My Lords, as one of the silenced ones at Second Reading, I must begin by declaring my interests in the register. In particular, I point to the fact that I farm, have land and am involved in land management in Cumbria. I endorse the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and a number of other noble Lords about the condition of the uplands.
Although this afternoon should have been the second day of the Second Reading—after all, the Bill is not due to conclude until September—I do not propose to make a Second Reading speech. Rather, perhaps unusually, I intend to follow the recommendation of the Government Front Bench not to be repetitious. I have heard the various contributions made across the Floor of the House and it is clear that they run with the grain of my thinking through this discussion of the first group of amendments, many of which would improve, refine and calibrate the general principles on the Bill. It is necessary to be clear what the generalities might in turn entail.
Many of your Lordships have said that we are at a very important point of change—perhaps as important as joining the CAP or even the great radical changes of the 1940s. In fact, I suspect it is a more important change, because we have not only political and administrative
changes; they are combined with very far-reaching scientific and social change and a great deal of enhanced environmental consciousness. That is why I join a number of your Lordships in saying that it is a great pity that this legislation is not being run in substantive tandem with the new environmental legislation due to come on to the statute book. The underlying reality is that many of the Bill’s provisions cannot be free-standing in their own terms. The remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, were particularly important in this context when he talked about the complications and importance of systems and administration.
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We must also bear in mind that if we do not recognise that finance is an issue, we are all of us really just whistling in the wind. First, farming and land-use changes are both long term and cost money. They cannot be done instantly, and the money frequently has to be spent up front. On top of that, as we leave the CAP—a policy which, in popular perception at least, has succeeded rather improbably in combining enriching barley barons with feather-bedding French peasants—the standard of living of many people involved in agriculture in the British countryside has been declining in real terms. I would like to see the reversal of that process emerge from the political and administrative changes being discussed this afternoon.
As your Lordships may know, I am chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership and, as such, one of the NP11. We are engaged, with many others, in trying to level up the north. In many ways, agriculture has many of the economic attributes of the north of England and it too deserves levelling up.