Food, Farming and the Environment

It has become quite normal for some people to believe that Labour Members have no interests in farming or rural issues. That idea was clearly put to bed by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey). I come from one of the oldest industrial areas in the country, but a large proportion of my constituency is rural, and I wish to pick up on some of the issues that have been raised in the debate. An issue that came to my mind while the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) was speaking was rural payments. It was like a bad ghost coming into the room. We probably had a smaller work load on that issue, but for the people concerned it was a serious problem. He said that it was possibly going to come back, and I hope that the Minister will get up to speed, so that if it does come back he can nip it in the bud and people will not have to go through what they did a couple of years back. In our area, farmers have done tremendous work. There is some really good partnership work, and we are developing the Great North forest across the whole north-east and down into Yorkshire. That is possible only because of the work of farmers who have been prepared to work with local authorities and organisations such as Natural England to make it a real success. Another example that comes to mind is the reintroduction of the red kite in my constituency. It was wiped out in the north of England sometime in the mid-1800s, and over the past five years there has been a tremendously successful reintroduction scheme. It is probably the first such scheme anywhere in the world where, within 3 miles of where the birds were introduced, there is an urban centre—the Metro centre, the biggest shopping centre in Europe. That scheme would not have been possible without the co-operation of farmers. There was great help from organisations such as Northumbrian Water, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Gateshead council, but if local farmers had not been prepared to buy into the scheme, it would not have been the success that it has been. On the back of that, a red kite trail has been developed and is bringing tourists into the area. The local bus company has branded nine of its buses with the red kite, at a cost of £9,000 a bus. It has taken that cost on itself and won a national award, but it did not do it for that reason, it did it to publicise what was happening. The scheme has been very successful, particularly for young people. There are not enough kites for each school that wants to adopt one to do so, and we pray that the kites will get on and do what they should be doing. Some 94 were released, but there are a lot more than 94 now, thank goodness. The scheme has been a huge success, and there has even been feedback from the kites to the farmers. The farmers report to us that on a farm within 400 yd of what was a huge council estate, the red kites are now eating sheep's afterbirth when lambs are born. The farmers calculate that they are saved two days of work a year in cleaning up afterbirth, so the kites are already giving their thanks to the farmers for helping them flourish again. It really is a success story. I spend every moment that I can—like everybody else in this place, I do no have much time—trying to get away and get some peace. My place to go for peace is Teesdale, a fantastic area. To survive there is a tough job for the farmers, including hill farmers. Some Members in the Chamber—looking around, probably all of us—are old enough to remember the story of Hannah Hauxwell, who was featured in a 1970s television documentary about where she was living in the dale. The conditions were very tough, and she had no running water and no electricity. Thankfully, most places there are not like that now, but some of the arctic conditions remain. There is a reservoir in Teesdale called Cow Green, and the weather station up there maps weather models like those of Reykjavik. That gives some idea of what the conditions are like. The people who work there are the salt of the earth. I have the great pleasure of meeting some of them in a fantastic public house called the Langdon Beck hotel. I would welcome the Minister there. If he really wants to see farming in the raw, he should go there—we would make him welcome. We disagree about many things in the House, but we should all agree that we owe a tremendous debt to the people who work the farms of this country. We should never forget that. I want to talk specifically about the dairy in Blaydon. This time last week, we thought that we were close to getting a deal to keep it open. The Secretary of State was very supportive and involved himself personally in getting the receiver to give us some breathing space last Thursday. We thought that there would be a deal. The union and the work force worked hard and the bank that was involved seemed to be saying all the right things. Sadly, on Friday morning, the news came through that the bank had decided not to go ahead. As I said in my intervention on the Secretary of State, there is a rumour—I would like to think that it is just a rumour, not a fact—that the plug was pulled because the bank account could not be put in place for four weeks. If we are facing that sort of bureaucratic nightmare in this country, the problem must be resolved. The outcome is that 299 dairy staff are out of work. The 288 farmers who fed into the dairy may, thankfully, have been relieved by the Secretary of State's words today. However, problems clearly remain for many people in the north-east. I hope that, if there is any more we can do, we are doing it. The regional officer for the FBU—I mean the NFU; I said FBU because the former fire Minister is on the Front Bench. Dennis Gibb, the National Farmers Union regional officer, said about the impact of the dairy closure:""The thought of Blaydon having to close down fills me with absolute horror… The worldwide milk market will be partly to blame. The world is saturated with dairy produce at the moment, which has undermined the milk price, which has of course made it more difficult… Over the last few years we have seen the gradual erosion of dairying in the North East and I fear this closure will be another hammer blow for milk production in this part of the world."" I would like to think that that is not the case. If the Secretary of State and the Minister can do anything to support the reintroduction of the dairy business in the north-east, I urge them to do so. The debate on the rural economy on Monday was closed by the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris). I cannot believe what he said—I thought he must have meant it as a joke. He said:""It is difficult to provide any further information at this point, because the situation is very fluid."—[Official Report, 15 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 85.]" The situation is not very fluid; it is very sad. I hope that the Minister can give us news about any possible help for the people in Blaydon. Even if the dairy cannot open, is there a role for DEFRA in helping those people try to find work?