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with Brazilians and Malays in asking them to produce national reports if we do not make clear the example that we are setting.The Minister for the Environment and Countryside (Mr. David Maclean) : Perhaps it will help the hon. Gentleman if I indicate nowwhat we have in mind. We are working on the second update of the White Paper "This Common Inheritance". We intend to take into account some of the decisions that were taken at Rio. We are well advanced on the route of writing what will be the White Paper and publishing it. We see the annual White Paper return that we shall make, together with the new statistical digest that we shall publish, as forming the basis of our national report for the Sustainable Development Commission.
When I was discussing these matters with Kamal Nath and Saifullah Khan of India and Pakistan last week, they were interested in our annual report and they had copies of "This Common Inheritance". We shall see whether we can further turn that report into a model that other countries can follow, with clear targets and honest admissions when we have not met our targets, while bringing in new targets and keeping the process rolling forward year after year.
Mr. Dalyell : That answer is not only courteous, but helpful. It means that I can spare the House the rest of the letter. I thank the Minister for his reply, which takes us rather further, on first hearing, on this important subject.
What will be done about the people-to-people networks? The Minister will know of the contribution of Christoph Imboden of the International Council for Bird Preservation to the conference the day before yesterday. I shall read one paragraph from the document "From research to action, From birds to people" produced by the ICBP. It says :
"once local people and communities have been made aware of the close connection between their own welfare and the sustainable use of resources, between quality of life and diversity of the environment, they must be mobilised to become advocates for environmental conservation. They must carry the message into all parts of society and, above all, seek to influence decision-makers in Governments and the private sector. All around the world, in developed and developing countries alike, non-governmental grassroots movements have been the prime driving force that has advanced conservation awareness and concern."
The argument is put extremely succinctly.
How do we set up benefit-sharing arrangements between countries providing potentially valuable biological resources and between those who develop ideas? perhaps the Minister will intervene on this point if he has the answer on top of his head. What was meant by the references of the Secretary of State at the natural history museum and in the House yesterday to regional networks? What is meant in that context by the word "network"? It may be the germ of an attractive idea. Would the Minister like to enlarge on the point, or would he not like to very much?
Mr. Dalyell : Not at this stage. I have a further question which follows the Minister's answer on 24 June. I asked the Minister "in what ways he proposes that the Darwin initiative will help the developing countries to attain compensation for the commercial exploitation of their genetic resources."
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The Minister replied :"The Darwin initiative aims to support the implementation of the bio- diversity convention. That convention facilitates the setting up of benefit sharing arrangements between countries providing potentially valuable biological resources and those who develop them."
Perhaps more properly in his speech than now, the Minister may like to explain how the mechanism of the benefit-sharing arrangements will work. I asked the Minister
"what relationship he proposes between the Darwin initiative and the work of the consultative group for international agricultural research."
He replied :
"We are still considering how to involve existing scientific and environmental groups in the Darwin initiative. However, the work of the consultative group for international agricultural research, which includes the development of higher yield crop varieties and the study of sustainable agricultural practices, shares the same long-term goal of the sustainable use of the world's resources promoted by the Darwin initiative."--[ Official Report, 24 June 1992 ; Vol. 210, c. 201 .]
Is there an idea of community-to-community sustained relationships? In the view of many at the natural history museum who devote their lives to these issues, it is the community-to-community, sustained and continuing relationship, to which I referred last night in my speech on Rio, that matters.
My next question applies to our countryside as much as it does abroad. What is being done about the establishment of an inventory of ecosystems? I am told that there is a strong argument for the establishment of inventories of species as a priority. We greatly value the work of Robin Pellew, Mark Collins and others at the monitoring centre in Cambridge on global diversity in our country and abroad. The status of the earth's living resources compiled by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre gives the information baseline on the status, threats, utilisation and management of the planet's biological wealth.
The global diversity strategy compiled by the world resources unit, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the United Nations Environment Programme provides guidelines for actions to save, study and use the Earth's biotic wealth sustainably and equitably. We are trying to put biodiversity on the map. That is one of the things that Rio achieved and for which the Brazilian hosts should properly be thanked. They have done something miraculous in providing a conference of that size without incident. Once again, the Brazilian state deserves our thanks.
We must learn to live in harmony with nature. The human impact on the biosphere is producing environmental stress and endangering the planet's capacity for sustained life. Depleting our ecological capital means that we are getting an amber warning. Soon it will turn to a red alert.
I want to use this debate as an opportunity to talk succinctly and quietly to the Minister about the example of Mar Lodge. As a former Scottish Whip and a highlander, the Minister may be tempted to say, "That is a matter for the Scottish Office. Leave it to the highlanders. Leave it to the people in Edinburgh." I am afraid that that will not do, because Mar Lodge is a potential world heritage site. We are talking about the conservation of the whole south side of the Cairngorms.
Just as the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, quite legitimately, talked about the Isle of Wight, I shall talk
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briefly about the part of Scotland that was the subject of an Adjournment debate I initiated, not only with the good will of, but at the request of, my late friend, Alick Buchanan-Smith, when he knew that he was terminally ill.The background is that the best part of the ancient Caledonian forest and the best part of the ancient European forest will be destroyed within one or, at the most, two decades if action is not taken. In the past, very rich people would take the Mar Lodge estate for a season and go stalking when it suited them, but stalking has now become an industry. To justify the enormous sums--thousands of pounds--paid by stalkers for one or two days of stalking, one must have a huge quantity of deer. I have never seen so many deer as on the Mar Lodge estate. The does are not culled as they perhaps should be, because it is necessary to keep them in such numbers to satisfy the stalkers.
As the Minister knows, when that number of young deer are involved, the young trees do not have a chance, and nor does natural reseeding. Adam Watson and Dick Balharrie of the Nature Conservancy Council compare the trees in that area with 80-year-old men. Now is the last chance of natural reseeding, yet there is no possibility of that happening with the number of deer that are now on the Mar estate. The Government reply that they hope to achieve a management agreement at some time. The estate is in the ownership of Mr. Kluge, who is an octogenarian and a millionaire several times over. You will not hear from me any personal criticism of Mr. Kluge. Rather, the reverse--for two reasons. He has been a very good landlord compared with previous landlords, and has been infinitely patient while the consortium led by Simon Pepper and others of the World Wide Fund for Nature prepare a proper bid for the Mar estate. Mr. Kluge has shown great patience--but sooner or later, he will want to sell and his patience will run out.
If we are serious about preserving Mar, something must be done. I know of no potential owner on the horizon. Any owner that agreed to carry the responsibility of Mar would have to be enormously wealthy--but that might be one answer from the Government's point of view.
I would respect a very rich owner if he agreed to the desiderata set down by most ecologists. They include reducing the number of deer, but that would make the estate unprofitable. In fact, it would incur an enormous loss, because of the diminished stalking fees. In those circumstances, one must question the role of the state. I understand, having had friendly personal interviews with the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro)--who is full of goodwill in this matter, but who I suspect has difficulties with the Treasury--that there is no possibility of the Treasury's releasing the amount of money that would satisfy Mr. Kluge's present demands.
What is to be done? I want to propose for the first time on the Floor of the House one constructive route that the Government ought to try. I suggest that they go to see Mr. Kluge personally. So far, negotiations have been conducted through his agent, and he has received no direct approach from the Government, When I suggested that the former president of the National Trust, the distinguished Earl of Wemyss and March--who is acknowledged to have a considerable background in such matters--should go to see Mr. Kluge, he agreed. However,
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a spanner was dropped in that particular works. No one will have much of a chance of pursuing the matter without Government backing.Mr. Bellingham : When the hon. Gentleman and I served on the Committee that considered the Natural Heritage (Scotland) Bill, there was debate on the Red Deer Commission and the powers that it has to intervene compulsorily to cull a herd of deer that has grown too big. Is there not a role for the commission in the case that the hon. Gentleman cites? If the herd at Mar has grown completely out of control, does not the commission have the power to cull some of the deer?
Mr. Dalyell : The commission does not have the power to reduce for ecological reasons the herd to the extent needed, because it would then risk making the Mar estate unprofitable. That is where huge amounts of money are involved.
The Government ought to suggest formally to Mr. Kluge that they would be willing to accept the establishment of a Kluge memorial park in that area of the Cairngorms, provided that Mr. Kluge was prepared to contribute a sum of money towards the establishment, for ever and ever in the ancient forest of Caledon, of something approaching a world heritage site.
I do not think that that is fanciful. I do not know whether the Minister has visited Jerusalem. On the road to the Hebrew university, one sees huge faculties bearing memorial tablets that say they are in memory of Rachel and Rubin Goldstein, of Ezra Erlichman, and so on. It is an American tradition--particularly an American-Jewish tradition--to donate money on a memorial basis. There is nothing dishonourable about that--it is an accepted practice.
It ought to be put without delay to Mr. Kluge, who has been a good landlord of the Mar estate, that he might like to think in terms of a Kluge memorial park. Failing that, and having immersed myself in the subject, I do not see any other constructive solution.
This matter is one for the Minister's Department and not only for the Scottish Office. In fact, it is a matter for the British Government. The Cairngorms are a potential major world heritage site, and Mar is the jewel in that crown. I thank the House for its patience.
10.56 am
Mr. Peter Ainsworth (Surrey, East) : I am delighted to support the motion, and I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech. The debate concerns issue of great interest not only to those who work and live in the countryside but to those who visit it. It touches on issues of some profundity, because the well-being, appearance and size of the countryside have been entrusted to our generation--as to every generation--for a relatively short time.
The countryside that we hold in trust now evolved gradually over thousands of years. With the pace of change in our rural communities faster than ever before, and given that they are confronted by new threats as well as new opportunities, it is vital that we nurture what is ours today, so that we may have pride in the countryside that we pass on to our children and to future generations.
The constituency that I have the privilege of representing stretches from the southern tip of Greater London in the north to Kent in the east, and to Sussex in
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the south. It has one foot in the countryside and one foot in the town, so straddling the north downs--which have for so long served as a natural barrier against the southward spread of London. The area was represented in the House in one way or another, and in whole or in part, by Sir Geoffrey Howe for 24 years. Following a boundary change in 1971, the constituency took its present shape, which is coterminous with the area covered by Tandridge district council.I am sure that the House and the whole country acknowledges the debt that we all owe to Sir Geoffrey for his remarkable record of public service over many years--notably as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary. He managed to combine his high office with an extraordinary commitment to local people and local issues. His sometimes avuncular and always perspicacious attention to the latter has alone set his successor a formidable and exciting challenge. I know that all hon. Members will join me in congratulating Sir Geoffrey on his recent elevation to another place, where no doubt he will continue to exercise his commitment to public service for many years to come.
Sir Geoffrey was not the first Member of Parliament for the area to achieve great distinction. Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston were both briefly Members of Parliament for Bletchingley, which was once a rotten borough close to the Pilgrims' way, and is now an attractive village close to the M25.
There is still much glorious countryside, and there are still many buildings and villages to celebrate in Surrey--but there is no mistaking the fact that they lead a fragile existence today. I am happy to say that that has been recognised, and much of the area is now covered by the green belt. I applaud the Government's outstanding record on enlarging and reinforcing the green belt in recent years. The Secretary of State for Transport's announcement yesterday on link roads has ensured that the M25 remains a controversial issue. There is no denying that its advent did much to remove traffic from the towns and villages along the main roads in my constituency--but there is also no denying that it cuts a noisy and unsightly swathe through the green belt countryside. No doubt the Minister for the Environment and Countryside is aware of the local concern about the plan for widening the motorway to eight lanes along its entire length, and yesterday's announcement that there was in effect to be a 14-lane highway a few miles to the north-west does not diminish that concern.
I do not wish to dwell on the matter now, although it has some relevance-- but if I say that, as well as being bisected by the M25, my constituency is flanked on its western border by the M23 and in the south by Gatwick airport, and is traversed by a railway line which appears to be decreasingly available for passenger transport and is shortly to be used for freight traffic from the Channel tunnel, hon. Members will understand my anxiety and that of my constituents about the impact of transport demands on the countryside.
There is clearly a need for balance. Just as it would be unwise to ignore the pressing need for a first-rate transport infrastructure in the south- east of England, and the importance of that to the economy as a whole, so nobody
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should underestimate the profound, sudden and irreversible consequences of change in a landscape which until recently had changed little for centuries. The promised environmental studies on the M25, with the likely public inquiry, will no doubt give such matters, and the question of pollution, the most serious consideration.The need for balance extends to housing and business development. The Minister and his predecessors are to be congratulated on their sensible and imaginative approach. The countryside, and the villages which are an integral part of it, are not museum pieces. Great care must be taken to balance the need for conservation with the need to foster a thriving rural economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) dwelt on that topic.
The task is difficult, I know, and with the recent changes affecting agriculture, notwithstanding the recent success of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the discussions on the common agricultural policy, it is becoming no easier.
I must apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the House, if I have to leave the Chamber before the end of the debate, but I hope that you will agree that I have good reason to do so. I hope this afternoon to celebrate the renovation of some near-derelict farm buildings in my constituency. Those buildings now house three separate businesses--one in the 200-year- old barn, one in the cowshed and one in the old milking shed. Such development represents the best of what can be done with imagination, flexibility and, of course, restraint.
In that connection, I welcome planning policy guidance note 7, which, along with the rural action initiative, emphasises the development of the social programmes, the pilot countryside employment programmes and a host of other new initiatives which show the Government's commitment to fostering both the rural environment and the rural economy--in truth, those interests are indivisible. Finally, I must mention hedgerows, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight also referred. Hedgerows form an essential part of our countryside heritage, clearly contributing to the familiar pattern of the landscape. They are also a vital natural habitat for all forms of wildlife, including butterflies. Despite the Government's recent success in fostering new hedgerow plantings, figures produced last year by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, in a report jointly sponsored by the Department of the Environment, suggest a net loss of hedgerows in England and Wales of about 65,000 miles--21 per cent. of the total--since 1984.
Neglect is the principal culprit, and I look forward with interest to the scheme that I believe that the Minister will soon introduce to promote better hedgerow management. However, about 2,000 miles of hedgerows a year are lost through active destruction, and it is to prevent such unjustifiable destruction that I have presented to the House for a First Reading a private Member's Bill to protect hedgerows. I look forward to consulting all interested parties to reach an acceptable, workable and enforceable set of proposals, which I trust will at the appropriate time command the support of all hon. Members.
11.7 am
Mr. Alex Carlisle (Montgomery) : What a pleasure it is to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Ainsworth). The clarity of his thought
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and the way in which he delivered his speech promise us much from him in the years to come. The hon. Gentleman has many choices to make about the examples that he may wish to follow--whether he is to be a Melbourne, a Palmerston or a Howe. That may be a difficult choice to make ; having heard him, I hope that he will simply be himself. We in Wales are extremely proud of the hon. Gentleman's predecessor, Sir Geoffrey Howe. It is not to be forgotten that Surrey, East was represented for so many years by a Llanelli boy, who was one of the most distinguished members of my circuit of the Bar--the Wales and Chester circuit--and who has been for many years an honorary member of that circuit.Mr. Win Griffiths : I hesitate to interrupt the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I thought that Sir Geoffrey Howe came from Port Talbot.
Mr. Carlisle : If it is Port Talbot rather than Llanelli, I stand corrected. I was speaking from memory. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right.
Although on one occasion Sir Geoffrey Howe was compared in the House to a dead sheep, those of us who were there will recall one of the most dramatic moments of recent years when Sir Geoffrey made the very short speech in the House that ended the reign of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. To sit 30 or so feet away from him as he delivered that speech was certainly one of the greatest dramatic moments that I have experienced, A similar auspicious occasion may arise at some point in the career of the hon. Member for Surrey, East. If so, I hope that he rises to it with the skill and dignity of his predecessor.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) on choosing this subject for debate. It is not often that those of us who represent rural constituencies have the opportunity to talk directly about matters affecting the countryside. My constituency of Montgomery is, I believe, the most rural of all constituencies. It certainly has the highest percentage of its population employed directly in agriculture--something like 15 times the national average. It will not surprise hon. Members, therefore, to know that the future of the rural environment, particularly of the rural communities, is of prime concern to me.
There is a great difference between the view of the countryside and the view from the countryside. That difference is not always articulated clearly in the House, despite the best efforts of those Members with rural constituencies. I should like to dwell for a few moments on that difference.
We who live and work in and represent the countryside welcome the view of the countryside that is taken by others. We welcome the arrival of tourists, for they bring interest and great economic advantage to rural areas such as Montgomeryshire, an area--soon, I hope, to be a county once again--which has invested wisely in its tourist potential and has produced many high-value tourist attractions.
However, the Government are sometimes extremely unimaginative in their approach to tourist attractions. Recently I visited the bird sanctuary and butterfly house at Llanfyllin in my constituency. It is a beautiful tourist attraction, of much interest and run scientifically, but the owners are not allowed to put a sign on the nearest trunk road saying that their tourist attraction exists, because, says the Welsh Office, they do not have 25,000 visitors a
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year. Quite apart from the fact that it would be difficult to bring 25,000 tourists every year up the road leading to the site, it is difficult to understand how they can attract even half that number--which they probably could accommodate comfortably--if they are unable to tell people of their existence by putting up a sign on the nearest trunk road.The A-road on which the present sign is displayed carries a very small amount of traffic. In inclement weather only brave drivers travel over the Berwyn between Welshpool and Bala. The fainthearts, who are the majority-- and probably sensibly so, in the view of the police--go the long way round along the A5 where my constituents are not allowed to erect a sign. Much more could be done, without damaging the environment, to allow for the signposting of tourist attractions.
We welcome the view of the countryside taken even by people who move into Montgomeryshire to live. There has never been xenophobia in Montgomeryshire about people--even, dare I say it, the English--moving into our part of rural Wales. It is an interesting part of rural Wales because it embraces the features of a border county, English speaking, and the features of a Welsh rural county, Welsh speaking and as Welsh as anywhere else in Wales. I fear, however, that we may begin to become a little xenophobic if current planning legislation remains unchanged.
I wish to raise two connected points in this context, both of which are of great importance, cause weekly concern and feature regularly in my constituency surgeries. The first relates to the absence of any need for planning consent for the occupation of a property as a second home. As the Minister knows, this concern applies throughout many rural areas. It certainly applies throughout rural Wales. It is not that we wish to stop people having second homes--there are many properties that, being realistic, probably have no other use--but we wish to ensure that our villages remain part of the community and are not turned into very pretty and prettified, but rather sterile, museum pieces. There is need for some planning control, albeit relatively loose, to be exercised over the proliferation of second homes.
In some counties in Wales, notably in the old county of Meirionnydd, there are villages where second homes dominate and where the local community has been virtually excluded by price. The fact that people are able to come in and buy cheaply old properties as second homes causes great irritation to local builders, for when they develop small estates of houses they are often faced with section 106 agreements that restrict the clientele who can buy those properties. There is no doubt that section 106 agreements have their place and I am not suggesting that they should be removed--quite the opposite. I believe, however, that the section 106 agreement, which causes problems for builders, would be far more acceptable if builders felt that some control was exercised over the purchase of cheap, old properties by outsiders, particularly as second homes. A balance has not quite been reached.
The view from the countryside is very different from the idea of "The Good Life". As the Minister, who now has great and valuable experience of the countryside and its concerns and who is much respected throughout the farming community, knows, living and working in the countryside can be as harsh and as heavy as living and working anywhere else.
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I make not a political point but a factual statement when I say that living on and from agriculture is becoming increasingly difficult. The small farm of 100 acres, or less, in the hills of Montgomeryshire which 30 years ago employed perhaps a dozen people can now barely sustain one family at the poverty line. Farmers often bring their accounts to me to show what is really going on. Those accounts frequently show profits of well under £5,000 a year to keep a whole family.Nor is it easy to diversify. If one is farming in Llanbrynmair, Trefeglwys or Llangynog, there is not too much passing trade for the love spoons that some may think can be made there and then sold at the farm gate. We do not have the tradition, the land or the weather to sell cider at a farm gate, as happens in Normandy. Would that we could : life would be more pleasant on a summer's evening. Village shops are closing. In my village of Berriew- -which many times has been the jewel in Wales's crown and has repeatedly been voted the best-kept village in Wales--to our great regret the village bakery closed earlier this year, not because the family that owned it did not want to continue to run it, but because the cost of meeting European regulations would prove prohibitive and out of proportion to the bakery's turnover. We see many such examples being replicated, with village shops closing and village pubs becoming unviable. The Minister will know of the tremendous network of chapels in Wales that have been the back-bone of the local community certainly since the 19th century, some of which grew when people decided that there must be some way of resisting the wicked Tory landlords. Through the chapels, there was built up a tradition of community and self-help, which sustained not only the Welsh language and culture but the communities themselves. People helped one another in times of difficulty, provided work for one another and inter-married, which is one reason why many people in Wales are related.
Much of that community strength is going. Even the most basic of village institutions--the school--is threatened by difficulties that now beset governors, because formula funding seems not to recognise peripherality as it should. This week, I received two letters which I can describe only as manic from depressed school governors who simply do not know how they can go on doing the job. They will probably resign in despair. I saw the Secretary of State for Wales yesterday and, while he was sympathetic to my view of village schools, he did not appear to have anything remedial to offer.
We have seen welcome economic development in rural mid-Wales. The Development Board for Rural Wales has been extremely successful. People change and companies grow up. Commercial attitudes change. I was recently given the honour of being elected chairman of the special share trust of Wynnstay and Clwyd Farmers plc--a farming co-operative which recently turned itself into a plc, dramatically facing the modern world, taking over other businesses and profitably turning over about £30 million a year in a very disadvantageous agricultural environment. That is an example of the best that happens. Such initiative needs as much help as Government can give. I hope, therefore, that the commitment to the
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Development Board for Rural Wales will continue and that similar commitments may be given in other parts of the country.Perhaps the greatest crisis that we face in rural mid-Wales is connected not with agriculture or poor wages but with the lack of somewhere for young people to live. When I first became Member of Parliament for Montgomery in 1983, there was no difficulty when young couples came along wanting council houses because they were getting married or setting up home together. Montgomeryshire district council was able to provide them, and the Development Board for Rural Wales was able to provide homes for new workers moving into the county. That is not so any more. Many local young people, who are in work, are now homeless. That is not acceptable.
We are told that Tai Cymru--Housing for Wales--is providing, or at least facilitating the provision of, the houses that are needed through housing associations, but I am afraid that that is not true. Every week, I receive letters and at every constituency surgery decent young people come in and tell me their situation.
I believe that we shall do great damage to our rural areas if we do not provide homes at least for our own indigenous population, for they will be forced to leave. The gain of places such as Telford, Birmingham and Wolverhampton will be our loss. It will be an irreparable loss, because there will be no young people left to do the skilled jobs for which they have been educated by what has been an excellent education system.
My final point--there is much that I should like to say, but many other Members wish to speak--is about the relationship between agriculture and the environment. In their publication, "Action for the Countryside", the Government emphasised some manifesto commitments that were welcome, one of which is the countryside stewardship scheme. The amount that has been allocated to the scheme--£2.9 million, I believe, over three years--is small indeed when set alongside the agriculture budget. The future of farming--and if there are no sheep on the hills in my area, there will be nothing on the hills but dereliction--depends on seizing the money that is rightly available for the future of the environment and marrying it to agriculture in a constructive partnership.
There was a time when hill farmers in mid-Wales perhaps did not see much sense in restoring hedgerows that had been removed years before, in leaving fields fallow, in planting wild flowers, in creating countryside trails, in reducing the stocking density and in clearing footpaths, but they see the sense of all those measures now and will take them not only because it will put money into their pockets but because they recognise truly the interests of environmental and countryside management. They are surviving on a shoestring. I therefore urge the Government to consider--this may be a happy consequence for the environment of subsidiarity perhaps--ways of spending money on the environment that would benefit the agriculture industry. If that produced real achievements, perhaps there would be less of a difference between the view of the countryside and the view from the countryside.
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11.30 amMr. Quentin Davies (Stamford and Spalding) : It is always a pleasure to speak following the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), and I enjoyed his summary of some of the traditions and history of the land of my ancestors.
I begin by declaring an interest--I am not sure that it is relevant to my remarks today, but for the sake of order I will declare it--in that I own a few acres in Lincolnshire and have a small flock of sheep there. I have declared that in the Register of Members' Interests.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) on being successful in the ballot and on ably presenting his motion. I began increasingly to regret, as he presented his constituency in such an attractive way, that I had spent only a few brief hours on his island. I resolved, as I listened to him, to return there with my family and to stay rather longer.
Today's debate has already been distinguished by a particularly able maiden speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Ainsworth). He set out succinctly and ably the differing interests of his constituency. I am sure that Members in all parts of the House greatly appreciated his obviously sincere tribute to his great predecessor, Lord Howe.
The motion presents us with a good opportunity to congratulate the Government on achievements for which they have not received sufficient credit. Without doubt, this has been the most environmentally conscious and sensitive Government we have ever had in our history. That applies to previous Conservative, and to Labour and Liberal Administrations.
I endorse the motion and everything that my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight said, and I congratulate the Government on a series of environmental initiatives. Many of them have been, or are in the process of being, copied by other countries, and that must be the greatest form of flattery. One thinks of the environmentally sensitive areas scheme and the farm woodland scheme, in which I participated in a small way.
We must recognise that, if we care for the conservation of the countryside, we must have a viable and prosperous agriculture. Without that, there is no chance of our having the attractive, neat, well cared for countryside that those who are concerned for the environment wish to maintain. The resource costs for the rest of the community of keeping the countryside pretty and environmentally healthy, so that people may appreciate it, without there being a farming community with the resources to work it would be horrific and out of the question. So we must ask whether we are willing to ensure that we have the conditions to maintain a viable and prosperous agriculture.
Agriculture is the most significant industry in my constituency. I know whereof I speak when I say that agriculture is going through a crisis of confidence in the future, and that crisis is shared by every other major developed country. Essentially, it is a crisis of over-production brought about not by the malfunctioning of markets but by the subversion of markets through governmental action over the last 50 years.
I am not targeting in particular the European Community or British Governments who, before we entered the Community and since the beginning of the last war, decided to subsidise agriculture. The level of
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agricultural support in the United States has always been comparable with that in the EC. The level in other OECD countries has been greater than in the EC or in the United States, and probably the greatest offenders have been Sweden, Switzerland and, worst of all, Japan. That has brought about a crisis of over-production analogous to over-production crises in other sectors of economic activity, such as in steel and shipbuilding in the 1960s and 1970s, brought about by Government subsidies and similar action in many parts of the world. The crisis of over -production in agriculture is the cloud overhanging every investment decision taken by every farmer in Britain today, particularly as he ponders the future, wondering whether he will be able to continue farming to retirement and have a worthwhile business to hand on to his children.The action that farmers must take to overcome that crisis is twofold. One way to ensure survival against that background is to be a lowest-cost producer, producing goods more efficiently than any competitor, so that, so long as there is a demand for one's commodities, one will have a market share. The alternative is to decide that one does not have the necessary competitive economic advantages to become a lowest-cost producer. In that situation, one must specialise, looking for new niches and products with which to attract the consumer. In other words, one must find a new way of using one's capital resources--for a farmer, land is the most important-- and change one's business mix to develop a new market. The same applies to shipbuilding, steel production or the manufacture of shoe buttons, should there be a crisis of over-production in the shoe button market. Many farmers believe that they can become lowest-cost producers and that, so long as there is a market for their production--for example, for cereals-- they will survive, provided that they are not inhibited by governmental or other external action from bringing those advantages fully to bear. Many farmers, perhaps not consciously, are adopting the other route and are becoming niche players, going in for new products and using their skills and land to develop them.
However, I am often depressed when I visit the workshops and storerooms in my constituency of Geest, the largest fresh food distributor in Britain, and see piles of new vegetables. I call them new not because they have recently been invented but because they have only recently appeared regularly in the shopping baskets of British housewives--food such as aubergines, asparagus and artichokes.
Such vegetables are produced in temperate time zones. They look attractive as they wait to be distributed throughout the country. When I ask where they come from, the answer is usually Holland, France or Germany. Generally, they come from some other country in Europe, probably in the same climate zone as ours. It is sad that our farmers have not always been enterprising enough to go in for such new products, which do not have a Community support regime for producing and selling them.
There are various reasons for that state of affairs, which I will not go into at this stage. Suffice it to say that marketing co-operatives on the continent seem to be better organised. We in Britain have many lessons to learn from their activities. We must ask to what extent governmental action, at the national or Community level, will ensure for the future a
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viable basis for agriculture in Britain. We have debated the recent agreement at the Agriculture Council on the modified MacSharry proposals. To what extent will that lay the basis for a viable and prosperous agriculture in the United Kingdom and enable farmers to take one of the decisions to which I referred--to become a lowest-cost producer or to go for new products?There is no question but that the achievements of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food at the Agriculture Council were memorable. Practically all the farmers in my constituency and many others said that it was impossible for the Minister to go to Brussels and successfully resist and remove from the MacSharry proposals all the elements that appeared to have the support of the other 11 member states and would discriminate against large farmers--which in practice means British farmers as opposed to those in the rest of the Community. Yet my right hon. Friend returned having completely got rid of the pernicious discriminatory proposals. It was an exceedingly fine negotiating achievement and there was a great sigh of relief. More generously than that --farmers are capable of being generous--a great well of congratulation met my right hon. Friend on his return when he announced what he had achieved. Nevertheless, one must consider the medium and long term, and ask whether the new agreement establishes a new basis for the CAP that will give us some stability for the foreseeable future. The jury is out. If the new agreement is to provide a stable, and at least relatively permanent, basis for agriculture in the Community, it must meet three criteria. First, it must give some assurance that the continually increasing burden of the CAP on the Community budget will be to some extent limited. The judgment on that must be slightly ambiguous, because in the near future the CAP budget will increase as a result of the proposals. The Commission calculates that after three or four years agricultural expenditure will fall. That calculation must depend on several assumptions about international agricultural prices, so is hypothetical. Therefore, the jury is out on that one. The second criterion is whether the new regime will allow us to reach accord in the general agreement on tariffs and trade negotiations. Clearly, that is necessary. If it does not, we shall have to reconsider the matter. Again, the jury is out. We have some complicated, difficult negotiations afoot. We have unquestionably thrown the Americans on the defensive with the agreement, but let us see what happens. It is too early to predict the result.
Thirdly, and precisely for all the reasons that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, if the proposals become the basis of a new stable regime in the Community, what will be their impact on the viability and profitability of agriculture? I must admit to a number of fundamental reservations here. The agreement is unquestionably far and away the best that we could conceivably have achieved in present circumstances. We must all be very happy with that. However, that does not necessarily mean that we should all pretend that that will be the basis of the CAP for the next five to 25 years. The agreement includes some fundamental shortcomings and contracdictions which were not inserted at British instigation but remain a fundamental part of the proposals.
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One of those is compulsory set-aside. If a farmer is to qualify for compensation under the scheme, 15 per cent. of all cereal land or of all land down to combinable crops, to use the jargon in the proposals, will have to be set aside. Let us think about that for a second or two. If you came from Mars, and I know that you do not, Mr. Deputy Speaker, without any particular prejudices, preconceived notions or habits of mind, to look at how the human race organises its agricultural affairs in this country or the European Community, and you discovered that there was a crisis of over-production, particularly in the cereal and livestock sectors, and that it was proposed to take 15 per cent. of that land out of production, irrespective of whether it was the most or least productive land, of whether it yielded 5 or even 6 tonnes of grain an acre in a good year or only 2 or 3 tonnes and of the profitability and technical and economic efficiency of cultivating it, you would say that something had gone peculiarly wrong with the financial sense and economic logic of the human race.It cannot make any economic sense over the long haul to take out of production 15 per cent. of grade 1 land in Lincolnshire and, at the same time, to grow cereals on grade 3 or 4 land in the Cotswolds or Scotland. For the medium term, it would be impossible to make the fundamental readjustments that economic logic might suggest, but we should not deceive ourselves : what we have is an anomaly, not to say an economically contradictory state of affairs, which will increase and not reduce the average cost of production.
Another shortcoming is the "quota system" for the livestock sector. If we are to have a viable, competitive agriculture and if we are to encourage our farmers to respond to new market stimuli, to develop new products, to switch their mix of production as the market changes and to do what every business must do if we are to have a prosperous economy, the last thing we want is to freeze the existing mix of production by a system of quotas establishing crippling financial penalties if people do switch their mix of production in that way. That cannot be a rational or viable basis for agriculture in the long term.
Perhaps the most anomalous and curious aspect of the proposals and the one we should reflect on longest is the concept of compensation on the basis of average yields. The new proposals provide that, for the 85 per cent. of combinable land that remains in production, the 15 per cent. having been set aside, the support prices available will fall, but that farmers will be compensated for the shortfall on the basis of average yields.
What does that mean? It means that, if previously the yield was below average, the farmer will be better off--he will receive a windfall--but if previously the farmer was more efficient than average and his yield was higher, he will suffer. In other words, we are back to the bad old business that the Labour Government used to specialise in, of penalising success and rewarding failure. That cannot be the basis of a sound, efficient, profitable agriculture any more than it can possibly be the basis of a sound and profitable sector of economic activity in any other area.
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