Examination of Witnesses (Questions 248
- 259)
WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2007
Mr Ian Woodhurst and Mr Tom Oliver
Q248 Chairman:
Thank you very much for coming. I should explain to you that this
is a formal session and there will be a transcript which will
be made available to you after the session so you can check for
accuracy. Secondly, this is actually web cast and there is a possibility
that somewhere somebody might be listening to what we are saying.
We did have evidence the other week that somebody was listening.
If you would like to start by making a general statement we can
then get onto questions and answers. If you do not want to make
a general statement we can go straight onto questions and answers.
Mr Oliver: Thank you. I will make an extremely
brief statement of introduction to explain the perspective that
CPRE brings to this question. CPRE has been around since long
before the Second World War and its perspective on the development
of agriculture has therefore been tested through a range of different
circumstances since 1926. Throughout that time we have been consistently
interested in the links between food production, rural businesses,
the strength of rural communities and planning as well as farming.
Our particular interest is in the pattern of land use where the
relationship between farming, forestry and landscape is something
which is millennia old. Therefore our interest in sustainable
use of land partly reflects our interest in that long term relationship
between production and landscape. I think it is probably true
to say that we are one of the very few non-governmental organisations
with an environmental remit which is interested in the whole of
the landscape, both urban and rural, and as a commentator and
policy advising organisation rather than as owner organisation
which does set us apart from some of the main players within the
environmental NGOs. We are interested in the relationship between
farm businesses and the future of the landscape and relating the
national asset, that is the farmed landscape, to everybody's interests.
At that stage we would be very happy to take questions on our
written evidence.
Q249 Chairman:
That is very interesting because you bring a perspective that
other witnesses we intend to have do not necessarily bring. Your
focus is a little bit different. Your evidence did express concern
about the impact of modern farming practices on agricultural landscapes
and on England's historic and archaeological inheritance. To what
extent is that being driven by agricultural factors and farming
factors and to what extent is it a product of perhaps wider changes
in society and the economy? Is it fair really to focus on agriculture
as being the negative factor when in fact there are much wider
processes taking place, the development of non-agricultural based
housing in agricultural areas, that sort of issue?
Mr Oliver: Our commentary on the Committee's
inquiry is primarily related to what happens to farmed land. It
is clearly the case that as society develops and a society's needs
change, some farmland ceases to be farmed and, if you like, the
outcome for that farmland is part of the story of the landscape.
I think it is quite important, given the remit of the present
inquiry, to focus on the effects of farming and its associated
activities on the management of land which could be farmed. Once
land ceases to be in agriculture permanently it is subject, as
you rightly say, to a huge range of other influences. In the 1920s
and 1930s it was true to say that a very large influence on the
east of England's agriculture land was the severe decline in cereal
markets and that led to very substantial release of land for housing
which might not have occurred otherwise. To some extent the pressure
on land today for development produces a similar situation although
under very different circumstances. Our primary focus in responding
to the Committee's inquiry is on the role of farming in changing
the landscape. In that respect the intensification of production
since the resurgence of agriculture at the beginning of the Second
World War and which has seen several phases, does play quite an
important role in the condition of the landscape.
Q250 Chairman:
Moving onto the impact of CAP and perhaps the advantages that
CAP reform could offer, how do you see CAP reform as it has taken
place—the 2003 reforms—and then looking forward to
how it may progress in the future? What opportunities has reform
produced for enhanced benefits of landscape and habitats and where
is that coming from? Is it coming from the Pillar II side of the
house or is it to do with the changes within the single farm payment
approach? We would be fascinated to hear anything you have to
say on that.
Mr Oliver: I will start and then it may be wise
to hand over to my colleague Ian Woodhurst. I think the first
point is that in the short run, reform in 2003 made possible a
recognition of the great value of well-targeted and thoroughly
well-planned agri-environment schemes. For many years there has
been a strong argument made by CPRE and others for the importance
of funding very specifically to achieve agri-environment outcomes.
The reform in 2003 allowed an opportunity to expand that funding
and as we have heard from the CLA drawing on a low base of Rural
Development Regulation funding there has been expansion with the
present round of modulation and that is welcome. In the short
run the expansion of the available resources for agri-environment
schemes is a very welcome part of reform. However, we are also
very clearly aware of the enormous pressure on European budgets
and of the political pressure on the negotiation over them and
the influence of other diplomatic and economic issues at an EU
level on the deal struck on the future of farming support to which
we can add the accession countries' role in the debate and the
progress of the Doha Round. I think the evidence you have heard
from the CLA amply demonstrates a longer term opportunity to radically
reform the funding of land management for environmental benefits.
Our evidence to some extent recognises the fact that we are at
a very early stage in the development of a new mechanism which
would probably be within an EU context, for a much wider recognition
of what managing land does for the public at large, whether it
is landscape character, bio-diversity, protection of natural resources,
or the retention of stable and responsible production. In the
longer run the radical reform of the CAP further offers much wider
opportunities and much larger scale benefits should those be seized
and should the Government be interested in delivering those changes
on the land. I think how that is achieved depends very largely
on marshalling enough evidence to show what is necessary in order
to achieve the outcomes that are generally agreed between environmental
organisations, land owning organisations and the non-departmental
public bodies (the Environment Agency and Natural England). There
is a great need for evidence gathering and a great need for recognition
of the common interest in a much broader approach to land management,
but at the same time remembering that farmers will be the primary
deliverers of this because they are, by and large, the only people
who have the competence and presence to achieve very large scale
landscape change.
Mr Woodhurst: I would not have that much more
to add to that except to say that the primary benefits of the
last set of reforms were to draw attention to the fact that farming
and environmental interests were moving much closer together.
I think that has been a very welcome outcome of the last set of
reforms. In the past there was perhaps a divisive position between
some of the environmental organisations and the farming community.
I think we are now in a very different world and there is much
more common ground to be found between farmers and environmental
organisations and environmental outcomes. The fundamental question,
as Tom has said, is that we really do not know how much resource
we need to deliver both the environmental outcomes and to sustain
some of the farming systems upon which those environmental outcomes
depend for delivery. Just going to a few ballpark figures for
some of the bio-diversity deliverables, we are looking at estimates
of shortfalls of around £300 million per year so we need
a doubling of the money that is being spent on bio-diversity outcomes.
Work that the CPRE and the NFU did on the amount of labour costs
that farmers put into landscape feature management we estimated
to be worth around £412 million per year, that is beyond
what is already being received through agri-environment schemes
spending. If you add in other environmental outcomes like the
Water Framework Directive we are seeing implementation costs of
around £400 million to £600 million a year. When you
start to add up the cost of all these different outcomes that
we hope to see farmers deliver, through the establishment of a
different mechanism for paying for these through further CAP reform,
the costs add up quite significantly.
Mr Oliver: It is important to add that there
is quite a lot of overlap between those figures but how much overlap
is not known. It is like Lord Lever's question about what to spend
on advertising and not knowing which half he was wasting.
Q251 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
You are proposing that that CAP should be replaced by an Agricultural
Public Benefits Fund. What sort of public benefits are you talking
about here? How do you measure them and how are they paid? Are
they judged at a European, national, regional or parish level?
Mr Oliver: The purpose of describing the title
as we set it out, as you quite accurately described it, is to
draw attention to what is being asked from the mechanism. In other
words, this is a primarily agricultural process which delivers
other benefits beyond the agriculture. You ask which benefits
would be forthcoming, they would include the present outcomes
which are so welcome from Pillar II funding which include very
substantial amounts of improvement in bio-diversity and habitat,
improvements in landscape character and the condition of farm
structures and farm systems of a semi-natural nature, increased
access to this by as many people as possible because of its great
value in terms of culture but also health. And also a recognition
of the interrelationship between the protection of natural resources
which includes the ability to make use of land productively which
sometimes is forgotten when people talk about a natural resource
protection within farming, with those other landscape, bio-diversity
and access outcomes. The long term future of the support by the
tax payer for land management must reside in recognising the comprehensive
interactive quality of managing farmland. It is the fact that
the farmland does many things at once and the degree to which
it achieves those outcomes is dependent on quite subtle shifts
in incentive and regulation.
Q252 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Obviously landscape is a raison d'être of the CPRE in some
ways and the landscape is, as you say, an interaction, it is a
living essence. The trouble I see in handing over the management
of what landscape should look like to public subsidies is that
you are tending to freeze existing land patterns and I do not
think that is necessarily a good thing to do.
Mr Oliver: Whether or not one passes judgment
on the last point you make, it is easy to observe that since the
war very substantial change has taken place in the fabric of landscape
whether one looks at the length of hedges or the amount of unploughed
permanent grassland or the amount of arable land in cultivation
or the condition of ancient woodland, for example. There is no
doubt that intervention in farming behaviour by government can
have a great deal of effect on the landscape. CPRE would contend
that the balance of that effect until the 1980s was to reduce
the quality of habitat and extent of semi-natural landscape and
the quality of the landscape with the benefit of very substantial
increases in production which went with that change. The balance
sheet as it stands is standing quite strongly in favour of intensification
and modernisation of the farmland in England. Even if one recognised
that one wished to retain that level of balance between production
and the retention of semi-natural features there is a very substantial
amount of work needed to be done to retain the qualities that
remain of the semi-natural landscape which is farmed. As my colleague
Ian has said, the amount of money needed merely to maintain what
remains of traditional landscapes within their modern context
and which brings very substantial benefits in terms of landscape
character, tourism, bio-diversity and other benefits, would require
substantial funding. Whether or not that funding would seriously
impede the modernisation further of farming I think is very questionable.
My answer to that is that the market will determine to some extent
the degree of innovation that takes place on farmland because
if markets are available within environmental regulations they
will be sought by enterprising landowners. The balance of support
for traditional landscapes and structures brings with it the huge
value of continuity which is something which stretches back far
further than the last 60 or 70 years and goes back to landscape
features that are often many hundreds of years old sitting in
the context of semi-natural systems which are very valuable.
Q253 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
To take Allan Buckwell's point, do you think people really want
to pay for that? Why should they pay for it, picking up Lord Bach's
question to him earlier. If, for instance, you were putting this
to the World Trade Organisation, to the World Trade Talks, that
is support for agriculture, in inverted commas, I do not think
you would be able to get away with that.
Mr Oliver: To answer the first question, I think
there is very strong evidence that people do wish to spend what
amounts to very modest amounts to the Exchequer on protection
and enhancement of the way in which traditional landscapes are
farmed and it is important to remember that this land would be
productive. There are benefits deriving, for example, from local
food and local identity and recreational activities which are
quite intimately linked with the continued protection of hedgerows
or stonewalls or ancient woodland. In terms of the World Trade
context it seems that the most important thing is to focus clearly
on what amounts to trade distortion. I do not think that any nation
would concede that its beautiful landscapes or its attractive
towns and their hinterland are in themselves anti-competitive
features. Actually what we are talking about is giving those who
own and manage and work on the land the opportunity to market
those benign outcomes to the world not on the basis of production
subsidy, not on the basis of false protection from the buffeting
of world markets but actually on the basis of the quality of the
outcomes they produce. That requires some funding to recognise
the cost of traditional landscape features' management—not
the cost of producing food or any other commodity from them but
the actual cost of managing those features in their own right—that
seems to me entirely reasonable and is commensurate with the protection
of heritage, for example, which is not regarded as anti-competitive.
Q254 Chairman:
Is there a market in international tourism in this respect and
are there any facts to prove that?
Mr Oliver: Yes, we looked into this and the
answer is that there is. To put figures on this is difficult and
we made some efforts and we can do more if you would like. My
colleague can give you chapter and verse but I can refer very
specifically to my experience this summer where I visited rural
Romania through a company called Transylvania Uncovered based
in Cumbria (a very welcome piece of rural diversification for
Cumbria) and which revealed an extremely keen market at a very
high premium for exactly that sort of tourism from England to
Romania. It has clearly had a great significance for Romania's
prosperity. My colleague can give you further information.
Mr Woodhurst: We did try to look into this and
I think in international terms in some of the other EU Member
States there is perhaps a bigger push towards promoting agri-tourism,
particularly in some parts of Spain. We found an example from
Zaragoza where a hotel offers visitors a chance to spend the day
with a shepherd in the mountains learning about the environmental
and cultural aspects of shepherding. I do not know whether we
would actually contemplate those sorts of activities in the UK.
Indeed, when you look at the Visit Britain website there
is a lot of play made about the quality of landscapes, national
parks, AONBs and it lists by region some of the landscape features
which people might be able to see, and can view on their international
website, such as dry stone walls. But there is actually no mention
at all of what any of this has to do with farming or the fact
that farming systems are producing and still maintaining these
environmental assets and these landscapes. I think there is a
lot to be learned from a UK perspective on how to promote some
of these connections between farming and tourism and some of the
tourist activities you can base around them. There is also Farm
Stay UK which lists accommodation where you can go and stay
on a farm but I think there is still a lot to be done in making
those connections.
Q255 Lord Sewel:
So the Scottish landowners need not worry, they can get people
to pay them to come and help round up their sheep.
Mr Oliver: There is an important point here
about the permeation of the advantages of this sort of tourism
across the country and clearly places which are more peripheral
physically have a harder time of it. On the other hand there is
evidence, of certain initiatives for example in Herefordshire,
that they emphasise the importance of high value, low volume tourism
in order to benefit most from high quality fishing or high quality
landscape or high quality countryside which is of course something
which people seek and which is increasingly under threat. There
is one figure which we can quote from a Wildlife and Countryside
Link submission presently in draft which is that in 1998 20%
of countryside visitors pursued activities such as hiking, rambling,
field studies and cycling and that accounted for 26 million tourist
trips which spent £2.7 billion. That is one way of looking
at the way in which people use the countryside, a very specific
one, and it is from nine years ago. To go back to your previous
question about whether there is a willingness in society to pay
for this, I think Allan Buckwell's point about the degree to which
the Exchequer contributes is important. Also in 2000 a survey
from the Ramblers Association indicated that 75% of survey respondents
wanted the Government to legislate for greater access to the countryside
which was luckily just about to happen. That was a very welcome
outcome and it indicates that very large numbers of people see
the value in going to the countryside and by definition I would
regard that as quite good value in terms of public expenditure.
Chairman: This is no criticism, these
are absolutely fascinating points that you are making, but it
would be particularly helpful to us if they could be put in the
context of CAP reform. We are really looking to say things on
the next stage of CAP reform and how these sorts of arguments
and issues feed into that would be particularly valuable.
Q256 Viscount Brookeborough:
An interesting point on the landscape is that people tend to appreciate
the landscape in this country, in England as opposed to the highlands
of Scotland, because they are passing through it. It is quite
difficult to get people to have the landscape as a destination,
literally in itself, and therefore it is for some other reason,
whether it be cycling or fishing or whatever. In the 1970s we
had a lot of development with grants of guest houses and that
sort of thing and it was not very well controlled as to why people
would go there and there were an awful lot of guesthouses which
came into being without anybody going to stay in them. The other
point about tourism and farms is that there is a limited market
but there is a problem with health and safety—sheep biting
people or whatever they do—and it is quite a problem for
a farmer to take it up, to put the expense into making his place
acceptable and actually getting enough people to pay for that
acceptability or standard. Your evidence discusses the pressures
affecting rural communities as a whole rather than just farming
and you suggest the development of local markets could play an
important role in increasing the viability of traditional activities.
How might this concept be developed in England through greater
use of Axes 1 and 3 of the Rural Development programme? What kinds
of interventions do you have in mind for such things?
Mr Oliver: The separation of delivery of Axes
1 and 3 from Axis 2 funding and the relocation of the Rural Enterprise
Scheme (as was) to regional development agencies presented both
an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity presents the idea
of course that regional development agencies could, for the first
time, really take seriously their rural responsibilities. The
difficulty lay in that there was the risk of their being little,
if any, connection between the initiatives which were encouraged
and funded for economic developments in the countryside and those
which were associated with the management of land. Work we have
done since 1998 on the network of local food producers, processors
and distributors in Suffolk suggests that where you encourage
the local infrastructure altogether to invest in its own production
capacity and its own ability to find markets, you have a very
substantial increase in the number of businesses and at the same
time secure the land management which otherwise needs to be solely
supported through agri-environment schemes. Our proposals in draft
for how this might be taken forward would be to re-integrate where
possible the economic initiatives associated with traditional
farming practices, so that is primarily to do with food production
but it also to do with things like harvesting wool for insulation,
for example, and to bring back the relationship between those
initiatives and the management of land surrounding where those
businesses take place. Other work that we have done has indicated
that unless there is a very clear targeting by grant structures
from a future reformed CAP for those sorts of businesses which
are land-based or closely related to what goes on on the land,
footloose businesses are much more likely to take over the space
and the available private investment because they are largely
more profitable and in turn that tends to generate various other
unwelcome phenomena like the reduction in local employment and
an increase in commuting to the countryside from towns, and a
reduction in the relationship between farms and businesses which
in the long run can reduce the quality of land management. In
future it would be better if there were a closer relationship
between local food production and local adding of value in the
countryside to that management of land which, for so many other
reasons, we value. When it comes to the specific question of local
food networks the opportunity to invest very substantial sums
where there is private investment available in addition to improve
the quality of local food networks would be a good example which
would fit in with all sorts of other government objectives in
terms of healthy eating, local economies and a de-centralisation
of control. Going back to Lord Cameron's point about parishes,
there is an interesting opportunity, if you are dealing in small
scale business diversification from a land-based point of view
to encourage farmers to participate in that at a much more local
level.
Q257 Viscount Brookeborough:
To what extent, if at all, would you promote supporting businesses,
be they quite small businesses, which are actually unrelated to
the land in the rural environment?
Mr Oliver: To a very modest extent in general
terms because it is very evident that the attractiveness of that
sort of investment in business development is very strong and
there is a lot of evidence that there is little need to encourage
that. There are a few examples where this is not the case, for
example with care farms which relate to health outcomes where,
as you were suggesting, some of the health and safety issues surrounding
farming impinge on other aspects of health and safety obligations.
In general terms encouraging private investment in diversification
which is not related to the use of the land is not necessary.
Q258 Viscount Brookeborough:
What about use of the buildings and the planning issue where it
is very often turned down regardless of the fact that the outside
of the building may be remaining the same?
Mr Oliver: Clearly the development control question
of what happens to buildings is an important one and the response
must vary depending on whether the building is listed, the building's
rarity, its attractiveness and what other functions may be available.
However, clearly there is a need for a realistic response depending
on what the application is asking for and its context. Very specifically
in terms of rural planning policy, there is very little evidence
of a need to encourage diversification which is not land-based
and quite a lot of evidence that if ill-considered, some rural
diversification can actually undermine local market towns, for
example, by locating retail sites far from where high streets
are and this can actually have quite a severe impact on small
rural towns which are actually service centres. There is evidence
to suggest that there must be quite careful judgment when it comes
to encouraging diffuse diversification. Clearly there are cases
where opportunities for diversification should be encouraged which
are not being encouraged. It is a patchy situation and it depends
a lot on the way local authorities interpret PPS7 and it depends
quite a lot on the quality of the applications that are made.
Q259 Viscount Brookeborough:
You are largely against rural retail.
Mr Oliver: I did not say that. I am against
rural retail that has no justification for being outside settlements.
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