Uncorrected oral evidence: Rural Economy Committee - Nov 13

Uncorrected oral evidence: Rural Economy

Tuesday 13 November 2018

9.45 am

 

Watch the meeting 

Members present: Lord Foster of Bath (The Chairman); The Earl of Caithness; Lord Carter of Coles; Lord Colgrain; Lord Curry of Kirkharle; Baroness Hodgson of Abinger; Baroness Mallalieu; Baroness Pitkeathley; Baroness Rock; Baroness Young of Old Scone.

Evidence Session No. 14              Heard in Public              Questions 151 - 161

 

Witnesses

I: Minette Batters, President, National Farmers’ Union; George Dunn, Chief Executive, Tenant Farmers Association; Sue Pritchard, Director, Food, Farming and Countryside Commission.

Examination of witnesses

Minette Batters, George Dunn and Sue Pritchard.

Q151       The Chairman: Welcome, all three of you. Thank you very much indeed for coming. Can I just give you advance notice that this session is being broadcast on the parliamentary channel? We will be producing a transcript following the meeting, and you will get an opportunity to have a look at it and make any corrections you wish to. Much more importantly, can I apologise that the length of this session is very brief? There is a lot we want to cover, so it follows that I would be very grateful if you could give short, sharp answers to questions, but particularly focusing on things where it will help the Committee to produce a report that can make recommendations to government, rather than just list some of the problems that exist, although clearly we want to hear about those as well. Can I also say that you have in front of you a list of the declarations of interest of all Members of the Committee? You may wish to take note of that.

Because of the shortness of time, you will inevitably leave feeling disappointed and frustrated that there are things you wish you had said and you have not been given the opportunity to do so. Right at the beginning, can I give an invitation to all three of you, if there are things you wish you had said, or additional points you want to make, to please feel free to write to us afterwards? We would be very grateful. It would be very helpful to us.

Can I just kick off by asking a very broad, general question? We know that in the rural economy farming, agriculture, fishing, forestry and so on play an important role, but it is only about 10% of the rural economy. Nevertheless, some people have argued that it is the backbone of the rural economy. I would be interested in your thoughts and how much you feel farming, agriculture and so on contribute to the rural economy.

Minette Batters: I think all three of us would stand behind the fact that we underpin the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, a role that has not been looked into in particular detail in the past. You have to look at the connectivity within the allied trade—the vets, the other associated industries that are all underpinned by a strong agricultural sector. When you consider that 72% of the UK is farmed, that becomes an incredibly important structure. You also have to look at the structure of food supply and food sales within the UK. Agriculture is effectively a price taker. If we take fruit and vegetables or milk as an example, you have not seen any price movement in 20 years. GVA is not a fair interpretation of the wider role that agriculture plays in supporting the whole of the economy. Agriculture very much underpins the largest manufacturing sector. 

George Dunn: I would agree with all Minette has to say there. Let us bear in mind as well that the agricultural sector is providing 60% of the food we consume in the country, so feeding our workforce, both rural and urban. As Minette says, it is contributing to the food processing sector. We would not have a food processing sector if it was not for farmers in this country. That is £113 billion, I think, on the NFU’s figures. 

Let us bear in mind particularly that the younger, progressive farmers who are coming into the industry these days are contributing to the rural economy in ways that older farmers may not have done in the past. They are more plural in their economic existence. They are doing more things in the rural economy. They are farmers in their hearts, which is why they are in the countryside doing what they are doing, but they are contributing more widely to the rural economy at the same time. If you look at the multiplier effect of expenditure, farmers tend to spend more of their money within their local communities, which has a massive impact on those areas. 

Sue Pritchard: I agree with both of those remarks. I just want to make two additional ones arising out of the work we have been doing so far in the commission. First, there is enormous diversity around the UK in the rural economy and in rural communities. To try to give a simple picture of how that looks from one perspective is inadequate. We need a much richer understanding of what that really means in localities and communities around the country. 

Secondly, I do not think we have very good metrics or measures for many things that people really value and care about in rural communities. When we talk about the rural economy, we tend to focus on very specific, frankly very blunt, measures of what matters to people. In our work around the UK, it is very clear that people really care about and value those things for which we do not have even good language, let alone good metrics. I will just use a metaphor. If we are looking at an ecosystem, we tend to focus on the big things. We focus on the big trees in the forest. We are very poor at noticing or understanding the smaller things that are, none the less, critical to a flourishing ecosystem.

We did not understand until recently the role of mycelium in the soil, for example, tiny things without which that ecosystem cannot flourish. I am very anxious when we just focus on the raw numbers of the contribution of the food and farming sector in the rural economy, because that feels to me to be a blunt and inadequate instrument for understanding the whole picture. 

The Chairman: As a Committee, we are already well aware of your first point about the importance of not assuming there is a one-size-fits-all solution to where they may be problems in the rural economy, and the importance, therefore, of place-based solutions. We accept that very strongly. I think we also accept there is a problem in relation to some of the data, some of the information and some of the understanding of the linkages. It would help us if you could expand, very briefly, with some examples of areas where you feel more information is needed that would be helpful in the future. 

Sue Pritchard: In our report, we have a section that we call “more than money”. It is highlighting a piece of work we are intending to go on to do. Like you, we agree that the metrics are not there. We cannot report on them if they are not there, but we are arguing that that work absolutely needs to be done. The work we are going to do over the next few months is to map the resources that flow through rural economies. An enormous amount of money flows through rural communities that is, frankly, invisible to us. It is not just public money. It is also private money, private resources, NGO money, which contributes to a flourishing rural community.

That other dimension that we were perhaps just touching on is what we are calling the hidden resource. It is sometimes called social capital, but even social capital is inadequate to describe what is really going on. It is more about the social processes, the flows of activity, how trust, reciprocity and mutuality are built in rural communities. It is that that makes rural economies important, lovely places to live, places where people want to live. We are very poor at understanding or valuing that for all that it means. Our next phase of work is going to do some more on that to unpick those dimensions, working with research colleagues around the UK and trying to shine a brighter light on what that means and how we might choose to amplify and enhance it, rather than risk undermining and damaging it. 

The Chairman: We look forward very much indeed to seeing the outcome of this work.

Q152       Baroness Pitkeathley: You mentioned public money. Do you agree with the Government’s public money for public goods approach? What is your view on the direction of travel outlined in the Health and Harmony paper and the Agriculture Bill? 

George Dunn: You highlight one particular aspect of the Government’s policy, which is public money for public goods, but there is a wider framework within which the policy is taking place. Within the ag Bill, for example, we are really pleased to see the stuff on supply chains. That is really important, in terms of getting those working more fairly and ensuring that more of the return from the marketplace goes to the primary producer. That is really good news. The marketing standards points are really good for us, but we want to see those applied equally to traded goods, so goods that we import from abroad, as to domestically produced goods. The productivity measures within the Bill are good in terms of bringing the standard of infrastructure on farms up to a better level. We support the public payments for public goods element, because the marketplace will not deliver stuff that the market will not pay for, at the end of the day.

There are also things beyond that, which we need to understand. What is our trading status going to be in a few months’ time? That is still very much up for grabs. What is going to be our access to labour? What is that going to look like, given what the Migration Advisory Committee has said about agriculture? There are elements of the Government’s policy that we like and elements of it that give us concerns and worry. Part of the problem is that the ag Bill is going through at such a speed at the moment that we do not really have enough time to give it proper scrutiny. 

Minette Batters: I would agree with a lot, if not all, of what George has said. One of the concerns we have is that, with a relatively small to medium-sized Bill, with 36 clauses and 28 powers, it only has three duties. Although there is a lot of admirable stuff on the supply chain and enabling legislation in there, a lot of which we have lobbied for, we know how powerless, effectively, secondary legislation is. It is very telling that it only has the three duties. We would like to see much more to say “a future Secretary of State shall intervene”, market failure being a good example, and the ability for the Bill to pause, to vary and, importantly, to reverse, as we look at public money for public goods. We are going to continually have to impact assess how this is looking on the ground. We will be the first country in the world to go to 100% public money for public goods and we are the third cheapest producer of food in the world. If we compare ourselves to the US farm Bill, it looks like we are farming on different planets.

There is a real need for us to look at the progress this makes. The fundamental point that George refers to is who our trading partners will be. As we sit here today, we have no idea whether we will have a future relationship with the European Union, or whether we will have a closer relationship with the US. Future policy must reflect all that. 

Baroness Pitkeathley: Could I ask you to take that a bit further on and speculate about how you imagine rural economies are going to look in 10 years’ time? What will agriculture’s place be in the rural economy, looking forward?

Sue Pritchard: There are a number of different scenarios that might play out from where we are at the moment. Relating back to your last question, the absence of a really strong and compelling vision for farming, at the centre of some of the UK’s and indeed the planet’s global challenges, is disappointing. There was more opportunity to put farming and agriculture centre stage in helping to tackle climate change, to help the UK become more secure in our food production and to make sure the UK takes its responsibilities for contributing to the challenge of feeding our own people and the world with healthy, sustainable, secure food supplies.

The absence of a strong, compelling vision that helps us to tackle those challenges is a little worrying and, therefore, makes me somewhat anxious that, under some scenarios, the future for the countryside could look really rather bleak. As you will know from my CV, I am a farmer in Wales, but I am from the Welsh valleys. I am from the mining communities in Wales. The impact of rapid and un-thought-through social and economic change in those communities is still being felt today, 30 years on. The country is still paying the cost of that in inadequate economic performance, in health, in well-being and so on. That kind of scenario for our rural economies makes me very nervous.

If I could relate it quickly to your question about public money for public goods, we have come to the view in the commission that that has become a somewhat stagnant argument, with economists dancing on heads of pins between the Treasury and other groups: “What is a public good and which one should we support?” That is wasting time when we have little time. Instead, I have taken inspiration from the framework the Treasury has adopted, which is the public value framework, and the extent to which we are much clearer about how we align public resources to get public value and to support that which the public values.

That is a framework adopted across government. I think it would be fair to say it has not progressed very quickly under the current circumstances, but I am much more excited by the potential in that framework to say, “Let us look at everything we are investing, what outcomes we want to create, what challenges we need to face in 10, 15, 20 years’ time”. We know what they are and we need to make really rapid and urgent progress now towards those. 

The Earl of Caithness: George, this is a question for you particularly. As farming itself is not a public good in the Agriculture Bill, are you, as tenant farmers, going to be disadvantaged compared to the owner‑occupier?

George Dunn: Yes, we have raised a specific concern about access to the new framework of support from the public purse as we go forward. Previously, we have had the basic payment scheme, going to the active farmer in situation, with agri-environment and productivity schemes on the side. Now we are going to a situation where we will have payments for public goods and the productivity stuff as the main way in which the Government are going to assist. We have many tenancy agreements up and down the country where the tenant farmer is required to be in agriculture only, so cannot produce public goods, or needs to get the consent of their landlord before they invest in fixed equipment on the holding. That is not always forthcoming, because the landlord might want to undermine the security of tenure the tenant has in order to secure that.

We have certainly tabled some amendments to the ag Bill that would correct for that. Yesterday, Defra had a meeting with interests within the tenanted sector, looking at a consultation next year on some of this stuff, but we absolutely need to make sure the tenant farmer has access to these things, going forward. 

The Chairman: That is very helpful. Thank you very much. 

Q153       Lord Curry of Kirkharle: I am interested in your view of the LEPs. We have had varying opinions expressed as to the extent to which LEPs are currently interested in the rural space, and agriculture in particular, and bring them within their strategies. Your view on the current role of the LEPs and the extent to which they are interested in agriculture would be good. Also, in the brave new world we are moving into, what role do you think the LEPs should play?

George Dunn: I have been with the Tenant Farmers Association for 22 years and I have to say I find the LEPs largely invisible in terms of the work I do, with the probably notable exception of the south-west and Lincolnshire. They tend to be more urban focused, peri-urban focused. They lack rural strategy, rural thinking. They lack rural expertise. They lack concern for the rural areas. Where are they? I am afraid that is my assessment.

The Chairman: What thoughts would you have about finding ways of ensuring the LEPs take these issues more seriously?

George Dunn: They should be required to have a rural strategy. They are meant to be urban and rural, and they focus more on urban because that is where the easy wins are. The rural space is more difficult for them to have an influence over. Each one needs to come forward with a rural strategy. 

The Chairman: Is that view shared by the others?

Minette Batters: Yes. Actually, we find the LEPs in the north-east are working well too, but George is absolutely right that it is not universal. To a certain extent, it is more by default than design as to the agricultural representation you get on the LEP. That has been a major challenge and needs addressing, going forwards. There has also been a challenge with underspend. We need to make sure it is less bureaucratic, less burdensome and, most importantly, accessible to all, which it has not been in the past. We cannot forget LAGs in all this. Again, there has been a prioritisation by where you live, location. It needs to be a simpler, more accessible process that is far more accessible to all. Where it is working well, it is working exceptionally well. In the south-west, we hear very good things about the LEP down there and we, as a union, have active involvement, but it is not the same picture right across the country. 

Sue Pritchard: I would perhaps want to contribute two further points, and absolutely share the view of my colleagues here. We have taken representations from the CPRE and indeed noted Amyas Morse’s comments on the effectiveness of LEPs. There are two particular things that can be done to improve their performance very rapidly. One is to make sure they represent more effectively the populations they serve. At the moment, they represent a very, very narrow demographic. The second is to reflect on their democratic accountabilities, the importance of transparency and openness. There are some serious issues about the volume of public money directed through institutions that lack transparency, lack accountability and often act in an unaligned way with other democratic local bodies.

Lord Curry of Kirkharle: There is a serious risk or opportunity to have a funding process that includes bidding, whether it is the prosperity fund or whatever. It is relatively easy for the LEPs to go for large-scale projects that can demonstrate really good economic return. How do we ensure that rural gets its share of that, if that is the likely pattern of support and one element of support in the future? 

Minette Batters: Within the new policy that sits over the Bill, there is a real need to look at productivity on-farm, infrastructure, investment, which has not been happening for many years, and to have a budget that is committed to helping farming businesses cope with less direct support. That is a real opportunity to focus on the productivity of the industry. Indeed, that funding would be and is aligned at the moment to looking at that, and to diversification. 

George Dunn: It is really important that, as I said, the LEPs are required to have a strategy for how they are going to hit those rural parts of their interest, so that they come forward themselves with schemes that are informed by what their local areas need in terms of funding. Not all areas will be the same. We think they need to be given the responsibility to go out and talk to the rural counterparts, and to come forward with a strategy that fits with their local need.

The Chairman: Is there any document put together by any of you or other bodies that shows us how investment in agriculture could significantly improve productivity, so you can make the case to LEPs, or is it just obvious?

Minette Batters: We have done quite an extensive piece of work looking at productivity. I am very happy to let you have that.

The Chairman: That would be really important, to pick up Lord Curry’s point. 

Q154       Baroness Rock: Mr Dunn, you raised earlier concerns around access to workers. I wondered if you and your colleagues could just elaborate on the challenges the farming and agricultural communities are facing with access to workers, but also access to skills.

George Dunn: Minette will be in a better place to respond, but I will just say this. In the wider economy, we are almost in a full employment situation. The number of vacancies and the number of people who are on jobseeker’s allowance tend to jump around that equality. We are also in a situation where UK-born workers have a cultural dislike of working in the sorts of industries we have to offer, in horticulture or the food processing sectors, and we rely a lot upon migrant labour for that. I take issue with the Migration Advisory Committee’s view that we have somehow been helped, assisted or received special treatment because we have access to this labour. It is simply not available from anywhere else. No one has a sizeable interest in coming into those sectors. The worry is that we will see our processing sectors shrink and the industry that supports them—agriculture—shrink as a result of that.

The pilot seasonal agricultural workers scheme is a good start, in terms of getting us into a better place for seasonal workers. It falls a long way short of what we need. I am sure Minette will say something more about that, but we need to think about the labour need for the processing sector as well. This is not all about skills, as MAC would suggest. It is about need, and we need these workers. When you see a worker in a field, cutting leeks with a knife, I think that is pretty skilled. I would not like to be let loose with a knife in the middle of a field of leeks. I would have no digits left at the end of the day. We need to change the way we talk about these things. We need these workers. It is not just about the high skills that MAC is talking about.

Minette Batters: I would absolutely agree with that. We welcome the commitment to trial a pilot for 2,500 seasonal workers, but our fruit, veg and flower industry is reliant on 80,000 seasonal workers. The UK has always been the preferred destination, out of the whole of Europe, to come to because it is deemed to be well paid. They are well looked after, well housed. Facilities have been good. We have held that status for many years. 

We split this into two tranches. Seasonal is one thing and that sector is on red alert right now. The thought of no deal is really life threatening to the whole sector. Looking at the permanent sector, a vast proportion of our herdsmen, for instance, have come from the EU. We are predominantly foreign-owned processing, so anywhere between 55% and 90% of people working in our processing industry are from the European Union. We look at our meat official veterinarians, and 95% of those are currently from the European Union. You look at the length of time it takes to become a vet and the massive challenge we have now in fulfilling a British veterinary workforce that is fit for purpose and can deal with wider SPS regulations going forward, and it is huge.

There is an absolute critical need for people. We, like George, feel very strongly that this should not be deemed to be low and high skilled. It is about a skillset. It is very divisive, indeed, to use that language. How do you empower a future UK workforce if you keep demonising these jobs as being low skilled? The fundamental fact, though, is that we have the lowest rate of unemployment since 1975, currently at 4%. Even if we wanted to, there are simply not enough people in the UK to do those jobs. We are in the same position as care, hospitality and the NHS. 

Lord Colgrain: This is something we are all very conscious of. How can more young people be encouraged to enter the farming, agricultural and horticultural sectors?

George Dunn: I hope that I have encouraging news. As I say, I have been with the TFA for 22 years. You could not get anybody interested in coming into agriculture 20 years ago because of the image it had, the low returns and the news stories about issues within the industry. I have to say that, now, I am inundated in our show stands, in the events that we have, with young people who are interested in coming into agriculture. The concern for us is that they all want to be businesspeople in their own right. They all want to be farmers themselves. They all want to be principals in their own businesses. They all want to be their own bosses. We do not have a massive amount of people who want to come and fill the jobs Minette was talking about or become employed within agriculture.

The enthusiasm for the industry is great and is at the highest level for a very long time, largely because of the work the industry has done itself. The NFU has done a lot to raise the profile of UK agriculture as a place to enjoy economic existence. The trick we have not yet found is how to switch the enthusiasm for being a businessperson in your own right to being employed within the sector. I have a daughter who is currently in New Zealand, having some experience in farming. She would love to have her own farm, but I am encouraging her to think about employment within the sector, because she will farm a bigger unit more productively, with more holidays, with higher pay than she ever would by running her own smallholding. We just need to find a way of moving this enthusiasm for being businesspeople to being employees within the sector.

Sue Pritchard: I wonder if I might contribute something too from my colleague Matthew Taylor’s review on the future of work. There are lot of similarities with bigger global challenges around what work will look like now and in the future across the farming and rural sectors. Young people are telling us they want more autonomy, they want to work with purpose, they want to feel a sense of affiliation and comradeship with their colleagues and they want some meaning in the work they do. Sometimes that gets expressed as wanting to run my own business, but it does not have to be like that.

There is a challenge for all of us to describe the enormous variety of opportunities that might become available in the future in food, farming and indeed in the broader rural economy. There will be exciting STEM careers where people are running their drones from the kitchen and farming that way. It might also be through broader diversification, through things such as care farming. At home, we work with children and young people who are at risk of exclusion from school. They come to us for what gets rather grandly called alternative access to the curriculum. 

For many of the big social challenges that we face—loneliness; isolation; lack of community cohesion; a real variety of jobs for everyone, not just people who want to do high-tech STEM-style careers—there are opportunities in rural economies and in perhaps what we might call the restoration economy of the future, when we are looking to amplify ecosystem services and do the kind of work we know will need to be done to improve our ecosystems. Telling stories of the enormous variety of work that is available in food, farming and rural economies is really important to provide an attractor for young people, who are saying those are the sorts of things they want and need. 

Minette Batters: There is a fundamental issue around education in food in general, understanding the food system and valuing food, which helps with diet and raises the big issue of the obesity crisis we have, but also understanding the huge variety of jobs on offer within the food industry, which are not and should not all be linked to the ownership or tenure of land. One in eight people is working in the food and farming sector, so it is an incredibly important sector. At the moment, we feel they are getting there by default and not by design. That, fundamentally, needs to change. 

George Dunn: There is a key recommendation for government here. If the wishes of the Migration Advisory Committee are implemented by government policy, we need the Government to step up to the plate and work with our industry to change the culture within UK nationals, so that they look at the jobs that we in the industry are offering. This is not just something the industry should be left to do by itself. The Government and the industry need to work together. The Government must ensure they are putting good resource into this stream of work. 

The Chairman: How does government change what you described as a cultural dislike?

George Dunn: If the Government have understood that there is no current stomach among UK-born workers to work in the sectors that have been traditionally using migrant labour to date, and they are going to cut off our access to migrant labour overnight, surely the Government have a responsibility to work with us to ensure we can address that.

The Chairman: That may be true. My question was not that. It was how they would go about doing it.

George Dunn: It is as Minette said: through education, through promotion, through providing opportunities for people to try this stuff, through providing funding for colleges to ensure they have access to the work experiences we have. There is a broad range of tools we can use—softer, rather than legislative, but certainly, within the area of productivity under the ag Bill, it is something the Government should be looking at. 

Q155       Lord Carter of Coles: Can I take us to the industrial strategy? I am keen to get your views on what you see as the opportunities for farming and agriculture arising from that, and, probably above all, how it should be implemented, or how you expect it to be implemented. 

Minette Batters: I am privileged enough to sit on the Food and Drink Sector Council. The industrial strategy has a big part to play within the whole food agenda. If I can make the comment and the comparison to the past with the Automotive Council, which was co-chaired by Vince Cable in the coalition Government, I have made the point to Michael Gove that it is short-sighted that there is not a co-chair within the Food and Drink Sector Council. Across the food and farming sector, and particularly for rural Britain, we are missing a real political ambassador to make the case. So many times, these things fall between government departments.

I fear the biggest challenge for the industrial strategy is making sure we have a political ambassador who really looks at the wider concept and makes sure this works for rural Britain as a whole. At the moment, the Secretary of State is very much the Secretary of State for the environment; David Rutley is a great appointment as a Food Minister, but I feel the largest manufacturing sector has been bereft of not having that ambassador.

We know the industrial strategy is sitting in the hands of BEIS and Defra. My watch point with all this is that it does not fall between those two government departments. If we are going to be farming without the same amount of reliance on a European workforce, we will have to invest in new technologies and massively change the way we farm and invest in our processing. It is not going to happen overnight. When you look at the price domination we have in this industry, you have to ask the question of where that investment is going to come from. The industrial strategy is the obvious place to make that future investment.

George Dunn: I would agree with everything Minette said. This is one small part of the picture. We need to get the basics right as well. It is okay looking at new technologies, innovation and R&D, which is absolutely vital. I agree that that has been missing for a long time and we need to push ahead with it, but a generation of infrastructural investment is required on farms up and down the country, which we have not been able to make because of relatively low profitability over many years. We need to get the basics right as well and not have ourselves cut off at the knees because of the access to labour issues, so we move together on these issues, rather than saying, “We need to look at only technology, only R&D, only future blue-sky thinking”. 

Sue Pritchard: There is a lot to like in the industrial strategy—the importance of taking whole-system approaches, a regenerative circular economy—but we share colleagues’ view that there is not an ambitious whole-system strategy for agriculture in the industrial strategy. That is a gap. It would have to take into account climate change, sustainability, health and welfare, because it is vital to the public interest. Those industries that do not pay attention to those wider concerns often pay the price later down the line, and Minette mentioned the car sector.

In terms of investment in innovation, we would counsel that the challenge fund does not fall into the trap of previous investment strategies and invest in big bricks-and-mortar interventions, which feel very far from everyday farmers’ concerns. We are very taken with what we have seen and heard about farmer to farmer-led innovation, supported by good knowledge, good science, good development from the institutions. That plurality of provision seems to be where the opportunities may lie.

The Chairman: Could I ask Baroness Mallalieu to pick up that point you are making? I know she was interested in looking at innovation, technology and investment. Perhaps now would be a good time to do it. 

Baroness Mallalieu: I wondered what each of you feels about the development of AI—not the old AI in farming, new AI. I wonder how you see it.

Sue Pritchard: It is that time of year.

The Chairman: Done by the 95% of vets who are not British, yes.

Baroness Mallalieu: What do you see as the opportunities and what threats are likely to arise as it develops, in so far as we can foresee what is going to happen? It is coming over the horizon pretty quickly.

Minette Batters: We see enormous opportunity. We talk as an industry about our high standards of animal welfare, environmental protection and food safety, but the fact is that we cannot effectively tell anybody about them. We are totally reliant on a paper-based system. Embracing new technologies and really allowing farmers to have ownership of their data is going to be of paramount importance. We have things such as the livestock information programme, which will deliver full multispecies electronic identification. Indeed, that platform is already in place, and that will give us the opportunity to showcase our standards. 

There are some challenges in all that, particularly around broadband and digital connection. I was out in Africa a couple of years ago and it was incomparable to the UK. As rural Britain, we are massively held back by the lack of connectivity. Although it feels like one part of the industry is moving at a pace to embrace the new technologies anddigitisation, we still feel very held back right across rural Britain in our lack of connectivity. You wonder, with these new tools coming in, whether farmers in particular are going to be held back. 

Looking at knowledge transfer benchmarking and how we upskill our industry, again, it is totally reliant on connectivity. There is a lot of opportunity. There is a real opportunity in the data revolution for us to be driving an agricultural revolution in standards of production, and the use of medicines and crop protection tools, but we need it to work. Without the connectivity, we will be held back. 

George Dunn: On data, technology, artificial intelligence, it is vitally important that we grab hold of all that for the farming and food sectors so we do things faster and better, but let us not try to recreate everything we do. We need to value the skills that are there within the human beings as well. We have stockmen who understand their stock really well. We do not need cameras to tell us when a sheep is feeling unwell. A stockperson can go out to look at that sheep and say, “Yes, it is not well”. So long as it passes the test of allowing us to do things better and faster, that is great, but let us not just try to recreate stuff we can do through humans with good skillsets.

Sue Pritchard: I have a couple of additional points. The Agriculture Bill talks about open and transparent supply chain data. That is really important. Who has access to the information, how that information is generated, what is measured and how it is measured is all really important. We would be very concerned if that data become consolidated through a small number of, say, proprietary systems that only people with lots of capital could access. Making sure that data is open, transparent and accessible is a similar challenge to the challenges we face around who owns, controls and channels information and intelligence across sectors. That is particularly important.

That perhaps links into another point we have made, which is what we should be starting to measure. When we come to putting the numbers around the environment land management schemes, for example, what are we going to measure and how are we going to measure it? What measurements count and are material to the challenges at hand? How will we measure soil health, for example? What are good ways of measuring that in order to get material and beneficial outcomes? There is a lot of currently underdeveloped conversation around these big challenges that need more work.

The Chairman: Can I just stop you, Sue? I know Baroness Young wants to pick this up in a second with you in a bit more detail. Before we move there, can we pick up the point on connectivity that both George and Minette raised as part of the answer earlier? 

Q156       Baroness Rock: You have touched on the issues around digital connectivity and mobile coverage. I wondered if you could elaborate a bit more on the impact of poor infrastructure, which would also include roads and transport, on farming and the agricultural sectors. Also, what are your views on the universal service obligation and its impact on farms and farmers?

George Dunn: We can rehearse the arguments about mobile connectivity and broadband connectivity until all the cows come home, because we know there are issues, but they do our farmers a disservice. If you look at Making Tax Digital, which is the new thing coming out for VAT in April, because we have had poor connectivity in rural areas for donkey’s years, some of our older farmers have not got a hold of the technology. They have not had the time, the energy or the resource to engage with it, because it has been so poor. Now they are being forced to do stuff in a digital way where they have not had the experience of doing that. While connectivity may have improved to a certain extent to allow people to have access to that, we have allowed a generation to not have the skillset, because they have not had access to it to date. We are forcing people to go down a digital route when they are disenfranchised from using that digital route, which is a great problem for us.

Clearly, there are other infrastructural issues. I remember in the past the arguments about bus services when communities did not need a bus; they needed other things. They probably needed a village hall more than they needed a bus. Talking to local people about what their needs are, in terms of infrastructure, is better than simply imposing solutions from the top. 

Minette Batters: We would absolutely agree with that. Running a diversified business myself, being able to have access to broadband is absolutely paramount for any diversification and indeed for any B&B now. If you do not have access to broadband, you are penalised. The survey work we did showed that 98% of farmers had a mobile phone, but only 16% reported that they could receive a reliable mobile signal, and only 9% had access to superfast broadband. George makes the point, very rightly, that there is a need to upskill farmers so they can use it, but even if they are upskilled they are still massively held back by access.

Sue Pritchard: I am in that category of people where I have to go and stand on a hill in order to get a signal. We could send pigeons more quickly than we can get broadband at our farm, so I absolutely echo those views. I want to add a counternarrative, which it is important to be aware of. Improving digital connectivity for towns and for rural communities may well have unintended consequences. Being able to get access to Amazon and all sorts of other internet shopping will have an impact for rural shops and rural services, so it is not without its potential consequences. As George said, that has to be managed and developed at a local, indeed hyperlocal, level, where communities themselves can determine what works most effectively. One suggestion has been to make those white-van drivers work harder for their money and offer lifts between places. That might be a little off the wall, but there may be counterintuitive responses to some of the unintended consequences that can be creatively thought through. 

Q157       Baroness Young of Old Scone: Could I ask Sue particularly about the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission? I should say that I sit on it, so I know the answer, but the rest of you do not. You have already covered quite a number of the things the commission has been working on so far. Is there anything else that you want to highlight from the early findings of the commission that would be helpful for the Committee?

Sue Pritchard: We are half way through, as you know, and we have set out our direction of travel in the progress report and highlighted those areas for further work. With that proviso in mind, there are perhaps a couple of things I might want to emphasise here. We suggest it is high time that we do some serious and focused work on how land is used across the UK, a land-use framework, and explore what kind of arrangements need to come into place for that to happen. It was perhaps one of the most overwhelming comments we heard from across our inquiries that it is high time. It is a very difficult conversation. It is a conversation that has become very heated in parts of the UK between, for example, environmentalists and farmers in the upland around things such as rewilding. The complexity of those questions is not going to go away. We need a managed, thoughtful, deliberative framework to manage and mediate those conversations, so we have that as a piece of further work.

We also talk a lot about the relationship between food farming and the public’s health—that is another point of intersection that is often poorly understood—the relationship between what we grow and how we grow it, what we eat and how we eat it, and the impact that has on broader health and well-being. There are enormous gains to be made from a better systemic understanding of the contribution food farming can make, and indeed rural communities, through the well-being benefits of being in nature for all of us, not just children and young people. Those are the two that I would pick out additional to the other comments I have made today, unless there is anything in particular you would want me to add. 

Lord Curry of Kirkharle: I cannot predict what you might conclude in terms of recommendations on that. What might this focus on health and your desire to embrace health within policy design mean, in terms of recommendations for government or the industry?

Sue Pritchard: Let us give an example. One thing we all have to face up to is that farming will need to change. It will need to change, not just because of Brexit but because of the big climate change challenges coming over the hill. We also have this huge public health challenge. As a country, we are becoming more obese. The effects of diet-related ill health are enormous. They are costly to the public purse but they are costly to people’s lives, health and well-being. It is possible, it seems to me, to make a more deliberative and thoughtful choice about encouraging farmers and growers to produce more healthy, sustainable food and to use instruments such as the social value Act to procure healthy, sustainable food for the public plate, but to have a rapid effect elsewhere to reverse the impacts of diet-related ill health. 

They are big and complex questions, and we are half way through our inquiry. Many incredibly bright people are pondering these, so I would not want to give the impression that we have some silver bullet solutions we are going to magically produce in six months’ time. By virtue of the fact that the commission brings together people who reflect all the different parts of that system, we are able to have better-quality, more innovative, more creative conversations about how we can work more effectively together to create better outcomes from our public spending but also other money that comes into the system. I realise that can sound a little waffley, and it is not intended to do that, but it is to recognise that this is a huge issue. It is a huge and significant issue, but we have to start by creating the right conditions for more innovative and creative conversations about it. 

The Chairman: I think we would all look forward to hearing a few more details of what you come forward with on that, but we are going to have to move on. Time is getting tight. We are going to look at planning issues for a minute. 

Q158       The Earl of Caithness: I would like to hear your thoughts on the planning system and the revised National Planning Policy Framework. Do you think it is working well for landowners and tenant farmers, and helping you to diversify enough? 

George Dunn: Like the broadband issue, I think we can all wax eloquent about the planning system, how dreadful it is and how problematical it is to get things done. We need a planning system that ensures the decisions made in our rural areas are good for rural areas, rural economies and the rural environment. The point I would make, and I am sure Minette would have other points about the owner-occupier sector within agriculture, is that for the tenanted sector there is a bit of a two-edged sword with the planning system. The easier you make planning, the easier it is for a landlord to get a notice to quit on a tenant to use that for an alternative use.

One of our concerns with the permitted development rights issue, for example, is that, if a landlord wanted to change the use of a building into a residential use, he could secure that away from a tenancy, serving a notice to quit under the statutory provisions of the legislation. We have managed to convince the Government for that particular aspect to not allow landlords to use permitted development rights unless they have the consent of the tenant who has been there or just previously there on that holding. 

The concern for us is this. While we need an active and well-organised planning system that gets things done quickly, we need to be mindful of the fact that, the easier that it is for landlords to get consent, the more undermining that could be for tenant farming businesses at the same time. We need to have protection in the planning system for the tenanted sector at the same time as we free it up a little more to allow people to diversify.

Minette Batters: The permitted development changes are fine if you have on-farm infrastructure available to be converted. There is a challenge where a family wants to provide more housing and new building. That is where the challenges arise with the people coming to work on the farm or people within the existing family who want to live there. There is a real challenge in putting up new buildings, and that is where we would like to see greater flexibility.

The Earl of Caithness: Given the importance of natural capital, in the NERC report last year a bit of evidence we got showed that landscape should be taken into account in planning. Do you think that farming and agriculture should come fully within the planning ambit? 

Minette Batters: That is a big question. There is a need, going forwards, when you look at the commitment to build houses and take away land for other uses, to look at food policy and indeed energy policies to see where the balance lies. There is a case for our grade 1 agricultural land. It would be sacrilege to do other things with it, but looking at your end statement—“Please do not give us too many legislative changes”—it is all part of a wider policy, and indeed the ambition as to what we choose to use land for going forwards. I would say that food production for an island nation home to 66 million people remains of critical importance.

George Dunn: For our most treasured landscapes, the AONBs, SSSIs, national parks et cetera, there is a considerable amount of regulation already, in terms of the agricultural industry. I think even farmers outside of those would say they are subject to a lot of restrictions when they are trying to put up buildings in areas. Also, there is the neighbourhood question, in terms of smells and noises et cetera, which is becoming ever more important. Adding a further level of regulation is not necessary at this time. There is already a high level of regulation. When you look at the capacity farmers have to build this stuff, there is an issue there. Let us not forget that some of the landscape changes we see come from the unintended consequences of other government policies. Look at the feed‑in tariff for renewable energy, the amount of maize that has been grown over the country to feed anaerobic digesters, which is in the wrong place for soils, in the wrong place for landscape, in the wrong place for lots of things. There are other things we need to think about, in terms of how we impact on our landscape, than just the planning system.

Q159       Baroness Mallalieu: What measures do each of you think would make it easier for farmers, including tenants, to diversify, not just for economic reasons but also for community benefit? What would be proposals that would help?

George Dunn: One issue for the tenanted sector particularly, which is obviously my parochial interest today, is this. Given the restrictions that tenants are often under within tenancy agreements, they should have the ability to serve a notice on their landlord to say they want to do something outwith the scope of their tenancy agreement for public goods purposes or for diversification purposes, so long as the landlord has the opportunity to make a reasonable objection. We want to stop landlords making unreasonable objections to tenants’ desire to do stuff. If the tenant in a National Trust property wanted to put up an NCP car park, fair enough, the National Trust should be able to say, “No, because it is not in keeping with our interests”. But if they want to use the three spare bedrooms in the farmhouse for bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which would fit quite well without impacting the landscape or the landlord’s reversionary interest, why should the tenant be precluded from doing that? Sadly, we see landlords using the leverage they have to stop tenants doing that stuff. We would want the legislation to be changed—sorry, Lord Chairman—to say the tenants have the right to serve notice asking for these consents, but landlords can reasonably refuse.

Sue Pritchard: At a macro level, this illustrates the fact that we do not have an overarching strategy for use of land in the public interest. Those questions often get mediated around people’s private concerns and there are big public interest questions implicit in some of the questions you are raising here. That is why we recommend the land-use framework. We recognise the complexity and difficulty of these conversations, but, none the less, they need to be had. They need to be appropriately, thoughtfully, intelligently mediated, with good evidence.

Then there are a variety of creative responses that communities can develop for themselves in their local contexts. For example, we have seen lovely examples of agri-villages, where the need for affordable housing, sustainable housing, access to good-quality work can all be brought together under a particular development scheme. The Prince’s Countryside Fund talks about the value of allowing farmers to build a home to which they can retire on their land, so they can think about how they can hand on their business, and their children can come in and diversify the business with all the creativity and energy they often have, but the farmer is not having to leave the place to which they are so deeply attached.

There are creative and innovative possibilities. A top-down, bottom-up strategy is needed here: a land-use framework that has the public interest at its heart and understands the public value of land in different parts of the UK, and then the opportunity to generate creative strategies appropriate to local contexts, local conditions and people’s needs at a very local level. 

The Chairman: Baroness Hodgson has the exciting topic of Brexit. 

Q160       Baroness Hodgson of Abinger: We have touched on this before, but what do you anticipate will be the impact of leaving the EU, including the withdrawal of direct payments, on farm profitability?

Minette Batters: Do you want us to start with trade first? What are you focused on?

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger: What are your views, really?

Minette Batters: Okay. At the moment we are all hoping for the best and planning for the worst. In a no-deal scenario, the impacts would be extreme. Agriculture, and rural Britain on the back of that, is the most impacted sector. We know we would lose access to the European market for six months. We know the Government have said they would lower, if not completely eliminate, the tariff wall for food to ensure food can continue to flow into the UK from the EU. You have a situation there with tariffs being lowered. You have a situation where fertiliser, animal medicines, chemicals and all the critical inputs that we would still be buying, because that is the main place of production, would have tariffs on them. You are carved out of the marketplace and you have to wait for six months until you go back, and when you go back you face the highest tariff wall. The prospects of no deal are truly, truly catastrophic.

It is yet to be defined what our future economic relationship would be. We, as a union, supported the Chequers agreement as a foundation for discussion. We were very pleased to see that agri‑food had been brought back in. There are so many questions around standards of production, standards of imports and future labour requirements. My main worry with the Agriculture Bill is the speed with which it is going through the House, and indeed the opportunity to change it without having the first idea of who we are trading with, or if that relationship with the EU is going to continue. In short, free and frictionless trade will determine what the future agricultural policy and the landscape look like. Until we have that defined, we feel it would be quite dangerous to put too much priority into any policy area, because if we crash out we will struggle to even keep the lights on.

The Chairman: Can I be clear on what you are saying? Are you suggesting that, until we know more about the outcome of the current negotiations, deliberation on the Agriculture Bill should be suspended?

Minette Batters: I personally think it should. It is going through far too quickly at the moment. It will be in the House of Lords before Christmas and yet we do not, at this moment, here today, know even if we are achieving a deal with the EU. It seems to us at the NFU that it is travelling at too great a speed. 

George Dunn: I think there was a bit of a non sequitur in this question. You asked about the impact of leaving the EU, including the removal of direct payments. Leaving the EU does not necessarily mean we have to remove direct payments. It is the Government’s policy to remove direct payments because they will have control over the policy going forward. As Minette has been saying, we need to move at a pace where we are able to take into consideration the manner of our leaving. I think Brexit will be a bump in the road, but it is yet to be determined how high and how long that bump is. It could be a significant hurdle for a long period that takes a long time for us to adjust to. We just need to move at a pace that allows things to work well, rather than deciding policy now for something we do not yet know. 

To this day, I do not understand why, under our negotiations with the EU, we do not simply default to our membership of the European Economic Area for the next two years, for our implementation period, and then use the next two years to decide what we want to be like at the end of what we thought was going to be the implementation period end in December 2020. That would give us more time to consider the issues we have been talking about and I still do not understand why we are not using that as an option for the way ahead. The question is unanswerable, in the sense that the manner of our leaving will determine what impact that will have.

Sue Pritchard: It means thinking about the kind of farming and the system of farming we want in the future. The direct payments language is often unhelpful and leads us to think about those big, strategic questions rather reductively. We would not, for example, talk about the energy system we need for the future with reference to how we are going to subsidise, in this case, the French Government for Hinkley C. We would not talk about our housing system in terms of how we are going to subsidise Persimmon Homes, or perhaps we should have done. But we end up having a conversation about direct payments to farmers that precludes us from talking about the kind of farming and food system we want for the UK that will enable us to meet the many challenges we face that have already been mentioned here today: climate change; a healthy,affordable, secure and sustainable food system; the health and well-being of our population. 

All of those are really big questions and we have an opportunity to talk more about what that really means, but it will not be helped, as my colleagues have said, by a speedy transition without having time to understand the intended, unintended and unforeseen consequences of the choices we are making right now.

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger: What should be done to ensure that the replacement for LEADER will cover all rural areas with fair and appropriate levels of funding?

George Dunn: That is the productivity element of the ag Bill that we have been talking about. We just need to explore it in a little more depth. The Government’s intention is that those elements will mop up that area of work. We already know that the schedule that the Welsh Government have put in for productivity is better than the one that the English Government are planning to use, so there is a real debate to be had over whether that productivity section is fit for purpose.

Minette Batters: There is a fundamental thing here that the Committee needs to take ownership of, which is that 16% of farms with the direct payment are currently unprofitable and, without the direct payment, 42% of farming businesses in England become unprofitable. The question that has to be asked is: what is going to replace that? When you do not have a duty in the Bill on the supply chain for a future Secretary of State to intervene with market failure and make sure that the supply chain functions fairly, where is that going to come from? Is it going to come from the market? We are looking at only the same budget. We have all made a case on the same budget. What happens to 42% of farms that become unprofitable going forward without the direct payment?

George Dunn: It is important to bear in mind that we sometimes talk about Pillar 1 being bad and Pillar 2 being good in terms of funding. Pillar 1 money through BPS is paid to individuals who day in and day out are doing the right thing by the environment, animal welfare, et cetera. To remove that would put them in a precarious position in terms of being able to deliver some of those public goods. We just need to bear that in mind as well.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: I just want to go back to this business of the transition period and leaving the EU. It seems to me that there is going to be some considerable time before the clarity exists about future deals with the EU in terms of trading arrangements, and with the US and other states across the world. At the moment you have two guarantees: that you will be protected by the transition period that goes up to 2024, which is longer than most; and that the money that is in the system will be protected on a same-cash basis. Is that enough or is there something else that could happen to get that transition to be protected?

George Dunn: What we have read so far is that the money will be in the pot until 2022. How that is spent is going to change over time, and that is the concern for us: how that is spent and delivered into ensuring that farm businesses remain profitable going forward. As for the transition period, as I said in my answer to the Brexit question, we do not know whether it will take seven years to come out of the issues that we are going to face with Brexit. It might take 17 years. It might take 27 years. We need to make sure that the policy going forward moves at a pace with the changes that we see as we encounter life outside the European Union.

Sue Pritchard: The point we have made in our report is that this is not the only money. The £3 billion in CAP, while significant—really significant for those farmers who are currently reliant on it—is not the only money in the rural economy. We have highlighted a number of different places where money is spent to do the work that farmers might otherwise be able to do and choose to do in the future. When we talk about farming as a system, we also talk about how we need to invest in that system in order to get the outcomes that we need to help us meet the grand challenges that face us over the next 10, 15, 20 years, and then talk about how best that money and those contracts are allocated to get those big outcomes that we need. Starting from those big questions is just as important as making sure that the transition enables people who are directly affected by those decisions to make those different choices going forward.

Q161       The Chairman: Thank you very much. Before we bring it to an end, here is your one opportunity to influence the Committee’s recommendations by proposing to us which recommendations you might yourself hope we will include. But, of course, if we are going to persuade government to do it, it would be helpful if they were recommendations that did not require vast sums of money and did not require huge changes to legislation. Here is your chance. Minette, what do you want us to put in our report?

Minette Batters: I am probably going to be a bit naughty here.

The Chairman: Please do; that is what we want.

Minette Batters: This Committee will be having many other conversations but, as we stand here today, looking at what is needed as the ag Bill progresses into the House of Lords, we have to make sure, in order to achieve what we need to achieve for rural Britain, that this is an agricultural Bill for agricultural purposes. At the moment, the Government or a future Government have the flexibility in it to do up Nelson’s Column if they so wish. 

A fundamental foundation going forwards is to make sure that the standards we produce to are reflected within that legislation. If we do not get the standards piece right for food imported into this country, it is going to have a far greater impact than any Budget ever will if we are flooded with cheap imports. Those are not the answers that you wanted. I also think the multiannual budget is hugely important. But you are all very powerful at this moment in time. I apologise for making those points.

The Chairman: No, abuse the position at will, but I will do it in return. Some other witnesses have suggested to us that, notwithstanding Defra promoting like mad the concept of rural proofing and its importance, it has been argued by some that the Agriculture Bill itself has not been thoroughly rurally proofed. What is your view?

Minette Batters: To a certain extent, I would agree with that. It is an agricultural Bill and should be for agricultural purposes. Although there is much enabling legislation within it, the policy statement that came out when it was introduced failed to mention farming and food. Indeed, if you did not know, you would have presumed it was the “Environment Bill” that was being announced. If we are truly committed to investing in rural Britain, this Agriculture Bill has to be fully connected to agriculture, to land use and to people who are predominantly providing the market goods. Otherwise, there is a complete opportunity for it to be indeed invested by Gatwick Airport or Heathrow to plant hedges, and why would they not? We want to make sure that we retain our place as food producers, custodians of the land and carers for the environment. The Agriculture Bill should have the opportunity to set that very important legislation.

George Dunn: The main recommendation must be integration. For such a time as this when we are making such a massive constitutional change to our position in the world, we need to be able to lift all parts of the blanket covering our systems and look at everything in a systems approach. I get really annoyed when I hear that there was nothing about agricultural tenancies in the Agriculture Bill because the business managers did not think they would have the time and the energy to get a Bill of that size through both Houses. Why are we looking at the RPA being the arbiter for the relationships between producers and first processors? It is because BEIS will not let the GCA do that. Why can we not look at tax policy in relation to agricultural tenancies? It is because that is a Treasury domain. Although we talk about joined-up government, it simply does not exist. For such a time as this, we need to lift the blanket over everything and we have to look at what we need to do.

Secondly, as I said, we need to move at a pace that makes sure we change as we see how things change as we leave the European Union. It is of concern. We are all learning. Every day is a school day for us in this Brexit scenario, but it was alarming to hear the Brexit Secretary say that he only just discovered the importance of the Dover-Calais route. If that is where we are two years down the line, it is a pathetic indictment upon the negotiations that we have had to date with the European Union. We need to move at a pace that really appreciates where we have got to.

The Chairman: Can I ask you to do the Committee a very big favour? We are a Committee that can cover all government departments. The joining-up issue is clearly very important. I know the Committee would be enormously grateful to all of you for any additional comments you want to make in writing. In particular, if you could write a briefing, making the points you just made in more detail about the lack of joining up and how it could be done better, that would be helpful.

George Dunn: I will do that.

Sue Pritchard: There are two points that go to the heart of that question you just raised. The first is a very practical one and the second is a more expansive one. First, we have mechanisms available to us that enable us to join up more effectively at a local level. The Public Services (Social Value) Act is one of those mechanisms. Effectively using the Public Services (Social Value) Act can be really transformative, and we have seen examples as we have travelled the UK of local authorities that have been bold, brave, creative and innovative, and have used that to really transform the outcomes through procurement for their local communities. That is the first point.

The second is the point that I have probably made already, which is that we need to map the money. The public value framework is a mechanism that speaks in a very practical way to the important point that George makes about understanding the system of government, and aligning all the mechanisms of government to create outcomes that add value for the public’s experience but that are also things that the public themselves value. I would encourage your Lordships to have a good look at that, and to understand how it can be used more effectively and expanded. It is perhaps underdeveloped as it stands at the moment because it does not take into account all the other resources that contribute to or indeed deplete public value if they are not used and aligned effectively. I would say this: map the money and follow the money. 

Finally, an enormous amount of that resource is most effectively applied, in order to implement policy frameworks, at a local level. We call for, in our report, an enhancement of local democracy, of re-enfranchising rural communities in ways that they have perhaps missed out on in the last 10 or 20 years as we have focused on the regional tier. That is really important. We have talked about LEPs earlier, but where change happens is on the ground in people’s everyday lived experiences, and local democracy needs to have the resources, the duties, the responsibilities, the accountabilities and the opportunities to make that happen. 

The Chairman: I am very grateful for that and I am grateful for all the others. Again, to set homework following this, where some of us have a problem with some of the things you have said in that report about the importance of localism—and we do not disagree with the importance of place-based solutions—is that in some localities there is insufficient leadership and skills to enable them to work and do the sort of thing you are talking about. Any comments on that—not now—would be gratefully received in writing afterwards.

On behalf of the entire Committee, I thank all three of you for a very informative, useful and helpful session. Please feel free to write to us with further comments. You have been set your homework. We look forward to receiving it and marking it in due course. Thank you, all three, very much indeed.