Farming

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

Having grown up in the countryside, I have great memories of spending my childhood on my friend’s family farm mucking about on tractors and taking in all that our great countryside has to offer. I am not sure that his parents have quite such fond memories of what we got up to on the farm back in the day. It has been a real pleasure for me to see him step up, take over the reins of much of that work, and take that farm from strength to strength.

It is a real privilege for me to represent so many of Bedfordshire’s fantastic farmers, but having spoken to them, I know that the sad reality is that many of them really need representation in this place at the moment. I have visited farms at the Whitbread estate. The fantastic work being done there on regenerative farming was a real eye-opener for me, but it was deeply frustrating to hear from farmers there about the challenges they have had in accessing the SFI scheme, as it was to hear that only 12 farms across my constituency are in the scheme; 20 more started but failed to complete applications, weighed down by bureaucracy. That is only those who could apply to begin with. Many more are unable even to start applications after the Rural Payments Agency bungled remaps of their estate. They are bogged down in negotiations finally to get boundaries agreed, so that they can start accessing vital funding to support their crucial work.

It was a pleasure to visit Clifton Bury farm and see its world-famous shallot fields, but it was quite painful to hear about the challenges that the industry faces due to increasingly tight margins, and the risk that the ending of access payments poses to the beloved access walks around the farm, which were used by people from across my community throughout covid and beyond it. Parish councillors have stepped up, but without a long-term, accessible scheme supporting access to our brilliant countryside, landowners may struggle to make such walks viable.

It was a pleasure, too, to speak to the people at Browns of Stagsden and see their fantastic livestock farming. I took great joy in purchasing my fair share of fantastic goods from one of the best farm shops anyone could hope to see. However, it is clear from speaking to people there that they face real pressures on their business, whether from high energy costs or the lack of action on rural crime, and those pressures continue to grow.

The sad truth is that those are not the only such stories; these issues face farmers and farming communities right across my constituency. They have seen a real increase in their energy bills, post Ukraine; the Government failed to deliver home-grown energy, and they were left exposed to the volatile world energy markets. The challenge of getting on top of rural crime has led many of my farmers to depend on private security firms for action and follow-up. The sad reality is that that new overhead has been added to their business when they can barely afford it. There is also the brutal reality of a broken funding model for farming. Just 1p of the profits associated with much of our produce makes its way back to the fantastic farmers who produced them, and who have been looking after our brilliant countryside in the process.

Our farmers deserve better than that. Our farmers deserve action. From speaking to my farmers, I know that they are desperate for a clear Government commitment to genuinely sustainable domestic food production that delivers not only for the environment, but for all land tenures and all farm business models. They see at first hand how important co-operation with councils is if we are to reverse the decline in council farms and ensure accessible routes into farming for young people right across our communities. Most of all, they are keen for a renewed commitment from a Government who will finally put farming and farming communities back at the heart of their vision for our economy and our country. I am incredibly proud to be a Labour MP, and to be part of a Labour party that is committed to doing just that.

I am proud of being part of a Labour party that is committed to finally making use of the great strength of public procurement, and of ensuring that 50% of public money spent on food goes to British farmers and supports British farming communities. I support the Labour party policy that will finally get us domestic energy security. That will protect our farming communities from some of the volatility in energy prices that they had to endure in recent years. I support a Labour party that will simplify the ELM schemes and ensure that we cut through the red tape that holds back my farmers and sometimes stops them accessing vital funding for the crucial work that they do.

Those good measures are Labour party measures, but they need not be just that. If press rumours are to be believed, the Government recently developed a bit of a penchant for pinching Labour party policies. I urge them to keep going. Labour Front-Bench Members have today outlined fantastic steps that are vital for supporting our farming communities right now. Let us not wait for a general election to deliver some of the changes that my farmers are crying out for. Let us bring forward measures in the dying embers of this Parliament. If not, I look forward to campaigning with Labour party colleagues from right across the country for a national Government who support the interests of the British farming community and deliver a decade of national renewal that our farming community desperately needs.