Today, we announced the Conservative Party’s bold plan to restore common sense to farming and nature policy.
It's a plan where Whitehall works for rural and coastal communities, not against them, and where the custodians of our land can focus on growing food and protecting the environment, not filling in forms.
With food prices rocketing, farm closures at a record high and nature in decline, the status quo clearly isn't working.
Axing the Family Farm Tax and Family Business Tax.
Our plan starts by axing both taxes. This time last year, we held a rally at Conference and launched our Stop the Family Farm Tax petition.
Thanks to you and more than 250,000 others who signed our petition, to our MPs who forced multiple votes in Parliament, and to the farmers who we joined at protests across the country, we delivered one of Labour's most humiliating U-turns of the past 12 months.
But the job isn't done. Labour's remaining taxes are still damaging our countryside, and nearly 9 in 10 farms have paused investment because of them. That's bad for farmers and bad for the country, so we must fight on.
Watch the rally with Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Victoria Atkins to learn more 👇:
And you can read Victoria's full speech here:
This time last year, we held a rally at Conservative Party Conference to save British farming.
This year, we are holding a rally for common sense, and for black Labradors, warm ale and pubs!
Our rally last year, along with all our campaigning with farmers, forced one of Labour’s most embarrassing U-turns in the last 12 months.
Their partial U-turn on the Family Farm and Family Business Taxes.
Thank you to everyone here for everything you have done with our farmers to secure that victory.
But Labour’s taxes are still damaging our countryside.
We know that nearly nine out of ten farms have paused investment because of these taxes.
That is not good for our country, and so we must fight on.
We Conservatives will be campaigning in the weeks ahead of the Budget to demand that Labour axe these vindictive taxes in full.
And if Andy Burnham does not axe these taxes in full, rest assured we will when we are back in government.
Today, I want to talk about choices.
Farmers and fishermen make a choice every morning to go out, whatever the weather, to feed their livestock, tend to their crops or take to the seas.
They choose to work hard, feed us and look after the land.
Governing is also about making choices, and I want to set out the choices that the Conservative Party will make for our countryside and coast.
But first, let us look at Labour’s choices.
Their bad choices are clear for all to see.
Since the General Election, Labour’s choices have been to increase taxes, impose more red tape, raise business costs and cut the farming and nature budget.
And in that time, we have seen rocketing food prices, the highest number of farms closing on record and the collapse of the Government’s environmental schemes.
Take the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, the Department’s flagship scheme that pays farmers to look after and improve our environment.
After 18 months of inaction, Labour chose to design this scheme, for the first time ever, on a first-come, first-served basis.
That meant £230 million of taxpayers’ money was sprayed around on the basis of who could press “send” the fastest, not on the best plans for nature.
This Government does not wake up thinking about how they can help you.
It wakes up thinking about how it can attack the rural way of life.
In fact, they think the rural way of life is a “nostalgic far-right fantasy”.
This matters.
Because climate change is happening and the world is becoming less safe.
Brutal summers are causing poor harvests and wildfires.
Rising disease is crippling our livestock farmers.
Prime agricultural land is being plastered in solar panels.
And food prices continue to rise for us all.
Accepting the status quo is Labour’s choice.
But we know there is a better way, bringing back common sense for farming and the rural economy.
This is why, at last year’s Conference, I announced that we would review all 34 quangos that sit under Defra.
I did this because, under Kemi, we Conservatives are doing the hard work now to prepare a plan for government.
I said that we would be honest and go back to first principles.
We would draw up a plan, keep what works and dismantle that which does not.
Since Conference last year, my brilliant Shadow Ministerial team of Robbie, Neil, Massey, Aphra and David have been travelling the country, listening to the custodians of our countryside and coast.
The first stage of this review has now concluded.
In this first stage, it has become clear that we must focus on how Defra works as a department and its two largest quangos, Natural England and the Environment Agency.
We discovered during this review that there is one Defra-related civil servant for every five farmers.
That is six times the ratio of school teachers to primary school children!
So it is reasonable to ask: is this working well?
Rural and coastal communities told us that it feels like Whitehall exists to catch them out, not help them.
Across the country, we heard complaints of duplication between Defra and the quangos, gold-plating of regulations, and no accountability for decision-makers.
Again and again, farmers, landowners, gamekeepers and rural communities gave us real-life examples of how powerless Defra is to effect real change and how these quangos affect their lives.
A dairy tenant farmer told me that he has been ordered by the Environment Agency to spend £750,000 now to prevent a risk that there might be a pollution incident in 50 years’ time.
As the farmer said to me, there will not be a farm here in 50 years because of a single inspector’s dictat.
On the moors, we have heard about Natural England overseeing the ban on heather burning, even though scientists and the National Fire Chiefs Council advise that this helps nature and prevents wildfires.
We heard of organised crime gangs piling up illegal waste dumps without consequence, yet volunteers being arrested for clearing rubbish from the River Thames.
Inaction and overzealous action by the Environment Agency.
How has this come to be?
Because it is what often happens in Whitehall.
A once well-intentioned policy slowly but surely morphs through mission creep, serving only to justify its expansion, processes and existence, rather than focusing on the outcomes for our people and countryside.
Very often, the hard-working officials within the system are as frustrated with its strictures as the public!
In other words, this system does not work.
My choice, the Conservative choice, is to call time on this failing system.
Doing this will require something bold, something that will make some special interest groups feel uncomfortable but will lead to stronger, healthier habitats that work for food production and nature.
So, I am pleased to announce that the next Conservative Government will restructure Defra to make it faster, simpler and fairer for us all.
This is a massive task to which we have given a lot of thought.
It encompasses how we manage our water systems, how we consolidate our world-leading scientific expertise, and how we make it easier for farmers, fishermen and food producers to access advice, permits and funding.
We will look at how we can reform our nature and habitat regulations into one coherent set of laws that actually works for our rural communities.
I will set out the details of our plans in the coming months, but I can announce today the biggest change.
We will abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency and return the powers that work back to direct ministerial control.
Those parts of the quangos that do not work, are duplicated or gold-plated will go.
But ministers cannot do this alone.
Farmers look after 70% of the land in this country.
We cannot feed ourselves or protect nature without them.
This is why we will return common sense to the Sustainable Farming Incentive to work with farmers, rather than against them.
We will also build on the success of farming clusters and Landscape Recovery Schemes introduced by the last Conservative government.
They are proving that they deliver results for nature quickly and for good value if the Government gets out of the way and lets them get on with the job.
So, we will restore common sense and accountability to the management of our countryside, with the expectation of measurable improvements in our food production and habitats.
Secondly, if we are serious about backing British farmers, Defra must be repositioned as an economic growth department at the heart of government.
We will work with farmers, food producers and retail businesses to focus on what needs to be eliminated and what needs to be changed to help farmers make a profit.
And thirdly, we have listened to communities who are sick and tired of our countryside being dumped on and polluted.
As part of this wholesale restructuring of Defra, I will create a tough new Environmental Crime and Enforcement Authority, whose officers will dare to go after organised crime gangs and others who pollute our countryside, dump waste and kill wildlife.
I used to prosecute criminals for a living, so I am up for the fight for our environment.
Because it is time to turn the tide and put Whitehall back into the service of our countryside and coast.
Our approach will not be to water down protections, but to make them work.
Now, I know there will be some who will criticise this change, so I want to take them on.
I am a Conservative, and it is in our nature to conserve and protect the environment.
Environmental charities are generous in their praise for what we achieved in government to protect the environment.
But this important task requires us to be honest about what is working and what is not.
Natural England and the Environment Agency have existed for decades, yet charities tell us our nature has declined during this time.
We should not protect quangos just because we dare not do better.
And we will not.
Finally, in our review we heard consistently that Defra, Natural England and the Environment Agency are not working.
But with these plans, we can transform them into a department that secures our food production, improves our environment, puts rural economic growth at its heart and protects the rural way of life.
The last year has shown that when the Conservative Party, farmers and rural communities work together, we can achieve great things.
So let us go to work and bring back common sense to farming and nature policy.
Because only the Conservatives can get Britain working again.
Thank you.
