Public Bodies Bill [HL]

I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Newton, because I want to pick up some of the themes which he touched on which I thought were worthy of further reflection. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for introducing the debate and for the manner in which he did so. It was very reasoned, trying to tease out answers. Indeed, he has probably posed most of the questions which I would pose. I also want to take this opportunity to add my tribute to Stuart Burgess. I worked with him very closely in the days when I was chair of the Forestry Commission. We met regularly, and I found him a tower of strength. He was a most admirable individual, a very knowledgeable man and, above all, a real champion for the countryside—not for any particular vested interest in the countryside but for the people in the countryside, especially the disadvantaged. It is interesting that the report which is imminent, probably the last report from the commission, will be on that issue. I am a little surprised that the coalition is proposing that action. I read the local papers, as does the noble Lord, Lord Henley. We probably read the same local papers, after we have read the back page, where we share a common interest. I am always finding the coalition partners, whether it is in Penrith and the Border, Westmorland, or wherever, appearing to champion the rural areas and saying that the Labour politicians from the west of the county—although they represent huge rural areas—have no concern for the rural areas. That could not be further wrong. Indeed, as we have heard, it was the Labour Government who established the Commission for Rural Communities, which I believe did a great deal of good work. The great advantage was that I frequently met Stuart Burgess on the train going on a fact-finding visit, or going to hold a public meeting, a public consultation, in some village hall on housing, broadband, or whatever. Like the noble Lord, Lord Newton, as a Minister I certainly found it incredibly valuable to be able to call in experts, especially people who were as independent as the chair of the Commission for Rural Communities. It was very useful for a politician to be able to call these people in aid because one of the things I found was that—this is just a fact of life in a sense—any politician has a certain struggle, not only with his opponents across the Chamber but, inevitably, with his own department. His own civil servants may have slightly different interests in certain respects than he may have. Indeed, they may be right, because they are there for the long term and most politicians are there for the shorter term. What I found interesting, and the issue that I would pose to the Minister, is this. I cannot imagine civil servants in a unit in Defra going out into rural communities on winter or even summer evenings, going to village halls, meeting ordinary people and listening to them, bearing in mind that, because of the nature of the occupation, the overwhelming majority of those civil servants, most of the policy people and the people with the real authority are based here in south-east England in the Greater London area. I simply do not believe that they will be going out and collecting the information for themselves. I believe that if the Government really want the big society notion to work, they are really going to have to engage with people and to communicate with them. Quite honestly, I believe that members of a commission are much better at doing that than civil servants in Defra or in any other department. That brings me to the second point that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, made. It is a killing point. It is about who is the lead authority. Let us take broadband, which has been mentioned several times. Broadband in rural areas is difficult, but it can be piggybacked on the school network. In Cumbria, the Member for Penrith and The Border has led a campaign in the north of the county to try to get broadband, quite rightly, into these rural communities. Defra will actually have very little authority when the execution of this plan comes to the fore because, quite frankly, it is not Defra’s responsibility. It is another government department’s responsibility. We heard about the power of the Under-Secretary of State, but it is more than that, it is the power of the civil servants, with their pecking orders, as well. I believe that rural communities will lose out by this abolition. I think it was my noble friend Lord Knight who made the point about listening. I hope that the Government will listen especially to people such as Geoffrey Lean, who for many years has been the finest environmental journalist in this country and for the past 40 years has been prepared to take unpopular stances against Governments of all political hues. I thought the quote that my noble friend used was most telling, and I hope the Minister will not dismiss this and will listen to some of these points of view.