Common Agricultural Policy Reform

Debate between Roger Williams and Tim Farron

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Roger Williams]

I agree. I am not arguing for an increase in the CAP budget; what I am arguing for is equality across the whole of Europe. At present, for instance, dairy farmers in the Netherlands receive twice as much support as those who farm in England.

DEFRA’s attempts to cut payments unilaterally, were they to be realised, would hit our farmers far harder than the proposed EU budget cut. In that context, I want to raise a few regional concerns that have arisen following discussions with the Farmers Union of Wales.

Although many of the draft CAP regulations and recently proposed amendments acknowledge regional administrations, others do not. Is the Minister confident that the final regulations will properly acknowledge devolved Administrations such as those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

The impact of greening measures on the regions was also raised with me by the FUW. Greening accounts for 30% of direct payments. Analysis by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board suggests that Wales, Scotland and northern England would be worst hit by the European Commission’s crop rotation greening proposals. That impact is likely to be due to the particular climatic and topographical challenges faced by farmers in those areas, which, as the Minister will know, are limited in terms of what arable crops can be grown in them, and are therefore at an instant disadvantage in relation to other regions. There is a fear that the greening measures will be perceived as too prescriptive and therefore unhelpful.

I should like the Government to make allowances for farmers in higher latitudinal areas, for example, to take into account the challenge of farming in a tougher environment. I should also like them to support amendments tabled by my Liberal Democrat colleague George Lyon MEP and agreed to by the EU’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, which will allow farms to be exempt from greening requirements if they undertake actions that reduce agriculture’s impact on the global environment.

It will be difficult to ensure that the greening measures that generate 30% of direct payments will have an equal impact in countries whose climates and agricultural systems vary as much as Finland and Malta. I fear that DEFRA wants to impose one form of greening on English farmers, namely the ELS-light approach in pillar one. It is one thing to say that a farmer who participates in the entry level stewardship scheme should be exempt from greening, and another to say that the only way in which he can receive his greening payment is to participate in the scheme. We see DEFRA’s approach as an interesting addition to the Commission’s proposals, but only as an accompaniment, not as a replacement. Forcing farmers in England to take part in ELS management measures when, say, Scottish, Irish or French farmers have access to choice and the various “green by definition” derogations sounds very much like domestic gold-plating to me.

I hope that the Government do not consider it necessary to use the new flexibility in the proposals to allow for voluntary modulation of funds in the region of 15% that can be made by member states between the two pillars. While it does represent a liberalisation of the voluntary modulation principle introduced for the UK and Portugal under the previous CAP regime, does the increased possible modulation not represent a threat that could undermine UK farmers’ ability to compete within a common market?

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the likely shrinkage in the overall size of the EU budget, a decision by the UK Government to reduce the amount of modulation would be one way of ensuring that livestock and dairy farmers in particular see no reduction in their single farm payments?

[Roger Williams]

I agree. UK farmers certainly need a level of direct payment to remain financially viable and to play their part in the activities in which the people of this country would like to see them play a part.

National Park Authorities (Elections)

Debate between Roger Williams and Tim Farron

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Benton. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of accountability in relation to Britain’s national parks. The matter is raised with me almost daily by local businesses and residents of the Lake district and the Cumbrian part of the Yorkshire dales, not because local people are desperate for more elections or because we are constitutional obsessives but because decisions made by people who are not accountable to those affected tend to be bad decisions.

As a result, businesses are under unnecessary pressure because they cannot expand, farmers are struggling because they cannot diversify, and local people, especially young people, are leaving our communities never to return because of the lack of affordable housing. Meanwhile, the rise in second home ownership has gone unchecked in recent years. A conservative estimate is that one in six properties is now a second home owned by folks wealthy enough to have a property in a national park that they occasionally visit, while locals who are desperate to stay are forced to leave.

That said, Britain’s national parks are stunning countryside protected for the nation. The 1945 to 1951 Attlee Labour Government spent a good six years implementing Liberal policies, among which was the establishment in 1951 of the national parks, including both the Lakes and the Dales. That was good legislation; it was a wise and visionary move. The motivation behind the Act was to preserve Britain’s most spectacular landscape and its environment and to promote the heritage of our national parks for the benefit of all the people of Britain. There was a sense that the national parks were the lungs of Britain’s towns and cities, and that they therefore belonged to the whole country, not just to those who lived, worked or indeed owned property or land there.

Today, those of us who are blessed to call the Lakes or any other national park home are proud to live in such beautiful places. We embrace the fact that our area is cherished by the nation. We are determined to be stewards of our countryside and to share it with all comers. The Lake district has 16 million visitors a year, the tourism economy of Cumbria is worth roughly £3 billion a year and, outside London, the Lake district is Britain’s most important attack brand for overseas tourism, drawing in millions of tourists every year, many of whom then visit other, less famous parts of Britain, adding hugely to the economy of the whole country.

It is vital for our environment, for biodiversity, for our tourism economy and for our fight against climate change that our national parks are protected, and it is vital for our nation’s heritage and for our sense of collective ownership that that heritage is propagated and that decisions taken about our national parks should be taken on behalf of the UK-wide community well as the local community.

I contend that the evidence of recent years shows that the local community’s interests are most likely to be overlooked when the balance of considerations is made. We in Westmorland and Lonsdale are blessed with two national parks: within the constituency are the most populated part of the Yorkshire dales, including Sedbergh, Dent and Garsdale, and the most populated part of the Lake district, including Ambleside, Grasmere, Windermere, Bowness, Hawkshead, Coniston and the Langdales, to name a few. For those towns and villages, the national park acts in many ways like the local authority: it decides on planning, environmental matters, provision of housing, car parking prices, tourist information and a range of other services.

Although I am talking about beautiful countryside, I am not talking about empty spaces. The Lake District is Britain’s most populous national park: 45,000 people live within it, and thousands more who live near it make their living there. The national park boards act almost identically to local district or county councils. There are 22 members on the Lake District national park board and 22 on the Yorkshire Dales national park board. Of those, six are appointed by the Secretary of State and by local district or county councils. A further four are appointed by parish councils.

The idea is that local council appointments tick the box when it comes to demonstrating that local people have a voice, but it is worth pointing out that many local authority representatives see themselves, understandably, as there to represent their local authority’s institutional interests rather than the interests of residents. To underline that point, many of those local authority representatives do not actually live in or represent wards in the national parks. Also, many parish councils that nominate members of national park boards tend be made up of people who, although able, decent and committed, became members of their parish council without being elected, owing to a lack of demand to take up parish council places.

That prompts the question whether there would be any interest in or demand for elections to the national park boards. Hon. Members might be interested to know that South Lakeland had the highest electoral turnout in the country in the police and crime commissioner elections on 15 November, but even then we managed only 23%. Perhaps that underlines the public’s antipathy to those elections. I suspect that one reason why the turnout was so low is that people felt that the post should not be politicised, and that we already have too many elections.

Maybe this is not the best time to be asking the Government—or, more important, local residents—to consider holding more elections, but let us look at it this way: we would not tolerate a district or county council making decisions about housing, planning, economic development, environment and tourism without its members being elected by the residents who had to live with those decisions. In fact we would be outraged, yet to the people who live and work within them, our national parks are effectively unelected and unaccountable local authorities.

That does not mean, however, that the national parks do a dreadful job. In fact, they do a good job. They protect our world-class landscape and environmental heritage to the extent that the lakes are potentially a world heritage site. They have done outstanding work, enhancing biodiversity in the Howgills and the Yorkshire dales, for example. They have performed an almost miraculous clean-up operation in respect of water quality in many of our lakes. They have made massive strides in reducing carbon emissions through improved cycle routes and rail integration. But they make silly decisions—for example, about aggressive car park ticketing prices in Hawkshead and Ambleside, and they choose to develop their main visitor centre at Brockhole in ways that are almost designed to damage local hotels. They throw out exciting, completely appropriate commercial ventures, such as the Honister zip wire, but they put pressure on farmers to reduce their livestock numbers, forcing many of them to abandon farming altogether. I suspect that they do such things because too often they do not listen to what local businesses, residents and farmers want.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

My hon. Friend sets out the importance of national parks and some of the failings. Does he agree that experience in the Scottish national parks, which have had elected members since their formation, proves that the elections can be well contested and of great interest to local people?

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. That is true. I will mention the Scottish example in a moment. The elections in the Scottish national parks have engaged people and made them take the national parks seriously, providing a sense of ownership rather than a sense that this is a national thing deposited upon them.

It is important that our national park boards are chosen by local people, not simply chosen by others, so that a strand of legitimacy supports their decision making. Of course, that is not to say that people who are elected will make perfect decisions. We hon. Members present are proud to be elected to this place, but there are occasions when we do not get things perfectly right. Decisions made by people who are accountable will tend to be better, because those people have had to listen to those who have put them where they are.