Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter on his maiden speech. He and I have worked together on regional and rural issues in the south west. I know that he will continue to contribute wisely, as he has done today, to the work of this House. First, I declare an interest as a past rural advocate and as an ex-chairman of the Countryside Agency, as well as being a farmer and landowner. Secondly, let me say how much I welcome the Bill. It will, I hope, bring to an end a very long period of uncertainty for all the bodies involved—a period now of some years of what I would call distracting change management, which I believe has taken everyone’s mind off the agenda. I hope that we can ensure a speedy resolution of that uncertainty. I should like primarily to touch on two areas of controversy which arose during the Bill’s passage in the other House. First, there is the statutory purpose of Natural England. This body now has to consider people and communities as well as the environment. Its remit includes access to the countryside, responsibilities for the broad sustainable management of designated areas as well as the ongoing need to understand the practicalities of making a living off the land while at the same time protecting the natural environment. Personally, I think that this broad agenda is a good thing. Nothing to my mind has done more to bring the environment into mainstream thinking than the sustainable development agenda. It is only by making the environment relevant to people’s lives, socially and economically, that it gets their backing and their votes. Thus I believe that the principles of sustainable development—economic, social and environmental—should be spelt out slightly more clearly in Clause 2. However, I can see why the Government do not want to go there and why they have avoided a conflict resolution clause. Our man-made countryside, as others have referred to it, has always been the result of conflict and changing need. I believe that it is right that these conflicts should continue to occur on the Natural England board, without Defra or the Bill setting out how it should respond. Each conflict will have its own solution with decisions quite often being taken on a localised basis. The real debate here of course should be about Schedule 1 and the appointments to the Natural England board. This board must not be made up predominantly of environmentalists and scientists. It must include land managers, access representatives, national park or ANOB managers, community leaders and so on. If it is to be a truly effective environmental body it will need to be able to relate to and work in partnership with the groups I have just mentioned, and it is crucial that the board is able to help forge and maintain those partnerships. I hope that the Government can give us some assurances about the make-up of the Natural England board. Turning to another issue that arose in the Commons, I would like to underline the crucial importance of the Commission for Rural Communities—the CRC. It is vital that this body exists to carry out research and to speak out strongly—I emphasise the latter part—on behalf of those who live in our countryside, particularly the less well off who might otherwise have no real voice within the system. Will rural quality of life be properly catered for by the urban-focused resources of the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Trade and Industry and so on? Can we even rely on the largely urban-based staff of Defra? Can we trust the all-too-often urban-centric local authorities and RDAs? I heard last week that the new in-phrase is to refer to the ““city region””, meaning that the best way to deliver the regional agenda is to focus largely on the main city or cities within that region. One can only assume that under this philosophy the rural areas go hang. I believe that a nationally based, independent voice for the countryside is now more important than ever. There is a school of thought that this independent voice could be represented by local authorities. Even on a local basis, apart from one or two notable exceptions, I am not certain whether they have a very good record in this field. All too often the majority urban members do not really understand rural problems, do not give them priority and, without really meaning to, tend to hijack the allocation of resources to the urban problems. Meanwhile, of course no local authority can possibly act as a nationally based rural watchdog—carrying out national research and providing national proof to government that such an issue is not simply a local problem. When I was a rural advocate the rural commission of the Local Government Association often used to lobby me to make the case for the countryside on issues it felt were important, but where it was constrained by the urban majority of LGA members. It was always grateful that the Countryside Agency was able to take its local issues and put them authoritatively on to the national governmental radar screen. The CRC’s role in that respect would, I believe, be enhanced by the fact that it is not a delivery body. It does not any more have to be part of the solution, unlike local authorities. The other school of thought is that the work of the CRC should be done by Defra. But how many civil servants would reckon that it was part of their job to stand up and name or shame other departments, or even other Ministers? It just could not be part of their job spec to take a publicly independent line and to speak out and not to take ““No”” for an answer. Funnily enough, there was much discussion in the Commons about the independence of Natural England—as there has been today—but to me it is the independence of the CRC that is really important. I am glad that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter supported me on that. The CRC has to goad. It has to probe. It has to get under the skin of government at all levels—from central, through regional to local. We need a nationally based body more than ever now to challenge others, or to champion others on rural issues and one that is capable of rural-proofing every aspect of our life. The countryside is going through a period of great change. Over 100,000 people move from our towns to the countryside every year. The rural population is growing at three or four times the rate of urban Britain. Farming plays less and less part in the rural economy and rural employment. More and more high-tech businesses are choosing to base themselves in the countryside and the growing and ageing population there depend more and more on efficient service delivery, which, by its very nature, has to be approached differently from delivering to the towns. Meanwhile, under this Government, the main delivery bodies, such as the health service, the education service and its agencies such as Connexions and the Learning and Skills Council, the business links, the police, the job centres and so on, seem to be undergoing permanent restructuring and change. Even the local authorities do not escape. Last year there were local public service agreements and this year there are the local area agreements. There seems to be an obsession with continuous change. My point is that amidst the chaos that these changes engender—and in some cases it really is chaos—never has a national rural proofing body and a rural advocate been more needed to ensure that centralists and centrally based planners, with, frankly, no concept of life in the countryside, do not leave the less well off people in rural England as second-class citizens. The CRC will not have an easy task—believe me, I know—but I hope it will have the support of this House. Finally, I, among others, look forward to seeing the Government’s promised amendments to Part 6 to ensure immediate commencement, without exemptions, of those clauses concerning mechanically propelled vehicles on rights of way.