Earl Russell (LD)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford for securing it and for the compassion and clarity with which he opened it. Combined with his rural knowledge, it gave us a very good introduction. I must admit that the butty van sounds like a good way of helping to make things better, as best we can. The first debate I had in this House in my name was on children’s mental health and I have the climate change position in my party, so I come to this debate with those two threads very much in mind. In truth, they are part of the same thing. I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northworld, said it very well: if farmers prosper, so do our rural communities. I do take issue with one point that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, made in his speech. I would like this debate to concentrate on what we can do to help our farmers with practical solutions to the unique set of problems that they face. To my mind, to frame this as city against country is too easy a dichotomy, and one that I do not feel is particularly helpful in moving this debate forward. There is no doubt that our farmers face a blizzard of competing and unavoidable pressures, and many of them have been named by previous speakers, including climate change, the increasing unpredictability of extreme weather, growing financial strain, social isolation, long working hours, regulatory upheaval and a historic stigma based in self-reliance that keeps too many of them from seeking the help and support that they deserve. Research consistently shows that UK farmers have worse mental health than the general population. I was going to go through some of the statistics from RABI, GHQ-12 and the Farm Safety Foundation, but those figures have been mentioned. What is true is that farmers face greater rates of mental ill-health than other comparable workers. These rates are unacceptable. This is not a new problem. Friends in the other place have raised it. This issue has been raised across parties. I am also struck by the fact that we do not have enough research on the scale of the problem. A lot of this work is being done by charities and a lot of the statistics we have are now a bit historical. My question to the Minister is: what actions might the Government take to try to improve their understanding of the rate and scale of these problems? Will they do more now to widen access and help provide support directly to our farmers? The Question names three pressures. It would be a mistake to treat them as separate. They are all intertwined and compounded, and they interact. I will look at them as separate threads, but I think it is important that we understand that. The first pressure is economic uncertainty. We have had a big change in government policy, and that process has been slow and uneven to say the least. We have had the basic payment scheme and the move to ELMS. This has left farmers with a great deal of uncertainty, and they tell us time and again that that uncertainty creates the greatest stress and pressure points. Will the Government look again at what more they can do to commit to a proper multi-year funding settlement so that farmers can have greater certainty for long-term planning and budget cycles? I strongly believe that solar presents a real opportunity. The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, talked about 20% of solar on farmland. I do not recognise that figure at all. The figure I have is less than 1% by 2050. A quarter of our farmers already use alternative forms of stable income to offset the increasing losses from climate change. There has been an announcement on GB Energy and community energy today, which is welcome, but I ask the Minister what more could be done to help provide renewable energy to farmers as a stable source of income. The second, obviously related pressure is regulatory change. I am not against regulatory change. We need this, but it needs to be better communicated and signposted; and it needs to be done with farmers, not to them as an afterthought. It is uncertainty and rapid change that causes them anxiety and leads to these tragic situations. Better communication and the Government doing much more to use trusted intermediaries to help deliver and communicate those messages is something we heard about in the Environment and Climate Change Committee. The third pressure concerns the environment and climate. We are increasingly moving to a cycle of extreme flooding—if your fields are flooded, you cannot plant your crops—and extreme heat, and heat and sunlight destroy the crops in the field. We have talked about the worst harvest. The Minister is well aware of that, but I will give this figure. The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit estimates that cumulative harvest losses across 2024-26 amount to £5 billion in real terms for our farmers. Our farmers are very much in the front line of climate change, and we need to do more to support them. Warm thanks have been given for the farming welfare grant, particularly the work the Minister has done on this, and I recognise that as well. But we need to take that further. There is a need for more support. We need more imaginative ways of reaching farmers. It is quite a hard community to get into to have these difficult conversations. I want to put on the record my support and the support of our Benches for the various charities and organisations: the Farming Community Network, the DPJ Foundation, RABI, and the Farm Safety Foundation’s Yellow Wellies campaign, all of which are working extremely hard to support farmers. It is important for all of us to say that if anybody knows farmers who are struggling, it is essential that they get the help and support they rightly deserve. My final message to the Minister is that the changes we make need to be made with farmers, not done to them. For me, that is one of the most important things the Government can do to help improve this situation.