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Care Farming

I had not realised that it was now 10 pm, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, farms can be dangerous places. We all accept that. There are still too many accidents on farms. However, I think that depriving young people of the experience of practical work in a rural environment is an over-reaction. It would be helpful if some of the agencies involved were helped to understand the opportunities that are available, as well as the limited risks that exist in a properly supervised environment. Some useful work has been done by the Mercia constabulary and probation service, showing some of the cost savings that care farms can make by reducing reoffending. As I said at the outset, none of the young offenders placed at Highfields farm have reoffended. Although I accept that that cannot be the outcome in 100 per cent. of cases, surely it will be marvellous if the same dramatic reduction in criminal activity among a group of young people can be replicated. We need to do further research and carry out tests. I suspect that some young people respond better than others to such opportunities, but research on how the model works for a mixed group of young people will require additional support. Probation and youth offender services need to be encouraged to consider care farming contractors. We have recently been rethinking the legislative arrangements for contracting to facilitate the use of private and voluntary sector contractors in lieu of direct provision by the state, and care farms provide exactly that model. At the time of the passage of that legislation, I raised the possible implications for smaller suppliers such as Highfields. Regrettably, that farm seems recently to have vanished from the horizon of the relevant probation and youth offender services, which appear not to have been able to find the capacity to continue contracts that have proved fairly successful in the past. That may be related to other factors, but it worried me that the changing framework for contracting for those who provide such services might militate against the smaller specialist provider, and that is what appears to have happened. Finally, we need to devise funding models that are suitable for a diverse range of providers who currently struggle individually to locate both clients and capital resources for periodic improvements, but that can be combined with the commercial activity involved in running a farm. Again, Highfields is a good example. I have suggested to Roger on a number of occasions that it should be run as a charity, but he says that the difficulty is that it is a commercial egg farm. ““It sells eggs,”” he says. ““We want to maintain it as a business.”” The difficulty lies in the lack of access to funding streams as a consequence of that strong element of commercial activity. I would defend it, however. The practical working environment of a business—as opposed to an entirely supported entity such as a charity whose only purpose is to care for young people in the countryside—is valuable in itself. It gets across the message that this is working to produce something that will be sold and that people will earn a living from. That is a valuable part of the experience these young people will have. Assistance in understanding the complexity of running a care farm that has continuing economic activity within it, which must be commercial, is an important requirement. I hope that my right hon. Friend will reflect on what I have said and the opportunities that exist not only for farmers looking for alternative sources of income and alternative activities in the countryside—although care farming does offer an approach to farm diversification—but, crucially, for young people. When there is a need to care for a young person better, give them a better future and correct some of the things that have gone wrong in their lives, the setting of an agricultural environment achieves better outcomes. That has been established by academic research, and it now needs to be entrenched and given greater resource and support by Government agencies. I look forward to hearing my right hon. Friend's response.