. That means it must allow for the possibility of reducing rains and therefore the ability to reduce the total licensed abstractions.

Of course, the key to success of any system of sharing out this precious commodity called water is overall catchment management, as several noble Lords have already mentioned. Catchment management is about ecosystem services: not only the supply of clean water and the treatment of sewage but landscapes, habitats, irrigation, food, sport, central heating, cooling systems and protection from flooding, among many others. People probably value these services—being the results of water management—more than the water itself. That applies particularly when our population has to face its three biggest worries: drought, flooding and pollution.

Wherever problems exist, the most important thing is to manage our rivers as whole catchments. We are beginning to understand that if problems are caused by the many different activities of too many humans, then the solutions can only be found in the way these activities occur: the way we farm, the way we live, the way we manufacture and consume and the way we plan our urban and rural communities. They can all provide solutions to our water-based problems. We need to understand better how a catchment-based approach can be adopted and how to build the respective capabilities to operate it. Integrated catchment management is in contrast to a piecemeal approach that artificially separates land management from water management. They are inseparable; we rely on the health of both for many of the things we value. Experience shows that considering this locally will help engage communities to take ownership and act.

Catchment management requires leadership to ensure that we get the essential co-ordination covering the many different aspects of land and water management: agriculture, water supply, wastewater, waste management, highway and urban storm runoff, stream corridor restoration and development and, particularly, planning. Working practices are needed that work top-down with standards and guidelines and yet facilitate local partnership arrangements and appropriate delegation, creating local ownership within local catchments. That is the basis of Elinor Ostrom’s famous polycentric system of water governance. It is to be hoped that the revised EU water framework directive will greatly encourage such governance both here and on the continent. When I say “continent” in the context of this debate, of course I mean Europe, but my aspiration is that we might eventually stimulate similar practices and improve water management where it really matters: on the continent of Africa.

Public Bodies (Abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities) Order 2012

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, this afternoon we are discussing another public bodies order from Defra. To date these discussions have been friendly affairs, much in keeping with the amicable way in which the Minister dealt with the dodgy primary legislation as it went through your Lordships’ House. I fear that our deliberations today might be slightly less consensual. As we heard, the Commission for Rural Communities was established by the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, following the review led by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins. I was the Bill Minister for the NERC Act and therefore would describe myself as something of a midwife for the CRC.

That does not mean that I oppose the order outright, but it does mean that there are important questions for the Minister to answer. They happen to be the same questions that I asked when the Public Bodies Bill was going through the parliamentary process. As ever, I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, on this occasion for its third report of this Session. Its conclusion is the one that I came to last year and that I know is shared by many in the House. The committee correctly applied the three tests of effectiveness, economy and efficiency, and accountability. As is the way with these orders, it is right that I should do the same.

The Government argue that it is more effective to bring officials in-house, rather than have them at arm’s length, so they will have earlier and greater involvement in the development of policies and programmes across Whitehall. I am afraid that in my experience Defra is not central to the Government’s thinking until there is a crisis, and that rural policy in turn is on the margins of Defra’s thinking. The clue is in the name. It thinks about the environment, then food and farming, and finally rural affairs. There is no sign that this has changed. We witnessed the inability of the department to secure a legislative slot in this Session for the much-needed water Bill. That is the reality of the marginalisation of Defra. To argue otherwise is naive in the extreme.

As the Minister said, the Government are looking to save £17 million over the CSR period by this change to their rural policy function. That is the real reason for this change: economy. I do not argue that savings are there to be made, although it is worth noting that the CRC cost around £600,000 in the past financial year. It is worth diverting some of the remaining cost of the rural policy function to support the continuation of a rural policy adviser who is independent of government.

My main objection to the move is on the ground of accountability. The Government argue that these changes will enable Defra’s Ministers to be held accountable by Parliament for the exercise of rural policy functions. However, we should look at how Parliament is currently being treated. Over the weekend, dairy farmers blockaded milk processing plants to draw attention to the exploitative pricing that is making milk production uneconomic. Two supermarkets have already responded by raising the prices they pay to farmers. The farmers clearly believed that parliamentary methods were not being listened to—and was it any wonder?

Today it was reported that Jim Paice, the Agriculture Minister who does not know the price of milk, had raised the possibility that an adjudicator would be created to oversee a voluntary code for the dairy supply chain. This is exactly what my noble friend Lord Grantchester suggested last week when he moved an amendment to the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill. Coalition Peers were whipped to oppose it—and duly defeated the very proposal that is now coming from the Agriculture Minister. Just one week later, threatened by angry farmers, Defra’s policy is churning, thanks to direct action rather than parliamentary pressure.

This follows a succession of protests that bounced Defra. Its proposals to sell off the nation’s forests were met with huge protests and it backed down. The same happened with national nature reserves and changes to reduce environmental protection in planning law. There was the case of wild animals in circuses. Over Easter Defra suggested allowing the shooting of buzzards—a native species—to protect pheasants, which are a non-native species bred to be shot. Unsurprisingly, that was laughed out of the court of public opinion within days. In these cases, we made what noise we could in your Lordships’ House or in the other place, but it was clear that Ministers were more accountable to 38 Degrees, the National Trust and Farmers for Action than to this Parliament—so much for accountability.

The lack of long-term strategic thinking that bedevils Defra is at the heart of the issue. At the same time, rural England feels the effects of policies and cuts from other government departments. For example, it emerged this month that the rate of young people not in education, employment or training is rising faster in rural areas than in urban ones—and that rural councils, which tend to have older and less deprived populations, receive lower grant allocations, spend less on social care, charge more for home care and allocate lower personal budgets than local authorities serving younger, more urban and more deprived populations. New research finds that social tenants in rural areas will be more likely than those in urban areas to have to move house as a consequence of reductions in housing benefit, yet there are fewer smaller dwellings for them to move into. I know these things thanks to the July newsletter from the Commission for Rural Communities. Its reports often make uncomfortable reading across Whitehall. The independence from government of these reports increases accountability. That is why a letter to today’s Daily Telegraph is signed by the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Wakefield, Norwich and Exeter, the Duchess of Rutland, the High Sheriff of Cornwall, me and other parliamentarians, including my noble friend Lord Grantchester.

As the letter says, there has been an independent voice to government since 1909. It goes on:

“In the current economic circumstances it is more important than ever that the voices of rural communities are not lost and that an independent adviser—distinct from the range of rural pressure groups—exists to speak up for rural interests”.

That is all we ask—not for the expensive retention of the CRC, but for the retention of what has served us well for more than a century, an independent rural champion. What do the Government propose instead? The independent voice will be provided by Defra’s very own Rural Affairs Minister, Richard Benyon, he of the buzzards U-turn. Rural England’s new champion will be inside the tent but, unusually, on this occasion pointing inwards.

The lack of commitment is demonstrated by the facts that Mr Benyon has not delivered the new rural-proofing guidance promised even today on the Defra website for this spring, and that he has failed to deliver a rural statement, referred to by the Minister, by spring 2012, which was also promised today on the Defra website. That is serious for this Committee. Can the Minister tell us in his wind-up what happened to it? Are we going to get it in September, along with rural-proofing toolkit, six months late?

As he says, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee specifically recommends that the rural statement sets out robust structures for incorporating stakeholder input into policy development and implementation. The Minister responded to that by referring to the explanatory document which has already been scrutinised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It then wanted more information, which we do not have, to scrutinise this order.

I ask again what I asked the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in column 765 in March last year. Why not give us an independent rural voice that tells us by appointment, with the authority of the Prime Minister, what is really happening and tells us the truth regardless of fear of or favour from the Government? It worked for Lloyd George, for Churchill and for Thatcher. Is it really too much to ask?

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this, and his team for providing the explanatory document about the different ways in which consultation will take place with rural groups such as the Rural and Farming Network, ECO and its sub-groups, the Rural Coalition, local economic partnerships, the Rural Service Network and the LEADER exchange group. I know that LEADER is an initiative to do with the delivery of the Rural Development Programme for England, but the word made me think. These groups, or leaders of groups, such as farmers, businessmen and local councils, are all stakeholders—to use the Minister’s word—in the countryside.

Who is going to represent the deprived of rural England—those who sometimes go with only one meal a day because they know that they have to spend their money on a car to get to their valuable work, or to have any of form of life there? Who is going to speak up for the countryside’s young, who cannot get a job because they have not got the transport to get to one and cannot get the transport to get to a job because they have not got a job to pay for the transport? Who is going to speak up for the unemployed, the unhoused and others?

The Minister will know that I am in a slightly difficult position. I have been asked by Richard Benyon, the Defra Minister in the Commons, to pool together a group of Peers to help rural-proof the government department’s policies in each individual case, but I still have not quite grasped who is going to do or commission the critical and independent research that will penetrate the normal attitude of most departments to the countryside, which is ambivalent at best. Actually, their attitude ranges from ambivalence to total ignorance and they need spurring on.

Most of us in this Room have argued our best on several occasions for some representation at arm’s length from Government, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of those rural voices that are not normally heard. I hope that the Minister can reassure me on the question of the independent, fearless research that is often critical of the Government, and which departments are, frankly, unable, to carry out. I hope that he can also reassure me on my point about who will represent the voice of the rural deprived.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his statement and his desire to ensure that the commission’s functions are properly fulfilled within Defra. I say from the outset that I am not opposing the decision to abolish the CRC. However, it is now clear—indeed, it was clear to many of us at the time—that in the desire to have a large bonfire of the quangos, decisions were taken without a clear plan for properly addressing the consequences. I am pleased that Defra has a plan, but I would like to be reassured that the functions of the CRC will be properly resourced and carried out by Defra. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, the CRC did some very helpful and useful research into issues like rural poverty and changes in demographics in the countryside that will be essential in helping design policies that impact on the countryside.

It is essential, as has been said, that government policies have a degree of rural-proofing. Without an independent commission, I suggest that it will be difficult for the department to fulfil this function without trying in the process to defend government policies in doing so. It is difficult for a department to be, if I might use the phrase, both gamekeeper and poacher. The role of the rural advocate, as the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Cameron, said, has been extremely useful in highlighting many vital rural issues. Dr Burgess has been a very effective and active advocate, as was his predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, before him. It has already been stressed that the element of independence that has been so valuable is being lost. The role of the rural advocate should be reconsidered.

However, I welcome the Minister’s assertion that ensuring growth within rural areas is critical to the Government and is being recognised. I have always believed that it is impossible to draw a line between rural and urban in any case; one is dependent on the other, and government policies need to reflect that. Without the vital independence of a rural advocate, though, it really is difficult to know where any challenge is going to come from.

EUC Report: Agriculture

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I am delighted to be speaking in the debate in which the noble Lord, Lord Curry, has made his maiden speech. As we have already heard, his CV in the agricultural and rural world is both comprehensive and stellar in quality. It has long been known that there are few to compare with him in terms of knowledge and experience of all parts of our agricultural and food industry, but equally important, to me, is the way in which he understands how all these parts fit together and how important they are to the economic, social, cultural and environmental fabric of life in both our rural and urban communities. I feel sure that we will all benefit from his words of wisdom on many future occasions, as we have done today.

I must first declare an interest as a farmer in receipt of a single farm payment and as a Lawes trustee at Rothamsted Research Station. I also chair the Strategy Advisory Board of the Government’s Global Food Security programme. However, today I want to explain that the problems facing the agricultural industry are global and that the solutions lie not only in pan-European and trans-world partnerships but in a variety of cross-discipline research projects that must cover the whole length of the food chain. Innovation is not just about growing two blades of grass where there was once only one.

Other noble Lords have mentioned the problems facing the world and, if the Committee will forgive a bit of repetition, I should like to put a bit more flesh on the bones of some of them. The first is the growth in the world’s population from 7 billion to 9 billion-plus. The more serious problem here is the fact that the population of sub-Saharan Africa is going to rise from 1 billion to 2 billion over the next 30 years. This is serious because there are very grave agricultural shortcomings there.

Secondly, world GDP is going to rise by 400 per cent between now and 2040. It sounds good but it means that most people will be changing to a more meat-eating diet, with more consumption of resources—much more than with a vegetarian diet. China is a prime example. Over the past 40 years, its arable area has almost halved and its meat-producing area has more than doubled. In spite of that, its balance of payments now suffers from major imports of both milk and beef, not to mention soya to feed its beef herd. In fact, the current annual trade of soya from Brazil to China is the biggest movement of a single food product from one country to another in the history of the world.

Climate change is another threat which has been mentioned by other speakers. The equatorial belt may become too hot to farm and, if sea levels rise, some of our most productive deltas will disappear. With only a 15 centimetre rise, in India alone some 150,000 farmers will be displaced.

Another problem area is world water supplies. Even with today’s population, the reality is that a child dies as a result of poor sanitation every 20 seconds. Total world water demand is projected to rise by over 30 per cent by 2030 and there are problems even now. Many river systems already run dry due to excess irrigation. Indian farmers, for example, are now taking 100 cubic kilometres per annum more from their aquifers than are being recharged by rains. The most important aquifer under China’s grain belt is falling at the rate of 3 metres per annum. In Africa, already people die in skirmishes between tribes over water. The trouble is that water and rivers do not recognise political boundaries. There are between 250 and 300 rivers and lakes in the world that transcend national boundaries. The dangers are enormous.

There is now a realisation that political unrest might be caused by water and food shortages in the future and that these possible conflicts or anarchy represent a greater danger to the world than the actual shortages themselves. The Government’s new co-ordinating research programme is well named as the Global Food Security programme because, while food shortages in the EU probably feel remote to most people, its citizens’ security could well be threatened by nutritional problems in the wider world.

The point of my very brief coverage of some of the future concerns is not only to show how serious they are but to show how multifaceted and global are the issues. These are worldwide problems. We have to ensure that we are all pulling together. We need scientific partnerships and co-ordination not only between research establishments in the UK—and I am very pleased to say that that is happening with this Global Food Security programme—but across the world. We need trans-European co-ordination and information exchange. We need partnerships in the wider world such as with the US, Brazil and China, where some of highest spending takes place.

I like to think that we in the UK can still contribute in scientific excellence, even if our budgets have been slashed over the years. Judging by the international partnerships that already exist, it would seem that others on the world stage share my confidence.

We also need north/south partnerships, so we can all focus on some of the developing world’s problems and at the same time hopefully enhance the credibility and importance of its scientists, particularly in the eyes of its politicians, so that they, too, pick up on the agenda.

As I said at the beginning, the food chain touches on a wide range of disciplines. Clearly, we need soil scientists, plant pathologists and others involved in the actual growing of the crop; we need hydrological engineers to provide us with water; we need mechanical engineers to provide us with efficient machinery; we need veterinary scientists to maximise livestock production while minimising livestock inputs and greenhouse gas outputs; we need a range of biologists and chemists to cut down on waste both before and after harvest; and we need social scientists to cut down on waste at the consumer end of the food chain, mentioned by several other noble Lords. I came across some research recently indicating that every year in the USA, which also wastes 30 per cent of its food at the consumer end, 300 million barrels of oil and 25 per cent of all man-used water go to produce food that is then thrown away. That is a pretty horrifying statistic.

We also need nutritionists to help achieve the right food intake at the right price to prevent millions of youngsters in the developing world remaining physically stunted or cognitively damaged for the rest of their lives. In this respect, many people think the GM debate is all about producing more food for less cost, but to me the most exciting aspect of these potential scientific advances is where the food is being improved for better health. Of the 10 million-plus kids who die each year in this world, 2 million die from shortages of iron, proteins and vitamins in their diet, while, for instance, only 1 million die from malaria. There is much potential for improvement here, and innovation could be at the heart of it.

We need land-use and planning research to ensure that we optimise our production of food and energy from land while not endangering other species and their habitats. Incidentally, that includes the responsible use of our marine environment, a whole area of research that is probably related more to the art of the politically possible than cutting-edge science. We have to get all these scientific disciplines working together if we are to address the perfect storm outlined by our chief scientist. We have to co-ordinate and ensure that there are no gaps in the chain. That is one of the roles of the global food security programme and the strategy advisory board that I chair.

Talking of gaps in the chain brings me finally to one of the conclusions of our sub-committee report which has been mentioned by several noble Lords already. As the Minister is only too aware—and we thank him warmly for his previous interest in this subject—there is no point in doing any science unless the information gets out to the practitioners, nor will the science be of much use unless the scientists have learnt what is needed from the practitioners. I chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development, which has recently produced a report on African agriculture called Growing out of Poverty—for all those interested, it can be found in the Printed Paper Office. During the evidence-taking sessions, we were again and again reminded that the greatest poverty in Africa is a poverty of information, yet agricultural extension services remain absurdly underprovided for in almost all African and other developing countries. Furthermore, as Sub-Committee D discovered, this underprovision is not limited to Africa but is only too apparent across much of the UK and EU. As others have said in this debate, this situation needs to be urgently rectified if the recently revived interest in agricultural and land-use science is, if you will excuse the pun, to bear fruit.

Defra: Research and Development

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I think the noble Lord is making the mistake of taking a particular aspect of Defra’s activity and not realising that, strategically, the Government have a great focus on the whole need to raise the game. We will need to double world food production by 2050. We shall be able to do that only with science as an ally. The thrust across government, and the whole thrust of the Taylor review, was about leveraging the Government’s investment as a whole in this area. We will be spending £1 billion on R&D in the Living with Environmental Change Partnership and £440 million on global food security.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, given the desperate need for better agricultural extension in the UK, does the Minister agree that this is as much about learning the lessons of environmental best practice—I refer particularly to soil degradation in this context—as it is about agricultural invention? If we wish the growth in the nation’s agricultural productivity to continue, we must better align environmental research with technical research and not treat them as two separate entities, as is currently the case.

Agriculture: Regulation

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I also declare an interest as a farmer. In my allotted three minutes, I have two points to make. First, there is no doubt that regulation has helped UK consumers to develop greater confidence in the quality of their agricultural products and the way that we, as farmers, produce them. Taken individually, most regulations and audits have the sensible purpose of protecting the environment and reassuring the public, who are our customers. It is right that nothing should be taken for granted.

However, my second point is: why does there need to be so much duplication? Just to give some examples: a neighbour of mine starts a chicken business and he has to pay someone to help him get through the Environment Agency’s integrated pollution prevention and control clearance. Nowadays, you have to employ a professional who knows how to prove you are doing the right thing—doing it yourself simply will not work. Anyway, no sooner has my neighbour got the all clear from the Environment Agency than he has to pay for an environmental impact assessment for the planning authority, which asks all the same questions. One has to wonder why the planning authority will not accept the IPPC—which it would not—and why the form is not the same. There must be ways of consolidating them into one.

On our farm—and I used it as an example, because I do not think we are atypical—we also have numerous inspections and audits. We have comprehensive audits from our buyers such as Waitrose and Tesco. We have local council hygiene standards checks, national dairy scheme checks, combinable crops assurance scheme checks, Freedom Food checks, health and safety checks, HOPS and Cedex checks for our student employment, assured produce checks, Environment Agency checks on both our abstractions and discharges, and of course the Soil Association checks on almost everything. They are all probably justifiable in their own way but put together they are a complete waste of everyone’s time.

In an ideal world there would be one inspector who came on to my farm and really got to know how we work and went through everything everybody wanted to know or to test on the farm. He or she would be under contract to all the government bodies, all the associations and all the supermarkets to impose whatever standards they required on whatever farm. Even if the process took two days on each farm, and involved subsequent random checks, it would be a considerable saving in man-hours all round.

I feel sure my approach is simplistic, but I do hope that Richard Macdonald’s working party will come up with something along these lines.

Adapting to Climate Change: EU Agriculture and Forestry (EUC Report)

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as a farmer, as a Lawes trustee at Rothamsted Research Station and as the new chairman of the Government’s global food security strategy board.

I was not on Sub-Committee D at the time of this report, so I come at the subject only from the evidence of my own experience, and I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I extend my horizons slightly wider than Europe.

The Government’s chief scientist has, rightly, become famous for his “perfect storm” analogy, wherein the world has to produce at least 50 per cent more food over the next 40 years without damaging the environment, while emitting fewer greenhouse gases and using less energy and, above all, without depleting our water supplies. It is on this last issue that I should like to focus today in connection with agricultural adaptation. Indeed, the committee report highlights my point, saying:

“Effective water management lies at the heart of efforts to adapt EU agriculture to climate change”.

Although the Environment Agency gave evidence to the committee that water availability in England and Wales is going to be 15 per cent lower by 2050, it is elsewhere in the world, including southern Europe, that water problems are going to be really critical.

We actually have enough fresh water in the world to go around. We are currently using only 54 per cent of all accessible fresh water, which leaves 46 per cent untapped. However, even now, with today’s population, the reality is that a child dies as a result of poor sanitation every 20 seconds, amounting to some 1.5 million preventable deaths each year. Without serious political action, that situation can only get worse. Total world water demand is projected to rise by over 30 per cent by 2030. Many river systems, such as the Yellow River in China, the Murray-Darling in Australia, the Colorado in the US and the Indus in Pakistan, are already running dry due to excess irrigation. As we will all be aware, the Indus had terrible floods recently. However, it is the Indus delta, which is a very fertile and productive area of Pakistan, that has problems. It is being invaded by saline water and is thus becoming less productive.

Meanwhile, projections in Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Morocco indicate that declines in rainfall of up to 30 per cent might be expected in the future. Equally, the rainy seasons in Africa and India seem to be starting later and later. Perhaps because of this, Indian farmers are now taking 100 cubic kilometres more from their aquifers than are being replaced by rains. They have to drill deeper and deeper. Likewise, the water level in the aquifer under the Hebei Province of China, where much of the wheat is grown, is falling at the rate of 3 metres per annum.

As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has already commented, nearly 70 per cent of all water in the world consumed by man goes to produce food. Water availability becomes a critical issue when 40 per cent of the renewable resources are used for irrigation. It is at that point that difficult choices have to be made between agriculture and urban water supplies. By 2030, some southern European countries will be at or nearing this 40 per cent level, and, believe me, all politicians will choose to support the urban voter over his rural brother. Therefore, in all these countries and regions, adaptation and new practices will be needed, and I give a few examples.

The first is drip irrigation. Israel is at the forefront here, employing expensive sub-surface drip irrigation that puts the water right to the roots of the plant. There are not even pipes on the surface, and of course that is infinitely better than spray irrigation, where most of the water evaporates.

The second is recycling urban sewage. For example, faced with paying higher costs for imported water and desalination, Singapore has gone for self-sufficiency through treated sewage water. When the fifth plant opens this year, water from flushed toilets and so on will account for some 30 per cent of Singapore’s drinking water. There are other examples, such as in India, where the sewage effluent of Hyderabad is mixed with the waters of the River Musi and put into underground pipes to help to grow vegetables in Andhra Pradesh.

The third is better capture and storage. They do not have to be big reservoir schemes, as many small schemes for individual farms and communities are usually better. In southern Europe and elsewhere they will need government support either with grants or with cheap capital.

The fourth is better use of shallow aquifers. If you want to store water in a hot country, what better way is there than pumping the excess water in the rainy season down to the underground aquifer to store it so that you can use it later on? You have a ready built reservoir, free from the problems of evaporation and free from the problems of flooding people’s homes, as can happen when you build an above-ground reservoir. I realise that there are complications in doing that, but as a method it has been quite successfully used in many parts of the world.

The fifth is better use of modern farming systems, such as no-till cultivation techniques, which, again, the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned. That greatly reduces the evaporation of water from the soil and encourages better organic matter, which is very useful in developing countries as an important source of fertiliser.

Last, but not least, we need to make better use of modern plant-breeding techniques across Europe. For example, if you can silence the gene in maize which makes the plant transpire and therefore need twice as much water as it really needs in order to grow its cobs, you can help to feed more with less. Equally, plant breeders are finding varieties of rice and other staple crops that now require less water than old varieties. There is a variety of rice with the wonderful name of scuba rice which allows rice to survive underwater in floods for much longer periods than was possible in the past.

Europe simply must invest in new technology and it must not be frightened of persuading its consumers that these varieties are safe to grow and to eat. I have a view that if scientists, farmers and everyone involved in the food chain seriously focused on how to feed 9.4 billion people—our forecasted population—we will be able to feed them, providing, of course, politicians and other funders can take a long-term view.

On water, no one is denying that there will not be serious problems in some areas, which there already are, as there is some political unrest and strife in areas such as northern Kenya and the Middle East. As regards food shortages, if the nations of the world can continue to work together and trade together, water shortages will remain localised and not affect the overall supply of food. I agree that that is a big “if”, and the key phrase is “providing politicians can take a long-term view”—which, in the immortal words of Private Frazer, means: “We’re all doomed!”.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I rise to oppose the amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, says that her amendment has some support in the agricultural industry and that the Agricultural Wages Board’s pronouncements are a good benchmark that the agricultural industry and others use. Both those statements are true; it is frightfully easy for farmers and others to give no thought to what they pay their workers and staff. They just follow the van, as it were. However, as I said in Committee, on our farm and on many others we do think about what we pay our workers and we pay more than what the Agricultural Wages Board sets down. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, farm staff are in charge of really expensive equipment. They are very skilled; they have computers, sat-nav and all sorts of things. Sometimes this equipment costs £200,000 per piece and that is why we pay more—it is a really skilled job.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that supermarkets will drive down wages. I disagree—in the audit that supermarkets put farmers through, they are very keen on environmental behaviour and other things, but also on behaviour towards the workforce. They insist on very high standards of facilities and I very much doubt that they would want to force farmers to pay less, because, if it got out to the public, they would not be so popular. In my experience, anything that the supermarkets can do to impose extra costs on their producers, they seem to go along with; but that is perhaps another point and why I spoke in the adjudicator debate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, is probably right that the industry needs a benchmark, but I do not believe that there is any need to make this a statutory benchmark. A very good alternative would be a voluntary get-together of the NFU and the unions which farmers who do not wish to settle their own wage agreements can use as a benchmark. I think that that kind of voluntary situation would deal with a lot of the worries that are coming from this side of the House.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, allow me to intervene at this stage. I add to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, as to how much, as always, we miss my noble friend Lord Greaves, who is, unfortunately, unable to be here. I listened very carefully to what she said; I am still not persuaded and I will set out why. I will start with a very small apology. When she said that 2p was the difference from the minimum wage, I interrupted her from a sedentary position to say that it was 3p. She was correct—it was 2p. So, mea culpa, I was wrong. But I am not sure that 1p makes that much difference.

I think it worth saying at this point, in relation to the points made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about the protection of vulnerable workers, that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority will continue to be there. Its job is to protect those vulnerable people and it does not appear in the Bill at all. It exists and there is no plan to change that. We intend to abolish the board and to remove outdated—my noble friend Lord Newton correctly described them as antique, worse than outdated—and unnecessary regulatory burdens from farm businesses so that they can focus their time on farming in order to develop a thriving, sustainable and prosperous industry.

I ask all noble Lords to listen very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, had to say, particularly about the way in which farmers themselves make decisions about what they pay their employees. These employees are using large machinery which very often costs a great deal of money, and these employers are not going to employ people without the appropriate skills. They will pay them the appropriate amount of money if they want to look after that machinery. Similarly, I commend the noble Lord for what he said about supermarkets, including the deals and quality assurances that they want. These assurances often involve the environmental and employment practices of farms and so on.

As noble Lords will know, the board has itself been keen to modernise the agricultural wages legislation; for example, to allow farmers and workers to agree payment of annual salaries. This will be far easier to achieve outside the current restrictions of a statutory framework. Once abolished, these functions of the board will cease to exist and agricultural workers within England and Wales will be protected by the National Minimum Wage Act and by wider employment legislation, as are workers in all other sectors of the economy.

My noble friend Lady Byford asked how much it would save, and how much it had cost over the past 10 years. All I can say is that the cost of the board last year was some £200,000, but that is without taking into account the cost to the department. However, this is not purely about saving money. We think that the board has outlived its term and therefore ought to go. Importantly, one should also remember that workers will retain contractual rights that exist at the time when the board is abolished until such time as the contract is varied by agreement between the employer and the worker or until any contract comes to an end.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support the amendment. Like the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I do so with a strong sense of déjà vu, as I made my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House on the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill. I recall speaking then about the real need from the perspective of a rural diocese such as mine, which covers the whole of Devon, for a body that could effectively hold the Government to account on the nature of rural policy and the delivery of that policy. No Minister, no matter how good, can do that for himself. At that time, people in my diocese were talking about the need for an independent body and not one that would be a creature of Defra. Therefore, I spoke about looking forward to a robust Commission for Rural Communities, with commissioners drawn from rural communities, from the voluntary sector and from academic institutions which had their fingers on the pulse of rural England. Such a partnership would be most effective in highlighting issues as they emerged in rural areas and advocate the policies needed to address them. Therefore, it was about a rural voice and rural advocacy springing out of a rural partnership.

I do not think that we have been disappointed. Rural England has benefited in many ways from the existence of the commission and its work. It has shown itself to have a robust independence; truly independent membership; and a good track record of evidence-based advocacy, especially on behalf of the most remote and sparsely populated rural areas of our land.

Alongside the work of the commission has also been that of the role of its chairman as rural advocate, which has been highly effective in ensuring that the findings of the commission, and the chairman’s own findings and views, have reached the ears of officials and Ministers. There is evidence that this has influenced policy accordingly. From the perspective of the countryside, his office has become increasingly valued in speaking up for rural people and communities, especially those experiencing disadvantage, and ensuring that policies take account of rural needs and rural circumstances. It was always envisaged that his role as rural advocate was to be at the forefront of public debate on rural issues and to have a really close working relationship with the range of different communities in the countryside, so that he might better represent the views and experiences of life in rural England.

There can be no doubt that the present advocate, Dr Stuart Burgess, has effectively carried out these responsibilities with imagination, tireless energy, drive, passion and focus. With the two parties currently forming coalition government having had a strong track record on rural advocacy when in opposition—I point particularly to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who, on some occasions when I have spoken on rural issues, has given me the thumbs-up from the Benches opposite—many of us were looking forward with high expectations of a heightened ministerial awareness of, and response to, the needs of rural Britain. However, within the current climate of cutbacks and of retrenchment of public services—I of course recognise the huge challenges that are facing the Government in this respect—there is a great risk that the voice, the partnership voice, of rural communities will now be lost. With so many issues impacting on the sustainability of rural communities, there is arguably a greater need than ever for this independent rural champion.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I do not hold a brief for the continuation of the commission, particularly in its present form, but it is about independence—robust independence—and about partnership. The sums involved here are not vast. For around £250,000 per annum we could ensure that this voice is not lost and that we will continue to receive that evidence-based dimension—detached from Government—that will ensure better informed debate about the future for rural communities. I am afraid that a rural communities policy unit, internal to Defra, simply will not do the same.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I should have declared before speaking to the last amendment that I have an interest as a farmer and landowner. I also declare for this amendment that I am an ex-chair of the Countryside Agency and an ex-rural advocate. I am not sure that being an “ex” anything is a declarable interest but it probably helps if everybody knows where I am coming from.

The Commission for Rural Communities has been a surprising success in providing the evidence, speaking up on behalf of the countryside and challenging the Government to look differently at the problems of rural communities—in particular, the still unrecognised issues of rural deprivation, which continue to come very low on every Government’s priorities. The CRC has had successes with the commissioning of research which, because the results are uncomfortable for the Government of the day, would almost certainly have never been commissioned by an ordinary civil servant within Defra. The results are uncomfortable for the Government of the day because usually they throw down the gauntlet saying, “This is the situation, what are you going to do about it?”.



It is not only Defra which gets challenged. There was a report by the CRC on the depth and impact of fuel poverty in rural England. Of course, that challenges the Department for Transport. Insight into maternity services in rural England challenges the Department of Health. Reports on financial inclusion, rural social housing and village schools challenge the Treasury, the DCLG and the Department for Education respectively, and so on.

In terms of fulfilling the Government’s tests of a permissible public body, I maintain that the CRC's activities definitely require political impartiality and need it to act independently to establish the facts. I accept that the economics of the day may preclude the existence of the CRC in its current form, which is why it is being abolished, but I do not believe that the Government’s proposed successor arrangements, based on a rural communities policy unit in Defra, will result in a rural champion, even under Mr Richard Benyon MP, who has already been mentioned and whom I know and respect. Such a body could not give the independence of thought and vigorous championing of all the rural injustices needed after decades of general government inertia by all parties.

Along with others, the real question I want to ask is perhaps more important than the existence of the CRC. I regret that I have not seen the letter referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. How will rural-proofing be carried out in future? The rural-proofing role of the Commission for Rural Communities and the rural advocate was an important part of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, which has already been referred to. In fact, it was the essence of the rural communities part of that Act. Rural-proofing is about getting the really important big-spending departments to consider how they equitably deliver their services in the countryside, especially to the remote countryside, in the same way as they deliver to the towns.

That involves everything from health, jobseeker advice, sports facilities, education and training, and justice to business advice. I always remember that when I was rural advocate, the DTI produced a manufacturing paper. I said, “Have you rural-proofed this paper?”, and it said, “What’s manufacturing got to do with the countryside?”. I said, “Actually, there are more manufacturing industries in the countryside than there are in the towns”. The DTI seemed oblivious to that. How do businesses access training and business advice? Can we ensure that they have access to fast broadband? For that matter, under the current Postal Services Bill, how can they post parcels at their local post offices, which are getting fewer and fewer?

All too often—in fact, almost always—urban civil servants ignore or are unaware of the difficulties of delivery in the countryside. How does someone get to hospital? That question often never crosses their mind. How does someone get to court? I have frequently joked that the best way to get to court on many occasions is to steal a car. How does someone get to training or to a job? The Department for Work and Pensions is totally unaware of the fact that if it put money into Wheels to Work to help young, first-time employees get to a job, it would save itself a lot of money, but it does not support Wheels to Work schemes because it does not really understand.

My question is: who will rural-proof those departments? Who will be bold, critical and outspoken on behalf of the countryside? Certainly not departmental civil servants—the words bold, critical and outspoken do not really feature in their career path. How does the Minister envisage rural-proofing happening in future? Perhaps it could be through a Committee of this House. Believe me, you need to have expertise and you need to be bloody-minded to be a rural advocate, and I should have thought that both those characteristics can easily be found in your Lordships' House.

I recognise that there are Ministers in the current Government who understand those issues, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said: is that good enough? What about future Governments? Are the current Government betraying the countryside in the long run? All the departments and their civil servants matter; all the Ministers and their staff within all the departments need to be continuously and publicly exposed to those issues. That just will not happen without a politically independent rural advocate of some description.

I beg the Government to have a rethink, not necessarily about the CRC but about the vital role of an independent rural advocate who can ensure that all parts of government, and not just this Government but the next one, hear and understand the voice of the countryside in all their doings. As your Lordships can probably gather, I feel pretty strongly about this. It would be a tragedy if the countryside were to lose that independent voice.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with all three speeches that have just been made. I declare various interests. I am a farmer in Suffolk, but I have some background experience myself because I was for 12 years on the Countryside Commission under the brilliant chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Tewkesbury. I was for eight years on the Rural Development Commission, chaired by Lord Shuttleworth and then the noble Lord, Lord Vinson. They had different, important, functions. They were then amalgamated, which may have been doubtful. Both bodies gave independent advice to Ministers. Of course, the Countryside Agency, of which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was a distinguished chairman, fulfilled that role.

All that is left now, apart from the body that we are talking about, is Natural England, which has made the awful mistake of becoming a bit of a pressure group itself instead of being an objective adviser to government. As I tried to explain to your Lordships at Second Reading, there is a crucial difference between a pressure group and an advisory group to government. The advisory group is meant to give objective advice, particularly advice on the views of pressure groups. Pressure groups have a totally legitimate role. The CPRE was mentioned, and I was for five years its chairman; it was and is a very effective pressure group.

There is a real danger of a lack of rural interest and understanding. This was very noticeable under the previous Government. This Government are more naturally attuned, in many ways, to the countryside and rural matters. In that respect, the coalition is a particularly happy combination because Tories and Liberals have traditionally had a closer relationship to rural areas than has the Labour Party; it is just an historical fact. That is not meant to be a criticism of the Labour Party, it is just a comment on the historical evolution of our political system. It is important that this dimension should continue in one way or another. We have ACRE, which is a body arranged by counties. I was for some years the president of Suffolk ACRE. In fact, I am now the president of the Suffolk Preservation Society, which is a county branch of the CPRE.

I hope that the Minister will be able to answer some of the points that have been made and questions that have been asked. It is an important aspect of this country, and I would hate to feel that we were dependent on civil servants, many of whom are neither sympathetic to, nor have much understanding of, the issues which need to be dealt with.

Agriculture: Farming

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, all I would say is “good for Gloucestershire”, but it is for Gloucester County Council to make that decision itself, not for central government.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, on the innovation side of this Question, it is encouraging to note that the agricultural colleges seem to be attracting more students than in recent years. Can the Minister say how the Government are going to attract scientists into this area, which is very important? How are the Government going to give them the confidence to choose a career that will help us to solve one of the great problems of today, which is how we are going to feed 9.4 billion people in 30 to 40 years time?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am not sure that I can solve that problem in a 20-word answer. Obviously we will find it difficult to feed another 3 billion people within the next 40 years. Technological and scientific changes will all play their part, as will the Government and the industry. However, at this stage it would be rash of me to give the noble Lord too lengthy an answer.