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3.42 pm
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner), who spoke with charm and fluency. One is, of course, meant to say that of a maiden speech, but in this case it is true. What is more, the hon. Gentleman sufficiently disagreed with my views about the right to roam to assure him a safe and prosperous future on the Labour Benches. I am sure that we shall hear him speak many times, as much to the point and equally in disagreement with my views.
Unusually, today's debate joins the environment and agriculture, and I wish to speak about the interstices between those subjects. First, I shall discuss the state of agriculture, particularly in West Dorset. It is a week or two since we held the third of a series of debates on agriculture. In a world in which, we are told, only e-commerce, the development of telecommunications and other whizz-bang, high-tech industries move quickly, it is astonishing that the situation in agriculture should have evolved dramatically, to say the least, in the space of just two or three weeks.
I recall saying in the presence of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food about three weeks ago that the situation of our pig farmers was dire. For some of them, it is no longer dire: they have gone out of business. I said that some of our smaller and
medium-sized dairy farms faced imminent closure; and, in just three weeks, that is no longer true, as some of them are out of business. One of my constituents ran one of the most efficient middle-sized farms--500 acres--in the area. He received various accolades for his business acumen, but he has sold up and left the business.
The situation is going to change not over the next month or six months but over the next few weeks--and not in a drain but in a cascade. Present policies will lead to the virtual elimination of all but three classes of farm in West Dorset. There will be old family farms where the owners have never borrowed. They hold their quota by purchase, and they have no fixed costs other than the modest cost of a modest existence in a modest house. They will continue until the farmers retire or die, and they will not be succeeded by their children.
The second class that may survive consists of those farms lucky enough to engage in some industrial process. One farm in my constituency combines the rearing of pigs with dairy production in a highly mechanised modern fashion. It has gone for the upper end of the niche markets for both meat and cheese. In effect, it is a wholesaler of final product, and a farm only in an ancillary sense.
Thirdly, some land will be farmed by very large contract farmers. Much land, however, will go out of production. My hon. Friends the Members for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) and for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) will testify to the same patterns of change in their constituencies, whether faster or slower than in mine.
Miss McIntosh:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the decline in farming is being expedited by the stranglehold of bureaucracy and form-filling imposed by the Government? Would it not be a great gesture in the run-up to Christmas if the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food eased off on the regulatory bureaucracy?
Mr. Letwin:
Absolutely. The threat of the integrated pollution prevention and control regulations--mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow--the offal disposal costs, the aggravation of IACS forms and the endless inspections and parade of bureaucracy do nothing to help, and the extra costs imposed are accelerating decline. I hope that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will tell us today whether he can do something about offal disposal costs. I persist in believing that he has an absolute right to act. He has not deposited in the House of Commons Library any legal opinion to the contrary. Action would be a welcome help for a pig industry in near-terminal decline.
We moved from the serious problem of six or nine months ago to the crisis of three months ago in both the dairy and pig industries. We have moved now to impending catastrophe. We shall lose traditional farming in West Dorset and, I suspect, in England.
I said that I would speak about the interstices of the environment and agriculture. I want to try to explain how someone such as myself--a free trader and a free marketer--can believe it right to try to avert the catastrophe that I have described. We should not do so merely with early retirement schemes, although my farmers would welcome some help in leaving the industry with dignity. It has been months since we first heard from the Government about early retirement schemes, and it would help if some schemes were produced.
In addition to early retirement, however, we need subsidies. Now, how can someone like me defend agricultural subsidies? [Interruption.] The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food says that I can do so because I have a farming constituency. I do have such a constituency, but I supported agricultural subsidies when I stood for the seat now occupied by a candidate for the mayorship of London--the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson). In fact, it is about as far from being an agricultural seat as humankind has yet devised.
Mr. David Heath:
What about Hampstead heath?
Mr. Letwin:
It is rather a long time since Hampstead heath had a cow or a pig on it.
I am a free marketeer and a free trader, yet I favour agricultural subsidies--and I suspect that anyone who understands the relationships between agriculture and the environment is bound to do the same. Agriculture is not in an ordinary sense an industry, and the countryside is not a park--nor was it given to us in its present form by accident. The shape of our countryside, which is part of the nation's ancient inheritance, evolved because of what human beings have done to it.
It is conceivable that our countryside could return to its mediaeval origins. Notwithstanding the efforts by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to study the matter, we now have wild boar in West Dorset.
Mr. Neil Turner:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is the bore.
Mr. Letwin:
I may be a bore, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not wild.
I first brought to MAFF's attention the fact that there were wild boar in West Dorset when I first entered the House two and a half years ago. I put down a harmless question asking whether the Ministry was aware that there was a feral population of wild boar there, and I was told, "No there isn't." Then the Ministry sent down a chap to find out what was going on, he did so, and I asked another question: what would the Ministry do about it? The answer was that there would be another study. We have not yet heard about the study, so nothing has yet happened about the wild boar in West Dorset.
As I said, I can imagine the whole countryside reverting to its mediaeval origins. There would not only be wild boar all over the place, but lots of forests and, as a result--this will please Labour Members--hunting everywhere. Hunting developed in this country because it was necessary for humankind to defend itself against certain animals.
However--I hope that this is the more realistic prospect--if we wanted to keep our countryside looking roughly as it does now, but without agriculture, we would have to pay somebody an awful lot to look after it. We could try to persuade landowners to look after it, but they would be disinclined to do so because it would be such a costly exercise. There are probably not enough people in the United Kingdom with enough money to keep up as parkland all the land that is now agricultural.
We would therefore have to do one of two things. The first option would be to do what I begin to suspect not only the Cabinet Office but the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions have as their
ulterior purpose--to allow massive housing development on the land. That is the very plan that was leaked from the Cabinet Office, and it is a perfectly rational plan, which would be entirely economically sustainable. I have not the least doubt that over the next 10 or 15 years Dorset could have not 50,000 new houses, but 500,000.
I am sure that there would be takers. As the prices for country cottages and holiday lets came down, the inhabitants of the city would flood in, and the landowners would be adequately remunerated by those huge housing developments. By then the landowners would no longer be farmers; the Government's wonderful policies would have produced groups of great landlords. I suspect that that is where the Government are heading. It is a perfectly rational economic prospect, but a perfectly appalling environmental prospect.
If that happens, landowners will no longer be farmers because they will have been driven out of farming by an unfair regime that allows other people to compete us out of the market, combined with an unwillingness to subsidise sufficiently to enable us to support that regime. If we then wanted to persuade them not to build houses but to keep the parkland looking like parkland, we would have to pay them mightily.
In fact, if I replay history a little, I can imagine the English countryside being looked after in that way, by stewards and executive agencies set up to pay people to keep the landscape looking the same, but without farming. Then some brilliant person--perhaps the Minister's special adviser--might make a clever suggestion. "Minister," he might say, "We could lessen the subsidy that we have to pay to keep England looking the way it does if we did a spot of farming. We could bring in a bit of income to supplement what we would otherwise have to pay."
The Minister--it would not be the Minister of Agriculture but the Minister for the Parklands of England, responsible, perhaps, for the executive agency English Parks--would look round and go off and get some expert scientific advice. There is not much of that in MAFF, of course, although there is a great deal of inexpert scientific advice all over the place.
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