Rural Landlords and Land Letting: Reform

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Greaves (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has really hit the nail on the head, as one of the major problems we will face with ELMS is introducing it on farms that are tenanted. I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, for her excellent, comprehensive and succinct opening speech.

I thank the Tenant Farmers Association for its excellent briefing, which points out that short-term tenancies are holding back progression, investment and sustainable land use—which are exactly what will be needed in abundance if the environmental land management scheme is going to result in what we all want, particularly in the upland areas that the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, referred to. Whether people there are tenants or owners, they have to get an income from the farm. If a lot of that income comes in future from government grants and environmental schemes, the relationship between landlords, tenants and the grants will be crucial. Will the pilots and the national pilot devote sufficient attention to relatively small tenanted farms—or perhaps large farms with large amounts of grazing—in upland areas and how they will cope with doing everything that the Government want them to do?