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Lord Bach: My Lords, I am minded to accept the principles behind these amendments. The wording is not yet adequate, but I shall discuss that with the noble Lord. We hope to return at Third Reading, meeting the points made by him. I do not want to shorten the debate unnecessarily, but it is important that the House should know that at once.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, those remarks are incredibly helpful. As I have to accept that the CRC is to exist, I would wish it to be as effective as possible. I like these amendments very much. I had hoped that the noble Lord would bring them back at Third Reading, given the hour, but now that the Minister has spoken, I am greatly helped.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, the Procedure Committee considered matters that have been debated twice being taken away. I draw attention to the fact that its recommendation was that matters of dispute should normally be resolved on Report. I add this for information. I do not want to debate the point. It is perhaps a point that the usual channels should debate. That matter was contained in a report from the Procedure Committee, which the House agreed.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, I do not believe the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, had any intention of doing that. We are all in full support of this. We shall not waste the time of the Minister or of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, except to say well done.
Earl Peel: My Lords, the Minister's intervention has certainly shortened the debate to the extent that I shall not say what I had intended to say, other than to commend to the House the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. In my view, unless a commitment to rural proofing is in the Bill, the future credibility of the CRC is in doubt. I very much welcome what the Minister has said.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, the Minister's assurance is most welcome. An amendment in the general spirit of what my noble friend Lord Cameron was asking for will put some real teeth into this commission. I suggest it would be extremely helpful if the commission could consider legislation long before it ever comes to Parliament, when still in a draft and malleable state.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have spoken for their support. I also
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thank the Minister for his acceptance of the principles behind my amendment. I hope that he and I can agree some suitable wording before Third Reading that includes the words "rural proofing", which are key. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Duke of Montrose moved Amendment No. 103:
"(b) sustainable development in meeting the needs of rural inhabitants."
The noble Duke said: My Lords, in speaking to Amendment No. 103, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 104, 105, 107 and 108. The drive behind all these amendments relating to the purposes of the CRC is that the word "rural" means people. It is also about landscape, open air, the countryside, farming, and sometimes tranquillity, but essentially it is about people. If the CRC is to have any value, it must express itself from the very beginning in terms of the people it works for and their needs. Rural people live and sometimes work in the countryside, so it is imperative to consider not only their social and economic needs, but the way in which meeting those needs has an impact on the environment.
The CRC will have to be constantly aware of the interdependence of these three factors, and will have to ensure that its message to relevant persons makes that relationship clear. We have already dealt with the issue of affordable housing in rural areas, so we do not need to say anything more about that, but the CRC has an important role to play in alerting all manner of authorities and the public generally to the needs of rural areas. Perhaps if the wording is adapted in the way suggested, following the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, that will take care of so many of these things. The CRC will do this best if it is enjoined to think in terms of the people who live there.
Amendment No. 109, the final amendment in this group, relates to areas under environmental pressure. I think that we all know the problems that occur on the east coast, where the history of cliff erosion is well known. Whole villages disappear below the waves. None the less, it is under increasing pressure, which we are told is caused by the south-east of England tilting gently into the sea and by sea levels rising in response to melting icecaps hundreds of miles away. I have also had some distant experience of the south-west and the environmental pressures of the annual holiday traffic, with its attendant litter, congestion, accident damage, and pressure on water supplies. But none of these things is inconsequential. Many of them impose heavy costs on communities that are not robust enough to bear them unaided. Those communities need a powerful environmental champion, whose voice carries weight in the arguments that surround progress, development and the attainment of government targets. I beg to move.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support these amendments. I think sustainable development is
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a very important concept, and if it is important for Natural England to abide by the rules of sustainable development, as I think it should, and if it is important for its board to have to consider the economic and social agendas, it is equally important for the CRC to have to consider the environmental agenda. One of the benefits that the Countryside Agency had over its two predecessors was that it encapsulated the whole principle of sustainable development. Previously, the Rural Development Commission looked after the social and economic aspects, and the Countryside Commission looked after the landscape. They very often gave opposite advice to government, and very rarely co-ordinated their agendas. I thought that various tricks were being missed. But with the advent of the Countryside Agency, the emphasis was on underlining the economic gains to be had from maintaining and promoting our beautiful countryside in national parks, AONBs and elsewhere.
Not only rural tourism but rural business is attracted by the countryside. It was all co-ordinated. Equally, it was about underlining the environmental and social gain of having profitable businesses, managing the countryside and the land and supporting the regeneration of rural communities. So let us make sure that we roll-out sustainable development as a basic principle underlining the purposes of all these bodies. I support these amendments.
Earl Peel: My Lords, I have some difficulty with the amendments. I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said but I rather take the view that, given the very clear environmental brief that Natural England is now taking on, it is important that the Commission for Rural Communities should be allowed to concentrate more on the socio-economic dimensions of rural life. Perhaps there should be a clear distinction between the two organisations.
One could argue that if Natural England became—I am sure that it will not—overbearingly obsessive in carrying out its functions as far as the environment was concerned, rural communities would be looking to the CRC to come forward and act as a form of socio-economic salvation. I understand the movements behind the amendments and the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, but my gut instinct is that it would be a retrograde step to put too much of an environmental brief into the remit of the CRC. I am rather doubtful about that.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, I associate myself with the comments made by the noble Earl, Lord Peel. We have established that Natural England will have a very clear remit and we are now in danger of confusing the issue and, perhaps more crucially, of confusing the kind of people who we want to serve on the boards of each organisation. They will undoubtedly need different expertise and I should like to be clear about the kind of people we are looking for.
Lord Bach: My Lords, I thank the noble Duke for his proposed amendments, which seek to clarify the
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focus of the CRC in meeting rural needs. He proposes an alternative version of Clause 18(1)(b) in his Amendment No. 103. That subsection gives the CRC a remit to raise awareness of the needs of rural England among public authorities and other bodies and to promote sustainable ways of meeting those needs which underpin our commitment to promoting sustainable development.
The Bill puts meeting rural needs first and makes clear that meeting these needs should be done by the CRC in ways which contribute to sustainable development. The proposed amendment seems to turn that around, placing the emphasis on achieving sustainable development. To us, that does not seem quite right. The goal of putting sustainable development into practice by integrating environmental, social and economic objectives drives everything that Defra and its agencies do and the principle was restated in the 2004 rural strategy.
The Bill will give statutory underpinning to this agenda by requiring Natural England, the Commission for Rural Communities and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee to seek to contribute to sustainable development through the functions that each perform. In the case of the CRC, the function it will perform should be the promotion of meeting rural needs, as set out in the Bill, while paying due regard to sustainable development.
In Amendments Nos. 104, 107 and 109, the noble Duke suggests adding an explicit environmental responsibility to the CRC's purpose—we have touched on this at previous stages of the Bill—but, rather than have equal regard to the social, economic and environmental pillars of sustainability, the CRC for its part will focus primarily on the social and economic needs of these communities. I can assure noble Lords that the CRC will not, however, be looking at social and economic needs in isolation from environmental issues because a thriving rural economy is inextricably linked to a thriving rural environment. While it will not be responsible for pursuing environmental goals directly, the CRC, we hope, will work to encourage others to consider such issues in a holistic approach to developing sustainable solutions for rural communities.
In Amendments Nos. 105 and 108, the noble Duke suggests a slight qualification of the CRC's target audience, as it were, narrowing it to persons "living in rural areas", rather than the broader "persons in rural areas". In assessing rural needs, the CRC is tasked with considering the interests of all those who live and work in rural areas, as well as those who visit such areas for recreational purposes. This goes far wider than the focus on just those living—that is to say, resident—in rural areas that seems to have been proposed. I am sure that he would not want the CRC to ignore the needs of the rural tourist industry on which so many rural livelihoods depend and which is susceptible to many factors outside its control. Nor do we believe that the CRC should ignore the needs of migrant workers, who, of course, make a valuable contribution to the rural economy in many parts of England. The CRC must be all about the many
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different people who live in, work in, visit and otherwise contribute to our rural communities. We do not think that just living there should be the test.
For these reasons and arguments, I invite the noble Duke to consider withdrawing his amendment.
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