Examination of Witness (Questions 140
- 159)
TUESDAY 29 FEBRUARY 2000 (Afternoon Sitting)
RT HON
NICHOLAS BROWN
140. We have all avoided that dreadful cliché,
Minister, about joining things up.
(Mr Brown) I know, but there is quite a lot of enthusiasm
for this at regional level. I met with the chairs and the members
of the Regional Development Agencies with specialist interests
and their representatives recently to talk through all this just
to see what can be done with their own economic development responsibilities,
again alongside this. The whole of the food chain is something
like 11 per cent of national output.
141. In your reply to our Report last year,
you said that access could be covered by Article 33. Has this
been highlighted or mentioned in the Plan for England or any of
the other regional plans?
(Mr Brown) It is certainly referred to in the larger
document. We will be drawing attention to the range of things
that people can bid for by setting out examples of successful
projects under 5b so people get a feel for what can be done under
the regulation. I am also looking at ways to advise people at
a pretty early stage on whether a bid is likely to succeed or
not, so we try to avoid the business of people spending a lot
of money preparing a bid and then finding it falls at some early
hurdle, something that should have been discovered earlier.
Mr Todd
142. You set out in the plan the priorities
for training and the training in this particular case is focused
specifically at farmers and those involved in farm-based activity,
so it is rather more narrowly defined than one or two of the other
strands of the plan. What assessment have you made of the current
arrangements for supporting training of those people?
(Mr Brown) I have no budgets for that, of course.
This is new for me. I want the money to be spent in a way that
is market orientated. We are going to have to use partners to
help deliver the training. I have a third ambition as well and
that is to make sure that we prioritise within the training budget
young people who either want to be entrants to farming or who
are young farmers. The measures that are most young farmer orientated
are the business sector, the training, the farm diversification
project money and the marketing money.
143. I think it depends on what you define as
young. In farming the word young might be applied to anyone under
the age of about 55.
(Mr Brown) The average age is 58. That is true throughout
the European Union, it is also true in the United States of America
and it has been true for some time. It seems to me that we should
do something to help young farmers. One of the projects that I
am particularly keen on is to try to arrange with the rest of
the supply chain—and it is not specifically a part of this
regulation but it sits happily alongside the implementation of
it and my Department's responsibilities—a form of mentoring
from the banks, from the big retailers and from the big processors.
The idea is that they lend senior employees to work with young
farmers who are trying to develop a project who say, "This
would work", or, "You need to do this if you are planning
to sell to us", or, "You could get into trouble here
if you take this route because you are over-extending yourselves",
in other words to give all that helpful advice at an early stage.
There has been an enthusiastic response from our partners in the
food chain group.
144. That sounds very welcome, but it is quite
noticeable that you have not listed among those partners any of
the existing training providers in the agricultural sector as
potentially offering some benefit from this.
(Mr Brown) All of that is possible. That is just an
oversight on my part. We are trying to look beyond just the conventional
college arrangements to see if something could be done.
145. Was it an oversight or an implicit criticism
of what is already available, because one could interpret this
initiative as being a criticism of the poverty of training and
support?
(Mr Brown) No, I am not making that point. The purpose
of providing the extra budget was to cover the gaps in the market
rather than to replicate the existing education budgets and it
seems to me that the gap in the market is pretty market orientated
and, also, this use of helpful advice from people who are key
players in the chain is what is missing. Remember, the purpose
of agriculture is to produce food.
146. Among other things.
(Mr Brown) Yes, to sell and get the helpful advice
of those that you are selling to.
147. As you said in answer to an earlier question,
increasingly the purpose of agriculture is not just to produce
food—
(Mr Brown) No, it is about farm businesses, which
is not quite the same thing. It is true that farm businesses might
not be food production orientated in future, that is a real possibility.
148. Can I just turn to the role of agricultural
colleges of which there are still roughly one per county of the
old traditional model scattered around the country. Many of them
have redefined their roles as beyond agriculture anyway. What
role do you see them playing?
(Mr Brown) It is true that colleges are modernizing
the courses that they offer, becoming much more business orientated
and I think all of this is welcome. It is not my purpose in providing
the training element to imply any criticism of what is done at
the moment but to fill a gap.
149. Is this initiative an opportunity to re-evaluate
their role and work with the DfEE on defining that role afresh?
(Mr Brown) To be honest, I have not got a ready answer
to that. I am certainly not against it, but I would see it more
as the responsibility of the Department of Education than my own
Department. We have rather retreated from education provision.
In the last Budget round but one I think we lost our last education
grants.
150. But obviously this is a reintroduction
of that role and perhaps an opportunity—
(Mr Brown) I doubt if the training budget will ever
end up being spent on formal education and three-year courses.
Those are provided by the education system rather than by my Department.
151. But it would be sad if this initiative
were to be lost through lack of co-ordination with other Government
initiatives in supporting training in rural areas, for example.
(Mr Brown) I am not quarrelling with anything that
you are saying.
152. So what are we going to do to make sure
it does not happen?
(Mr Brown) I am trying to understand what perceived
gap it is that you think I should be addressing. If you are asking
me to take responsibility for the agricultural colleges, that
is not my ministerial responsibility.
153. Agricultural colleges in this country have
a mixed record of performance and there is an opportunity to review
that role and focus it more clearly on the needs of the rural
economy. Is this an opportunity for you to participate in that
or are you going to step back from it and say, "No, I have
got a very limited set of goals to pursue here which I have got
a budget for and I will allocate for my own purposes"?
(Mr Brown) The lead department is the Department of
Education, not I. The purpose of providing this modest training
budget is to try to help farmers who are going through a pretty
tough time train to be more market orientated, to help them get
business skills that perhaps they do not have now and I respectfully
would say that is a slightly more limited objective and the sums
of money are much more limited than the role of the agricultural
colleges which is a form of higher education.
154. But there is also the linkage with the
operation of the New Deal in rural areas as well where there has
been a good deal of comment on how that delivers effectively to
support particularly younger people seeking to retain rural skills
and retain an opportunity to work in the rural area.
(Mr Brown) I want to do what I can to help with these
measures, but I cannot take over the work of the Department of
Education and Employment.
155. We are not seeking that. We are seeking
a joined-up approach here.
(Mr Brown) I have not got the money yet.
156. At least it brings you to the table because
you have got some cash.
(Mr Brown) That is true. These are very early days
yet, but I must stress that the lead responsibility for this is
David Blunkett, not I.
157. Let us turn to forestry. The element here
I want to focus on is the linkage between recreational forestry,
providing something we can all appreciate and trying to make money
out of trees and you have the development of a long-term crop
and also the very much short-term coppicing initiative. How is
that going to fit with the initiatives that you have put together
here to support additional forestry development because you have
got an energy cropping initiative as well?
(Mr Brown) You have identified three separate things
and one is the capital grants for forestry, the other is the continuing
payments that are made to support farmers who have gone over to
forestry and use their land in that way and, thirdly, there is
the completely new non-food crops initiative which is focused
on elephant grass and short rotation coppice with a view to using
these things as fuel to provide power. The constraints on the
budget in the third area are capacity. I am an enthusiast for
doing what we can to support the area, but there are only a limited
number of plants that can actually use the fuel. I think it would
undermine the initiative if we ended up having to buy into intervention
or having a stockpile of the stuff. It is an area that I hope
with experience will grow. As for the two forestry initiatives,
I think the money that is being provided is proportionate and
it is a viable way through for farm businesses and, after all,
it is sustainable. We should put some money behind it.
158. There has been a very gentle criticism
by the Woodland Trust that perhaps the schemes are not sufficiently
targeted at the moment and that, if you like, there is a rather
ad hoc, opportunistic, approach which takes out various
bits of the project, and it is without a strategic framework around
it.
(Mr Brown) Strengthening the sums of money available
does enable us to do that. The fact of the matter is that the
sums of money have been limited so there probably is an element
of "ad hockery" in it.
159. So there is an opportunity there for a
strategic focus?
(Mr Brown) It is also the certainty of funding over
the seven year period which enables us to take a longer term view,
and of course you have to do that with forestry anyway because
of the nature of it.
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