Robbie Moore MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Twigg. Before I start my speech, I would like to go back to the comments that I made earlier. With the motion now having been moved, I seek your guidance on how we can consider these regulations without any financial impact assessment having been undertaken.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Mr Twigg. I seek clarity on whether I can move a closure motion. I am seeking your guidance on that.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. That takes me back to a point I made to the farming Minister at DEFRA questions just last week. I told him that many farming businesses are deeply concerned about the collective impacts of the wider budgetary changes, and he said that I need to get out more and speak to more farming businesses. Just last week I was in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire —and that was just three days of last week. Not one of the farming businesses I spoke to agreed with the approach the Government are taking. [Interruption . ]

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I just want to make it clear that we did not indicate dropping the delinked payments at the speed at which the Government are doing it—in the fifth year of the seven years of transition. That is the clear difference and the reason why we are debating this piece of legislation today.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It comes back to both points that have been made, and perhaps the Minister will pick them up in his response. There is no absolute clarity about the deadlines or timelines for new announcements that will come forward to replace the sustainable farming incentive extended offer, which opened to all applicants only in November 2024. Cutting that option is therefore causing huge concern. We do not know—perhaps the Minister can pick this up when he responds—whether, as has been indicated, the design of whatever may replace the SFI will be based on the land use framework consultation. I would like to understand from the Minister when that consultation will conclude and when the Government will make a positive announcement to reassure our wider farming community. Just yesterday, the Government revealed in answer to a written question that more than 6,600 applications from farmers trying to do the right thing and transition to SFI—the replacement scheme that covers the dramatic reduction in the delinked payments that we are considering today—have been frozen out of the system. That means that about 20% or 25% of the 37,500 live applications are still in in-flight mode, sitting on the Rural Payments Agency’s database and locked out of consideration. What does the farming Minister say to those 6,600 applicants, who have spent months working up a replacement scheme? How will he provide financial reassurance to the businesses that will not be able to benefit?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  That is absolutely the point: it causes huge concern to many farming businesses because they are not able to forecast what financial investment will go into the business, whether from delinked payments or any sustainable farming incentive scheme that they were hoping to enter.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  The reality is that we cannot, because of the Government’s announcement of dramatic reductions to the delinked payments that many farming businesses relied on. The explanatory note itself states that the reductions for 2025 will result in “increased demand from farmers for the Environmental Land Management schemes”, but the Government have closed the entry for any applications that were live and stopped any new applicant coming in. So where is the money going to? How will it be utilised by the farming sector? Slashing the payments without warning ahead of the expected timeframe has thrown thousands of farming businesses across the country into disarray and forced to reconsider their financial position and many of the ongoing projects and investments on the farm. I can use an example in my own constituency. Just this week I spoke to a farming family in Stanbury in the Worth Valley who have experienced a dramatic reduction, with this being the fifth year of the delinked payments going down dramatically to £7,200 from an annual payment of about £20,000. They have been locked into a higher level stewardship scheme for a five-year period, but because the Government have announced that the SFI application window has closed, they do not now have the ability to enter a new SFI opportunity that has a higher financial payment rate than the higher level stewardship that they have been locked into. That is just one example of many farming businesses across the country that are being negatively impacted.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was at the Yorkshire agricultural machinery show just a month or so ago, and I spoke to many farming businesses and many people associated with them, including machinery dealers and feed merchants. Many of them are saying to me that already their order books have dramatically reduced as a result of the collective impacts of the budgetary changes that were announced in October and November. The wider rural economy is being impacted by the legislation before us.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  That is the crux of the issue. I am sure that all Members have been contacted by many of those in the environmental lobby who are deeply concerned that closing the SFI applications is having a detrimental impact not only on our many farming businesses, but on the environmental benefit for which the SFI schemes are designed to set the right direction. The idea of SFI, and public services for public goods, is the right one. The changes we are discussing today would be understandable had they been announced alongside a massive increase in the SFI offering to make up the difference in the shortfall. The question that not only I but my colleagues who shadow the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have been constantly asking the Government is: where is the money from the dramatic delinked payment drop going? It does not seem to be going to any of the other measurables. The Government will say that they have reached the cap, but they have given no explanation as to what the cap is for SFI nor, indeed, where it has been reached and where the applications in the pipeline would have got to. Much more is clarity needed, which is why, Mr Twigg, I felt pushed to raise my point of order. We feel that there should have been a proper economic impact assessment of this piece of delegated legislation. We needed to be more informed before we could discuss it. Will the Minister confirm what date he expects the SFI to open? At the same time that the Government have cut the two primary sources of support for farmers, budgetary changes have also had a huge impact on the wider cash-flow position of farm businesses. The introduction of the double cab pick-up tax punishes family farmers for using one vehicle for both personal and business use; perhaps the Minister would prefer that they owned two. The fertiliser carbon tax is likely to come down the line, and wider sources indicate that it is likely to push the price of a tonne of fertiliser up by £50. That is a clear political choice to push net zero no matter the cost to farming businesses and food prices. The changes to employers’ national insurance have hiked up the average cost of a worker by £900. Far from reducing energy prices by £300, the Government are about to oversee a hike in the energy price cap of about 6.4%. The reason why I go through all those other budgetary changes is because they are highly relevant to this piece of delegated legislation. The Government are making a choice today to vote on dramatically reducing delinked payments in the fifth year of a seven-year transition period, despite the certainty that was provided to the wider farming community. That is why the NFU, the Country Land and Business Association, the Tenant Farmers Association and the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers do not support the direction of this legislation. Then, of course, there is the family farm tax, which will force a family farm to anticipate an inheritance tax bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds. That will be an additional burden on our many family farming businesses, which in many cases are already struggling to make a profit. We know that the return on an average family farming business is about 1%, and many of those businesses are highly geared. To then have a huge change in the amount of positive cash coming into those businesses through the dramatic reduction in delinked payments does not give them any clarity or certainty.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  That is my point. This weekend I will visit farmers in Northumberland, who have contacted me to make the point that some of our cross-border farming operations will have access to very different subsidy schemes and environmental payment schemes north of the border and south of the border. Has the Minister has considered the impact of that in relation to the need to put everybody, no matter where they farm, on the same level playing field? Hon. Members will by now be tired of my asking the Minister and the Department for impact assessments, not just of the Government’s farming measures in isolation but of the collective impact. The explanatory memorandum suggests that taking away 76%-plus of principal payments to farmers, shortly after announcing that the scheme designed to replace them is being frozen, will have no significant impact. Of course it will. How has the Minister’s explanatory memorandum come to the conclusion that there will be no impact whatsoever? That does not seem to ring true. Paragraph 9.2, on the impact on businesses, charities and voluntary bodies, states: “There is no, or no significant, impact on business”. I do not understand how that conclusion has been reached. It goes on: “However, the reductions to delinked payments will be used to help fund other schemes, including Environmental Land Management schemes, which offer funding streams for farmers and land managers.” When the SFI has been closed, how can the Minister conclude that there has been no impact whatsoever? I would like to understand that. One question remains, and I hope the Minister will be able to address it directly. Where will the money go that has supposedly been saved by the instrument? The NFU estimates that the total saving to the Department next year will be £400 million. In answer to my recent written question, the Minister declined to provide a spending breakdown of the farming budget for this year and next year. Instead, he provided those figures across the two-year period, neatly hiding where the £400 million will go. I would greatly appreciate it if he could explain where that £400 million is going. Can the Minister assure farmers across the country and those watching that the funds will not be going back to the Treasury and the Chancellor, and that they will at least find their way, through some mechanism, back into farmers’ pockets, including the 6,600 who have applied for SFI but have had their applications blocked by the Government? At the very least, farmers need certainty, and since last July they have been blindsided time and again by this Government, including by this legislation. Perhaps the Minister could provide that small piece of reassurance in his remarks. To conclude, it will come as no surprise that we will not support this legislation. At the end of the debate we will push for a vote, so we can at least demonstrate that the Opposition are on the side of our farming community.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Okay, thank you, Mr Twigg. As the Committee debates this delegated legislation, I would like to take us back to why we are where we are, in the sense of being in year 5 of a seven-year transition period. This direction was positively set out by the previous Administration as we moved from the common agricultural policy to a transition away from the basic payment to the environmental land management scheme, which enabled farmers to enter the sustainable farming incentive, the countryside stewardship schemes and landscape recovery schemes, all of which aimed at inviting farmers to make applications so that they could make up any financial loss from not receiving the equivalent amount of basic payment scheme moneys. They were to be paid for delivering public goods. As the Minister rightly said, we are in year 5 of a seven-year transition period; but the direction rightly set under the Conservative Administration had to do with a steady tapering down of payments that could be made through what was previously called the basic payment scheme—in other words, the move to the revised delinked payment scheme. However, without any warning or suggestion before the general election, in November, in a sneaked-out blog on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ farming website, there was an indication that dramatic reductions would be taking place through delinked payments. Our wider farming community was given no warning of the change, which will have a dramatic impact on cash flow in all of our farming community. Under this instrument, farmers will receive significantly less through their area-based payment schemes than they originally expected—the anticipated reduction is 76% The reduction climbs even higher or larger farms as payments for farmers receiving over £30,000 will be ended. No matter what payment they were anticipating, how big their farming business is or how much land they are farming, it will be capped at £7,200. For a farm, short-term planning is for longer periods than in any other sector. Improving fields, livestock herds and farm infrastructure takes many years, and delinked payments alongside being able to get into the sustainable farming incentive were the key guaranteed income that allowed farmers to invest with the assurance that the moneys would be coming in..

• 25 Mar 2025 · Construction Standards: New Build Homes · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for securing this important debate. As I said in my earlier intervention, it seems that we have both experienced the challenges of Harron Homes, and she has my full sympathy for having to deal with them. In my own constituency, I had the managing director come out—not that he wanted to, but I managed to get him there—and we had a meeting with residents to talk through some of the challenges. I share the concerns that she raised on behalf of her constituents, because it is not a good housing developer and it does not have its residents’ best interests at heart. Construction standards are not just about bricks and mortar; they go into a home, and they go beyond that, into the sense of belonging that one feels when living in a good quality space. Construction standards are also about the process of planning, site security and development maintenance, all of which play a part in the experience of a resident who moves into a property. I will use this opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that I have experienced in my constituency, particularly in Long Lee. In Redwood Close, a development is being undertaken by Accent Housing Group. I was called to look at the condition of an existing construction site about eight months ago. It is derelict because those involved in the construction went bust, but this is a site that is right in the heart of Long Lee and, dare I say it, has been causing a huge nuisance not only to those who wanted to move into the development and are now experiencing delays, but to those living in close proximity. I was invited along to see the access challenges to this particular site for myself. Neighbouring properties have had boundary walls, drainage and access all disturbed as the result of ongoing, existing construction. It is completely unacceptable. I met again with the director for development, who came out on to the site with me around four months ago and reassured me that things would change at speed. I can tell hon. Members that nothing has changed at all, other than giving me further reassurance and then holding a residents meeting. They have told me that Esh Construction Ltd has now been appointed to complete the works, but those works are not due to start until mid-spring and construction of the site at Long Lee will not be completed until 2026. All the while, those neighbours—who have had their property damaged, access hindered and boundary walls to their properties completely removed, allowing easy access to a dangerous site—have had to live with this right on their doorstep. It prompts the question: what has the local authority been doing throughout this whole process? Bradford council has not monitored the construction, nor has it carried out sufficient enforcement action; indeed, no enforcement action seems to have been taken at all. That is not a satisfactory outcome for the residents in Long Lee.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Construction Standards: New Build Homes · Hansard source

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  I would politely push back on that. My understanding is that local authorities do have the powers available to them throughout the planning process to challenge the planning application put before them and to have a robust level of negotiation with the developer, resulting in a section 106 obligation being firmly and robustly constructed to deliver residents’ best interests. It is up to the local authority whether it chooses to utilise the powers awarded to it. In my case, I feel that Bradford council does not use any such powers in the first place.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Construction Standards: New Build Homes · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady raises two points. I will take the second point on the director’s responsibility first. I absolutely agree that it should not be possible for a housing developer to move away from a scheme, leaving it unfinished, as happened in Long Lee, where Accent Housing effectively did not deliver, causing huge nuisance to local residents. That should not be an acceptable situation. On the section 106 negotiations, the question comes down to this: when is the trigger point kicking in, and is it in the best interests of those residents? If it is not, why? I would argue strongly that, in the scenarios I have seen with Bradford council, those trigger points are not negotiated in the best interests of my residents. That local authority, back in 2021, threw its statutory obligation to Government and said that it was in sound financial health. I do not think that resource or Government cuts are an issue in relation to how it anticipates those negotiations going on; it is just pure lack of willingness to do its job. I conclude my remarks on that point, because I know that there are many other speakers who want to contribute.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Construction Standards: New Build Homes · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Construction Standards: New Build Homes · Hansard source

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  I feel for the hon. Member’s constituents. In Silsden, in my constituency of Keighley and Ilkley, Harron Homes carried out a development of 50 plus properties where my constituents faced exactly the same challenges and scenarios of snagging that she is quite rightly indicating. Alongside her, I reiterate my call to the likes of Harron Homes to, essentially, sort themselves out for the benefit of the constituents of us both.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Construction Standards: New Build Homes · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree, and that point has been made by the hon. Members for Sherwood Forest and for Ashfield (Lee Anderson): once someone has purchased a property or is tied into a contractual relationship, dealing with those snagging issues is a huge challenge. Where can they go from there? They have been taken out of the local authority’s remit to deal with it, because it has approved the planning application—having probably not carried out any enforcement action at all. That is the problem I observed with Bradford council’s lack of any attention to the challenges that we faced in Keighley, Ilkley and the wider area that I represent. The problem is that, when someone is locked into a contractual relationship, or has even moved into a property, and there are snagging issues, they are effectively trapped and there is no real ability for any organisation with any weight to deal with that. Will the Minister address in her closing remarks what action the Government will now take to deal with cases where new developments have been constructed of a poor quality and concerns have been consistently raised? It should not take a Member of Parliament to deal with those concerns—it seems that only housing developers only then suddenly realise they have to do something about them. What will the Government do to provide more weight to these concerns that are being raised, so that people with snagging issues can have reassurance that those problems will be sorted out? I will conclude my comments by discussing the challenges associated with dealing with section 106 moneys. When planning applications have been approved, there is then effectively a negotiation that takes place between the developer and the local authority. I again have to rely on Bradford council negotiating the best deal for whatever that section 106 money is contributing to. Section 106 money is effectively a payment to deal with any mitigating factors that have been negatively imposed on our community through that development. I give the simple example: if those negotiations are not robust enough, that disadvantages the communities we represent. If that section 106 obligation is not spent or enacted within a reasonable time, our constituents are significantly disadvantaged as a result of a local authority—such as Labour-run Bradford council—not responding well enough. That disadvantages the communities we represent.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. It is why the Government should be honest with the public that, far from strengthening environmental protections, the Bill creates a direct avenue for developers to pay to do environmental damage and get around otherwise more stringent protection laws.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Let me get to the point—I know time is short, Madam Deputy Speaker. This Government’s approach in the Bill will not deliver planning done at speed, and it will not give the environmental protections that the Government are indicating to the wider public. It is not a good Bill.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  There are so many points to address in the Bill, but I will keep my remarks to just a few. I have grave concerns that the Government’s agreeable aim of freeing up our planning system will be dragged further by this Bill into the bog of planning delay and indecision. There has been a lot of talk about whether the Bill will afford special protections for peatland on sites of special scientific interest, but I have looked at the detail and have concerns that, rather than leading to better protections for peatland areas, the Bill does the opposite. I will start my contribution by explaining why that is such a huge issue. Take Walshaw moor, which borders my constituency, just next to the Worth valley in my beautiful part of West Yorkshire. Most importantly, it is an irreplaceable blanket bog peatland and carries protected status. It is a site of heavily protected bird species and ground-nesting birds. Recently, it has become the proposed site for what would be England’s largest onshore wind farm. I am firmly opposed to that development. The disruption that a new wind farm would cause, through the constructions of 65 turbines—each taller than Blackpool tower—would be devasting to the blanket bog peatland. In fact, peat bogs across the UK store many times more carbon than our forests. Disturbing that peatland by constructing a wind farm on top of it could release many tonnes of carbon back into the atmosphere, directly contradicting the aim of the whole development—namely, to reduce carbon emissions. It is simply nonsensical to use Walshaw moor when the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has shown that the Government could achieve their targets for wind power without building on a single acre of protected peatland. Let me come to the substance of the Bill as it relates to that development. The introduction of environmental development plans seems like a good idea: why shouldn’t developers pay some form of compensation for the environmental damage that their developments cause? As is always the case, however, things begin to unravel when we delve into the detail. What this change effectively amounts to is a mercenary approach to environmental protection that gives developers a much freer hand to negotiate their commitments. Indeed, local planning authorities will be given a much freer hand to take a looser approach in ensuring that developers do their fair bit for any environmental mitigation measures, particularly on protected sites, with the emphasis on a financial contribution. Funding for restoration, either on site or indeed mitigated elsewhere, does not undo the damage caused by the development—be it to assets of scientific, natural or cultural value. In the case of a protected peatland such as Walshaw moor, that is exactly why the current proposed development is completely the wrong approach. The bogs themselves take millennia to reform, and sphagnum moss breaks down so slowly—by just 1 mm a year—to form peat. That is why the removal of the moratorium on onshore wind farms, which will allow more protected peatland to be built on, is the wrong approach from the Government. I cannot stress that enough. The Bill moves us from a dynamic in which we proactively protect what we value to one in which we barter what we can price up and pretend that value and price are the same.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is not fair at all for the state, be it national Government or our local authorities, to step in and not pay a landowner the market value they deserve. It is absolutely outrageous that this Government are introducing legislation, and changing section 12 of the Land Compensation Act 1961 on that basis. I do not think that that will create any efficiency within the planning system, and neither—dare I say it?—will it create any better means of money being spent by local authorities to deliver public services.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister gets to the nub of the issue in that the nutrient neutrality issue caused an absolute stagnation in housing development. Indeed, the Government want to give Natural England even more powers, which will lead not only to increased stagnation in development but to frustration for those who want development to take place. Many Members from across the House have referred to the £100 million bat tunnel and the development of HS2. Natural England raised that issue, yet the Government want to give that very organisation even more powers, which will lead to increased stagnation in development. The Government may bring forward a Bill to create an avenue for more development, but this Bill will not achieve that given the environmental protection measures. In the light of the Government’s removal of the moratorium on onshore wind farm development, coupled with the provisions in the Bill, I fear for our protected peatlands, not only in the beautiful uplands of West Yorkshire but right across the county. Secondly, I fear that the Bill will not create the speedy planning system that the Government hope it will. By placing the design and formulation of environmental development plans in the hands of Natural England, the Government have ceded much of their control over them. As a single-issue public body, Natural England operates with a very different interpretation of “reasonable mitigations” than the rest of the public when it comes to preserving nature—I have already referred to the £100 million HS2bat tunnel. As developers, Natural England and environmental campaigners barter over the details of environmental development plans and lodge legal challenges against them, how will the Secretary of State speed up our planning system, as she is forced to sit on the sidelines of those negotiations and watch Natural England take a lead? She has created a Bill that hands more power to Natural England, not less, and removes her ability to ensure that infrastructure can be delivered at speed. The Government must be honest and up front about what they value. Finally, I would like to raise another issue in the Bill which, in my view, moves from naivety to the realm of malice. Compulsory purchase orders are highly controversial at the best of times, but in another blow to our rural communities the Government have decided that landowners should not be paid the value of their land in full.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my right hon. Friend not realise that, in addition to placemaking, this is about making sure that infrastructure is at the heart of any new development, so that those who move into new places have GP practices, doctors surgeries and other facilities available to them?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Following Santander’s disappointing decision to turn its back on Ilkley and close the bank branch there, Link has recommended that our town gets a full banking hub, which I have long campaigned for. That is welcome news, but it should not have taken the last bank closing for us to get one. Meanwhile, in Keighley, bank branch after bank branch has closed, but there is no sign of us getting a banking hub. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time on getting banking hubs open without our waiting for an area’s last bank branch to close? Will she ensure that banking hub services are accessible, with full cash access?