Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I was very pleased to put my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I pay tribute to him for the way in which he is scrutinising this Bill, and in particular the arm's-length bodies in the Defra family, as we lovingly call it. My interest in this is as the midwife of the Commission for Rural Communities. I was the Rural Affairs Minister responsible for the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill, and for the creation of the Commission for Rural Communities in 2005. For noble Lords who are not familiar with the subject, I will give a potted history. In 1999, the Countryside Agency was established out of the Rural Development Commission and the Countryside Commission. It was ably headed by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who also served as the rural advocate. Just prior to my taking over from Alun Michael as Rural Affairs Minister, Stuart Burgess was asked to take over the rural advocate’s responsibilities. At the same time, the recommendations of the review carried out in 2003 by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, were being implemented through the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill that I was pleased to steward through Parliament. The Bill took English Nature, a rural development service within Defra and the Countryside Agency, and created from those three bodies Natural England. A small element around rural advocacy was retained as the Commission for Rural Communities. After some searching around the real estate of government, it found a home in Cheltenham, which was where the Countryside Agency had been. On the longest day of 2005—23 June—we debated at length in Committee primary legislation that would create the Commission for Rural Communities. It is ironic that five years later, on the shortest day of the year, we are now debating its demise. Currently it has just over 60 staff based in Cheltenham, and a budget just shy of £6 million. As we have heard, its closure was announced in June. Looking through the local press cuttings, it is notable that the Member of Parliament for Cheltenham, Martin Horwood, said back in June: "““There hasn’t been any obvious consultation and I think it leaves questions unanswered about how important independent roles are going to be fulfilled””." I think that the Liberal Democrat Member for Cheltenham puts his finger on the need for independent advocacy and independent rural-proofing, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, echoes his questions about how those functions will now be performed if the Commission for Rural Communities is allowed to go. When I was thinking about this debate today, I also noticed a fine article in the Daily Telegraph—not a paper that I normally peruse with great interest—of 2 July this year by Geoffrey Lean, who is easily the longest-serving environment correspondent writing in any of our national newspapers. He has been following these issues for a considerable number of years. I think it is worth quoting some of the things that he said in that article. I know that it may not be the most popular newspaper today among the government Front Benches but in an article headed ““The countryside will be the poorer”” Geoffrey Lean says: "““Think about poverty in Britain, and the mind jumps to grim inner-city estates. But deprivation can be just as great amid some of the loveliest landscapes. About one in five rural families live beneath the poverty line, a rate increasing three times as fast as in the cities””." He goes on: "““The commission’s job was to tackle this. It could, perhaps, have done so more dynamically—and it could have sold itself better—but it did make a difference ... It produced regular State of the Countryside reports—the last, as it happens, comes out next week””—" this was written in July— "““keeping a focus on rural poverty. And it persuaded the last government to stump up £180 million to maintain village post offices and enable them to provide banking services, and to propose a 50p tax on all phone bills to finance rural broadband. Now, a coalition of two parties that traditionally represented the countryside is betraying it. First to go was the broadband tax, scrapped in George Osborne’s Budget. And now Ms Spelman has killed off the commission””." He finishes: "““This will save money—but not a great deal. The £3.5 million a year won’t help much towards the £750 million reduction in the department’s budget demanded by the Chancellor, and seems outweighed by the cost to the countryside … So who will speak for the countryside? The Conservative and Lib Dem backbenches, perhaps? But many of the Tory knights of the shire have retired behind their moats, leaving the party more Bullingdon than bucolic, while their coalition partners seem cowed by power. The NFU, and the Country Land and Business Association, are effective, but represent sectional interests as, in a different way, does the Countryside Alliance. And the much diminished Campaign to Protect Rural England has disbanded its rural policy team””." Finally, there is a quotation in the article from Tim Farron: "““’The role of somebody outside government to look at rural policy and decisions taken by all departments is very, very important’””." I could not say that better. I apologise for reading to your Lordships from the Daily Telegraph at such length but I think that Geoffrey Lean makes a really good argument. It is true that at times the Commission for Rural Communities has not pulled its punches—sometimes, I am afraid, at the expense of the Government of whom I was proud to be a member until May of this year. I found a cutting from the Times—this must have been before the paywall was invented because it is dated 6 June 2008—on the report by Stuart Burgess as the rural advocate. The report states bluntly: "““Rural issues are given little recognition in keynote speeches, only passing reference in policy papers, and rare places on platforms of major economic and regeneration conferences. Urban-based officials and organisations are rarely challenged to upgrade their understanding and commitment to the substantial rural part of the national economy””." Stuart Burgess and his lean team of staff based in Cheltenham did an admirable job in holding us to account. It is great to see the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in his place as a schools Minister. Stuart would regularly come to see me, encouraging me to ensure that the rural schools group established by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, was allowed to continue and to ensure that I attended it and listened to what it had to say. He was also keen to ensure that we properly rural-proofed what we were doing in education, that the presumption in favour of keeping rural schools would be retained, and that things such as the academic broadband network that schools are able to take advantage of could be piggy-backed to help to tackle the rural broadband issues that the Commission for Rural Communities was so keen to advocate. I have a document from the commission dated 11 May 2010 which lists some of the successes of 2009-10 alone. They relate to areas such as affordable rural housing, fuel poverty, climate change, transport, digital communications, health, post offices, financial inclusion and market towns. There is a whole list of areas where the commission has been active, has been reporting and has been challenging the Government to do their job. That should be allowed to continue. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will be assertive and perhaps even put it to a vote and challenge the government on this, if not now, then at some future point. This is a commission that the Government can and should be proud of and should allow to continue. Will the Minister answer a couple of questions? The commission has oversight for the England Rural Development Programme; how will that continue? Will it be passed on to Natural England, or will it be dealt with in-house by Defra? It is an important source of European money for rural England and there will be some concern as to how it will continue. Similarly, I ask him to put his mind to what will happen to the rural affairs fora in the various regions. They provide a more localised form of rural-proofing. They were serviced by the Government Offices for the Regions, which are now to be disbanded, so I do not know how they are now to be serviced. If we are getting rid of the Commission for Rural Communities and, in turn, the rural affairs fora are not going to be allowed to function properly, I do not understand how there is to be any check or balance on what the Executive is up to in rural England. Finally, or almost finally, I ask noble Lords to cast their eyes to the future and think about the need for rural-proofing as we go forward. There are real questions at the moment around the closure of the magistrates’ courts and access to justice. Who is going to give a genuinely independent voice, free of any Government interference, or any suspicion of Government interference, as to whether people in rural areas are going to get access to justice? There are questions around police numbers as the fiscal constraints bite on police authorities. There are questions around school closures, the significant and radical reorganisation of the National Health Service, doing away with PCTs and strategic health authorities and how GPs in rural areas will continue to provide the full range of service to people in rural England. I have already mentioned broadband. Dr Stuart Burgess has been interested for a number of years in migrant labour, trying to ensure that migrants working in agriculture, particularly in rural England, who are often very low paid with very poor conditions, are properly served in communities that are not used to dealing with people who do not have English as their first language. The jobcentre network, wind farms, housing, the impact of the Localism Bill, the impact of giving all this freedom in planning and whether that will deliver on the affordable housing needs of rural areas—these need an independent rural advocate. I cannot speak highly enough of Dr Stuart Burgess, or of the job that Ewen Cameron, now the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, did before him. I would like to see that role continue independently of government, even if some of the other functions need to be brought in-house, in order to allow the independent rural advocate to continue. Having been a rural affairs Minister, I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that we do not, as Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State, or even as Secretaries of State, as Alun Michael was, have the clout across government that an independent person does. Such a person has the capacity to name and shame and the statutory right to go to see the Prime Minister and present his report. I say finally to the Minister, listen to the voices that I have read out from newspapers and the media, listen to other Members of this House, listen to the countryside and at least retain an independent voice for rural-proofing. If at some point down the line the Minister wants to reorganise functions, it is set out in the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, in Part 8, ““Flexible administrative arrangements””, which allows Defra functions to be transferred between Defra and Defra bodies and gives the Government the legislative freedom to do what they want to do without rushing at it here and now.