Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-21
Topic: Agriculture
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness. I welcome this group of amendments, which are excellent as probing amendments. The voice of business is missing in the Bill, in particular the voice of farmers and landowners, and indeed water companies, which have a real role to play here. I regret also that there is a missed opportunity in the Bill, which is very ambitious on certain levels but has some spectacular omissions at other levels, in that the interaction between this Bill and the Agriculture Act and the Trade Act could have been spelled out more, both at Second Reading and as we proceed now with the more cohesive infrastructure I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lindsay and my noble friend—if I may call him that—Lord Teverson, under whose chairmanship my noble friend Lord Cormack and I have the honour to serve on the EU Environment Sub-Committee. I also congratulate Cornwall on so successfully hosting what seemed to be in its own right a successful G7 meeting. Had the meeting been held over the past few days, perhaps it would not have been quite so visually attractive. I am sure that Cornwall will go on to benefit from that, as Yorkshire has from the Tour de France and the Tour de Yorkshire that we held in previous years and which we hope to repeat this year I invite my noble friend the Minister, not just when he sums up today but as we go through the Bill, to rise to the challenge that has been laid down by my noble friend Lord Lindsay in particular. There are two specific areas my noble friend Lord Caithness has identified where businesses have a role to play. Farmers stand prepared to play their part in tackling climate change; you need only look at the websites of the farming organisations—the Tenant Farmers Association, the NFU and the CLA—in this regard. However, as my noble friend Lord Caithness identified, all the action the Government seem to be proposing, in planting huge numbers of trees, improving soil quality and many other factors, will be of great benefit to the landowners who own the land, but I struggle to see what the benefit will be for tenant farmers. Looking at the future of upland farming, I think that up to 48% of farms in North Yorkshire alone are tenanted farms, which is a very high proportion. It distinguishes England from other parts of Europe, which do not have this background. I am struggling to see how tenant farmers in particular will benefit under the Bill The Government are looking to encourage older farmers to retire, but where they will live is a separate question that needs to be addressed. Smaller houses are simply not being built; smaller properties of one or two bedrooms are not available to allow those who are retiring to either rent or own them. It is not just the starter homes but the step-down homes as well. The other area where I believe farmers, landowners and water companies have a real role to play—we will look at this in later amendments—is flood prevention. Again, this area could be explored more fully in this regard My noble friend Lord Lindsay and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, have done the House a great service in enabling us to debate this small group of amendments this afternoon and I look forward very much to hearing my noble friend on the Front Bench tell us more about ELMS, flood prevention and other schemes under the Bill where he expects businesses, particularly farming businesses and water companies, might benefit.