Tim Farron MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  One in five social care jobs in Cumbria are currently unfilled, and the consequences are unbearable for those who are vulnerable; indeed, they are causing pressure on the rest of the NHS. Will the Secretary of State look carefully at the specific needs of rural communities such as ours, where it is so much harder to recruit and retain social care workers?

• 19 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  It is related to the questions we just had. Thank you for granting the point of order, Mr Speaker. At 7 o’clock this morning, entirely foreseeably, Ofwat announced bill rises of 36% for water bill payers around the country, which is an increase 14 times larger than current inflation. We know that a large proportion of that rise will be spent on paying off the debt of water companies: a debt incurred simply by paying dividends that were unearned and bonuses that were undeserved. Is it in order for the Government to have known that was coming but not to have come to the House to make a statement, which would have allowed us to hold them to account for their failure to ensure that Ofwat has the teeth it needs to hold the water companies to account?

• 19 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

• 19 Dec 2024 · Budget: Family Farms · Hansard source

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  Merry Christmas to you, Mr Speaker, and to all here and beyond. Farmers in my communities and across the country are genuinely devastated by the Government’s family farm tax, which will affect many in my patch who are on less than the minimum wage, and by the 76% cut in the basic payment next year. Perhaps what dismays farmers across our country and in Westmorland even more is that the overall agricultural policy of this Government and their Conservative predecessors is to actively disincentivise farmers from producing food, despite the fact that this country produces only 55% of the food we need. That is a dereliction of duty by both main parties, and a threat to national security. What plans does the Secretary of State have to change his policy and back our farmers to produce food?

• 19 Dec 2024 · Hospice Funding · Hansard source

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  This additional funding will benefit hospices serving Westmorland communities—St Mary’s, St John’s, Eden Valley and the children’s hospice, Jigsaw—only if two things happen. First, the Government must provide additional funding to match the national insurance increases that those hospices will have to bear, and secondly, the Government must ensure that the integrated care boards in south Cumbria and north Cumbria pass on that money in full and on time. Will the Minister press them to do so? On the Morecambe bay end, will she press them on the closure of the Abbey View ward at Barrow hospital? The trust is planning to close that end of life ward, which will put additional pressure on our local hospices but without any additional funding to support them.

• 17 Dec 2024 · National Wealth Fund: Opportunities for Industry · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that it is something of a tragedy that the UK, which is surrounded by the highest tidal range on planet Earth after Canada, uses so little of that for tidal and marine energy? She may agree that the reason is that while the lifetime cost of such schemes is as cheap as chips, the up-front costs are expensive. Could the national wealth fund ensure that we can build things—for example, in Morecambe Bay—that will generate secure renewable energy for all our lifetimes?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Refugees: Employment · Hansard source

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  The Government are seeking to clear the very unacceptable backlog—the huge backlog—of asylum applications they inherited from the previous Government. As a result, we are already beginning to see an increase in the number of newly recognised refugees, who rightly now have the right to work and to contribute here. Can the Minister say a bit more about the strategic planning and cross-departmental work that is happening on providing tailored support—he talked about tailored support, but the existing scheme of course comes to an end in June—so that refugees who have every right to be here have the ability to take a job, pay taxes and contribute here?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Refugees: Employment · Hansard source

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  9. What steps her Department is taking to support people newly recognised as refugees into work.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is a great privilege to speak on this Bill on behalf of my party, and a still greater privilege, I dare say, to speak as the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, which includes Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston Water, Haweswater, Rydal Water, Grasmere, Elterwater, Esthwaitewater, Brotherswater, the River Kent, the River Eden and much of Morecambe bay. We are a stunningly beautiful part of the country, and also one of the wettest. For us, water is unavoidable and precious. It is precious to our biodiversity, our heritage and our tourism economy. As the House may have noticed, the Liberal Democrats chose to make water the centrepiece of our election campaign. So much so that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) spent much of the campaign in the stuff. We continue to champion a radical restructuring of our water industry, because water is the most vital of resources and because we cannot allow a continuation of the poor regulation, wanton pollution and abuse of power that became hallmarks of the water industry under the Conservative Government. There is much to welcome in this Bill, including criminal liability for chief executives who are responsible for severe environmental failure—a measure that I remind colleagues was proposed by the Liberal Democrats before the last election, and that Labour refused to support at the time because it believed the measure to be unnecessary. We are pleased that Labour now agrees with us. We are also encouraged by the proposals to increase some of Ofwat’s powers, to introduce a fit-and-proper-person test for chief executives, to institute an automatic fining system that makes sense, to install real-time monitors, and to create greater data transparency. All these measures are welcome, and they will all help, but they do not yet amount to the radical structural transformation that is so obviously needed. The recent announcement of Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review is welcome, but it is also kind of frustrating. It suggests that the Government might well be up for a more radical change, just not yet. The review will not conclude until next summer, of course, after which many people, including in the Treasury, will need to go over its proposals before it hopefully makes it into a King’s Speech, running the risk that the more ambitious part 2 might not find its way on to the legislative timetable in this Parliament. Of course, fixing the entire water industry and sewerage system is not an overnight job, but this feels like an especially ponderous way to solve such an urgent and pressing issue.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I commend my hon. Friend for his swimming activities, and I agree with him. The regulatory framework should be used to improve our waterways, not to strip them of their vital designations. We take the view that it is our job to campaign with energy and passion for a radical clean-up. We are determined to keep our word to the voters by fighting for that action. I will take a quick moment to say something that I feel is most important. The people who work on the frontline in our water industry, and those who work for the Environment Agency and Ofwat, deserve our thanks and admiration—yet, because of the failings of the system, they end up taking the blame that ought to land here in this place. The legions of people running our water system do a vital job, so I want us to get the tone of this debate right. We can be rightly outraged about how our water industry is allowed to operate, and at the same time be hugely grateful to those who, despite the system, do outstanding work to serve our communities. I want those people to know, and to hear, that we really value them. They are a blessing to us. They are not the problem; the system is. We are determined to fight for a better system for all those people to work in.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I think two things. I respect the devolution settlement and think it is important that we do not overstep what we are called to do today. I also, however, agree that the waterways of all corners of our United Kingdom are precious and must be protected. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. To conclude, the job of the Liberal Democrats is to be the constructive opposition in this place, and to now use Committee stage to inject into the Bill the ambition and urgency that we feel is currently lacking. To millions of people out there who care deeply about our waterways, the problems are obvious and so are many of the solutions. We call on the Government to accept the amendments that we will table in Committee in good faith, to act ambitiously and comprehensively, and to do so without delay.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his service in a previous life, as well as in this one. He makes a very important point, to which I will turn in a moment. There is no point having great regulatory powers if we do not have a regulator with the resources to do the job that it needs to do. Nevertheless, regulation could be made better. Water industry regulation is split between the Environment Agency and Ofwat, and that plainly does not work. We have two inadequately resourced regulators, with inadequate powers, being played off against each other by very powerful water companies that are far better resourced and able to run rings around the very good, but very harassed people whose job it is to hold them to account. I welcome the concession made in the Bill requiring Ofwat to contribute towards meeting the targets of the Environment Act 2021 and the Climate Change Act 2008. That is a step in the right direction because I believe it will be the first time that Ofwat will have proper environmental obligations, alongside its business obligations. We have received promises, as the Secretary of State set out from the Dispatch Box earlier, that this Government will strengthen Ofwat’s powers in ways that we do not see on the face of the Bill. For instance, Liberal Democrat peers asked the Minister to confirm that the Government would ban water company bosses getting bonuses when their company had had a major category 1 or category 2 sewage incident the year before, and the Minister in the other place said: “These are the type of circumstances in which it would be highly inappropriate for a bonus to be awarded.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. 247.] That is very welcome, but it is not on the face of the Bill. I pay tribute to my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place, who forensically engaged with the Bill to make it much better. I also pay tribute to the collegiate and constructive manner in which the Minister, Baroness Hayman, worked with them. To be clear, though, the Liberal Democrats would go even further and create a unified and much more powerful regulator, the clean water authority, absorbing the regulatory powers of Ofwat and the Environment Agency, but with many additional powers, including revoking the licence of poorly performing water companies swiftly, forcing water companies to publish the full scale of their sewage spills, reforming water companies to put local environmental experts on their boards, and putting robust, legally binding targets on sewage discharges. On the issue of discharges, we welcome the change to require data from emergency overflows to be published within an hour of a discharge. That will require companies to monitor all emergency sewage overflows and to ensure that data is reported to the Environment Agency within the hour. To pursue the point made by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), my concern is that the Environment Agency is already massively overwhelmed. In my constituency, I see good people working very hard, but with Coniston, Windermere, the River Eden and the River Kent competing for time, attention and resource, as well as the ongoing work of building flood defences in Kendal, it is hard for them to be able to focus.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Unless, to my absolute surprise, the Liberal Democrats were in power in the 1980s and early 1990s, I do not think that could have been the case. I was at university with the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) when it happened, and neither of us was in government at the time. The British people rightly believe that they voted for a far more ambitious plan than the one in the Bill, and they believe that they voted for it to be delivered urgently. The biggest mistake that Labour Governments tend to make is not being ambitious enough, presumably under the impression that they will be in power for longer than they perhaps might be, so my friendly advice to the Government is to seize the day and seize the moment. The millions who voted Liberal Democrat at the election absolutely did vote for ambitious and urgent change.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Yes, to a degree. I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; it is very welcome, as is the investment that is promised and the way in which it will be provided, but—and I am happy to be put right on this—I think the figure used by the Government is an additional 500 members of staff for the Environment Agency. That is one per constituency in England and Wales. That will not make a noticeable difference. In practice, the Bill could well permit a continuation of the current situation, where water companies will be setting and marking their own homework, with an Environment Agency without the capacity to even manage its current workload, let alone the new duties the Bill will give it to monitor masses of important overflow data. The regulator must be much better funded to do that well. Even then, the regulation rules must be watertight for the Environment Agency to ensure that the water companies cannot pick and choose which information they release or retain. The Minister indicated that the data will be made publicly available and easy to access. I look forward to hearing more detail about how that will be done. That could be a positive move, allowing citizen scientists and campaign groups—such as the wonderful Clean River Kent Campaign group, the Eden Rivers Trust, the South Cumbria Rivers Trust and the Save Windermere campaign, as well as many others from other communities —to be able to hold the water companies to account to a greater degree. After all, knowledge is power. We are keen to encourage the Government to move forward with that. We would also like to see water companies publish the volume and concentration of discharge from all emergency overflows, not just their duration and frequency. Will the Minister consider including that duty? And should we really have water companies installing and maintaining their own monitoring equipment? We believe that the Environment Agency or its successor should be doing that, with the full cost of that work paid for by the water companies. The Bill makes almost no attempt to address the structure of finances and ownership of the water industry. The Minister has indicated that the Bill will seek to change the culture of the industry, which would be welcome, but cultural change will only come with a change to the reckless profiteering that has been the norm. As right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches have said, Lord Cromwell in the other place tabled an amendment requiring annual updates from water companies on any financial restructuring that they have done or plan to do. It cannot go unacknowledged that financial stability and good governance seriously affect the environmental standards that any water company is able to reach. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Witney (Charlie Maynard) and for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) who made those points in relation to Thames Water. I am grateful to my noble Friend Baroness Bakewell for tabling a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Bill in the Lords to create special status, with special protections, for Windermere as an exemplar of the standards we will expect in our waterways across the whole country. The Campaign for National Parks’ health check report, which was released earlier this year, found that only five out of the 880 bodies of water in the national parks of England and Wales met the highest ecological standards, and that every single one was polluted to some degree. Windermere itself received 140 million litres of pollution in the last two years. Amendments tabled in the Lords, which we will table here also, will seek to tackle that. Water industry leaders must be forced to take responsibility for the care of these world class lakes and waterways, and our amendments to the Bill would ensure that they do so. Although the privatisation of the water industry was an incredibly bad decision and definitely did not happen on our watch, I am not convinced that renationalisation would be necessary or a good use of public money. I fear it would mean that we would have to buy the assets back, putting taxpayers’ money into the pockets of those who have already made so much money out of them, without a single penny of that money going into improving infrastructure. Instead, it seems wiser to move away from the current model and to ensure that water companies should be community benefit corporations, so that all revenue goes into keeping environmental standards higher and solving the long-term problems of our networks. None of our constituents should have to pay for company debt. These were business decisions, taken by those who took risks to make money, rather than to invest in our sewage systems; they should bear the consequences of those risks. The current regulatory framework seems to leave water companies immune from the highest penalties, despite their repeated failure to meet their basic obligation to prevent sewage from being dumped in our lakes, rivers and coastal areas. The current rules mean that, under special administration procedures, to remove a water company’s licence to operator would mean the regulator serving a 25-year notice on them. That is why we are disappointed that the Bill does not go as far as we want, or as far as so many water campaigners have asked for it to go. The Cunliffe review gives us hope of a more radical set of proposals to come later in this Parliament, but our communities are impatient for change—a change more radical than this Government are so far willing to offer us. Although we see nothing in the Bill to disagree with and much in it to commend, we are left frustrated that any radical transformation will be at best delayed until a second instalment, after Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review.

• 16 Dec 2024 · English Devolution · Hansard source

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  The Minister will know that in Cumbria we are still going through the process of a reorganisation that happened just 18 months ago. For better or worse, all reorganisations are massively distracting and take people’s eyes off the ball. Does he understand why residents, businesses and everybody else in both parts of Cumbria—we now have two local authorities—are outraged at the thought that a mayoral model might be imposed on us? Is that not the opposite of devolution? Is it not right that local communities should be able to have the devolution that we want? We are up for all the devolution that the Minister will give us, but we do not see why we have to have a top-down mayoral model and be told that we have to have a reorganisation again, five minutes after the last one.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Storm Darragh · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake), who asked an excellent question and raised this important issue today. My thoughts also are with those who tragically lost their lives this weekend and with their families, and with all the communities who have been so terribly affected by the storm. I have immense gratitude, as I am sure we all do, for our emergency services, utility companies staff and local communities, who have responded with such effectiveness and compassion. We were affected in Westmorland, although not as badly as the constituents of many Welsh Members present. Last week was the ninth anniversary of Storm Desmond, which we remember and still bear the scars from, and we stand in solidarity with all those deeply affected right now. The storm reminds us of our duty to protect homes, communities, farmland and businesses. In the Budget, the Government agreed to funding for flood defences up to March 2026, with the potential threat of reduced funding thereafter. Will the Minister take this opportunity to guarantee, as a minimum, the current level of funding for flood defences beyond March 2026? So much farmland has been affected by the storm, yet farms are key to successful flood management, storing water and slowing the flow to protect villages and towns downstream, such as Appleby and Kendal in my constituency. Will the Minister now agree to increasing the environmental land management scheme budget to help our farmers be our first and best defence against flooding? Finally, will the Minister confirm that the Government will expand eligibility for the farming recovery fund? Will they publish an up-to-date water management strategy to set out a plan for urgent maintenance and upgrades to flooding defences to protect homes, farmland and businesses at risk?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Planning Committees: Reform · Hansard source

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  The reform represents a loss of control when local communities such as mine in the lakes and the dales are desperate for more control. With over 90% of the homes in some of our villages being second homes, we are crying out for the Minister to bring in a change of use for planning for second homes so that we can limit the numbers in those communities. Will he look at doing that in the coming days?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Skills Training · Hansard source

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  There has never been greater urgency for us to equip our young people with the skills they need to enter a career in farming, yet only half of those who took level 3 agricultural apprenticeships in Cumbria last year completed them, and no level 4 apprenticeships were available. Will the Secretary of State look at this worrying situation, pay personal attention to it, and provide the funding necessary for us to have agricultural apprenticeships in Britain’s leading agricultural county?

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  That is nonsense. Wherever Liberal Democrats are in control, we back and support our farmers and are proud to do so. Talk is cheap, and most people in this House will at some time quite rightly have uttered the sentiment that British farmers are the best in the world, without actually understanding why. It is true that they really are the best in the world, and that is because the way in which our farming economy is structured is based on the family farm. Family farming makes a difference because it has close husbandry, higher environmental standards, higher welfare standards and better quality produce. It is not an accident that British farming is the best in the world.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  I have heard that from land agents in my own constituency, and my hon. Friend makes a really interesting point. We obviously do not know what will happen unless and until it happens, but that could be exactly what happens, in which case there would be no money to invest in businesses and people would end up not being able to pay back their loans. Also, the Government would not make anything like the amount of money that they think they are going to, so whatever the outcome, it is bad news for farmers and also for the Exchequer. It is also worth bearing in mind where the money that the last Government spent has gone. It has gone on landscape recovery and other schemes mostly taken up by very, very large estates, where either smaller farmers got nothing or tenant farmers had to do exactly are they were told. In my part of the world, we have seen something akin to lakeland clearances over the last three or four years as a result of all this. So let us not forget that before 4 July, the farming economy was under enormous threat and in enormous danger, either by accident or design, due to the failures of the previous Government, and the Conservatives need to take that on the chin.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  There is something in that, and I will come to that in a moment when I talk about poverty in our countryside, when it just does not look the way people in urban communities think it ought to look. There is no doubt that family farms are under attack, but this did not start on 4 July, and I want to go through why we have ended up where we are now. The botched transition from the old farm payment scheme to the new one is the principal source of hardship among our farmers. Let us start with the fact that the environmental land management scheme—ELMS—budget saw a £350 million underspend under the last Government, and that was not an accident. It was blindingly obvious that that was going to happen. One hill farmer I spoke to just last month told me that, as a consequence of the transition, he will lose £40,000 a year in basic payment. To replace it, he will gain £14,000 under the sustainable farming incentive. By the way, it cost him £6,000 to go through a land agent in order to get in in the first place.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes a good reference to the outcome of the Rock review, which took place under the last Government, although they took too long to put those things into practice. I am pleased that this Government have said that they will implement the recommendations of the Rock review. Baroness Rock deserves enormous thanks and praise from all of us for her work defending tenant farmers, and the fact that she has not been replaced is very regrettable. We are talking today about farming and the consequences of the inheritance tax issue. It would have made so much more sense, given the impact on tenants, if the commissioner and their framework had been put in place before this policy was brought into practice. This feels like putting it the wrong way around.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  To clarify my response to my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire), the Government could have looked at a working farm exemption so that these people will never have to pay this inheritance tax. Who knows, the Government might consider putting people who are not active farmers under the HMRC microscope instead. That would be far preferable to what we have. Grant payments are a significant issue. With the cut to basic payments and the Government’s failure to be as quick as they should have been on the new payments, I am pretty confident that we will see an underspend from this Government, just as we did from the last one. In recent days we have seen the Government’s decision to pause capital grant payments, which will be a huge blow to our farmers. The areas that will end up being cut or paused include: hedging, walling and fencing; countryside stewardship grants to allow nature-friendly farming; work to prevent pollution of waterways; slurry storage; covered yards to clean up our rivers; peatland restoration; carbon storage; and being the cornerstone of natural flood management. My constituent Matthew, who farms in Eden valley, explained yesterday that he has just finished installing 10,000 metres of fencing for a nature-friendly farming project. The pause in the grant funding means that he will not be able to buy any hedge plants to finish the work, and nor will he get the mid-tier countryside stewardship annual payment. He says: “Some say it could be paused until June…this is a business-breaking issue.” On top of that, the higher-level payment has not increased since I entered this House in 2005. It was £40 per hectare for moorland restoration in 2005, and it is £40 per hectare today. That is a brutal attack on hill farmers and those who farm our common land. Again, some of the sustainable farming incentive options on common land are good, and they should be applauded because doing more for nature is a good thing, but the SFI moorland options are currently closed to all common land because of technical issues online. We can see those consequences very clearly. Among all this, farmers are struggling, often with their mental health. The isolation that people feel when their family have farmed a valley for generations and they might be the one who ends up losing the family farm is utterly devastating. However, farmers just crack on with the job, so our job is to be their voice. Farming is a glorious vocation. Farmers work to protect our towns and villages from flooding, to promote biodiversity, to back the tourism economy, to tackle climate change, to underpin landscape heritage and to produce our food. The fundamental failure of both the last Government and this one is that they have brought together agricultural policies that actively disincentivise the production of food. That is criminal, and it is foolish. The first thing the Liberal Democrats would put right is a food strategy and an additional £1 billion a year for ELMs to back our family farmers. It is time we listened to farmers such as Liz and Matthew Staley from near Kirkby Stephen, and their sons Luke and Lewis. I regularly talk to Liz, and she says: “There is so much anguish out there for farmers.” On the new schemes, she says: “They aren’t working and there isn’t that crossover just yet… They’re just making it harder to make a living.” I want to encourage people on all sides, especially in government, to listen to Liz. It is the vocation of farmers to save our planet and to feed our country. The least we can do is give them the value and the future they deserve.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  It is my utter privilege to speak on behalf of my party and 1,500 farmers in Westmorland and Lonsdale. I represent people all the way from the Yorkshire dales and the North Pennines to the Lake District and the Cartmel peninsula. We are proud of our farmers not just because they feed us and care for our environment, but because they are the stewards of our heritage. When UNESCO awarded the Lake District world heritage site status, it gave as much credit to the farmers as it did to the glaciers that formed the landscape in which we live, which drives a tourism economy with more than 20 million visitors a year. We seriously value our farmers, and they need to hear that, because the tone of the debate—not just today, but over the last few months—has suggested that politicians do not value farmers. However, words are cheap.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  I am going to get to that, but the right hon. Gentleman will have to tolerate me accurately pinning blame on his side before I do so. We were told by the last Government that they would maintain the amount of funding that we used to spend when we were in the European Union. In England, that was £2.4 billion. In one sense, and one sense only, they kind of kept that promise because it was £2.4 billion throughout that five years. However, they did not spend it, because they phased out the old scheme very rapidly, causing a great hardship, particularly to small family farms, and they brought in the new schemes far too slowly and made it very difficult for people to get into them. By the way, the people who were able to get into the new schemes were the big farmers. They were the landowners who had land agents to help them get into the schemes. So the large landowners with the bigger estates managed to get into those schemes. They are all right, broadly speaking. It is the smaller family farms—the farmers who own their own farms and the tenants—who have struggled. It is also worth bearing in mind that there has been a little bit of inflation since 2019. The cost of running a farm has gone through the roof when it comes to feed, energy, fuel and all sorts of input costs. So the fact that we are at just £2.4 billion now, as we were five and a bit years ago, is absolute nonsense. It is important also to recognise that the grants that were available under the last Government, and now, are in reality often only available to those who have the cash flow to be able to get them in the first place.