On 25th July 2023, the Bishop of Carlisle gave his valedictory speech during a debate on land use in England, raising the need for sustainable development and strong communication within departments and communities:
The Lord Bishop of Carlisle: My Lords, this is a valedictory speech. I rise to deliver it with a mixture of huge gratitude and considerable sadness. The gratitude is what I feel towards so many in your Lordships’ House, both Members and staff, whose kindness, friendship and wisdom have made my 10 years here a time of great enjoyment, huge learning and constant interest. Thank you so much.
The sadness, of course, derives from the fact that this chapter of my life now comes to an end. As lead bishop on health and social care, I have had the particular privilege of getting to know a whole series of Health Ministers—all extremely gracious and accommodating— of engaging with some fascinating, and often contentious debates, especially in the area of medical ethics; and sitting on Select Committees on the sustainability of the NHS and on the future of social care. Indeed, I had been hoping to speak about social care—which is still by no means fixed—in the debate originally planned for today. That was not to be, and instead I am delighted that this topic of land use relates so very closely and immediately to that part of England in which I have lived and worked as a bishop for the last 21 years: Cumbria. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and the Land Use in England Committee, on producing such a thorough and very judicious report.
My right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford had hoped to be here in her capacity as lead bishop for housing. Regrettably she is unable to come so, in her absence and on her behalf, I focus my comments primarily on housing, with particular reference to recommendation 28 in the report. It goes without saying that housing has to be an integral pillar of any effective land use framework. As the report observes, the built environment in England is still relatively small, especially in very sparsely populated areas and counties such as Cumbria. New housing represents only a fraction even of that.
There is, as we all know, an enormous need for more houses—but they must be in the right places, as the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Moylan, have indicated. Wise planning is essential both for meeting that human need and for stimulating economic growth. Those new houses must, above all, be sustainable. This was one of the five principles for good housing mentioned by a recent report of the Archbishops’ commission on housing called Coming Home. It means that any new housing must work in harmony with its local environment and sustain the balance of the natural world in which it sits.
Sustainability is also a golden thread which runs right through the report we are considering today. I was particularly struck by a comment made by Dr Alison Caffyn of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, who said that while communities were not necessarily against new housing,
“they see so many missed opportunities for integrating more trees, more biodiversity, more play areas and more transport connections, cycle routes and so on”.
As we have heard, another word for this is “multifunctionality”. It applies just as much to urban areas as it does to rural ones. It is a vital principle of land use that any housing development should offer a happy, healthy environment for those who live in or near it.
The report makes clear that we need developments which are biodiverse with plenty of access to green space. Those are the developments which are good for the planet, for people’s physical and mental health, as we have heard, and for secure and productive communities. In Cumbria, there is of course huge potential for multifunctionality of this sort, with carbon sequestration, public access to green and open space, and biodiversity projects.
We are all acutely aware of the need to make decisions about appropriate land use in close consultation with local communities, acknowledging their particular history and culture, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, pointed out earlier. I hope that this too will be incorporated in any future land use framework. I should mention that the Church Commissioners are already working on a number of biodiversity-focused projects in close collaboration with several tenant farmers, offering a kind of example in this area.
I must also add my voice to the several calls we have already heard for such a framework to be cross-departmental. The report is very strong on this, and I think it is widely recognised that none of the land use challenges we face can be tackled by one government department alone. Only yesterday my right reverend friend the Bishop of Exeter spoke in your Lordships’ House about the need for a cross-cutting rural strategy. My hope—and I am not alone in hoping it—is that this approach could be dovetailed with the land use framework and duly incorporated into the brief of the proposed land use commission, should that ever come into being.
Extracts from the speeches that followed:
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl): My Lords, I am delighted to speak as the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle’s swansong die away across your Lordships’ House. I have been one of his flock in the diocese of Carlisle for the 21 years in which he has served both as suffragan and then as diocesan bishop. While it is true that I am president of the National Sheep Association, I do not think I am ever likely to win a rosette in his class at the Loweswater Show.
As his comments today have shown, he has throughout his time here ceaselessly promoted the concerns and problems of his diocese in your Lordships’ House. As he has explained, he has also been the Bishops’ spokesman for health and social care. I understand that this arose out of a slight misunderstanding about his previous experience, which seems to me to echo the generality of how things work in politics. One of the leitmotivs of his activities has been an overriding wish to try to draw people together to get genuine agreement about the appropriate way forward.
While I have made innumerable speeches in your Lordships’ House about sheep, I have never once in over 30 years spoken about health or social care, so I am not qualified to comment, other than to say that it is quite clear from the respect he is accorded across the House that he has made a real contribution. I am sure I speak for all of us when I say to him and his family that we wish them every good wish as they emigrate from Cumbria to Oxfordshire.
Baroness Rock (Con): My Lords, I too pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle for his valuable contributions to this House. I declare my interests as a tenant farmer and as chair of the Tenancy Working Group and the Rock Review. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and the members of the Select Committee for producing such a thorough and extremely important report.
The committee heard that a significant barrier to achieving high take-up of ELMS is uncertainty around the schemes and how they will work in practice. This includes provision of access to those schemes for tenant farmers. Your Lordships have heard me say many times in this House that 64% of England has a tenant farmer as a custodian of the land. It was encouraging to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, talk about land managers as opposed to landowners.
Defra could have a quick win in this area. It could ensure that the design of its Countryside Stewardship Plus scheme, which is due to be rolled out over the coming months, takes on board the measures already employed within the Sustainable Farming Incentive to ensure that tenant farmers are not excluded from participation. This would include not routinely requiring landlords’ consent, providing flexibility on scheme length and avoiding the imposition of penalties where land is lost to tenant farmers. Will the Minister confirm that Countryside Stewardship Plus will be as tenant friendly as SFI?
Lord Bilimoria (CB): My Lords, the Land Use in England Committee produced its report Making the Most Out of England’s Land in December 2022. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, highlighted that one of the main recommendations was the creation of a land use commission and gave the example of New Zealand, which has a national spatial planning unit. The committee took evidence from a variety of institutions including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Natural England, the National Farmers’ Union, the Country Land and Business Association, the Woodland Trust and the Ramblers. I congratulate the committee and the noble Lord on leading this debate. I wish the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle all the very best and thank him for his 10 years of service to our House.
Lord Greenhalgh (C0n): I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate for his decade-long contribution to this House and his interest in these matters, and particularly in the long-term future of health and social care. There is no greater conundrum than how we remove the “Berlin Wall” between health and social care and create a sustainable future so that people, particularly in old age, get the care they deserve.
It is important to recognise the scope of this ad hoc committee, which was established last year. It was called to examine the pressures on land use, but excludes the built environment, and to consider land use needs outside the planning system. The central recommendation of the committee is for the creation of a land use commission, although, because of the Government’s negative response, I think the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has potentially reframed that as a panel: an independent, statutory, arm’s-length public body tasked with producing a land use framework. While it is not suggested that this land use framework set any distinct housing development policy or replace the planning system in any way, it is certainly all about the interaction between housing and land use that clearly should be acknowledged.
Baroness Bakewell of Hartington Mandeville (LD): My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register as a vice-president of the LGA. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle on his valedictory speech. His contribution will be sorely missed in the House after he has left us.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, on his introduction to this debate and on his excellent chairmanship of the Land Use in England Committee, of which I was a member. The noble Lord is enthusiastic about the rural countryside, the environmental and economic well-being of the countryside and how it fits into and contributes to the prosperity of the whole of England.
(…)
There will now be no low-cost housing for young people, young couples or young families in rural areas. This will result in social engineering on a grand scale. Who will provide the children for our rural schools? Where will the teachers, the voluntary firefighters, the police officers, the hairdressers, the nurses and the farm workers live? All of these are essential occupations in rural hamlets and villages. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle referred to the need for sustainable housing. Having no new homes means fewer residents, which means fewer bus services. Young people will be unable to mix in the evenings, and young people do need each other. They are noisy and they like loud music, but they are full of life and need stimulation and something to do. They will be pushed out of the countryside.
This announcement may well deliver the number of homes the Government have promised, but it is very short-sighted. I am not surprised; the lack of a proper rural strategy is about to come home to roost. Rural areas are not just about agriculture and farming. There is a real need for a vision for land use that covers departments other than Defra, and many others have referred to this. The Government’s response is, sadly, a missed opportunity to make a real difference, and I remain deeply disappointed.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for his excellent introduction, and all the members of the committee who have taken part in producing the report and who have spoken in the debate today. It has been a really important debate, and one that I am sure that we will continue. In particular, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle on his valedictory speech and wish him happy birthday for yesterday. It has been a real privilege knowing the right reverend Prelate—Bishop James—initially through the Church in Cumbria, then as a Member of Parliament, and now in your Lordships’ House. He has given many of us his experience, knowledge and wisdom in everything that he has worked on. He will be missed both here and in Cumbria.
When I was reading this report, I found that it drew a close focus on to why we need a land use framework: the fact that there is a finite amount of land in England yet increasing pressures on what this land needs to deliver. The current system, where different needs are delivered in isolation by different teams and organisations following policies set by different departments, is inefficient and, as we know, can have unintended and unforeseen consequences. The report talks about the challenges, pressures and missed opportunities from working in these siloes. This point has come across very strongly in the debate. As we have heard, it does not have to be like this, and I hope the Government will take much of what is in the report and actually act on its suggestions.
Lord Benyon (Con, DEFRA): My Lords, I refer you to my entry in the register. I start by paying tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle. His contribution to this House and the wisdom of his involvement here over a decade was well known to me as a new arrival, and I pay tribute to what he said today but also for his service to this House. He talked about many issues that came up in this debate, and his interest in social welfare is of course very pronounced. It was great that he could speak in this debate, because I think understanding nature’s ability to heal us in body and mind is fundamental. I know that he will continue to take a great interest and we wish him well for the future.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB): My Lords, I must first thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, especially the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle, who has contributed so much to this House. I join others in wishing him well in his retirement, although I suspect that, like most people who are born contributors, his retirement will not be retirement in the sense that a lot of people think of it. I also thank the Minister and his team for the meeting we had last week, and I thank the Minister for his concluding remarks just now.
As I hope I managed to get across in my introduction, the main point is that this subject is not business as usual in the countryside. The Government, I hope led by Defra, has to plan, manipulate and flexibly manage—I am not quite sure what the right word is—our land use going into the future. I emphasise to those noble Lords who expressed concern that we on the committee were not proposing that some large commission would take over and command not necessarily the nationalisation of land but the nationalisation of land use. That is definitely not what we were looking for. We were looking for a small panel with data-collecting and analysis ability, taking the long view, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned; definitely no dictatorial powers, either from the bottom or the top. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, you will not achieve your wanted outputs unless you have collaboration. Demanding outputs will never work, and we are very well aware of that. If you want more skylarks, you have to put up the rewards for skylarks. If you want more forestry, you put up the planting grants. You just have to analyse it and work it all out.
On both those subjects, as I mentioned in my introductory remarks, training is so important. You get people involved. I was on the Glover review and I remember visiting the Cranborne Chase AONB, where there was a local scheme to encourage more plovers’ nests. I visited a farmer there and, that night, a fox had killed two of his plovers. He was in tears—he was emotionally involved in what he was trying to achieve. It is not all about the money; it is about involving the farmers. Certainly, I am aware that all the farmers I have spoken to on this subject, both before and since we produced our report, have become emotionally involved. However, they need guidance, and for Defra and the Government to help them.
The Church of England in Parliament 
You must be logged in to post a comment.