All MPs must support farming standards
I STARTED my sunny Saturday morning with coffee and the letters pages of the WDP and the first seven paragraphs of Mr Maskell’s fight against the virus and dictatorships and to wave the flag of... ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – straight out of the good old U S of A.
Goodness me! For once he and I both wear the same uniform.
Then in paragraph eight he goes and ruins the whole illusion.
The bit about sliding down into dictatorships – China, Russia, Belarus, Brazil and then, to be dead sneaky, what does he do?
He throws into that list of dictatorships list... the EU. Like fat on a fire. Maybe it was but a moment’s aberration?
The EU is not a nation, it is an idea in an Bruxelles office block, a philosophy, now 70 years in being, supported, endorsed... taken up by more and more nations as a way to keep the peace in Europe after 900 years of blood letting at the behest of power hungry monarchs and their family feuds, untrustworthy politicians and despotic military dictators.
The EU offered freedom, stability, help and harmony and ease and confidence of relationships through free trade, free exchange and free movement of people.
A co-operative of economic and social values whose principles are freely subscribed to by a group of 27 nations – a union and trading block of 600 million people.
Britain has started to build its aluminium barriers, manned by hundreds of expensive uniforms, to take back control of those coming in and going out. It’s called our independence.
Britain’s Conservative Party, in power with 43 per cent of the people’s vote – such an oddly British interpretation of democracy – have chosen to take Britain out of the EU.
Its first act of some delusional independence will be to tear up the promises to maintain Britain’s high standards in all aspects of agriculture and meat production.
This government’s Agricultural Bill is about to be returned to Parliament and the government of Mr Johnson has made it known it will not accept any changes to the Bill.
In the House of Lords there was cross party agreement to an amendment to the Agricultural
Bill that would give economic security and protection to our huge Westcountry farming community, with an undertaking in the Agricultural Bill that would prevent the import of agricultural meat products that were below the high standards and practices being maintained by British farmers.
By denying that protection it leaves Britain open to what I can only describe as junk American meat products, as part of a much needed trade agreement with the United States that Britain has promised not to renege on. Every Conservative member of Parliament representing seats in Devon and Cornwall have been contacted and asked to vote in support the House of Lords cross party amendment that would give the economic security and certainty that our huge Westcountry farming community needs.
As the Agricultural Bill now stands, it does not protect the present high standards of food quality and animal husbandry against the importing of meat products from elsewhere that are well below Britain’s own high standards.
I would ask Mr Maskell to put on my uniform and call for all
West Country MPs to show their colours and publicly declare they have put their vote where their mouth is on British agriculture and farm produce, and supported the amendment cross party agreement to an amendment to the Agricultural Bill.