Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

If the hon. Gentleman and I both serve in Committee, I look forward to taking the debate further. I disagree with him that others could perform that role, for reasons on which I would be happy to expand in Committee. I say with no great certainty that the CRC will be up to the job, but the role of rural advocate—and direct access to No. 10—will be an important part of having a strong voice for rural communities at the heart of Government. That is what the CRC is intended to be. However, I have concerns about rural-proofing and about the loss of other good work that the Countryside Agency performed, such as seedcorn funding for projects at local level in rural communities and the vital villages programme. That will be lost to the CRC and pass to the regional development agencies. It worries me that a thematic programme that was designed especially with rural areas in mind will be diluted to the regions. If, as I hope, the CRC is to be a watchdog that speaks up for rural areas, it should be able to pick up such programmes. The Bill builds on much good work that has already been done. The Countryside Agency has done good work and English Nature has been a superb defender of our rural and natural environments, with a direct impact on our constituencies. I am happy to give examples from my constituency of work done by those bodies. For example, Cannock Chase is a huge expanse of what was once a royal hunting forest and is now managed by Staffordshire county council. It has one area of outstanding natural beauty and several sites of special scientific interest, all supported by the work of English Nature and the Countryside Agency. Doxey marshes, an area visited by birds from all over the world, is managed by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, which benefits from advice and assistance from English Nature and the Countryside Agency. The wetland meadows at Wheaton Aston are owned and managed by English Nature and provide a superb example of that habitat that would not exist without that body’s work. The work that the Countryside Agency has done with grants for bus services and rural transport partnerships, such as that in west Staffordshire, has helped to devise innovative ways to ensure that people from the smallest villages can reach the bus routes so that they can go where they want by public transport—truly, a success that has benefited many people in my constituency and in others all over the country. The Countryside Agency has worked on improvements to rights of way and the creation of local access forums. With British Waterways, its work on the canal network and towpaths has been important in areas such as my constituency, which is criss-crossed by three canals. Great work has already been done by the predecessor organisations. They deserve Parliament’s thanks and praise and I hope, as they do, that by combining their efforts in one agency they will do even greater work for the benefit of our constituencies and our country. I know less about the rural development service, another of the predecessor organisations. I am told that, as a directorate of DEFRA, it manages the agri-environment scheme. The British Ecological Society has asked us to ensure that some of DEFRA’s science budget goes from that directorate to natural England, so I am happy to tell my hon. Friend the Minister that that sounds like a good idea. Lord Haskins’s report was an important forerunner to work on the strategy and the Bill, as was the Curry report. Each led to the Government producing substantial strategy documents—the sustainable farming and food strategy and the rural strategy. Parliament, too, has done good work on which the Bill can build. We passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which opened up mountain, moor, heath, down and registered common land to open access. Each time that a new area is mapped and made subject to open access, there are ever greater outpourings of praise from walkers and others who enjoy our countryside, with many thanks to people such as us who have made that possible. As has been mentioned before, we also passed the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which has had some influence by giving local authorities and parish councils new powers to clean up their local environment. There are good things in the Bill and good things have been done in preparation for it. I turn to some of the challenges ahead where more attention is required. The first of these is in the field of rural-proofing. I give credit to the Countryside Agency for what it has already done. During its short existence, it has made an impact nationally in rural-proofing by naming and shaming Departments that were formerly incapable of devising policies that could be assessed for their application to the special challenges and needs of rural areas and of distinguishing where a different solution was required. As a result of naming and shaming year after year, the last rural-proofing report that I read showed that only two Departments were not pulling their weight in that regard. By then, the Countryside Agency had extended its rural-proofing activities to the Government offices of the regions. Although that was only a couple of years ago, the agency has been able to report that some improvements are visible. We need to look beyond that and consider the rural-proofing of the policies of regional development agencies and every local council. If the Countryside Agency is to be reduced to a rump, as the hon. Member for Lewes described the commission, which will none the less be responsible for issues such as monitoring, research and advice, is it really the body that can take forward the rural-proofing agenda and extend it to RDAs and local government while still retaining the influence that the agency has developed over the past few years? I have my doubts and I want to be assured that what we are putting in place of the Countryside Agency’s rural-proofing will be effective in the future. Regional development agencies have recently been given the Countryside Agency’s economic function and it is important to look beyond the economic activity of RDAs to the social, environmental and rural issues for which they are now responsible. When Advantage West Midlands, the west midlands RDA, was set up, its focus was on economic activity and on urban rather than rural areas. Over time that has changed. The biggest single factor was the disastrous foot and mouth disease outbreak and its effects on many businesses, far beyond what some people anticipated at the time. The response and support given to rural businesses was fantastic, thanks to Advantage West Midlands moving so quickly. The agency saw that the importance of the rural economy went beyond farming and it has developed much better policies, so I have more confidence in RDAs now. However, when I look back at their short existence and the economic regeneration focus in the Act that established them, I wonder whether they have developed so far beyond their statutory basis that we should consider amending it. The Bill may not be the place for that, but the commission for rural communities should consider whether we are getting a fair deal from RDAs in rural areas. Lord Haskins had a clear vision that much of what was needed involved the devolution of power and service delivery to regional and local areas. Rightly, he saw local councils at the sharp end of delivering services because they are the elected, publicly accountable bodies—not the quangos in their offices in places such as Birmingham, but the local councils elected every four years. He thought that they would be much more in the driving seat under the new system for the delivery of services, but I am not sure that we have yet seen the devolution of power to them and the accountability from them that we should have. I think that there are two places in the Bill where local authorities are mentioned: the extension of the biodiversity duty to councils and the possibility that new organisations such as natural England and the commission may enter agreements with local councils to deliver services on their behalf. The Government’s response to the Select Committee included the example that licensing functions could be carried out by local councils on behalf of natural England. That is not a great response to Lord Haskins’s call for democratically accountable, elected local government to take a leading role. I want to prod the Government by reminding them of some of their promises, especially during the recent election campaign, to encourage them to look further at that matter.