Rural Affairs

Sarah Bool Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Over 52,000 hectares of the land in South Northamptonshire is agricultural—equivalent to more than 35,000 football pitches—so rural issues are at the heart of my constituency. I will focus on three matters: the death of the family farm, flooding and solar farms.

The Chancellor’s agricultural property relief reforms have caused huge distress among the farming community in South Northamptonshire. Last week, I joined fellow Opposition MPs to deliver a letter to Downing Street urging her to rethink this disastrous policy. However, we must not forget the other pernicious elements of the Budget. Increasing tax on fertilisers—the carbon tax—to meet net zero targets will force farmers to produce less food. We will therefore have to import it from a country that does not have such a tax, with all the resulting carbon impact. It is unbelievably counterintuitive. The Government will also now class double-cab pick-ups—the workhorse vehicle of the countryside—as company cars for tax purposes. This change could increase the tax burden on the working people of the countryside by 211%. I am staggered that Labour can say that food security is national security while introducing a smorgasbord of attacks on farmers.

Members may also be aware that in September parts of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire suffered catastrophic flooding. The village of Grendon in my constituency was flooded in a matter of minutes at 9 o’clock on a Sunday evening, resulting in the entire downstairs floors of some properties being ruined, cars being destroyed and priceless memories being lost. Residents believe this may have occurred due to insufficient dredging of a nearby brook, such that when the heavy rainfall occurred upstream, the water built up like a dam that burst and wreaked havoc. Will the Secretary of State and the Minister commit to exploring how extensively the Environment Agency dredges small brooks, to prevent such catastrophes from recurring?

On solar farms, Easton Maudit in my constituency would be enveloped on three sides by the proposed 2,000-acre Green Hill solar farm, with once-beautiful English countryside reduced to grey sheets of plastic and glass. I am not against more renewable energy, but to have a solar farm on such a scale totally enveloping an idyllic rural village, while warehouses on the M1 sit without solar panels on their roofs, seems totally illogical to me and my constituents. Our rural towns and villages may be smaller in size and less visible than our urban cities, but their residents are just as important and we must protect them.