TORY MPS HAVE KICKED FARMERS IN TEETH
60 DAYS TO SAVE UK FAMILY FARMS
FARMERS feel ‘hugely betrayed’ by the Tory Party after a bid to protect Britain from low-standard food imports was torpedoed, an award-winning farmer said last night.
Andrew Ward, who has 1,600 acres of arable land in Lincolnshire, claimed Conservative MPs had kicked farmers in the teeth after they failed to agree a legal protection that would stop food being sold here that was produced abroad using lower safety or animal welfare standards.
The Conservatives had pledged in last year’s Election manifesto: ‘In all of our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.’
Earlier this month, senior Tory MP Neil Parish tabled an amendment to the Government’s landmark Agriculture Bill which would have prevented future trade deals from allowing food into the UK not produced to the equivalent standards required of farmers and processors here. But it was defeated after failing to receive Government support.
Mr Ward, who was awarded an MBE for his services to agriculture in 2014 and was crowned Arable Farmer of the Year by Farmers Weekly in 2009, said the vote had rocked his faith in the Conservative Party after he backed them at last year’s General Election.
‘I was undecided but at the last minute I thought, “No I will stick with the Conservatives”, so I voted for them,’ he said. ‘The trust that we have put in our Conservatives to look after industry and look after busi- nesses has not materialised.
‘That is where we feel hugely betrayed. A lot of us wrote to MPs before this amendment was discussed to highlight how important food standards are – and we really do want them protecting – and they wrote back to us all and said they fully appreciated where we were coming from and really did understand and agree that food standards need maintaining. And then when the votes took place they completely turned tail and they all voted against it – that’s another betrayal. It really kicked us in the teeth.’
Mr Ward, who grows wheat, spring barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape, has been praised for the innovative methods he uses.
Rapeseed from the farm is processed into oil blends used by
McDonald’s and it is one of only two farms in the country to be awarded ‘flagship’ status by the fast-food giant.
He said arable farmers were concerned about cheap wheat and barley imports, while livestock farmers were worried about beef, pork and chicken produced abroad to much lower standards.
Earlier this year, The Mail on
Sunday revealed leaked emails in which one of the Government’s most senior officials made the incendiary suggestion that Britain does not need its own farming industry.
Influential Treasury adviser Tim Leunig argued that the food sector was not ‘critically important’ to the economy – and that agriculture and fishery production ‘certainly isn’t’. Mr Ward said our story sent ‘shockwaves through the whole industry’.
He added: ‘The Government really needs to decide, do they want an agricultural industry where we produce our own food while looking after the environment – or do they want to import it all and not have an agricultural industry?’