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I want the Minister to say whether it was right and proper for the Competition Commission to rule that Milk Marque could not be established because supermarkets would be faced with unfair competition, and so it was split into four. The supermarkets do an excellent job, but the one thing in which they are all united is that they want to keep the price at which they buy at the lowest possible level. However, farmers are not allowed to speak as a whole and that is grossly unfair. In Denmark, Germany and Holland, farmers form large organisations which are able to bargain fairly. Surely the same should apply in this country.
With a current price of 17p for a litre of milk, you need to be a very efficient farmer not to lose money but you will certainly not make any. The Government must either explain why that is reasonable or do something about it. It is grossly unfair that farmers are not allowed to combine in this country when they can do so in Europe. There, they take advantage of the situation and it does not drive the price of milk to ridiculous heights but it does leave farmers with a chance to survive and make some profit. I should very much like the noble Baroness to deal with that point because, in my view, it is important.
3.38 pm
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, we have had a wonderful debate on the Motion for an humble Address. It has seemed far more coherent than in previous years. The business managers who decided to put the topic of local government with those of agriculture and the environment did very well. In previous years, we have addressed the environment together with education, and the debate has not flowed as it has done this afternoon.
The four maiden speakers certainly showed what a great addition they will be to the House, particularly at this time of climate change. They all have very
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We welcome the fact that there will be a Climate Change Bill and that it will set targets for carbon emissions. My noble friend Lord Redesdale addressed what the targets should be. I pay tribute to him for his Private Member’s Bill last year, which was full of practical measures, as was the Bill on home efficiency introduced by my noble friend Lady Maddock, which has been on the statute book for some time. We hope that such practical solutions will form part of this Bill and that it will not simply be a wide framework that relies on statutory instruments brought in at some future date to achieve those practical solutions.
My noble friend Lord Teverson said, in his excellent contribution, that legislation is no substitute for action. I am sure that the rest of the House shares our confidence in him. He is also a futurologist, so we will be relying on him to predict all sorts of things for us.
The Stern report has been referred to many times this afternoon, not least by my noble friend Lord Teverson. I remind the Government that Sir Nicholas Stern said:
“Adaptation is the only response available ... over the next several decades before mitigation measures can have an effect”.
While we welcome the Climate Change Bill, we also have to keep a very close eye on what the Government are doing about adaptation. Over the past six months there have been some terrible blows to our ability to deal with adaptation; for example, the cuts in research and development funding to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, which has to be at the cutting edge of this work; the decision, which I accept was not a Defra decision, but is necessarily a government one—I hope it is not a precursor of the Government’s attitude to this kind of thing—to cut funding to Natural England as it, too, has to be at the forefront of this work; and, as other noble Lords have mentioned, the decision to cut, for example, the flood defence budget funding. When I questioned the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on this—he is not in his place at the moment—he said that the funding was not being cut, but according to the figures in the forthcoming programmes for next year, the effect of what is being promoted is a cut.
I turn to local government. My noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market made a speech which was quite rightly referred to by my noble friend Lord Greaves as outstanding. I do not believe I can add anything to it. Coming from a local government background, I wholly endorse the thread that ran through the contributions of my noble friend and many other noble Lords that the lack of democracy at the heart of the local government system offends. When my noble friend Lord Greaves spoke of neo-fascists, I saw an expression of disagreement on the Minister's face, but when one is on the receiving end of local government diktat, that is how it feels. We hope that the forthcoming Bill will take considerable steps to relieve that.
I share the bemusement of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, at one day being in local government and the next day being here. I welcome his
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I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, on aviation. The House will not be surprised to know that we on these Benches share her views, because our aviation policies and the Oxford Policy Institute’s paper to which she refers are extremely similar. Starting with many of the noble Baroness’s suggestions would be a good way forward. If there were a change of attitude, the transport Bill might be a good place to start bringing forward some of the necessary changes referred to, for example, by my noble friends Lord Bradshaw and Lord Glasgow when they spoke of practical ways to improve the railway system. That would mean legislation was actually translated into something real on the ground—indeed, on the rails.
The theme of the contributions from these Benches this afternoon is that people expect practical action. My noble friend Lord Redesdale talked of the public’s expectations of what will happen in the face of our biggest threat. Change must be aimed at helping them to solve things at both an individual and a community level. I was struck by the quotation from the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh:
Enabling people to take personal responsibility for bringing about the necessary changes is extremely important. The role of the Government is to ensure that there are no barriers to that change, even, for example, in the tax regime, ensuring that there is no VAT on home insulation materials and that the permitted development referred to by my noble friend Lord Redesdale does not stop small-scale innovation in energy generation. There are many practical measures to be taken.
Two other themes run through the debate this afternoon: farming and—something which we have not seen in the gracious Speech—the marine Bill. There have been several notable contributions on farming issues. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, implied that everything was pretty rosy. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, developed that point. It may be, as the NFU has said, that there is an upturn in farming, but it is pretty limited. It is definitely limited to areas not referred to in some of the other speeches this afternoon, such as the upland areas and those full of small, traditional farms, particularly dairy farms. They are facing all sorts of pressures at the same time: not only the restructuring of the CAP, but also the capitalisation involved in creating, for example, nitrate-vulnerable zones. I could list further pressures, but I do not have time.
I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in his place, because I want him to hear this comment. While the outlook may have improved somewhat, it cannot be taken for granted that there is an upturn in outlook for all farmers—far from it. There may be a geographical divide.
The Government need to look at rural development funding as the Treasury considers whether to match that funding and to help with
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This is also a time of opportunity, in that the Competition Commission is looking at whether there is a fair grocery market—not only at whether small shops are being put out of business by aggressive supermarket behaviour but also at retail prices. There are linked issues—for example, concerns about the aviation miles involved in flying food in and the ability of our farmers to produce food throughout the season, together with consumer demand for seasonal food, show that the public are beginning to grasp the issue more than they did three or four years ago. The Government could build on that. I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, of the School Food Trust will take part in the debate about food and education, as expertise is critical.
The long-promised marine Bill was not in the Speech. It was first promised in Labour’s 2005 manifesto, although I think it was first talked about as long ago as when the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was in charge of the Department for Transport—he is holding up his hands—which, along with Defra’s Marine Consents and Environment Unit, was looking at streamlining all sorts of things. The Bill has been on the books for a very long time, and it is particularly disappointing that, yet again, it is not even promised as a draft Bill. In last year’s legislative programme, the Government announced that they would publish a draft marine Bill. I appreciate that it is a very complicated area to legislate on, but I personally feel the loss of the Bill because I live on the coast and spend any time I can walking or sailing there. As a result, I see the pressures on the communities around me. We have an estuary forum that deals with the pressures between recreation, the economy and the environment. It does the best it can, but it is a voluntary forum with no funding or statutory basis. It is trying to deal with all the pressures which are a microcosm of what is happening at a national level. The pressure has been exacerbated by our demands for offshore energy, which I fully support. Shipping is becoming busier—as I look out towards Lundy, I can see that more ships are going up to Bristol—and mineral extraction is not lessening. At the same time, we have become more aware of the necessity for marine conservation areas. There are huge pressures, and many sectors, not just the environmental sector, are disappointed that a marine Bill was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech.
I believe that this debate will give us many pointers towards a more detailed examination of the issues and the links between them. The year ahead will be challenging as we deal with some of the issues that we have touched on this afternoon. We look forward to helping the Government do that and to proposing practical ways in which their Bills can enable us to make progress on these issues.
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3.55 pm
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, as has been said, we have had a fantastically fascinating day with excellent speeches. Not surprisingly, I suppose, many noble Lords have concentrated in some way on climate change, but, then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, the way in which the topics for debate have been grouped is much better than usual. Climate change of course runs through all the areas about which we have been talking, so it is not surprising that these matters were touched on. The other matters were not quite so firmly embraced, but we have had good discussions on local government, with some contributions on agriculture and transport and a few on tourism.
I start by congratulating from my Benches those who have made their maiden speeches today. I appreciate—and remember well—that it is fairly awe-inspiring and a great relief to get it out of the way, because that means that you really can start to take part in the proceedings instead of sitting on your hands wishing that you could get up and say something. All the contributions indicate that there will be no more sitting on hands and that there will be great participation by all four noble Lords who have made their speeches today.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Ford. As chairman of English Partnerships, she brings an immense knowledge about regeneration, development, planning and local government. That will be enormously important as we discuss the local government and planning Bills. She referred quite rightly to the use of brownfield sites and the importance of design quality in construction. She has a wealth of knowledge on which we can build as we take forward the debates.
I particularly liked the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, as she drew attention to local government staff. Too often we forget about them, but they are the people who make local government work—they provide the services to, and support and nurture, our local communities. I was really glad that she mentioned them, because too often we do not mention them. She also talked about decent homes. We had a long discussion on that when we considered the Housing Act. The only trouble about decent homes policies is that the money will run out long before we get the decent homes built, but I am sure that something will be done about that.
My noble friend Lord Bruce-Lockhart swells the number of Peers on both sides of the House with a local government background. With the Conservative Party becoming the largest party in local government, he has achieved the unique position of being chairman of the Local Government Association. He has been involved in the discussions on the Local Government Bill, which we will be taking on in this House in due course, and on which he aired his views today. He has also demonstrated a much wider breadth of interest, through his farming and agricultural experience and his experience of the economy. So we welcome him very much to our Benches and congratulate him on his maiden speech.
I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Sheikh, who joins us on the Conservative Benches. He made
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The subjects in the gracious Speech touched on today are, as I said, pretty wide. My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith, in his excellent opening speech, addressed climate change. We have had many speeches on that this afternoon and I do not think that I shall take the House any further on it, except to say that I have noticed that it will have an impact on all the areas that we have discussed today—local government, agriculture and tourism will all be affected by climate change. How the Bill proceeds—the clauses and policies that we end up with—will be extremely important to our future, both in the impact on us all personally, as we will have to withdraw from some of the ways in which we have lived our lives, and in wider aspects.
There have been notable contributions from my noble friends Lord Inglewood and Lady Byford and the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on the areas beyond the urban. We tend to concentrate on the urban, but in their contributions on rural aspects, agriculture and the important effects in rural areas of housing, farming and everything else that we need to embrace, each of them put their finger on a specific point.
In declaring my interest as an elected member of a London borough, I should like, perhaps not surprisingly, to dwell a little on local government matters. The first of those is the Local Government Bill—as has already been mentioned, the Bill has been heralded by the White Paper, which we have already discussed briefly in this House. The second is the Greater London Authority Bill on the powers of the Mayor of London, and the third is the planning Bill, which, surprisingly, does not appear on the list of Bills due to come before the House but, as I have now checked—it was not just my ears going funny during the gracious Speech yesterday—was mentioned in the Speech. I hope that it will be given some authority on the list, so that we know that it will be part and parcel of our lives in future.
The big question over the Local Government Bill is when it will be introduced and whether that will be before or after Sir Michael Lyons has reported on the financing of local government. It is inexplicable that we should discuss local government in any depth knowing at the back of our minds that there is yet another major issue to come forward: local government finance. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that there will be a tying-up of those two aspects when we have those debates. It would be ludicrous for Sir Michael Lyons to have
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I am sure the Minister will recognise that, after the debacle of the system being introduced in Northern Ireland of council tax based on a percentage of the value of the property, there is now considerable alarm about what will be proposed by Sir Michael. The Minister has already stated categorically in this House that percentage of value is not a measure to be implemented in this country for council tax, but an expansion of the number of bands, for example, could bring almost the same increases for some high-value properties as have been demonstrated in Northern Ireland on the percentage basis. The percentage-based system in Northern Ireland has caused great panic and the increases in bands here will cause the same panic. It will therefore be important, as I have said, that we discuss this altogether and can see everything that is proposed.
The White Paper is something of a curate’s egg—there are some good parts and some bad—but we welcome any reduction in the regime of targets, performance indicators and inspections, and we welcome the promises to devolve central powers and responsibilities and to strengthen local leadership, albeit with caveats. Our support will be tempered by the absence of a complete rethink on regionalism. We believe that local councils are, and should be, at the heart of decision-making and providing the services on which local people rely, and that regionalism has no part to play in that. Regionalism is not localism, and unelected regional assemblies are an obstacle to it.
The White Paper is strong on the value that local government brings when it works in partnership with other organisations to stimulate community interest and participation, and we support that. As the paper says, many local authorities are already doing this; indeed, many were the leaders on community partnership, and it is interesting that the White Paper and presumably the Bill are now catching up on that. As the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, said, the Bill is still very short on the devolution of powers. We remain sceptical of the value of elected mayors, but we support the view that a leader’s term of office should be for four years. The challenge of electing someone every year is not necessary and does not lead to continuity. However, we also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, that one of the problems with a mayor is that his power is individual and that checks and balances on that form of leadership are very hard to provide. That is one reason why, with our view of the Mayor of London before us, we have remained very nervous about the role of mayors in local government.
It has also been said that councils will now be able to speak out again. It was a disgrace to introduce a measure that prevented councillors speaking on planning and licensing issues, and it is very good to see the Government beginning to ease up on that. This has come about through the members’ code of conduct and the Standards Board. I hope that the Government did not believe that the measure would
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We believe that the role of parish councils can be strengthened, but we see no room for them in London. We have concerns about the ambiguity of having city regions and regional regions at the same time, and about the rather artificial proposals in the White Paper for councils in shire areas to bid for unitary status. We will end up with so many tiers of local government that we will have no idea who is doing what. By the time the Bill becomes an Act, I hope that it will fulfil the hopes that we have for it. We will play our part in ensuring that it does.
The GLA Bill will give both housing and planning powers to the mayor. These are strongly local matters. This is particularly true of planning; it is essential that communities have their voice heard not only on strategic planning matters but on matters that affect them locally and individually. The mayor has already said that his powers will be limited by him to only a very few major applications, but he will decide which ones. We already know of his enthusiasm for tower blocks, even where they have been rejected by local committees, and of his imposition of a 50 per cent affordable housing requirement on each development, irrespective of the views of individual local authorities. We also already know that he is prepared to dictate rather than to consult on matters or, if he consults, to pay no regard to the outcome, as with the extension of the congestion charge. His record does not augur well for a benign use of additional powers.
There is little or no detail on the planning Bill, which I hope will appear, but we can assume that it will implement some of the recommendations in Kate Barker’s report, one of the most controversial being the introduction of the new development land tax to replace the current Section 106 provisions. Both relate to the amount of money that a developer can be required to provide for community gain; they relate to what it can be spent on and who has control over it. Earlier proposals for a planning tariff were not well received and we wait with interest to see how the development land tax is put forward, if the planning Bill is to be about that.
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