Examination of witnesses (Questions 640
- 653)
THURSDAY 20 JANUARY 2000
MR GREG
WILKINSON, MR
SUMA CHAKRABARTI
and DR NEIL
WARD
Chairman
640. Would it not be better to call it a first
crawl? We could hardly call it a step.
(Mr Wilkinson) One small step for Government, perhaps.
(Dr Ward) Taking an evolutionary approach looking
over five, ten, 15 years, which is the timescale for reform of
the Common Agricultural Policy, the key thing for me is that the
mechanism is now there and it can be fed and watered over time
and we can see it grow. It will put the United Kingdom in European
terms in a progressive forward looking position. The French are
going to be modulating as well and as far as I understand it,
it is just the United Kingdom and France that are pushing ahead
with this move and that will strengthen the United Kingdom's position
in future negotiations to present this as a model and a way forward
for the rest of the European Union.
Miss McIntosh
641. Do you not think it needs to be bolder
and less hesitant because if we really are trying to find and
encourage rural development measures, to promote modulation, and
I do not like that term because a lot of people do not understand
what modulation means, if you are to take the emphasis off food
production into more general rural development programmes, which
many farmers would welcome in this country, in fact we could have
encouraged people to have applied for these? Do you not share
my concern that it is too tied up in red tape and that there is
going to be a problem with matched funding and rural development
(which you have hinted you would like to see yourself in the answer
you have just given) will not be allowed to grow because of the
bureaucracy tied up with it and the problem with matched funding
and the problem with the funding criteria.
(Dr Ward) I was not a party to the decision but I
would guess that matched funding has been made available by the
Treasury and the Treasury has to weigh up that spending commitment
with other priorities of government like health and education.
I was pleased it was there at all. It is not insignificant because
in six years' time, for example, we are going to have double the
amount of resources going into agri-environment so for those farmers
who are queuing up to get into Organic Aid Schemes or into the
Countryside Stewardship Scheme this is quite good news and I was
very pleased.
(Mr Chakrabarti) It is clearly a political judgment.
642. Why then has there not been the take-up
that we would have liked to have seen in the Countryside Stewardship
Scheme this year?
(Dr Ward) It is over subscribed and now all that money
will be in there so that issue will be solved.
Mrs Ellman
643. How can more affordable housing be provided
in rural areas?
(Mr Wilkinson) Chairman, this was one of the areas
we did not look at in any great amount of detail again because
of limited time and resources but the suggestions that we made
were contained towards the end of chapter 10. The ideas that we
looked at were broadly two-fold, firstly, the amount of resources
that go into social housing via the Housing Corporation and, secondly,
whether or not there are changes which can be made to the planning
system, for example to allow local authorities to differentiate
in development plans between social affordable and private housing
and to give favourable treatment to applications that say they
are going to be for social and affordable housing. We did not
do much more than identify those as the options.
644. Why did you not do more?
(Mr Wilkinson) Again because the steer that we had
from our advisory group and also from the sponsor Minister was
that other things were a higher priority in the time that we had
available. I am sure if we had had a bit longer to work on the
report social housing would have been moving very close to the
top of our agenda.
645. Who gave the steer?
(Mr Wilkinson) The advisory group and the sponsor
minister worked it out in discussion.
(Mr Chakrabarti) The advisory group, just to remind
the Committee, includes both departmental interests but also outside
experts. They together helped to define our priorities in the
short time we had available to us.
Mrs Dunwoody
646. They did not think that social housing
in rural areas was a priority?
(Mr Wilkinson) That is not what I said. What I said
was that in the time and resources available to us we could not
cover it in any sufficient depth.
647. They did not think it was as important
as the other things that you do, although in fact it is clear
quite clear that poor housing and the lack of provision of social
housing in rural areas makes a very fundamental difference both
to the composition of rural areas and villages. They did not think
that and you did not feel it was sufficiently important to argue
with them.
(Mr Chakrabarti) We do think it is an important issue.
I am pretty sure it will be taken up by the Rural White Paper
team—
648. But I thought yours was the vision across
the Whitehall village. You were the people who were envisaging
the future of the rural economy.
(Mr Chakrabarti) Ours was one vision. The final vision
will clearly be the Rural White Paper vision, not ours.
649. So we have a series of visions. This is
getting a bit more ethereal by the minute, is it not?
(Mr Chakrabarti) Is that a question?
650. Yes, it is a question. Do you really think
that rural housing, particularly rural housing which is social
housing, is not fundamental to all these other things which you
are talking about, the changes in agriculture, the changes in
the composition, questions of transport? All of these are directly
linked to housing.
(Mr Wilkinson) I think it is very important and it
was the next thing down our list for detailed analysis and research
had we had time to look into it.
Mrs Ellman
651. Did you on any occasion during this report
take a contrary view to that given to you by the steering group
or outside advisers? Did you ever form your own opinion and stick
to it?
(Mr Wilkinson) We regularly did that, at great personal
cost to some of us, though in any exercise of this nature there
is a process of debate and on occasions people disagree. We disagreed
with the steering group on a number of things and certainly the
final draft is a PIU draft and not a draft that has been approved
by the group. In terms of the priorities for the project, as I
said, had we had a little bit more staffing resource or a little
bit more time, my own judgment as the team leader was that social
housing was the next most important issue. If you start off with
a focus on rural economies generally and you are looking at support
for all businesses and then you move on to the agricultural sector
and then you look at the operation of the planning system and
then you look at the impact on the rural environment and then
you recognise the need to look at service delivery and transport
in rural areas, that is actually quite a big and meaty agenda
to cover in a short period of time with a small team and to have
looked at social housing as well would have over-stretched us.
652. Do you agree with the proposal to exempt
people who live in settlements of under 5,000 from the Right to
Buy?
(Mr Wilkinson) We did not form a view on that issue,
Chairman, so any view that I would give you would be a personal
view based on having looked at the issue over the last few months,
and I am not sure how relevant my personal view would be as opposed
to anybody else's personal view.
653. What would that personal view be?
(Mr Wilkinson) I think there is a strong argument
for exemption.
Chairman: Thank you very much for your evidence.
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