Standing up for farmers in trade deal
This week I welcomed the announcement of the Government’s plans to set up an independent Trade and Agriculture Commission to advise on trade policy and export opportunities for British farmers. The group, which will include industry representatives, civil society groups and experts in food and farming, will make recommendations on the UK’s future food trade policy.
I know that many readers and local West Sussex farmers and food producers share my pride in our high-quality British production, hygiene and animal welfare standards and so I was reassured that this was welcomed by the president of the NFU as a ‘hugely important’ step.
As the representative of such a rural constituency, I will stand up for our local farmers and will not support any trade agreement that would mean they would be unable to compete on a level playing field.
The biggest political news of this week was the Prime Minister’s ‘New Deal’ speech, which promises to stimulate the economy and ‘build build build’ to help the country recover from the impact of the coronavirus lockdown.
Over the next five years, the
Government will invest more than £600billion in our national infrastructure, including on transport, hospitals, schools and towns.
A National Infrastructure Strategy will be published in the autumn which will set a clear direction on core economic infrastructure, including energy networks, road and rail, flood defences and waste.
This week’s announcement brings forward £5billion of capital investment projects, supporting jobs and the economic recovery across the country.
A local beneficiary is St Philip Howard
School in Barnham, who will benefit from a grant to improve their building’s ageing plumbing system, replacing the primary heating and hot water plant.
This allocation forms part of an overall £1.4billion capital funding for 2020-21 from the Condition Improvement Fund which is being invested to ensure that they have well-maintained facilities.
Another aspect of the ‘New Deal’ is planning reforms to get more development on brownfield sites by allowing existing commercial properties to be converted into residential housing more easily, giving more types of commercial premises flexibility to be repurposed and the ability to demolish and rebuild vacant and redundant residential and commercial buildings as homes.
We await the details of the planning policy paper but there is more than enough ‘brownfield’ land in our urban towns and cities to avoid ever having to develop greenfield sites.
This reform could therefore be a useful development to protect our precious natural diversity and valuable agricultural land and flood plains under threat from inappropriate developments at Buck Barn, Adversane and the 17 parishes around Henfield from Mayfield Market Town.