Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Ev 40 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence 17 November 2010 James Paice MP, Jeremy Eppel and Dan Osgood North Yorkshire being two of them. I can’t remember the other two off the top of my head, but I’ll come back to them. In that respect, the link is there. Rural housing is an area of huge importance for me, from a personal interest. I was very involved with Grant Shapps in developing the policy that is now being worked up by DCLG for local community development, moving on from Community Land Trusts to the ideas, which you’ll be aware he’s working on, of communities being able to develop and give themselves planning consent, as long as a certain percentage—I believe it’s now looking at 75% or whatever—are in support, and where the community can actually have equity in that property, whether it’s shared equity, to rent or whatever. There’s much more localised control. They are both very important issues to us and, out of genuine personal interest, it comes back to my earlier point about the wealth of knowledge in the team. Q184 Dan Rogerson: That’s very encouraging; the Coalition Agreement included a number of these sorts of issues for us to work on, which is great. However, further down the line, as the other Departments are getting to grips with their own priorities, spending pressures and so on, how will you maintain those relationships and that drive, and make sure that these rural issues are not lost? Mr Paice: Simply by constant engagement and, as I say, genuine personal commitment and involvement from Ministers. I don’t think any of us, even those of us like myself who have been shadowing for some years, fully appreciated the extent of the financial challenge we were going to face in Government. There’s no getting away from it, as I know you discussed with the Secretary of State yesterday. There’s no getting away from the impact of that, not just in terms of what we can do but of our own work schedules. The first six months have very largely been taken up with addressing it. As we’ve now got the Spending Review, every Department knows and is now working out the detail, and we’re going to be in a much better position to pursue our policies and our approach. The bottom line to your answer is: personal commitment. Q185 Richard Drax: Perhaps I should know this, but what is the commitment you have made to install the necessary pipe work, the necessary whatever it is, to get broadband out to rural areas? Where are we on targets, figures and money? Mr Paice: The Spending Review committed £530 million of funding for broadband through the organisation called Broadband Delivery UK, BDUK, working closely with the private sector. BT and Virgin Media have already announced major network upgrades. As far as the particular rural issues are concerned, as I said, there are four pilot locations. I mentioned Cumbria and North Yorkshire; the other two are the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and Herefordshire Golden Valley. That will help to establish commercial costs and challenges that are involved in rolling out superfast broadband. That £530 million will be used, some of it, for those pilots, and then clearly we will take forward those lessons. I think the real answer to your question is there is no particular blueprint. In some cases, it will be possible to do it by rolling out fibre optics. In other cases, it may require radio or satellite transmission. A number of communities are already developing it; in Cumbria, again, there’s a lot of work that has already been done to develop it. I have a small example in my own constituency where the BT exchange is just too far away. I don’t think there is a particular blueprint; we have to provide the basic framework, within which local communities can find the right system for them. Q186 Chair: Can I turn to Uplands Entry Level Stewardship, Minister? We were told by the Tenant Farmers Association that there are 9,000 potential applicants for the UELS, but so far only 3,000 have joined the scheme. What assessment have you made of the number of tenants and commoners having problems with the UELS and their landlords? Mr Paice: We’re working through them. I’m not going to pretend everything is coming up roses, but certainly the latest statistics, as of 8 November, show that there were already 3,000 live agreements covering 377,000-odd hectares. Although it may only be 3,000 agreements, it’s actually 75% of the target area that we had hoped for, and is well ahead of the planned profile. We’ve had a total of 573,000 hectares as applications, or 3,600 if you want the number of applications. Within that, there are 108 shared common agreements. We are making progress. There have been some issues. I had a meeting this morning about issues. This was in Yorkshire, but it applies elsewhere, where, for example, traditional estates already had agreements with the Treasury for relief on inheritance tax. There was the issue that you couldn’t then claim UELS on features that were reasons for not paying inheritance tax. Therefore, we had to find—and our officials have found—ways around that. That, I think, has been resolved, certainly in the cases that we had. We’re being innovative in trying to find solutions. There are a few—but, despite hearing lots of anecdotes, I find it difficult to nail them down—issues to do with disputes between landlords and either commons graziers or grazing tenants who may not be commons graziers. As you know, the person signing an agreement has to have management control for a minimum of five years. Obviously, people who are only taking a grazing lease or who are commons rights holders don’t have that and, therefore, the commitment of the landowner is important in that. I hear anecdotally of stories where landowners are being difficult or taking all the money and not reducing the rent. First, I don’t actually get the chapter and verse, and nobody has yet come to me with a case of, “This is Landlord x and this is the problem.” I’m not saying they don’t exist, but I haven’t had them. Secondly, it poses the question as to how far Government should go in actually intervening in what is a commercial relationship between landlord and tenant. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q187 Chair: I will seek to make private representations to you, if I may. We’ve had cause to discuss previously a particular example in my own
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 41 17 November 2010 James Paice MP, Jeremy Eppel and Dan Osgood constituency, where agreement has broken down. Now because of the suspension of the scheme until, I understand, April, the graziers who were receiving Hill Farm Allowance stand to gain nothing in this financial year. I will raise that separately with you. Are you looking at possibly altering and weakening the management control over the land to allow the tenants to benefit, where it can actually in many cases be a lifeline in their survival? Mr Paice: It’s an issue that has caused me a lot of vexation, because I take the view that, from the farmer’s perspective, although it may not be the case from that of the taxpayer, the Uplands Entry Level scheme is effectively an income replacement for the Hill Farm Allowance. I know we’re asking them to do different things and it’s all based differently but, from the farmer’s perspective, that’s what the cheque’s for. I fully endorse the idea that, therefore, it should be going to the practising farmer. We are stuck with this requirement from the EU that you have to have management control. That’s not something I have to alter because it’s an EU rule, and I can’t decide directly on who has management control. If you have occupancy for only a grazing season, nobody could realistically argue you have management control of the property. Q188 Chair: From previous discussions I’ve had with commissioners, they don’t seem to understand the position, and they think tenants are being treated in this country on the same basis as tenants in other European countries. I would argue that clearly they’re not. Mr Paice: That’s perfectly reasonable, yes. Q189 Chair: Was this something we’d have to take up in the context of the CAP review? Mr Paice: It certainly is an issue for CAP review, but it’s an issue that we, as we develop the statement I’ve been referring to, may well want to pursue ourselves. Q190 Chair: In the short term, in particular the example of the case in my constituency, would you look at a dispute mechanism such as mediation to try to reach an agreement? At the moment, it has to be an agreement signed by the landlord but, if they withhold agreement, then the tenant cannot claim. That cannot be right. Mr Paice: Obviously emotively, I tend to agree with you entirely that it can’t be right but, equally, I don’t think Government should be heavy-handed and go in and start interfering in that commercial relationship. I don’t think it’s the job of Government to set, to create or to intervene with a mediation approach. We have discussed this with the Tenancy Reform Industry Group and obviously separately with the CLA and the Tenant Farmers Association to try to find ways of mediation happening, rather than the Government imposing it, and I think that frankly is the best way forward. I’m happy to talk to you at a later date about your individual case. Q191 Richard Drax: Minister, we touched on landlords and inheritance tax, two aspects of the next question. Have you discussed anything with the Treasury about improving the tax situation in some way, to encourage the agricultural landlord to offer longer leases to tenants? Mr Paice: “No” is the direct answer. Frankly, all discussions with the Treasury over the last few months have been on the other side of the balance sheet. Q192 Richard Drax: How do you feel personally? Is there scope here? Mr Paice: I don’t pretend to be a tax expert, but I’m not sure that there’s anything tax-wise that would directly impact on the length of a tenancy. If there is, yes, I’m more than happy to look at it. Obviously we will be making our representations to the Treasury in terms of next year’s and ongoing finance bills in the future. I’m happy to look at any representation. I’m not sure that there is an issue directly but, with your knowledge, you may have more experience, Mr Drax, of where we could create that incentive. Q193 Neil Parish: Carrying on with Upland Entry Level Stewardship, how are you going to monitor the environmental benefits, especially given the cuts likely to be made to Natural England funding? Mr Paice: Let me firstly deal with that last point—the cuts. The Chairman referred earlier to “the freeze”. Yesterday, we announced that the freeze is over, for want of a better phrase. The situation is—if I may digress for a second, but I think it’s illustrative—the Higher Level Stewardship scheme has been a great success, no doubt about it, and that’s good. When Natural England agrees a scheme and signs up to it, the budgetary impact of that is in the following year, because that’s when the farmer gets his first payment. What happened was that, because of the uncertainty until the Spending Review of next year’s budget, this year’s approvals had to be frozen until Natural England knew how much money there was for HLS next year, when the bills would be paid. We’ve now sorted that out and it does mean—I’m brutally honest, we’ve made a statement about this— that there isn’t as much; it wouldn’t allow Natural England to go on approving schemes in the rest of this financial year at the rate they did to start with, because long before that, they’d have hit next year’s budget, even though it’s for considerably more than this year. They are going to be able to approve a few more, mainly ones that are probably on their desk, but they haven’t signed off. Then there will be a stall before any can be formally approved until 1 April, so that those payments then fall into the following year’s HLS budget. I need to emphasise the point that we’ve made repeatedly: by the end of the remaining threeyear programme of spending for Stewardship—that’s the end of the whole RDPE period—there will be an 80% increase in the amount of money for HLS compared with the current year. Neil Parish: Part of the Defra business indicators is to monitor whether it’s good or negative to agriculture on these schemes. Mr Paice: There’s absolutely no doubt, even the NAO has made this point, that of the Stewardship schemes, indeed all RDPE money, HLS is probably the most cost-effective. I have to use the word “cost-effective”, because we can’t even be particularly precise about EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011
Page 1 and 2:
House of Commons Environment, Food
Page 3 and 4:
House of Commons Environment, Food
Page 5 and 6:
Contents EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: No
Page 7 and 8:
Summary EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not
Page 9 and 10:
EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be p
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
5 Upland communities EMBARGOED ADVA
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
6 Conclusion EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY
Page 49 and 50: 4: A new approach to funding EMBARG
Page 51 and 52: EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be p
Page 59 and 60: Witnesses EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: N
Page 61 and 62: Oral evidence Environment, Food and
Page 63 and 64: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Page 77 and 78: Tom Blenkinsop Richard Drax George
Page 79 and 80: walked they ain’t coming back, be
Page 81 and 82: great, but there is the wider issue
Page 93 and 94: to engage in a conversation with th
Page 95 and 96: Q161 George Eustice: One of the com
Page 99: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Page 113 and 114: Written evidence Environment, Food
Page 151 and 152:
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Page 153 and 154:
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Page 155 and 156:
show all

Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?