Oral Answers to Questions

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Mr Speaker, as I am sure you will have heard from other Ministers, we recognise that science and technology is critical to our future economy, and much of that originates from research within universities and other research bodies. We have made a huge commitment financially to research across the whole of the UK, and that will persist. We are dead keen to join the Horizon programme, but the hon. Member’s question is better directed at our European friends.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

T8. When I visit schools in my constituency, it is often—quite rightly—to discuss climate change, and I am so proud of the passionate and smart young people across Rutland, Melton, the Vale and Harborough villages. However, I am concerned by the anti-dairy, anti-meat and, frankly, anti-farmer narrative I am starting to see, where students and children of farmers feel they are being silenced and cannot speak out in support of their families, who feed our country.

[Kit Malthouse]

As a rural Member myself, I am very alarmed to hear my hon. Friend’s stories. She is right that we should be encouraging schools to educate children about where food comes from, and indeed about the very high standards that UK farmers have produced, not least in animal husbandry, but I have to say that there is a way to intrigue children and make them curious about some of the challenges to climate change brought about by farming. I read recently about an additive made from seaweed that we can add to dairy cows’ feed that reduces the amount of methane they produce. I gather it is in operation very effectively in Australia and being looked at in this country.