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Earl Peel: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, on his exceptional maiden speech. The whole House acknowledges the noble Lord's wide knowledge of education and his deep involvement and commitment to the Methodist
 
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Church. I was particularly interested to hear of the extraordinary powers that the noble Lord managed to show when he was in Haiti, which certainly came as a big surprise to me. I know that I speak for the whole House when I say that we very much appreciate having the noble Lord in this Chamber and we look forward to hearing him again in the future.

I also enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands. He clearly has great dedication to the subjects to which he referred. To the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, whom we are about to hear, I extend a big welcome. I have had the pleasure of knowing the noble Lord for some time in his capacity as president of the Country Landowners' Association and more recently as chairman of the Countryside Agency. I have no doubt at all that his knowledge on rural matters will be much appreciated in your Lordships' House.

I shall confine my remarks to rural affairs. I declare an interest as an owner of land in the north of England. Rural Britain continues in turmoil in many respects. The common agricultural policy now presents our farming community with what I can describe only as new and interesting challenges. We must not forget that British farming produces 70 per cent of home food consumption. It is essential that those levels of self-sufficiency are maintained and, wherever possible, enhanced.

Farmers remain the bedrock of our rural communities, and every effort must be made to ensure a healthy future with every possible encouragement and support from the Government to face this brave new world without production support. I believe that there will be considerable new opportunities, particularly from non-food crops, which already offer farmers a possible alternative. The key is to put potential producers in touch with the manufacturers. That will require confidence on both sides and a determined effort from Defra. I realise that there will be great difficulties for some, but we must not talk ourselves into a state of pessimism and believe that there will be a wholesale abandonment of the countryside. That would be to the detriment of everyone—the farmers and the countryside.

I have always supported the move away from production support to payments in lieu of environmental management. It is right that those responsible for the management of the countryside are paid accordingly and that the general public recognise that such payments provide a service that taxpayers can support and which are not seen as subsidies.

It is therefore important that the so-called cross-compliance conditions attached to the single farm payments, along with a raft of other agricultural, environmental schemes, are seen to deliver their environmental objectives and that the environmental objectives themselves are clearly defined from the outset. I am bound to say that although very considerable sums of public money have been provided for habitat restoration schemes over many years, I suspect that the level of monitoring has been insufficient to assess the success or otherwise of such schemes.
 
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There seems to be a general perception by some that habitat restoration alone is automatically associated with species recovery, when clearly that is not always the case. It is akin to building expensive houses where no one lives. The red squirrel, for example, despite having any amount of suitable habitat, is now on the verge of extinction because of the grey squirrel. That is due largely to a lack of determination by the powers that be to tackle the problem. Take also the black grouse, for example. Despite increasingly friendly habitats, it continues to decline in areas where there are no longer gamekeepers to control the species that predate on them.

We need a much more pragmatic and determined approach to wildlife management in this country, if we are to avoid a listless drift into further decline simply because we take the simplistic view that if the habitat recovers, all good things will follow. So I urge the Government to monitor closely the success or otherwise of those new environmental opportunities and to note with care why they work or why they fail, so that we can ensure that we all receive good value for money.

The demands on rural Britain are complex. I welcome the Government's endorsement of the proposals by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, to, among other things, merge English Nature with the main part of the old organisation of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the Countryside Agency. Indeed, I was disappointed when my own government failed to take the opportunity when the matter was last reviewed, despite amalgamating the two equivalent agencies in Wales and Scotland.

However, there is one point that concerns me. It seems to me that, if the Government's commitment to sustainable development in the countryside is to have any real credibility, such an influential agency as the one that will be created must take into account social and economic considerations in addition to having a purely environmental remit. If the integrated agency's objectives are based solely on securing the environmental management of habitats and landscape, it is unlikely to succeed in the absence of a sound underlying economic viability.

Without the bedrock of profitability and incentive, the infrastructure to deliver such environmental objectives could be severely undermined. No one is keener than I am to ensure that environmental objects are met, but they cannot be regarded in isolation from the real world. If we are to have—in the Government's words—"joined-up government", such an important agency should not pursue a sole objective without taking into account the other influencing factors; in the same way as it would be inappropriate for the regional development agencies to promote economic development without taking into account the environmental implications of its actions.

I have one other point before leaving the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, which the Government intend to implement. I believe that the new slimline Countryside Agency will still have an important role to play, albeit principally as a research agency, calling the Government to account on what is
 
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known as rural proofing. So I would suggest and hope that it remain as an independent statutory agency and does not have its present status degraded through any forthcoming legislation.

Rural businesses in their many guises are vital to underpinning rural communities, which in turn provide the means for countryside stewardship. Accordingly, there is a need for suitable sites for new business activities. That is becoming a real problem, along with, of course, the ever-increasing demands for affordable housing. There is deep concern that the emerging regional spatial strategies want all new rural houses to be in market towns, to the detriment of smaller and remoter rural settlements and their communities.

I urge the Government, through Defra and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, to issue the guidance to regional housing groups to expect some small-scale well designed housing development in the remoter and smaller settlements and breathe new life into such areas when such a need is clearly identified.

Given the dynamic nature of rural Britain today and the need to respond to new challenges, I urge the Government to embrace the need for flexibility by recognising the need for exemption sites, which would enable local authorities to grant permission for such small sites, which would not otherwise be released for housing under the local plan.

I cannot finish my remarks this evening without making reference to the extraordinary article that appeared recently in the Daily Telegraph by Peter Bradley on the question of hunting. Noble Lords will no doubt recall the fairly acrimonious and wholehearted debates on the subject that we had. The Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister, Alun Michael, said:

I gather that the honourable gentleman tried to backtrack, but it is difficult to backtrack on an article that you—yourself—have written. I find it disappointing, to say the least, to find that we went though all those 700 hours of deliberation in coming to a conclusion that has had such a devastating effect on many people in the countryside only to be told that it was class war. If that is a new government policy, I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it.

Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, first, I must apologise for putting your Lordships through the ordeal of yet another maiden speech with all its flowery tributes and so on, which in my case, as you will see, will be totally unwarranted. All I can say by way of recompense is that I suspect the ordeal is probably slightly worse from this side of the text.

I know that it is also customary, but I would very genuinely like to thank your Lordships for the warm welcome that I have received in this House, not only from your Lordships but also from all the staff—attendants, doorkeepers and not forgetting the bar
 
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and restaurant staff. I have been very impressed by everyone's ability to remember the names of us newcomers. After all, we were quite a big batch. It is particularly impressive how the restaurant staff—at the Long Table, for example—seem to be able to recognise Peers by the backs of their heads. I expect there is a thesis waiting to be written on the individuality of the noble and often balding cranium. Anyway, I thank you all for your tolerance of this particular new boy at the school.

No one could be more surprised than me and my family to find myself in this House. I come from a long line of highlanders, who for most of the last 800 years or so have been making law—and probably breaking it—on a more local and violent basis than noble Lords are used to. Indeed, I am named after one Ewen Cameron of Locheil who claimed that he fought a battle for every year of his 90-year life. Having spent his life killing his fellow countrymen, Scots and English—he did not discriminate—he was knighted by King James II, presumably for services to his country in relation to population control—who knows?

One of his more famous incidents was when he was fighting an English captain in mortal combat and they both lost their swords. Grappling on the ground on the banks of Loch Lochy, the Englishman drew a dagger from his boot. To protect himself, Sir Ewen clutched him to his breast and bit out his throat, thus killing him. He said afterwards that it was the tastiest morsel he had ever had.

I feel I should reassure the House that I intend to limit myself to more conventional forms of debate. The rural economy is the area that I want to touch on today. And when I say "touch on", I mean barely scratch the surface. My main point is that the very future of our countryside depends on the continuing existence there of a myriad of small and diverse businesses.

These businesses are important to local employment and to the battle against rural deprivation—a feature of rural life which still goes unrecognised by far too many people who should know better. Sound businesses are also a vital means of maintaining the fabric of our countryside—its market towns and villages. This is the fabric that spawns a tourist industry worth £14 billion per annum to the countryside.

Our landscapes depend, of course, on farmers, who now represent only around 5 per cent of rural employment and GDP—very small compared with the manufacturing sector. But then most of our farming families also depend for their survival upon having some non-agricultural income or a non-agricultural wage coming into their household or their farming businesses. So our landscapes too are thus dependent on a variety of small and often high-tech businesses, existing—ideally, in my view—in each and every rural community, however small.

In the context of enhancing the rural economy, I want to make two pleas with reference to the proposed new arrangements to deliver rural policy as referred to in the gracious Speech. I should declare an interest at this stage, as has already been stated, as a recent past
 
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chairman of the Countryside Agency but also as the owner of a multi-faceted rural estate. My first plea concerns planning. I do not think that it would be controversial—I would not dare—to say that one of the problems with our current planning system is that it spends too much time on development control and not enough on actually planning. There is too much of, "No, you cannot build that there or here", and not enough of, "What do we want our village or market town to be like in 10 or 15 years' time?". Much has been done in this field in recent years to encourage communities of all sizes to think hard, often with the help of a facilitator—sometimes provided by the Countryside Agency—about their future and to devise a parish plan. That forces them to ask questions such as: do they want their shop or pub to survive? Do they want their school to survive? After all, the closure of a school can usually be pinned on planning decisions made six, seven or eight years previously, when plans were not made to encourage enough young families to live in the catchment area. They must also ask: do they want their town to be purely a dormitory ghetto or do they want there to be suitable local jobs and even some affordable homes? Now there is a controversial area, on which I will not tread today.

My plea is that during the administrative changes to be made, I hope that Defra and the ODPM—because at the root of many of our rural problems is that they often fall, and I mean fall, between departments—will ensure between them that those parish plans continue to be encouraged, facilitated and grant-aided.

My second plea is on training. Many of the businesses started in rural England are founded by people who have never run a business before. There is a further problem in that all too often a small community's future can get intertwined with the success or otherwise of a local business. So training and/or help for those businesses is crucial for rural Britain, even if sometimes the businesses themselves do not realise it.

In my travels around the countryside in recent years, I have found that access to training in rural areas is, on the whole, very patchy. That is non-controversial speak for something rather worse. Several Business Link managers have told me that, with the time and travel involved, they can do little more than scratch the surface of the needs of the rural business community. They do not actually exclude rural businesses from their client list, but they do not go to look for them and would certainly never dare advertise their services in rural areas for fear of being swamped.

So my second plea is therefore that the provision of business advice, public and private, be analysed in every area by the local authority or the regional development agency and then rural-proofed—the monitoring of rural-proofing is very much a government job—to ensure that even the most remote businesses are provided with an adequate business advisory service.

I thank your Lordships for your kind attention.
 
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5.33 p.m.


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