Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, I have not had the opportunity to speak very much on the Bill, for reasons that are probably well known, but I would like to address Amendments Nos. 48, 50 and 52—briefly, as a lot has been said already about them. Amendment No. 52 is about resolving ““irreconcilable conflict”” and the ““greater weight”” being,"““given to those relating to the conservation of the natural environment””." As someone who has lived most of my life in rural areas—albeit remote rural areas—I think that, before one gives the amendment approval, one needs to think about the people and the sustainability of the communities. Young people there in particular may not have the opportunity of employment. I have seen instances where initiatives have been blighted and all hope for school-leavers in some communities has gone with the wind. I have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. I happened to be working in Scotland at the time of the initiatives in the Cairngorms. They were very much a regeneration of that area, because of a great amount of people leaving it. The initiatives were a flagship commitment of the authorities in Scotland at that time. We have an interesting situation at the moment with some of the older initiatives. For example, there was an appalling café on top of Snowden. I do not know whether I am allowed to mention it, but the Prince of Wales criticised it. He has not called it a carbuncle, but we are having to build a new café 100 years after the old one was built. No doubt the new one will not really be appropriate, but it should be a heck of a lot better. I shall make a couple of points on the other amendments. I strongly support Amendment No. 48, which is on,"““action in the countryside to assist the containment of global warming””." That is terribly important. There are a lot of aspects that we do not have time to go into, but I shall speak about one. We will have to look in the future for drought-resistant varieties of crops. We can no longer use North Sea gas to produce nitrogen to produce crops. We will have to go into nitrogen-creating crops such as new varieties of clover, which will actually sustain drought problems and increase production in, and the viability and sustainability of, the countryside. We are cutting back on research and development at present. Is that wise? Some of our research stations are going to lose many of the staff working on such things at the moment. There needs to be a great deal of thought on that. Amendment No. 50 is very important in supporting rural communities in furtherance of social and development objectives. We have to achieve in the countryside the viability and sustainability of our communities as well as of our environment. This series of amendments is extremely important. We can see that there is variable reaction to some of them—particularly Amendment No. 52—but I would have thought that most noble Lords could subscribe to Amendments Nos. 48 and 50.