In My Opinion

Second in our series about key issues in Cumbria is a hard hitting statement by  Lord Inglewood of Hutton in the Forest.  Previously an  MEP  and a government Minister  he is  involved in many important groups  in this country and in Europe , Richard Inglewood is  a hereditary Peer in the House of L ords. He  runs the Hutton estate and is Patron of the Pentalk  Network

This is his opinion

The current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cumbria Professor Peter McCaffery is faced by a series of decisions which nobody would relish and responsibilities for which he is in no way to be blamed since he has only recently arrived in post.

The University of Cumbria is a noble project, although I have always had some concerns about the detail. It now finds itself in the eye of the storm generated by the current financial crisis facing the UK and its consequential implications for Further and Higher Education.

Already one of the casualties is Charlotte Mason College  in Ambleside. I know next to nothing about education policy and teacher training , but Lady Perry of Southwark whose desk  is next to mine in the House of Lords does , and without any prompting from me explained what a tragedy its recent near death is.

Another institution very much in the firing line is Newton Rigg. I am proud to have obtained two City and Guilds there  in the1980s in Dairy Enterprise Management and Farm Business Management and I have always maintained that the teaching I received was better than that I got at Cambridge University where I received my degree. Now Cambridge is one of the top universities in the World ,and while Newton Rigg would never have claimed that kind of eminence, it was one of the best county agricultural colleges in Britain. These colleges were setting out to be something quite different and in their own way  were equally valuable. It aspired to equivalent excellence in its field and achieved it. It was a jewel in Cumbria's crown.

The decline of Newton Rigg is, in my view, one of the Cumbrian tragedies of the last quarter century. It has moved from being at or near 'top of class' to near extinction. Excellence in whatever sphere should always be promoted, and the tragedy is exacerbated by the potential it has to contribute to this area and to the country as a whole.

In Cumbria, one of our country's premier farming counties, we also have our premier National Park and some of its finest landscape, which in turn makes it the top  English tourist destination outside London, Oxford ,Cambridge, and Stratford .The College is one of the country's centres for forestry and I think alone of any of its equivalents has both upland and lowland farms on its campus. Hence it  is perfectly, indeed I think uniquely, placed to be in the forefront of rural land based education so important to our county and our country.

In my view at the heart of many of the problems facing the future of farming and the countryside is a naivety on the part of those promoting environmentalism and landscape, and incomprehension on the part of those actually on the ground doing much of this work. This is compounded by almost all environmentalists, bureaucrats, and regulators being on salaries with pensions and many directly engaged in farming being self-employed in a very hard market place. Having been both I know each engenders a different perspective on the World. Newton Rigg, if developed in the right way could and should help bridge that gap

The decline of Newton Rigg was associated by the then popular perception-it is interesting how often such popular perceptions are wrong, that UK agriculture was now at best a side issue. All of a sudden, now, the World looks a bit different from the way it did then, and this view, quite rightly, is being questioned  .At this point in time Newton Rigg should be being promoted, enhanced, improved and expanded because it offers something of real benefit, as opposed to many superficially more attractive non subjects and non courses on offer elsewhere.

How this country treats its universities is going to have a major impact on our country's future well being as The Russell Group is rightly pointing out. Self indulgence will be disastrous. In the economically chilly World of 2010s and beyond, institutions like Newton Rigg wedded to excellence within their own spheres of activity offer, potentially, enormous intellectual, human, and economic benefits. Please, Professor McCaffery don't throw out this particular baby out with the bathwater.