Farming and Food Security

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

I completely agree with that, and it leads me on to what I was going to say next, which is to praise Michael Gove. The environmental land management scheme created at the beginning of the last Parliament has an awful lot going for it, and there is actually cross-party support for the idea of public money for public goods, as my hon. Friend rightly points out.

I will say this: we have searched high and low for Brexit benefits, and this might be one of them. The common agricultural policy was riddled with all sorts of failures, some of which have been mentioned already. ELMs provide the possibility to have a bespoke farming and cultural environment policy that actually delivers what we want in the places where we want it, and providing environmental goods is absolutely part of that.

However, this positive idea with all-party support was botched by the last Administration. There was a £2.4 billion budget for England alone—eroded, of course, over five years by inflation and all the shocks we have talked about—yet even that pitiful budget, which was frozen by the last Government, was underspent by £358 million. What does that mean? It reduces our ability to feed ourselves as country, to restore nature and to tackle climate change. We did not spend the money not because farmers did not need it, but because of a surplus of complacency from a Conservative party that thought the countryside would always vote for it, because of a lack of care for farmers, their families and their communities, and from a fundamental absence of competence.

My message to the Secretary of State, the Treasury, the Prime Minister, and every Labour MP is this: please do not let the Treasury take financial advantage of Tory incompetence. Do not bake in the underspend. Please, Secretary of State, do not give in to No.11 and No.10. Protect this budget, because without that public money we will not get those public goods. Please fight your corner—[Interruption.] I am pleased to hear him say that he will do so. In fighting his corner, he will be fighting the countryside’s corner, and I want to support him in that.

I would like the Labour party to understand why the Conservatives botched the transition and why the money did not get spent. One of the few efficient things that the previous Administration did was to get rid of the basic payment on time and without any delay. That happened without any problems whatsoever. What did not happen at the same time was the adequate rolling out of new ELMs payments, in particular the sustainable farming incentive. We had a stop-start approach, and many people on historic stewardship schemes for example, were simply not able to get into the SFI.

At the Westmorland county show a few weeks ago I spoke to a youngish hill farmer in his 40s—I mention this particular case because it is so typical of all the others I have spoken about in my constituency and beyond. He said to me that by the end of the process he will have lost £40,000 in basic payments from his annual income. He will gain £14,000 in SFI, and by the way that cost him £6,000 in agent fees. That is a net loss every year of £26,000, and that is typical. That is why there is an underspend. Please do not bake it in. The Secretary of State rightly spoke about mental health, and in this time of flux and change I have never worried more about the mental health of my constituents, and of farmers in particular.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

The suicide rate among male farmers is three times the national average. The Conservative party left rural communities such as mine facing a mental health crisis. A close family friend of mine, Rocky Poulson, took his own life just four days after a farm inspection found that 18 of his sheep were tagged with the wrong coloured ear tags, leaving him facing criminal sanctions and the embarrassment of that among his friends and colleagues—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. May I respectfully suggest to the hon. Lady, and all Members—she should be sitting if I am standing—that interventions should be short, they should be spontaneous, and they certainly should not be read out as if they were part of a speech. I am sure the hon. Lady has made her point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

My grandad was a tenant dairy farmer, and rural communities such as mine feel let down by the Conservative party. I spoke earlier about a close family friend who took his life following a farm inspection. Many farmers who had been let down and forced out of producing food were my clients when I practised as a high-street solicitor in North Warwickshire. They could have done with the £300 million that the Conservative party failed to allocate to the support of rural farmers. They needed a better inspection regime that worked for them and for consumers. I was inspired recently when visiting Aldi, which has its national headquarters in my constituency, because it is passionate about British food and forming good relationships with local farmers.

The agriculture and food industry sector contributes £148 billion to the economy, and provides 4.2 million jobs in the UK, including many jobs in my constituency. However, the Conservative party created a cost of living crisis that forced families to buy less fresh food, particularly vegetables, because they could not afford it. That squeezed our local farmers further. Because the last Government did not prioritise energy or food security, farmers were crippled by escalating energy prices, and animal feed and fertiliser prices. The last Government’s chop-and-change approach to rolling out environmental land management schemes left farmers reeling with uncertainty, and it is no wonder that they and their representatives are looking to this Government for much-needed reassurance. We need to reassure our farmers and give them the confidence to invest for the future. We need to make sure that they know that this Government have their back.

Rural and freight crime in my constituency, like many others, has become intolerable. The Conservative party left rural criminals to roam free, with crime in rural areas spiralling out of control. Farmers are losing valuable equipment essential to the running of their businesses, and to add insult to injury, they are often the ones left to clear up fly-tipping. I am glad to be part of a party and a Government taking rural crime seriously with a cross-Government rural crime strategy that is the first of its kind. This strategy will crack down on issues such as fly-tipping and antisocial behaviour that affect rural communities such as mine.

I am looking forward—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. The time is up, I am afraid.

Waste Crime: Staffordshire

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is almost as if she has read the script in front of me, because she has perfectly lined me up for my next point, which is about the link between illegal dumping, fly-tipping in communities and the wider connection to organised crime and money making. Another report from Unchecked UK, published in 2022, pointed out that enforcement against fly-tipping was at a 10-year low, while the number of incidents of fly-tipping was at a 10-year high. There is a growing chasm between what is happening on the ground and the activities that perpetrators are being punished for and prevented from carrying out.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I am in the neighbouring county of Warwickshire —we share many borders with Staffordshire—and fly-tipping is at an all-time high in my constituency. Much of that is from organised crime from the neighbouring boroughs of Tamworth, Coventry and Birmingham. They come along the M42, the M6 or the A5 and dump waste in the entrances to farms in the middle of the night.

That was the biggest issue that was raised when I recently met the National Farmers’ Union in my area. It is also the No. 1 issue raised by our local rural crime service, but it is not taken seriously by the police and crime commissioner for Warwickshire, and neither is any funding spent on advising people not to use the white vans that parade the streets offering to remove their waste. Reports of fly-tipping are the No. 1 thing I see every day on my local Facebook page. Because no money is spent on publicity, people have no idea where they should report these crimes—whether it is the local authority, the Environment Agency or the police. There has to be more joined-up working, and I would like to see the Minister leading that.

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that interventions should be a little shorter than that.