Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I want to speak as a farmer for a moment. In a sense, the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer—and, to a certain extent, those of the right reverend Prelate, if he will forgive me—lead into mine. We really need to demystify the countryside. Yes, it is glorious; no one appreciates landscapes more than I. However, in my early days of being in county hall four days a week, some non-agricultural friends often used to ask me how I managed to run a farm and yet spend all of my time away from it, doing other things. For a number of years, I used glibly to answer that while I looked after the farm for 10 minutes a day—and that that was all it required of my time—the good Lord had it for 23 hours and 50 minutes. I got away with that for a long time. Everybody accepted that it could probably be done; the truth was that there was growing inefficiency in the system, but that is neither here nor there. However, one day one of my more intelligent friends asked a question that stopped me dead in my tracks. He said, ““Yes, Bill, I understand what you’re saying, but have you considered what your farm produced when the good Lord had it for 24 hours a day?””. You need to stop and think about that—but not very hard. There is a reality there and we need to recognise that the countryside is a totally artificial creation. It has been driven by economics. Latterly, in the past 30, 40 or 50 years, it has been driven hard by government policy and we have arrived at the present situation. If there is something mystical regarding the countryside that I might call divine inspiration, it is divine inspiration that brings about this sort of debate, where we sit down and look at the whys and wherefores of what we are doing. At present, the reality is that policy is driving us back towards the countryside that we used to know; we want to retain our biodiversity and everything else. That is fine, but as I have already said in this Committee, other factors are at work in what we are doing that will be tremendously destructive if we are not exceedingly careful. Such matters are not taken into account in this debate, but are the inspiration that lies behind my noble friend’s amendment, and I understand why she has moved it. We need to be realistic about the countryside. It is not a divine creation. It is a creation of man in combination with nature. If there were inspiration, it perhaps came to man divinely—if we were lucky. I hope that that can continue, but we need a judgment.