I add my thanks to those of noble Lords before me who thanked the Minister for his opening remarks, and I welcome the order. The debates to date seem to have been around how successful the new arrangements will be in delivering the vital roles that the CRC has performed in the past in its roles of adviser, watchdog and advocate. I do not want to revisit those but I shall ask a few questions that I hope the Minister will touch on.
The first question is around the issue of adviser and watchdog. It is clear that rural community policy units are being set up to be centres of rural expertise, and that is to be welcomed. However, it is also clear that they will have to have to have a firm external focus, otherwise they will end up talking to many of the usual suspects. I would welcome a list of organisations that they will be engaging with but, having taken the opportunity to look at the Defra website today, I struggled miserably to find anything about the objectives and activities of this important new unit. If I were an activist in a local community who wanted to find out what was going on—if I had any initiatives that I wanted to share or discuss with the Government—I would have no concept of what their activities or programmes of work were. I therefore ask the Minister if the public interface of that unit could be looked at, particularly the website.
7 pm
On a more substantive point—and this may be regarded as heretical in present company—I am not convinced of the role of a rural advocate. As someone who has spent most of her life in the voluntary sector, in conservation and rural affairs, I think that it is an impossible job. I say that for three reasons. First, there is no single constituency for the rural areas. They include the uplands, the mining communities of Nottingham, deprived areas in Cornwall and, where I come from in Surrey, fairly wealthy communities with tiny pockets of depravation. However, there is no one area and no one constituency.
Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Curry touched on, there is no separate set of issues for rural communities that do not affect urban areas. They are the same issues—two sides of one coin—but because of the geography of rural communities and the scarcity of population you need different solutions. There is no separate constituency, there are no separate issues and there is no single voice. As someone who fought the anti-hunting campaign and proposals for wind farms, there is no one rural voice on many of the controversial issues. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will bear witness that when we had those debates there
was pressure for the rural advocate to get involved. It was decided, very wisely, to sidestep the issues because of their polarity. Do not tell me that a rural advocate will come in and solve all the problems. I admire the letter in the Telegraph and the support that it has received from fellow Peers. As I say, it might be heretical, but I do not believe that a rural advocate is a silver bullet that will solve the problem. I can see the attraction but the approach that the Government are taking, whereby Ministers are accountable before Parliament, should at least be given the benefit of the doubt.
I have a small issue, also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about who will actually speak up for the disadvantaged communities in our rural areas. That is where both previous incumbents of the role of rural advocate, on that single issue, have made a real impact. That is what we need to focus on—what we want the rural advocate to be doing. What are the single issues on which we feel that an extra voice is really needed? I look back to what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said in the debate in the House on 23 March last year. He said that if an independent advocate was needed again, the Government would of course be prepared to look at the matter if the change proved not to be as effective as they believed it would be. I believe that these changes have the potential to deliver, but there may be single issues in rural communities where we need a stronger extra voice. I hope that the Government will remain open to that idea.