Who ate all the pies?

Tom's pie chart

Comments here and elsewhere noted that this week's Countryfile took a sharp left turn, with Tom Heap looking at  UK land ownership and tax avoidance, and concluding that "it's clearly very important that the countryside doesn't simply become a tax haven for the super rich".

Land reform campaigner Guy Shrubsole from Friends of the Earth appeared, as did Robert Palmer from the left-wing Tax Justice Network. (You might as well face it he's addicted to stamping out tax avoidance).

Here's a transcript:

ELLIE HARRISON: Now, many of us have strong feelings of shared responsibility and even a sense of ownership over our countryside. But is too much of it now in the hands of the super-rich looking for tax breaks? Here's Tom.

TOM HEAP: The value of our countryside speaks for itself. A wise man once said, "Buy land - they're not making it any more." But here in the UK, getting your hands on a slice of the pie isn't easy. Today in England, 50% of the land... ..is owned by less than 1% of the population. And in Scotland, a little over 1,000 people... ..own 70% of the land. That's a lot of our land being swallowed up. But what does it matter who owns the countryside? Well, the Scottish Land Commission has warned we're facing a land monopoly that could lead to an abuse of power. And there are also concerns that some landowners are more interested in securing tax breaks than managing the actual land. So is the UK countryside in danger of becoming little more than a rural tax haven? Trying to find out who owns all this land isn't easy. There is a Land Registry for England and Wales, and separate ones for Northern Ireland and Scotland, where we should be able to look up ownership - but in many cases, the entries simply aren't there. Take the land around me here in West Berkshire - it's among the millions of acres that the Land Registry simply doesn't have an entry for. Guy Shrubsole is a campaigner who's spent years digging through the English register's dead ends, and he's discovered nearly a fifth of our land is not properly accounted for.

TOM HEAP: So why have you brought me to this particular spot?

GUY SHRUBSOLE: Well, this is a spot of actually unregistered land, which means that we don't know who the landowner is.

TOM HEAP: It seems so bizarre. I mean, how come?

GUY SHRUBSOLE: 17% of England and Wales is actually unregistered land. The Land Registry has been around since about 1862, yet it still hasn't actually finished the job.

The HM Land Registry puts the missing figure at 14%, but say they aim to have it sorted by 2030. While a lack of information is one issue, Guy thinks it's what the records DO tell us that's the real problem.

GUY SHRUBSOLE: A really large number of big estates can trace their land ownership back as far as the Norman Conquest from 1066, when William the Conqueror came over, conquered England and handed out the land to his 200 barons. I think it says quite a lot about how concentrated power, wealth and land still is in our country and I think that's quite worrying for how we look after the countryside. 

Including the unaccounted-for chunk, Guy estimates nearly half of the land is where it's been for centuries - in the hands of old money. But the landscape is changing. Today, almost a fifth of land rests with new money - oligarchs, entrepreneurs and investors. Approaching another fifth is owned by private companies...with the rest split between the public sector, charities, the Crown and the Church. Modern-day land barons range from the Duke of Buccleuch, who owns more than 200,000 acres or 81,000 hectares, and the Duke of Abercorn in Northern Ireland - it's thought he owns at least 15,000 acres - to foreign investors like the Sheikh of Dubai, with more than 60,000 acres in the Scottish Highlands, and the American energy company Valero, which is reported to own 17,000 acres running from Wales to north-west England. With 95% of the land eaten up, there's little left for the rest of us. And that lack of opportunity is being felt across rural communities. Some say this is a land grab that has left small-scale farmers across the UK struggling to expand their business, or even get a foothold on the rural property ladder. One man who dreams of doing both those things is Matt Launder. He's a first-generation tenant farmer giving it his best shot in Welshpool.

TOM HEAP: Tell me about the struggles you've had in the last year or so with land and getting the right ground to farm.

MATT LAUNDER: Predominantly I am a tenant farmer, I farm 11-month tenancies, so when it comes to that you don't ever know year-on-year if you're going to keep that ground, so there was about 300 acres of the farm which I rented that was sold off, you know, and that's...

TOM HEAP: A big proportion.

MATT LAUNDER: It's a big chunk of my business, yeah. But it was, you know his choice to do, it was his land. I don't know of many tenancies about now which are longer than 11 month, so us as the next generation or the first generation of farmers, that's how we do it, it's all risk. But to grow my business, it's something I'll have to keep doing, and it's just part of it, I think.

TOM HEAP: You must know other young farmers like yourself - what are they telling you? How difficult is it to get established as a farmer today?

MATT LAUNDER: It's seriously hard, I think, it's seriously hard but very worthwhile. You know, we're coming from nothing and competing with someone who's established, but that is the way of the business. And one day I will hopefully be that established person. But it's the beginning and, you know, no good songs are written about an easy start, are they? 

Matt is clearly one to watch. He's got the drive to succeed in a tough business but he risks getting left behind as farmland is snapped up by those who can afford it. Even with a recent slow-down caused by Brexit, the price of land has gone up fivefold since 1995. And estate agents are marketing UK farmland to attract the richest investors from across the globe. It's clear where they think the value of land lies - farmland is transferable to the next generation in a tax-efficient way. It sounds more like trading stocks and shares than looking after what's around me here. Some of the attraction lies in Agricultural Property Relief - or APR for short - which was written into inheritance tax law 35 years ago. It was designed to help family farms survive when they are passed on to the next generation. But today critics say it's allowed the wealthy to harvest tax breaks. Robert Palmer is from the campaign group Tax Justice UK.

ROBERT PALMER: The idea of what we want to do is build political momentum to get a fairer, more effective tax system here in the UK.  

He says the UK Treasury has lost millions as wealthy investors deliberately buy up land so they don't have to pay inheritance tax:

TOM HEAP: Just as an example, say I had a £500,000 house and I wanted to pass it on to my kids, or I had £500,000 of agricultural land, what would be the difference? 

ROBERT PALMER: So on the agricultural land, you could pass on the whole amount tax-free to your children. For your house, you'd have your £325,000 threshold and above that you would pay 40% tax on the amount that was left. So you'd be paying about £70,000 of tax. 

TOM HEAP: In what sense is this unjust? 

ROBERT PALMER: There is absolutely no cap on it. Our research shows that there are just 60 families sharing £100 million of tax relief between them. These are huge amounts of money that are going to already wealthy families. 

Although he agrees that APR is vital to the survival of smaller family farms, Robert thinks the relief should be targeted to avoid abuses.

ROBERT PALMER: So one of the very obvious things would be to put a cap on the amount of relief you could get. So for example you could say the government will give tax relief up to £1 million worth of property, and after that there's no more. You could also say, for example, that if farmers had held the land for ten years or more they could also be able to get the relief. 

HM Treasury says APR relief can only be applied to working farms, which means any landlord claiming it must prove a commitment to farming the land. But is money flowing from business into the countryside really all that bad? Last year I put these very tax concerns to Sir James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner tycoon who's bought up large swathes of the countryside.

TOM HEAP: So this isn't just something that you're doing for tax purposes, a tax dodge.

SIR JAMES DYSON: No, no. Far from it. I'm investing a lot of money. We've built 93 miles of hedging. We're building 15km of dry stone walling, we're repairing all the ditches, about 650 hectares, and set aside grass. 

So big estates can provide real payoffs for the countryside and environment. One businessman who's bought into land, albeit on a much smaller scale, is Roger Saul - he started the fashion brand Mulberry. 15 years ago, he moved from handbags to grain sacks as he began growing organic spelt on the Sharpham estate in Somerset, which he bought from a neighbour.

TOM HEAP: So why the move from bags to farming?

ROGER SAUL: I'd had a crash landing with Mulberry at the end and sadly came out, but the farm came up for sale. It was the dream because I used to spend all my summer holidays with my grandparents over in Suffolk, farming.  They were farmers, so that had been sort of instilled in my brain. 

Roger converted the rundown dairy farm to grow spelt, when a doctor recommended it for his sister, who was dying of cancer at the time.

ROGER SAUL: She had been trying to get something that could work in her tummy that could perhaps rebalance the alkalinity and acidity of her body. And somebody said, "Try spelt." It's good for the mind, good for the body, good for the soul. 

With his gift for marketing, Roger has expanded the business in the past 15 years, breathing new life into the farm and the local community.

TOM HEAP: Roger, I can see you've really got a passion for this. But do you understand that for some farmers, money coming in from the outside kind of prices them out of getting on to the property ladder?

ROGER SAUL: Yeah, I can quite appreciate that. But I suppose if you look at it from my position, the fact I've created a spelt business out of nothing from here over a 15-year period and that we're probably doing, I don't know, 15 times the turnover and we're employing eleven and a half people, and we've got seven farmers growing for us - we're creating wealth for those around us - not on a big scale in any way, but we're making this all possible whilst protecting the soil, whilst protecting the environment. And I think that's vital.

TOM HEAP: So do you think this inheritance tax relief which makes that passing on easier, do you think it's right? Or do you think it's just being used as a tax dodge?

ROGER SAUL: I think in a farm of this sort of size, it's crucial. Already it's tough enough if you've got three children, I would imagine. Are you going to split your farm in three or is it going to go to one? Add that capital tax that would come in, I think it would destroy farming. 

From ancient estates to insecure tenancies, the way land is owned has a huge impact on the way it's farmed. And while it's difficult to legislate for people's motives, it's clearly very important that the countryside doesn't simply become a tax haven for the super rich. 

Heaping on the Bias

Not Ellie

What with one thing and another I've become much less of a regular Countryfile viewer than I used to be. And I've also become much less of a regular reader of Christopher Booker's Sunday Telegraph column.

We all came together today, however, when Mr Booker wrote about last Sunday's Countryfile and, via a tweet, I was reunited with both of them. (I was all ready to run into Ellie's arms, to the strains of cod Rachmaninov, but she wasn't on, alas).

Mr Booker's piece is headlined BBC groupthink is undermining its claim to impartial reporting and its particular focus was last week's report from Tom Heap about fracking:

Apart from a brief, dismissive interview with Cuadrilla’s chief executive, the item was no more than a relentlessly one-sided commercial for the vociferous anti-fracking lobby. 

The report, he says, "makes nonsense of any pretence that this is the 'impartial' reporting to which the BBC is legally committed by its charter". 

Naturally, I had to watch it myself to see if it was anywhere near as bad as Christopher Booker says. I thought he might be exaggerating.

To my surprise, not only wasn't he exaggerating but the piece was actually much worse that he'd led me to believe.

If we do a Top 10 Most Biased BBC Pieces of the Year 2018 award at New Year this year, I'm tipping this to be at No.1 (even with a third of a year still to go). I can't see anything beating it.

*******

A full transcription follows but you really to see the whole thing - the images, the background music, the inflections in Tom's voice, Tom's body language, everything.

*******

How to sum up why it's so biased a piece of BBC reporting? (And whether you favour or oppose fracking is not the issue here).

Well, just look at the was it's framed from the very start, as something "controversial" that flies in the face of hopes and expectations and history. 

And look at the loaded language used throughout, which is heavily biased from the word go. Note especially Tom's uses of  "for some" and "Some say" and "fears" and "some people speculate", etc. It all tends, and trends, just one way (against fracking).

And look out for the Bias by Placard Placement. (The link, if you click on it, explains all).

And the Government's go-ahead is repeated painted as being against the advice of its own experts, with the experts ("impartial", as Tom described them) and their findings being given uncritical treatment by Tom. 

And the Government is, again and again, made to look wrong-headed and shifty by all sort of hints and nudges from Tom. ('They delayed this, to help fracking, didn't they, nudge, nudge, wink, wink?')

And look at the way Francis Egan from Caudrilla is treated - put on the defensive from the start, his contributions brief and obviously heavilly edited, never fully given the chance to advance the case for fracking, very much placed in the naughty corner throughout via Tom's questions and framing narrative. (Why on earth did he agree to participate? Tom Heap ran rings round him and made him - and his company - look stupid and dishonest. It's as if a trap was set by the BBC here and Mr Egan walked right into it, smiling broadly).

And look at how Tom spins the to-me-somewhat-surprising polling evidence to suggest an overwhelming public opposition to fracking that the Government is brushing aside. (I expected the gap to be much wider, and for the opponents of fracking to be well above 32%).

And look how the fears of anti-fracking Jane, with her dreams and her animals, are immediately given credence by Tom. ("Well, it seems Jane may have some reason to be concerned").

*******

I was already ready to write this post, having gone most of the way though the report and gasping at the sheer scale of the bias, when the coup de grâce fell.

We were introduced to an expert who turned out to be heavily anti-fracking. And that expert, introduced as being from a "think tank", without any mention of his recent BBC past, was none other than that most biased of all the BBC's recent environment reporters, Richard Black - a man whose BBC reporting was rarely free from charges of bias and even of pro-environmentalist activism. Richard duly trashed fracking.

Dick and Tom

(Didn't the team behind Countryfile have any qualms about that?)

As is Tom's way, his closing paragraph made efforts to appear balanced. But it was the soppiest of all possible sops to impartiality. 'The mother of all sops', you might say.

*******

Seriously, please watch the thing and read the transcript below. And if you want to vote for it in our (possible) Top 10 Most Biased BBC Pieces of the Year 2018 award, I'm behind you all the way.

Anyhow, here's the transcript:

Anita Rani: Now, we're often told that clean, renewable energy is the future, so why then has the deep drilling for gas under our countryside been given the go-ahead? Tom's been finding out. 

Tom Heap: From the air around us... to the water in our seas and rivers, and the sun's rays... ..the search for a greener, cleaner energy supply the UK can rely on continues. So, for some, the news that the UK is about to launch a whole new fossil fuel industry came as a bit of a surprise. And this is it - fracking, the controversial practice of onshore deep drilling for shale gas. It's an issue we've been covering on Countryfile for years, but now there's been a big leap forward. In July, the Government gave gas company Cuadrilla the final go-ahead to start pumping shale gas from here at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire. But is the Government pushing through fracking despite warnings from its own environmental experts? Some say it's putting short-term economic gain ahead of long-term sustainable energy needs. That's something that protesters here would agree with. Today, they're out in force as the site goes into lockdown while preparations begin. 

First female protestor: The residents and the locals have spent over the last seven years, must be clocking up to nearly a million in just fighting this.
Second female protestor: Everywhere that drill rig goes, a protest group will arise out of that community. We will not stop, obviously, because this has never been a choice for us. 

The work causing so much opposition here is hydraulic fracturing, where water and chemicals are pumped at high pressure deep underground to fracture rock and release natural gas. It will be the first such project in Britain since 2011, when exploratory drilling at a nearby site set off minor earthquakes. Since then, Cuadrilla has lobbied hard to convince us fracking is safe. I was supposed to meet their CEO, Francis Egan, on site, but three days before filming, we were told we'd have to have a chat outside the fence. 

Tom Heap: We were originally hoping to get on there today. You suggested we'd be able to, but it's not happening. Why's that?
Francis Egan: Well, there's a lot of activity on the site. The noise you can hear in the background is reversing alarms and I have a site manager who tells me that his job is more important than the BBC, which I know you'll find hard to believe, but that's the case.
Tom Heap: So it's a safety thing, is it? There's not something you're trying to hide from us over there?
Francis Egan: Well, I think you can see everything there is to see there at the moment.
Tom Heap: It shows you're getting pretty close to the moment of actually starting to frack.
Francis Egan: We are indeed, yes.
Tom Heap: And for a lot of people, not least the protesters, that's a worrying moment. They're going to be thinking about earth tremors and air quality issues and things like that. How can you assure them that it's going to be safe?
Francis Egan: Well, this site behind us here is probably the most monitored oil and gas site that there ever has been in the history of oil and gas. We're monitoring air quality, water quality, seismicity, traffic movements, and we've been doing that continuously for a period of 12 months. And if there are any issues, then the operations would cease. 

Despite these assurances, the British public are yet to be convinced. For the past four years, the Government has surveyed people on their support for fracking four times a year. At the last count in April, 18% were in favour, with 32% against. But it seems the Government's no longer that keen to know what we think because in the most recent survey, that question has now disappeared. They will now only be asking once a year. And fears the Government isn't listening to concerns about fracking don't end there. When it comes to big infrastructure projects like energy supply, the Government has a team of its own impartial expert advisers in the National Infrastructure Commission. And this wide-ranging report is its assessment of what the UK needs to run effectively and efficiently. And it clearly states that if we are going to meet our climate change and emissions targets, relying on gas is not the way forward. And yet just a few days after this was published, the Government gave fracking the go-ahead. At the moment, gas makes up more than 30% of the UK's total energy demand, used for heating, cooking and to produce electricity. The Government argues that it would be far better if that gas were home-grown. But some estimates say that could mean 4,000 wells being drilled across the UK, which could swallow up swathes of our countryside, including areas like here in Roseacre, just a few miles from Preston New Road. Cuadrilla are hoping they'll get the go-ahead to frack here next. Jane Barnes and her husband built their home here more than 25 years ago. Then, it was a dream location for her family and her animals. 

Jane Barnes: Hi, Lucy. Hi, Gaby. Good girl. 

Cuadrilla submitted plans to drill here in 2014, and Jane fears the impact fracking could have. 

Tom Heap: So what is it that so worries you about this potential site?
Jane Barnes: There's the light pollution and the noise pollution and of course the 17,000 HGVs coming through our country lanes. You have to realise that this is really heavy industry with all the pollution it brings, and we live and work here. So we will get no respite.
Tom Heap: Is this, in the end, the very definition of "not in my backyard"?
Jane Barnes: No. A local gentleman told me yesterday he calls himself a SIMBY, which is "safe in my backyard", and we do not consider fracking as it is being proposed at the moment to be safe in anybody's backyard. 

Tom Heap himself

Well, it seems Jane may have some reason to be concerned. This is yet another new report by another team of Government advisers, the Air Quality Expert Group. And this one says the local impact of fracking could be significant. Anyone living near a fracking site could see their air quality suffer. But despite being written three years ago, this report only got round to being published three days after the Government gave the go-ahead for Cuadrilla to frack in Lancashire, leading some people to speculate that the Government was trying to bury this deeper than our own shale reserves. Since it was written, air quality monitoring has been introduced, but why did the Government wait so long to publish that report? They said it: "It needed thorough consideration" and was "published as soon as our sign-off procedures had been completed": It added: "Shale gas has the potential to be a new domestic energy source, delivering substantial economic benefits, nationally and locally, as well as through the creation of well-paid, high-quality jobs". But even with those jobs the British shale gas industry would bring, does fracking really make economic sense? Richard Black, from think-tank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, isn't so sure. 

Richard Black: It's really hard to see what the rationale is, frankly. If you look at what the Government and its advisers have put down for how we need to reduce the use of gas over the next decade, really, you see a declining role for gas.
Tom Heap: But we still need gas for central heating and cooking in our homes. Is it not better that that comes from Britain than Russia or the Middle East?
Richard Black: Something that's often missed is that the gas industry is almost entirely in private hands. So the gas won't belong to Britain, it will belong to Cuadrilla or whoever gets it out of the ground. We will still be in a European gas network, whatever happens with Brexit. So the company that owns it can basically trade it wherever it wants. 

Cuadrilla says its first site will supply the local grid, but how much bigger could this industry become? 

Richard Black: Well, my personal view is that we might see commercially viable shale gas, but it'll be a cottage industry if it's anything. The need for gas is going to decline, so you would be putting your money into an industry that has a finite shelf life. 

With so many experts saying fracking might not be worth it, for the environment or the economy, why is Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan so fired up about shale gas? 

Tom Heap:  The National Infrastructure Report says we shouldn't be relying on a gas industry into the future. Doesn't that give this place a very short shelf-life?
Francis Egan: Well, I agree entirely we shouldn't be relying on it, in the sense that it shouldn't be the only form of fuel we need, but I don't think there's any credible commentator who doesn't believe we won't be using natural gas for decades to come.
Tom Heap: But gas is something we should be weaning ourselves off. How does this help?
Francis Egan: Well, because weaning yourself off does not mean coming to an emergency stop and halt, or else people will freeze in their houses. So gas is a fuel that in any scenario for decarbonisation will be required for decades to come.
Tom Heap: But you could drill down and find that gas flows really badly out of here, and then the whole thing's been a waste of time.
Francis Egan: That's what exploration is all about.
Tom Heap: So there's real jeopardy there?
Francis Egan: Well, you call it jeopardy, we call it uncertainty. 

That's an uncertainty fracking companies are willing to take a gamble on, but it's clear that divisions on what payoff shale gas will actually deliver to the UK run as deep as ever. With fracking due to start here in just a matter of weeks and gas flowing thereafter, we should soon have a much better idea if shale gas is just going to be a brief sideshow or a key component of our energy system, with all the resulting economic impact and environmental challenges. 

A taste of things to come (tonight)

From Guido Fawkes...

There's nothing that really needs adding to that.

On Countryfile

As you'll doubtless already know, Countryfile found itself in the firing line for anti-Brexit bias at the start of the week following a report on last Sunday's edition. 

The Daily Express, which appears to be in hot pursuit of Countryfile at the moment, picked up on the outrage of some on Twitter and the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph duly followed suit. 

The Daily Express scuffed its attack rather by blaming the wrong presenter, Adam Henson, rather than the man responsible, Tom Heap. Bizarrely, though published several hours later, the Daily Mail did exactly the same thing! - leading me to guess that the Daily Mail writer pretty much copied the Daily Express's article without bothering to do much checking. (After many hours the Mail {online} edited the article to change the name, without printing any acknowledgement that it had done so!). At least the Telegraph got the right man from start. 

It all allowed Tom Heap to ignore the substance of the complaints and laugh it all off:

It made me smile because, as a Countryfile fan, I remember Adam and Tom appearing on a special (from some Countryfile event) and joking that people can't remember which one is which - though that's no excuse for lazy journalists of course. 

As for the substance of the complaints, there's no question that this was a heavily one-sided, negative piece of reporting from Tom Heap. The balance of voices was entirely one-sided and Tom's narrative was cut from the same cloth, reinforcing the negative points being made.

The added irony of that was that Matt Baker introduced the second report by hinting that there would be some balance ("But is it really as bad as some seem to think?") but it never materialised. The second report was as full of people who seem to think its "as bad as some seem to think" as the first report was. There wasn't a positive anywhere to be found. 

I can well understand then why pro-Brexit people poured onto Twitter to complain and anti-Brexit people poured onto Twitter to tell pro-Brexit people that they can't handle the truth. 

Of course, the BBC would say that this is a one-off and judge Countryfile's Brexit coverage over time, but if a report's so biased in its own right, surely that overrules the 'one off' argument?

That said, Tom Heap last got into trouble for anti-Brexit bias with the Express and some people on Twitter for his report from Spain on the 5 March edition, but, to be wholly fair to him, he barely touched on Brexit (though he mentioned climate change a few times) and focused more on possible positive developments for farming courtesy of UK science, so not every complaint against him holds water:

No matter how innovative we are, extending the UK growing season of iceberg lettuces through the winter is never going to be economically viable. There's just not enough sunlight. So if we want them on our shelves in December and January, we're going to have to continue driving them across Europe to get here and that's not helping in our battle with climate change. And then there's Brexit. We don't yet know the future trade deal, but import tariffs are a possibility, so if we can't rely on produce from Europe, could science help us out?

Anyhow, here's a transcript of last week's edition. Please judge if my complaint about it holds water:

REPORT ONE

MATT BAKER: Now, agriculture is an industry that relies on migrant workers but with Brexit on the horizon, there are worries that we could be facing a severe labour shortage. Here's Tom. 

TOM HEAP: Growing, harvesting and processing our food is a big job. And even at this time of year, there is plenty to do. A small army are preparing for the summer strawberry harvest. The fruit may be quintessentially British, but most of the workers are not home-grown. And on farms across the UK, the changing seasons will bring thousands more European workers. 

ANTHONY SNELL: Well, we're a sort of medium-sized soft fruit business. We grow about 1,000 tonnes of strawberries and about 300 tonnes of raspberries. At this time of the year, we have about 50 to 60 workers and they start arriving here in early February and then once we start picking, in early May, we'll boost up the workforce up to 300 and then it gradually reduces during the autumn time. 

TOM HEAP: Herefordshire soft fruit grower Anthony Snell says it's a British success story, which could be derailed if migration restrictions are introduced. 

ANTHONY SNELL: This isn't anything to do with migration or immigration - this is just seasonal workers coming over here, working hard, benefiting our economy and then going home. TOM HEAP: Put simply, would this farm, on anything like this scale, exist if you didn't have these workers? ANTHONY SNELL: No, there's absolutely no doubt we'd be in serious trouble if we didn't have our seasonal workers coming here. We would be out of business. It would be absolutely catastrophic to our industry. TOM HEAP: Could we not go back to the way it used to be, when students and others used to work seasonally, you know, summer jobs in the fields? ANTHONY SNELL: No - the horticulture industry is a very specialised industry. We can't just have people just turning up and picking. You know, we have to train our workforce, these are skilled seasonal workers and there just isn't the British people who want to do this work, although we'd love to employ all British people. 

TOM HEAP: His concerns about recruitment are backed up by a recent National Farmers' Union survey. It showed that this time last year, before the Brexit vote, about a quarter of farmers had problems filling seasonal vacancies. But by September, the ready supply of workers was drying up and all growers had recruitment problems. High numbers of overseas workers are present across farming and not just picking and harvesting. Highly qualified jobs like vets are affected too. At this Cotswold dairy farm, two vets are being trained to carry out TB tests - a vital part of modern cattle farming. The trainees are Cristina from Spain and Olivio from Romania. Their tutor, Ana, is Spanish too. 

ANA CANGA: We have vets coming from Portugal, vets coming from Greece, vets coming from Czech Republic... 

TOM HEAP: In fact, nearly a third of all vets in the UK were trained overseas. And in public health work, like food safety and abattoir inspections, almost all the vets are from outside the UK. 

TOM HEAP: So, is it simply the case that vets from Europe are filling the jobs that British vets don't want to do? ANA CANGA: Exactly, that is what happens. The British vets don't want to work in those fields. TOM HEAP: And for you personally, Ana, you've spent 17 years here, what do you feel about it? Do you feel worried? ANA CANGA: I am, yes, because I have a partner here with me and we are looking for a home to buy. And at the moment, we don't know if we can afford to have a mortgage for 20 years because we don't know if I can stay in this country for that long.

TOM HEAP: Others we spoke to say the fall in the pound since the Brexit vote has put some people off coming to Britain. The poor exchange rate means the most skilled pickers will earn around 75 euros less each week than a year ago. According to the National Farmers' Union, the migrant worker situation is a crisis in waiting, so what's being done? Well, that's what I'll be finding out later. 

REPORT TWO

MATT BAKER: Agriculture in the UK employs large numbers of overseas workers and with Brexit on the horizon, there are warnings of a severe labour shortage. But is it really as bad as some seem to think? Here's Tom. 

TOM HEAP: Every year, the UK horticulture industry employs around 75,000 seasonal workers, half of them coming from abroad. We're so reliant on workers from overseas to pick and process our produce that it's claimed that, without them, the horticulture business could collapse. And it's not just seasonal workers - farming employs plenty of foreign people who live here all year round, including many of our vets. The concern is that Brexit could mean restrictions on the number of foreign workers coming into the UK, so what can be done? Well, the minister responsible for farming, Andrea Leadsom, recently told farmers that technology has the answers. And for some labour-intensive fruit and veg jobs, we've already made great strides, from GPS-controlled tractors to robot weeders. But could machines replace thousands of seasonal workers? Earlier I met Herefordshire soft fruit grower Anthony Snell. This production line is processing frozen blackcurrants and, like his pickers, most of the workers are from across the European Union. 

TOM HEAP: What's going on here? ANTHONY SNELL: What we're doing now is sorting all the organic blackcurrants and they're going through their final process. TOM HEAP: They're picking out the duff ones? ANTHONY SNELL: They're picking out all the bad ones. The whole horticultural industry is spending a lot of time looking at mechanisation and robotics and everything but there's only a certain amount we can do. You saw us processing organic blackcurrants through a stringing processing line. TOM HEAP: "Stringing", that's a good word. Is that the machine that was shaking them all? ANTHONY SNELL: That's right. It's rapidly vibrating the frozen berries and knocking off the little bits of stalks and everything, clean and ready for your yoghurt. TOM HEAP: Yeah. Is there any more you could do in this packing side? ANTHONY SNELL: Well, there is, we're looking all the time because we are worried, we arre very worried about the future with the availability of labour. But basically, for the main tasks in horticulture, for picking and in strawberry crops, we need seasonal workers to pick our crops and we can't just replace them all with robots because it's a very specialised job. It would be a pretty clever robot to really replicate all the skills that our staff have. 

TOM HEAP: So what is the solution for the fruit and veg industry? I've come to Barfoots in West Sussex, a huge UK-based international vegetable grower. Three-quarters of their workers are from overseas. 

TOM HEAP: OK, Ewa, what are we doing here? EWA: I need 24 strings to have for one plant, yeah? TOM HEAP: These are the strings for the chillies to grow up. EWA: Yes, it's for the chillies to grow up and I put the thing in the up... 

TOM HEAP: Ewa is from Poland. She's been here six years.

TOM HEAP: You're very quick. Can I have a go? EWA: Yes. Yes.TOM HEAP: Once round... Oops. EWA: Yes. Then where next? TOM HEAP: Second time... I'm getting the hang of this. EWA: Yes. Very good. TOM HEAP: It'll be done by Christmas if I carry on like that. TOM HEAP: Given the choice, she'd like to stay. EWA: It's a nice job and no stress. TOM HEAP: Good money? EWA: Yes, for me, it's better money than I was in Poland. Yes, yes. TOM HEAP: Are you worried about anything in the future? EWA: Sometimes I worry about Brexit, yes, because I stay here. TOM HEAP: You want to stay here? EWA: Yes, yes, yes. 

TOM HEAP: There is hope for permanent workers like Ewa, but at the moment, their future here still remains uncertain. There's also a sense that the penny is starting to drop in government regarding seasonal workers too. Brexit Minister David Davis recently said Don't expect the door will suddenly shut. It won't." And the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, said just last week "We will need European workers to come and work here for many years to come". Ewa's boss is Barfoot's MD Julian Marks. He says growers and all their workers need a solution and they need it soon.

TOM HEAP: How worried is the whole horticulture industry about labour? JULIAN MARKS: I think the industry is worried in the short term - for 2017 and in general, there is some uncertainty as to whether we'll be able to source enough people to meet the requirements for the 2017 harvest. TOM HEAP: Really? Even for this year, there's already a worry? JULIAN MARKS: Even for this year, we're seeing the number of applications from individuals falling, and falling rapidly, as they make choices about where they go to work. 

TOM HEAP: The industry is suggesting its own solution - a new visa system to allow seasonal workers to come to the UK in a controlled way. But again, it's needed quickly. 

JULIAN MARKS: A seasonal permit system is absolutely critical. We need, in 2017, a trial of the scheme which could be applied in 2018. That would then, at least, create certainty for returners and for individuals coming in 2019. TOM HEAP: Do you think government get the urgency? JULIAN MARKS: I think they're constantly battling the political requirements of immigration and the issues surrounding that and often, perhaps, the economic importance falls away. TOM HEAP: It sounds like they don't get it. You're being too polite to say so. JULIAN MARKS: Am I being too polite? Well, they need to get on and do something in 2017. 2018 will be too late. 

TOM HEAP: Despite Julian's concerns, the government this week said there will be no workers' scheme in 2017 as employers still have access to EU labour, though it will keep the situation under review. But as for when we leave the European Union, the future still remains uncertain. 

'Good fences make good neighbours'? Not according to Tom Heap

Quentin Letts's "hunky" Tom Heap

Like Quentin Letts of The Daily Mail, I do like a bit of Countryfile on a Sunday night. I really do. (And, like Quentin, I ignore all sneerers about the programme). 

So I didn't really want to go to town on Countryfile regular Tom Heap over his pro-EU-biased Costing the Earth edition on the possible consequences for the environment of a British exit from the EU...

But it was so biased I felt it had to be done.

(News-watch's David Keighley had also written a powerful critique of it - and he's escalated the matter well beyond the blogosphere).

Reflecting on that though, some of Tom's pieces on Countryfile are exemplary in offering contrasting views, allowing viewers to make up their own minds and not appearing to come down on either side of most arguments - such as last week's piece on offshore wind farms v birds. 

Others are less exemplary, such as the one on gypsy/traveller sites we looked at last year (which fairly obviously took the side of the 'travellers') or his Panorama on genetically modified foods (which seemed to be pro-GM food against the likes of the Soil Association and Greenpeace) - a comparison which shows that things aren't black-and-white here. 

What then to make of today's Costing the Earth entitled Beasts of the Border?:

If you to listen to it all the way through you will hear a variety of people - academics, hunters, social democratic politicians, environmental activists, scientists - all of whom believe that the fences being erected across parts of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans to stem the flood of migrants are wrong - wrong for wildlife and wrong for human beings.

They believe the fences are wrong not just because of the wildlife dying on its barbed wire but because the fences don't work in keeping out the migrants and the fences evoke the dark past of Europe not the hopes of its present. 

Everyone spoke out against the fences, and Tom Heap's narrative didn't challenge them or contradict them once. It only reinforced them. 

It was one single hymn sheet, and every last person sang from it. 

I'm not exaggerating about that. That's exactly what this programme was like.

And I have to say that I did expect someone from Slovenia or Hungary (or wherever) to be invited on - if only for the sake of appearance - to put the other side of the argument. I was sure some 'sop to BBC impartiality' would pop up to defend the fences and the governments that erected the fences, or to argue that the fences are working. 

But no, not a bit of it. No such voices came. It was 100% one-sided from start to finish. 

If anyone thinks I must have missed something (or am suffering from confirmation bias), please listen for yourselves. You won't find a supporter of the fences - or a point in favour of the fences - anywhere, no matter how closely you listen. (Or a critic of the flow of migrants either for that matter). 

It was quite powerful though. I really had to stop myself from getting sucked into it. 

In fact, come to think of it, this Costing the Earth would make for a powerful pro-EU, 'no borders', pro-migrant propaganda piece, if a campaign group was canny enough to take it up and run with it in a big way. (The pro-EU message was a definite undercurrent - if only explicitly from the contributors).

That's not what the BBC is supposed to be about though, is it?

And that's another black mark against Tom Heap (in my book).

Costing the Earth: The Environment after Exit

This week's Costing the Earth on Radio 4 was called The Environment after Exit.

It looked in turn at four key EU policies: the Habitats Directive, the Common Fisheries Policy, the Common Agricultural Policy and the European Renewables Directive.

Was it biased? And if so in which direction? 

Let's take it section by section.

1. Habitats

This section (which took up the first eight and a half minutes of the programme) looked at the EU's Habitats Directive.

Presenter Tom Heap talked to three people: Andrew Blenkiron, estate director of the Euston Estate; former EU Commission official (and father of Boris) Stanley Johnson; and Matt Shardlow of Buglife. (Stanley Johnson is, of course, famously on the opposite side to his son over the EU referendum.)

First we heard from Andrew Blenkiron on the steps he's had to take to look after the great crested newts on the estate. 

Then Mr Johnson stood up for the Habitats Directive, saying "Why is it important? In practical terms it means there is an extra layer of protection to this precious landscape provided by Brussels"...

...and not just for great crested newts... 

Thus, following Tom Heap's question "Now what has Europe done for the Roman snail?", Matt Shardlow of Buglife said that the EU directive had helped protect these remarkable snails.

Tom Heap: And how confident are you it need Europe to deliver that? It couldn't be delivered by national governments?

Matt Shardlow: Well, it potentially could have been done by national governments but it wasn't done by the national governments.

Mr Shardlow said organisations like his have used the European Court of Justice and the Habitats Directive to help keep the environment protected. He said he didn't have much faith in the (UK) government to step up and take up this EU "moral urge". 

Mr Blenkiron discussed the hurdles he had to leap over to build a reservoir on the estate because of those great crested newts. It added £65,000 to his costs and only ten newts were found. Like other landowners, the estate has been "irritated" by the legislation - though, Tom added, Mr Blenkiron is "rather proud" of the newt habitat he's built in recompense for the reservoir. 

This segued into Matt Shardlow of Buglife, who "sympathises" with Andrew Blenkiron (according to Tom Heap) but "blames national interpretation of the law rather than the EU".

And that's where that topic was left, with the Habitats Directive's virtues strongly praised and the blame for Mr Blenkiron's newt problem shifted onto the UK government.  

All in all, Stanley Johnson and Matt Shardlow were strongly defending the EU there and, allthough he was cast as a possible critics of the EU, you may have noticed that Mr Blenkiron didn't directly criticise the EU. 

By coincidence, I'd Googled Mr Blenkiron the other day after hearing him on another BBC programme and knew something Costing the Earth listeners probably didn't know about him (as they weren't told): that he's also pro-Remain. 

His Farmers Weekly article Leaving the EU would be a leap in the dark makes his views very clear on the subject....

which, of course, makes it a clean sweep of anti-Brexit speakers here. 

This was the most strongly pro-Remain-biased section of the programme.

2. Fishing

This section (occupying six minutes of the programme) looked at the Common Fisheries Policy.

Tom Heap began by framing it in this way:

The Marine Conservation Society credits EU legislation with cleaning our beaches and creating marine protected areas. However, there's no avoiding the association between the EU and those pictures we've seen so often of fishermen throwing perfectly good fish, dead, back in the sea from which they've just been caught.

Then BBC reporter/producer Robin Markwell went to a fish market in Plymouth to canvas views there. We heard getting on for four minutes from them. 

All three 'vox pops' - fisherman Andy Giles, harbourmaster Keith Bromley and Pam from Pam's Snacks - were firmly against the Common Fisheries Policy and in favour of Brexit. ("I'm not sure the Common Fisheries Policy is working"; "It's not really much good for us at the moment but, who knows, if we came out of Europe maybe it would change"; "There's a lot of bad feeling towards it - and quite rightly so, because it's a pretty flawed policy"; "I think we should come out of Europe...It's killing the fishing industry.")

The last word here though was given to a pro-Remain speaker (an 'authority figure' in contrast to these 'vox pops'), who Tom Heap introduced in this fashion:

You won't find many people willing to defend the Common Fisheries Policy. It's largely failed to protect the fishermen and the fish. But Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermans Federation says that in his personal opinion - and he stresses this isn't the view of his organisation - exit from the EU could actually make things worse.

Mr Armstong said that collective action is better than individual action. The negotiations following Brexit would be "very complicated" and "full of hazard". Fishing is less than half a per cent of GDP. Fishing is unlikely to be a 'pressure point' for UK negotiators seeking to strike a new deal with the EU, he argued. 

Obviously this section gave more time to the pro-Leave side than the pro-Remain side and the failings of the Common Fisheries Policy were made clear - though Robin Markwell did challenge the anti-CFP 'vox pops' and pushed the point that the CFP was being reformed and improved. The highly articulate closing speaker's point (a variant of the 'hold on to nurse for fear of something worse' argument) also counterbalanced that time imbalance somewhat.

3. Farming

The Common Agricultural Policy was up next (taking up some five minutes of the programme). We heard from two people - an expert and a farmer. The expert - Brian Gardner, policy analyst at Agra Europe - was the bread in the section's sandwich-like structure and the farmer - Colin Tyler - the filling. Mr Gardner argued the anti-Brexit case and Mr Tyler the pro-Brexit case. 

Mr Gardner began by saying that a pro-Brexit government wasn't guaranteed to match the income subsidies and other subsidies from the EU which support farmers now. "In fact I'm quite sure they would not," he said. He reckons British farmers could two £2 billion a year in subsidies, post-Brexit. 

He wasn't challenged. 

Then came the interview with Colin Tyler, who Tom Heap introduced by saying:

He doesn't deny the British farmer's dependency on money from Europe but he thinks it's time for his industry to kick away its own subsidy crutch.

Mr Tyler was challenged - and undermined.

"How many people shared your view?" asked Tom. Mr Tyler admitted he was the only one out of a hundred in the bar in favour of exit at a farmers' conference. "And what did that tell you?", Tom then asked. 

Mr Tyler says he doesn't think it's that "black and white". He thinks we produce the best of a lot of food and livestock and could export it elsewhere. Tom challenged him by saying: 

Maybe that's easier for you to say here in the South East, relatively close to markets, a few opportunities for making money outside conventional farming. If you were a hill farmer a long way away you really need those subsidies. They make up a big proportion of your income.

Colin Tyler replied:

I would have to agree with that. It's easier for me to make the decision, but let's look: We're in Europe, ten years time. have we made any changes? The subsidy will the lower, the regulations will be higher. Would they allow us still to graze sheep on mountains, because they say we are destroying the environment?

(I have to say I really hope this conversation wasn't edited to make it seem as if Mr Tyler was  undermining himself.)

Tom then turned to another question: "Would lower subsides affect the landscape?" 

The expert Mr Gardner returned to answer that one. He said lower subsidies (of the kind he predicts post-Brexit) would tend to push out small family farms, especially diary farms, which, he said, are essential to the current structure of rural areas. 

There would be a tendency towards larger farms, fewer farmers - a move towards the countryside being dominated by large farms would tend, without government intervention, would tend to be not good for the environment in my view.

And, undermining Mr Tyler one last time, Tom Heap then said that that Mr Gardner thought that any UK government would keep funding highland farms, so sheep wouldn't disappear from the mountains. 

As you can see, I'm not accepting that this was a balanced section for one moment. The whole thing was tilted against the Brexit side here.

4. Renewable energy

The final section (taking up the final seven minutes of the programme) looked at the European Renewables Directive.

Tom Heap described renewable energy as "a recent money spinner for farmers" and the section began with Tom Clothier, the renewable energy business manager at Wyke Farms. 

A spot more Googling shows that the farm's owner Richard Clothier was one of those who signed that pro-Remain letter to the FT at couple of weeks or so back. No mention was made of that on Costing the Earth. 

Tom continued:

This anaerobic digester here at the Wyke Farms Cheese factory is part of an extraordinarily swift energy revolution led from Brussels.

An expert voice, Andrew Whitehead, energy analyst with the lawyers Shakespeare Martineau, was next. 

Another spot of  Googling shows him to have written articles for the Birmingham Post focusing on the downsides of a Brexit as regards Britain's energy needs.

Mr Whitehead talked about the different climate change targets - the UK's and the EU's targets. The binding EU target has been "influential", he said. Has it "handcuffed" policy?  asked Tom. To a certain extent, Mr Whitehead replied, but he thinks the UK has persuaded the rest of the EU to make the targets for 2030 "less prescriptive".

It's not only farmers for whom renewables are a "money spinner. Tom Heap continued: 

Those European targets have been great for those subsidised to produce renewables and for an electricity company like Good Energy that buys that power and sells it on to consumers.

Juliet Davenport from Good Energy duly appeared to say the European Renewables Directive has been "strong" and describe how the sector's success has "very much been driven by legislation as well as by technological change."

Then it was back to a BBC reporter with some 'vox pops' - or this time a BBC reporter with one 'vox pop'. We heard two female voices, one complaining about onshore wind turbines. The BBC reporter was  Nancy Nicolson and the 'vox pop' was Linda Holt. As you will see Tom Heap, in contrast to some of the other voices on this programme, made it very clear which campaign group she's associated with:

In Fife, Linda Holt agrees that the EU has encouraged renewable energy, such as the wind turbines that provide Good Energy will half its electricity, but she's not keen on the consequences. Linda belongs to the campaign group Scotland Against Spin.

She wants Britain to leave the EU and blames the wind farms ruining the local landscape on the European Renewables Directive. Again (in contrast to the pro-Remain speakers in the programme), her views were directly challenged - as with this question/statement from Nancy Nicolson. 

But this is a very industrial landscape. Yes, we're looking at windmills, but we're also looking just over the hill at Mossmorran. We can see the big chimneys, and I don't know if it's steam or smoke that's coming up from there. The point is surely that if we didn't have renewables we would have more of these - more coal-fired power stations - and that would mean more climate change and worse air quality.

 Again, this section, to my mind, had a marked anti-Brexit tilt to it.

Tom Heap's concluding remarks

That, perhaps, is the nub of the debate over Britain's exit from the European Union. The future of the environment would depend upon the UK governments that follow Exit. Each of these enormous issues will need to be reassessed and weighed in the list of national priorities. Exit would just be the start of a debate on what's best for our environment. Should landowners be subsidised to manage the landscape? How do we protect our fish stocks? Where should we get our low-carbon energy? They are all question we have, to some degree, allowed politicians and officials in Brussels to take the lead on. Are we happy to start each debate afresh? 

That makes it sound rather is if we'd have to return to Year Zero, doesn't it? 

My thoughts on hearing this were: 

Would we really need to "start each debate afresh?" 

Would we really be leaping from the 'nurse' (Brussels) to 'something worse' (the possibly less dependable post-Brexit UK governments? 

Would the environment's future really be at risk from a Brexit? 

Conclusions

This edition of Costing the Earth did seem to me to have a pronounced anti-Brexit, pro-EU bias. 

It did offer some variety of views, especially as the progtamme proceeded, but it didn't treat those voices equally. The pro-Leave voices were challenged much more strongly, even though they were 'ordinary people'. In contrast. the 'experts' and 'influential people' featured for the Remain side, who you would have expected to have been challenged more strongly, weren't challenged as strongly. 

This was only part of the programme's weighting problem. We were clearly steered towards the beneficial effects of the EU's Habitats Directive, and were strongly guided towards seeing the economic boons for farming and business which have (allegedly) flowed from the European Renewables Directive. Plus the section on the possible effects of a Brexit on farmers was made lopsided (towards the negative effects). Only the section on the Common Fisheries Policy placed a key European initiative in a strongly negative light - and even that was balanced by talk of reforms and a dark, closing warning of worse things to come if we left the EU.

So, yes, I think this edition of Costing the Earth was heavily biased. 

Please listen to it for yourself and see if you agree.