Former MP David Maclean, now Baron Blencathra, has been appointed deputy chairman of Natural England. He tells Mark Green how the organisation aims to protect and improve our landscape and agriculture

Brexit offers Britain the ideal opportunity to reset how it funds and cares for its agriculture and the country's landscape.

The bold statement comes from former Government minister and Penrith and the Border MP David Maclean, Lord Blencathra, who has just been appointed deputy chair of Natural England.

The politician admits that his passion for our countryside and the prospect of Brexit lured him into the role.

“We've now got a great opportunity after Brexit to make some fundamental changes to the way we fund agri environmental measures in the countryside,” he says.

“We are piloting things such as payment by results for farmers to take more environmental care.

“In Cumbria , we have the National Park, we have 22 national nature reserves, all wonderful oases.

“What we want to do throughout the country is make sure that we don't just have oases and desert lands in the middle, we want to improve the landscape and biodiversity throughout the country.”

He speaks with obvious enthusiasm and his interest in the environment goes back decades; from supporting red squirrel feeder projects in his constituency to representing Britain at Rio in 1992, the first 'earth summit'.

He was also involved in Agenda 21 and the Darwin initiative, projects which promote sustainable development and biodiversity.

Natural England is a government advising body and dedicated to protecting and promoting nature, biodiversity and access to the countryside.

As the Common Agricultural Policy will be swept away with Brexit, new funding and new methods of land management will be introduced for UK farmers and Lord Blencathra is looking to sign up Cumbrians for Natural England – backed schemes.

The current funding system is guaranteed until 2023 and one of Natural England's main aims over the coming years is to encourage involvement in its Environmental Land Management Scheme.

He explained: “When we leave the EU we will be rid of agricultural support where farmers will be paid on the size of their farms.

“Michael Gove has made it clear that they will be paid for the environmental good that they do and pay by results.

“Rather than specifying in minute detail what they should do in an environmental scheme, we are piloting some payment by result schemes.

“We measure what the biodiversity is in the start and the results at the end and pay by results.”

Some critics have argued the process means farmers are not being paid to produce food but are being funded to be landscape managers, or park keepers.

But Lord Blencathra says Environment Secretary Michael Gove has made clear that producing food is a priority, adding: “What we cannot do in future is to pay farmers just because they have 50 acres or a thousand acres.”

He stresses the payment by results agriculture programme more than once. The nearest scheme is in Wensleydale, he is hoping to recruit more local volunteers very soon.

He points out that 70% of Cumbrian farmers have been or are involved in voluntary agriculture welfare schemes and adds: “We can only succeed by encouraging people to do the right thing.”

How the pilots fare over the next few years will be important because they will influence how the schemes are shaped and will run from 2023.

The seasoned politician takes his post as the countryside faces it toughest challenges over greenbelt areas and at a time when the Lake District National Park Authority has produced controversial plans for its development over the next 15 years.

He has fought plans for wind turbines at the foot of Blencathra, branding the idea “unacceptable” and he is not a fan of zip wires in the National Park.

But he maintains that the National Park Authority would not do anything to endanger its newly-won UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

He argues: “UNESCO liked the management plan for the Park. It would seem to me that the Authority are trying to continue the slow development and change that has characterised the Lake District for the past 400 years.

“I don't think there is an excessive bias toward tourism in its plans

“It has got World Heritage status because of the things they have done over the past 200 years.

“If the tourism thing was bad, UNESCO would not have granted that status. They have been getting it right all along and I can't see them going wrong now.”

He admits he “raised eyebrows” at the schemes for a zipwire at Thirlmere and the cable car at Whinlatter, adding: “Personally I dislike the idea of cable cars or zipwires in mountains.

“Idiots go up there in plimsolls, shorts and with a mobile phone, they can't read a map, they get lost and call for help.

“That will increase if you make it easy to get to the top.

“A cable car may take vehicles off some roads, but will increase it on other roads to get to the cable cars.”

Baron Blencathra chats at the Natural England offices in Penrith, not far from his home in the town.

He started his political career in 1983 when he took over from Willie Whitelaw as MP for Penrith and the Border.

He was a government whip then Minister at the Department of the Environment, and then Minister at the Home Office.

Worsening multiple sclerosis forced him to resign as MP in 2009 and he was made a life peer in 2011.

It's a slight return to political life, one he feels healthy enough to take on and a move he says he wouldn't have made if it did not involve the environment.

He explains: “If the Prime Minister had said ‘I’m going to make you Secretary of State for defence’ I’d say no thanks Prime Minister. Unless you doubled my budget, there’s nothing I could do, if I was health minister there is nothing I could do for the NHS, it is a bottomless bucket, no government will ever have enough money for it.

“But this is the one area where we can completely rewrite policy.

“As Defra rewrite agricultural policy, Natural England has this opportunity to completely tackle the way we fund and protect our landscapes and our biodiversity.

“Instead of spending two and a half billion on farmers, just because of the size of their land, we could convert that into doing environment good and leaving the environment in a better place than we found it.”

He remains a fierce champion of red squirrels and defending native species while determined to eradicate invasive species and points out he was the first environment minister to introduce rewilding when, in 1992, he helped reintroduce dormice to Kent.

“When they hear rewilding, people think of wild animals, lynx and bears. We’ve got our ‘back from the brink programme launched earlier this year part of that will be reintroducing the chequered skipper butterfly to Rockingham Forest in Corby after it became extinct in 1985.

“NE, if it gets a legitimate licence application, we will consider it.

“I would prefer to see Pine Martens reintroduced than Lynx.”

As for controversial environmentalist George Monbiot's demand to remove sheep from the fells and return the land to forests, he says: “If you take the sheep off the fells we will lose all the other management.

“The farms are going to go, the farms are going to go everything UNESCO said about the agro-pastoral thing would go.

“UNESCO didn’t make it a World Heritage site because it is covered in forestry. It is because of the mixture.”

He is appointed to the deputy chairman role for three years, but before the new agriculture policy is introduced by 2023, he hopes he will have helped put in place “ the building blocks to leave the environment in a better place than we found it.”