Member

On top of this, the Government’s manifesto commitment to abolish hereditary Peers has the regrettable impact of removing from Parliament a cohort of rural Britain’s most supportive voices. From Caithness and Dundee to Devon and Leicester, there will be a deafening silence. Who can replace the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on farm productivity or the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on water? Add to that the well-earned retirement of the noble Lord, Lord Curry, Northumberland’s tireless agricultural champion, and our Parliament will be hugely diminished in the expertise necessary to scrutinise and support rural and agricultural policy of the long term, just as a 25-year farming strategy is being launched. There can be no other policy sector so damagingly impacted by the loss of hereditary Peers, and I urge the Government to do all they can to remedy this sad imbalance.