SIR NICHOLAS SOAMES: STAND UP FOR BRITAIN

From Churchill’s grandson, an urgent message to Ministers

WE ARE extraordinarily lucky in this country to be served by some of the most effective and efficient farmers in the world, and never should we have been more conscious of this than now.

Our farmers have worked round the clock, in all-weathers, to ensure we remain fed, even at the depth of the crisis. Food has been diverted from all manner of supply chains into our supermarkets and high street grocers.

British agriculture is renowned throughout the world for its productivity, very high standards and its skill in getting food from farm to fork.

Yet, today, facing an unprecedented economic slump and a radical overhaul in our international trading agreements, our farmers face their biggest challenge since the Second World War.

We are truly at a critical juncture for farming, the countryside and the environment.

It has barely registered in public debate, yet radical legislation is now going through Parliament that will set the future arrangements for domestic agriculture for the first time since 1947. And within this Agriculture Bill, there is no protection against substandard imports. It is of profound importance that all of us realise this.

We are being sleep-walked into negotiations with the United States which are of profound importance, even though there is still no clear trade policy for our agriculture and our farmers. This is why I was deeply saddened to see so few of our parliamentarians stand alongside our farmers last week, with so few of them voting for vital changes to the Bill.

These amendments would have protected consumers and the farming industry from damaging food imports, the type of cheap food that would be illegal to produce here and which threatens serious harm to the high standards of our own agriculture.

We have many MPs who make great play regarding Britain’s high standards in both farming and the environment. This vote was a real opportunity for them to ensure that our farmers would not be undermined by future trade deals, especially when such agreements could see imports of low-quality food with a damaging environmental impact undercutting the very standards we rightly demand at home.

So the question is, will Liz Truss and her Department for International Trade do their duty and stand up for British farmers and the public interest, and block the truly dismal prospect of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef?

Many of these are produced at well below the high standards we insist our own farmers adhere to.

These mean that we don’t need to wash chicken in chemicals to get rid of harmful bacteria, or bulk up our cattle with artificial substances to make them grow faster.

The Government must ensure that there are cast-iron guarantees that British farmers and the public will not be betrayed over this.

The farming industry has suggested we establish a Food and Standards Commission in order to examine trade deals and make informed recommendations to MPs. This is an extremely good idea and would offer essential parliamentary scrutiny, something that appears sadly lacking today.

There has been considerable and welcome support for such a commission, including from successive Secretaries of State at the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs: Michael Gove, Theresa Villiers and currently George Eustice.

I understand, however, that the proposal remains firmly stuck on the doorstep of Liz Truss’s Department for International Trade.

We need to know why this urgent matter has not been dealt with – and when the Government is going to protect the public interest.

This is emphatically not about protectionism. This is about leadership. This is about the values that should – and most of us understood would – underpin ‘Global Britain’.

We should be leading the world towards our own, hard-earned high standards, not lowering the bar so we can join the rest of them.

When I was an MP, I saw our former Prime Minister, Theresa May, take the bold decision to legislate this country’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. That was about brave leadership. Indeed, it showed the world we were absolutely committed to and serious about climate change.

We must continue that legacy. We should be embracing the vital role agriculture has to play in tackling climate change and its unique position to suck harmful gases out of the atmosphere and store it in our soil.

If we import food which has been grazed amid the burning remains of the Amazon rainforest, what on Earth does that say about Britain and its principles?

I have lived in the countryside all my life. I was an Agriculture Minister in John Major’s government and I have developed a profound respect for all that our farmers do for the nation, often under great difficulties. Our consumers can be is assured of very high-quality food produced by our excellent farmers, to some of the highest standards of animal welfare and environmental protection in the world. We must settle for nothing less.

Our countryside, in which everyone shares equal pride, is a blessing and a joy to us all.

All across our country, the patchwork of family farmers maintains our footpaths, bridleways and dry stone walls, and are truly part of the very backbone of British life. They bind together often remote, sometimes fragile, communities.

Many of these farmers and their hard-working families are already going through extremely tough times, and living on incomes perilously close to the edge of viability.

Which is why I also believe the Government should now pause its plans to phase out direct financial support for food production next year, as it currently intends to do.

If it wishes to continue the welcome development of its new ‘public money for public goods’ policy, then it can and should, but it must not take money away from food production at such short notice and at such critical times.

With farmers facing great uncertainty and disruption due to the immediate impact of the coronavirus, it is short-sighted and truly foolish to press ahead with an overhaul in arrangements for farmers.

In the US, a Farm Bill is injecting billions of dollars into agriculture. A decision by this Government to leave our farmers exposed at this time and unable to compete on a level playing field, would be an unprecedented dereliction of duty with severe consequences for our farmers and the public interest.

My grandfather, Winston Churchill, recognised after two World Wars the profound importance of being able to feed this island nation. My grandparents’ and my parents’ generations lived through an era of food rationing in the 1940s, conscious that Britain produced a dismal 30 per cent of its own food.

Important lessons were learnt and the landmark 1947 Agriculture Act put us on a new path. We are now roughly 60 per cent self-sufficient in food, which is a very considerable achievement, although we can – and will – do better.

History offers us many of the answers to the great difficulties we face in modern life, if only we would listen to them, not least that it is one of the most important duties of any government to feed its people.

This Government has committed itself to taking back control, to building a bigger, better Britain.

Surely that is about a truly independent nation that will maintain exceptionally high standards of animal welfare and environmental protection, and continue to care for our magnificent countryside and the farmers that have shaped it.

Achieving this will ensure that Britain can be the global leader that our planet desperately needs.

This is a time for our Government to aim high and negotiate trade on our terms. We must not give away the keys to British farming and open the door to deep and lasting damage.

Betraying our hard-pressed farmers would have severe consequences Winston knew that a government must feed its people