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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is our spokesman on agriculture in this House. I agreed with a great deal of what he said on defence until he ran into a little local difficulty with the Scottish regiments. I agreed very much with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich that the gracious Speech made no mention of farming and no mention of agriculture. Indeed, so far as I could see, the speech did little more than to cover up past failures to deliver whole policies; yet all the Government's environmental ideas must be based on a profitable agriculture. Farming has sustained the beauty and biodiversity of the countryside for generations. I am amazed that the Government have given no priority to such matters, perhaps hiding behind the new common agricultural policy, which leaves farmers wondering which way to turn. The single farm payment—SFP—is not identical on both sides of the border. The Queen's Speech indicated that the Government work closely with the Scottish Executive. Therefore, there is no need for a misunderstanding, as there certainly has been recently. New policies gave us new hope for simplification, but what we have is the reverse. I do not in any way blame the staff in any of the agricultural offices throughout the country. They are doing their very best. I blame the ministers who got into this muddle in Europe. I do not know how on earth we agreed to some of the schemes. In addition to the IACS forms and the six-monthly agricultural returns, we have the new SFP and now the land management contracts—pages and pages to fill in for each item on the menu that you might like to apply for. If you cut your grain with an old binder and then stook it, you get £140 per hectare. I do not suppose there are many binders that work now, and very few staff are prepared to stook a field. There are 17 schemes. It is very difficult to fill in the forms accurately. Each scheme involves several pages of application, and one has to do it again when one asks for payment next spring. It is no wonder that the staff will be under enormous pressure in both countries. As was asked at Question Time, how many farmers have failed to make the deadline? It was a little difficult to follow what the score actually was. As of today, they are losing 4 per cent a day until they reach the deadline. That is a very serious financial loss to farmers who may have tried to do their best throughout this difficult time. I wonder, too, whether the rural payments agency will manage to fulfil all its duties. Yesterday the newspapers mentioned that there would be a 12.5 per cent cut in agro-environmental payments. However, that has been rescinded today. One can therefore see the problems that farmers face when the Government change their minds from day to day. I believe that the whole operation would be made much simpler by putting all that environmental money into the SFP and distributing it to all the farmers who apply for it. I do not believe that the Government realise the extent of the extra work that has been placed on farmers in recent years—and, of course, I declare an interest as a farmer myself—in relation to the completion of forms and the amount of support that they must give to visiting officials when the whole farm has to have every ear tag read by an official. Bringing in some hundreds of cattle in midwinter and putting them through a cattle crush is a tiring job for any farmer. Only the other day I was the subject of a spot check. Every one of my fields was measured with a wheel by the officials. They found that the field had not changed over 100 years, but it was still 0.2 of a hectare out. Consider the amount of work that goes into visiting every farm to carry out those kinds of checks. We must try to simplify what is happening in the minds of the departments responsible for agriculture in both countries. All this frustration comes on top of higher council tax, higher fuel tax, and now, in Scotland, the scourge of increased water charges. On my farm there is a charge of £118 for every trough, even though half of them are in fields that are under crop and therefore not used. If you have 20 troughs, you need a great deal of money just to pay the water board. This is where farmers are being taxed surreptitiously by the utilities, when they cannot possibly afford to pay those charges. The environmental aspects of the Queen's Speech are very worthy objectives, but I think that straight away we can see a paradox. The Government want to beautify the landscape—we all want that—but why are they so incredibly insistent on developing wind farms in almost every attractive part of the countryside? Planning guidelines have been changed because, in effect, the supply authorities have so much money that they are able to offer huge inducements to local communities not to object. That is really bribery and nothing else. But, ultimately, these 300-foot pylons dotted about the countryside will be a very sad reflection on the Labour Government. If only they had the courage to get on with an energy policy and develop more nuclear power stations, the wind farms would not be required at all. I was a Minister for rural affairs in Scotland and England and a member of the NCC for nine years. The Government should think again before they go down the road of these monolithic agencies. I am sure that that is the wrong way to go, as I believe the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich indicated. Natural England, which sounds like bottled still water, is to be the key agency in England with environmental responsibilities. That means bringing in the rural development services and the Countryside Agency. By and large, we are going the wrong way. We want to devolve these matters so that the officials are nearer the ground and nearer the people who know something about what is going on. For that reason, when I was a member of the NCC, I was insistent that we devolved Scotland from the NCC and set up SNH in Scotland because we felt that the organisation was too big. Now, under the Scottish Executive, SNH has upped sticks and has gone to Inverness, which will make it even more difficult for everyone to keep in touch with what is going on. Therefore, I think that we should try to bring the countryside together rather than put it into huge agencies, where it will become very formal and very difficult to get the results that we want. The one-stop shop is all very well in theory but, in practice, I do not think that it will work. I am only glad that the Government are to keep the JNCC together as one committee with a UK remit, but I suppose that it, too, is pretty upset that that will include Inverness as part of the one-stop shop. The way forward is through flexibility and evolution. The countryside should not be administered through more legislation but by people who are experienced in the countryside and who can advise on SSSIs, birds, animals and habitats. We want more effective leadership by Ministers.