Politicians must work together to deliver the best possible Brexit deal for rural Britain, MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has declared.
Parliament has thrown its weight behind the Prime Minister’s plans for taking Britain out of Europe, signalling the start of months of intense negotiations.
But Mr Liddell-Grainger, Conservative MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset, said it was vital that the interests of the countryside were not treated as a minor issue, or even sidelined, as the shape of post-Brexit Britain was mapped out.
One major question mark hangs over farm subsidies: UK producers currently receive about £3 billion a year support from the EU through the Single Farm Payment, which in thousands of cases makes the crucial difference between profit and loss.
Industry leaders have warned it would be catastrophic merely to turn that support off like a tap, which would leave farms impossibly squeezed between inexorably mounting overheads and the relentless, downward price pressure from supermarkets.
Mr Liddell-Grainger said it was essential that farmers benefited from some kind of support framework.
“Though, equally, it should be possible to ensure that money channelled to farms is better targeted and more wisely spent than under the current system, which rewards people merely for owning land,” he said.
“Ideally we need to see some kind of standard, baseline support provided with a fixed headage of livestock, or cropped acreage as the ceiling, so if farmers wish to expand beyond that they do so unaided.
“But we can also incentivise payments so that the British agricultural policy is better tailored to the nature and needs of Britain, rather than a situation where British farmers running several hundred sheep on West Country pasture not straitjacketed into the same regime as a Greek farmer running a dozen goats on a near-vertical, barren hillside.
“We need to reward our farmers for delivering what this country needs, be it more specialist crops to replace imports, or the recruitment and employment of young farmers who are crucial to the industry’s future.
“And we need to consider what to do about the use of migrant labour, without which large sectors of agriculture would almost grind to a halt at certain times of the year.”
But Mr Liddell-Grainger said farming was only one area of rural activity which would be profoundly affected by Brexit.
“There are nature conservation interests. There is tourism. There are the small industries that have sprung up as firms have moved out of towns and cities into more attractive surroundings. There are the hundreds of enterprises set up by diversifying farmers and, of course, there is our huge food and drink sector whose network links both urban and rural areas,” he said.
“In fact when you sit down and take a long, hard look the countryside is a far more complex arrangement of inter-related commercial activities than most people even begin to suspect.
“That is why Brexit is going to affect it so profoundly. And that is why we are going to have to devote so much time and attention to ensuring the result of Brexit is a strengthened, rather than weakened rural economy.”