Mr David Maclean (Penrith & The Border)

Thank you for letting me catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak in the House for the first time, on a measure which has been long awaited in the country, in my constituency and by me personally, since I hoped that it would arrive more quickly from another place.

Before discussing the Bill's merits, I hope that the House will accord me the customary privilege of referring to my constituency, which I am proud to represent, and to my illustrious predecessor, Lord Whitelaw, whom I am honoured to follow.

My constituency is geographically immense and sparsely populated. It extends to over 1,200 square miles and has an electorate of almost 69,000. It was enlarged from the old Penrith and The Border to include the beautiful town of Appley-in-Westmoreland and surrounding area. The new seat forms the eastern half of the new administrative county of Cumbria, running from Westmoreland to the Solway firth and marching with County Durham, Northumberland and Scotland.

Physically, my constituency is focused on the relatively fertile Eden valley and the Solway plain, while running up the western slopes of the Pennines from the Scots border to Stainmore, including Crossfell, and eastward to Alston, the highest market town in England. In the south my constituency extends to the Shap and Crosby fells and includes the Ullswater and Caldbeck areas of the Lake District national park.

The major part of the present constituency was created in 1950 from two seats. Since 1955 it has been held by William Whitelaw, who continues to serve the country and the Government in another place. I pay tribute to my right hon. and noble Friend for his excellent service to the people of Penrith and The Border for the last 28 years. He diligently looked after his constituents' interests in a large area, even when he had the onerous burdens of Northern Ireland and the Home Office on his shoulders. The House will join me in wishing him well and all good fortune in his continuing parliamentary career. I hope that in the coming years I can attract a fraction of the deep and undoubted affection that my constituents have for my predecessor.

I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmoreland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling), from whom I have inherited the northern part of Westmoreland. I have no doubt that he is as dismayed at losing one of the most beautiful parts of his constituency as I am pleased at having it included in my constituency. I can assure my right hon. Friend that I shall endeavour to serve my constituents there as diligently as those in the Cumberland part of my constituency.

Indeed, I hope that by patient hard work my "landlords" in Penrith and The Border will renew my present "term tenancy" at successive elections, creating a type of one-generation leasehold. I am sure that many bidders will promise grossly inflated "rents" because of the scarcity value.

Agriculture is a dominant feature of my constituency's economy. Only 2·2 per cent. of the employed work force is engaged in farming, fishing and forestry nationally, but in my constituency the figure is 15·7 per cent., which makes it the most agricultural in the northern region.

When one takes into account the people employed in ancillary activities—the machinery dealers, engineers, vets, agents, feed merchants, shopkeepers, school teachers and others whose profit or employment is heavily dependent on the farming community, one can see that the employment of as many as one person in three in my constituency is significantly dependent on farming.

The other outstanding economic feature of my constituency is the high level of small business activity, which is way above the national average. I am delighted to have encountered every business activity imaginable, from high-quality casting to survival aids; from waterproof clothing to road haulage. The involvement of so many people in running their own small businesses is typical of the enterprise, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of the people of Cumbria whom I am privileged to represent.

Their drive and initiative has resulted in Penrith and The Border having an unemployment rate of only about 8 per cent. Thanks to the excellent attitude of the workers and management, we also have some successful larger industries with productivity and industrial relations records which few sectors of British industry can emulate.

One particular industry has an excellent productivity record. Indeed, its productivity record has brought it to its present crisis. I refer to agriculture. Only six months ago this Bill was probably the most exciting feature on the farming horizon. Now the anxiety is not only about how to get more people into farming, but how to stop the bankruptcies that will occur in the next few years to people already engaged in farming unless there is a favourable common agricultural policy settlement. I do not wish to trespass into that area today, although I hope that we shall soon have a debate on that subject in the House.

I regret that the Bill is not attracting the attention that it deserves. It is modest—I believe, too modest—but it at least removes the fundamental injustices in the 1976 Act. I wish that the Bill had gone further. I am disappointed that the Government appear to have accepted the view that nothing too drastic should be done now, lest a future Government of a different political complexion change it. If we accepted that view generally, we would pass little legislation.

When I examine the rent formula, even after the amendments made in another place, I am not surprised that the Bill is long and convoluted. I shall not be surprised when it is criticised as attempts are made to try to implement its provisions. It is a sad truth that land is a finite resource. We cannot create more. An equally harsh reality is that the price of a commodity is set by its scarcity value.

When we get away from that reality and legislate to prevent tenants and landlords, of their own free will, offering and accepting rents that the holdings cannot support, we are led to invent this cumbersome formula. We do not protect contracting business men from the consequences of their own folly, nor should we attempt to do the same here. As the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, said during the Second Reading: it is indeed the case that the freedom in rents that there ought to be is one of the disciplines, one of the rigours, and indeed one of the dangers, that go with a private enterprise system, and it is often a spur to efficiency. We must never lose sight of that and pretend that you can have a free market system without some of the disciplines … Farms are scarce … But so are, for example, shops in prime sites; but we do not go around legislating and saying that we must eliminate scarcity value and stop people getting their fingers burned by offering too much rent, or having a had effect on their neighbours when their rent reviews come up." — [Official Report, House of Lords, 8 November 1983; Vol. 444, c. 732.] I hope that the Government will also see the wisdom of providing term tenancies for those landlords and tenants who freely want to enter into them.

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