§ 3.21 p.m.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will provide a breakdown of their estimate of £6 million in a full year as the cost of designating five or six environmentally sensitive areas, and what is their estimate of the savings to the taxpayer from the much reduced subsidies, grants and other costs resulting from such a change in land use.
§ The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead)My Lords, at this stage it is not possible to provide a breakdown of the £6 million, since the recommendations we have received from the Countryside Commission and Nature Conservancy Council on the areas under consideration vary a good deal from area to area. Costs will therefore depend on the areas chosen and the management prescriptions offered. We would expect some farmers to reduce their output in areas designated as environmentally sensitive areas. This should have some effect on production subsidies. But it is too soon to assess the size and type of effect, given that the environmental agencies have proposed a wide range of possible measures which we are still analysing.
Lord ChelwoodMy Lords, I am certainly grateful for that Answer, but it does not get us very far. Will my noble friend confirm that Article 19 of Regulation 1276 797—in the drafting of which the Secretary of State played an enlightened and significant role—permits the use of national funds to encourage farming practices significantly different from those being followed at present? If advantage is taken of the use of national funds for that purpose, will there not be built up very substantial savings in subsidies which at present are going, for example, to subsidise farmers to grow wheat and barley on a colossal scale simply to put it into intervention; it being wheat and barley which nobody wants? Has the Treasury taken any account of that, at any rate for future years?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his recognition of what my right honourable friend did to obtain agreement within the Community for the principle of designating environmentally sensitive areas. That recognition, of course, was for the use of national funds and the £6 million which is to be devoted to the designation of these areas is our national money.
I do not in any way contradict my noble friend when he says that he would expect there to be a reduction in production in these areas, but I must repeat what I said in my original Answer—it is too soon to assess the size and the type of effect which designation will have. I hope that we will know more quite soon. I very much hope that designation will take place by 1st January 1987.
§ The Earl of OnslowMy Lords, may I press my noble friend on the point made by my noble friend Lord Chelwood? If we are to reduce the supply of wheat and barley and encourage extensive rather than intensive farming methods, this must reduce the amount of money that is to come out of the common agricultural policy funds. Does my noble friend not agree that that money should be further used to top up national moneys and to create yet more methods of extensive farming and environmentally important methods of farming?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, my noble friend's logic is immaculate. However, he has overlooked the fact that at the moment support for market prices in the Community is running enormously above what anybody budgeted for a year ago. We must first think about that.
§ Lord GallacherMy Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister allow that if there is an offset, even though it is at present too soon to calculate what it is, it might be used to allow his right honourable friend the Minister to designate perhaps more areas than the six originally chosen? In publishing a list of some 14 from which the selection of six has been made undoubtedly some disappointment has been generated in those areas which have not been selected on this occasion.
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, in no way do I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher. The Government want to see as many of the areas designated out of the 14 as is possible. However, this will depend initially and very considerably on the costs of the areas. Once again, they differ enormously. As far as we can see from the proposals which have been put to us they vary from as much as only £140,000 capital 1277 which would have to be put into one area I have in mind to about £2.5 million which would have to be put into another area. Therefore, we will have to look at the costs of each area to see how many areas we can squeeze out of the £6 million.
§ Lord Mackie of BenshieMy Lords, does the Minister agree with his noble friend's statement that there is production of wheat and barley which nobody wants? Is that not an extraordinary exaggeration of the situation? Can the Minister say what percentage of the wheat and barley is unwanted and what this country will do without the percentage which is wanted?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, I must apologise to the noble Lord since I do not have that percentage with me at the moment. However, it is a fact that the storehouses are groaning with cereals at present. As the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, knows better than I do, the Council of Ministers has now decided that we must try to grow more for the market, which means growing more milling wheat and malting barley.
§ Baroness NicolMy Lords, can we take it from the Minister's apparently sympathetic reply to my noble friend's supplementary question that the Treasury veto which is to be written on to the face of the Bill will not be applied at least until the £5 million or £6 million has been spent?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, the £6 million is firmly secured so far as agreement with the Treasury is concerned.
§ Baroness WhiteMy Lords, should the Welsh environmentally sensitive area prove to be one of the rather more economic ones, can we have some assurance that we shall have more than one designated area? We put in for several and we should like to have more of them in our beautiful country?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, we must see where we go so far as designation is concerned. I have no doubt that we shall be discussing this in some depth when we reach the Committee stage of the Bill.
Lord HuntMy Lords, can the Minister say, even at this early stage, how long he expects the initial experiments with six designated areas to run, bearing in mind the threats in that period to the other areas within the total of 14 recommended by the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council? When does the Minister expect that it will be possible to move from the pilot stage to a wider extension of the scheme?
§ Lord BelsteadMy Lords, I should have thought that a period of five years would be about right for the initial designation of environmentally sensitive areas; but again, this is something on which we would want the views of the House.