will today promise to bring the Labour Party closer
to rural and farming communities in the first Labour leader’s
speech to the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference since
2008.
Starmer will say that Labour’s next manifesto will offer hope and
optimism to rural communities. He will also call on the
Government to take measures to back British farming, including:
- Encourage people to buy more British food – including looking
at whether more of the £2.4bn public spending on catering could
be spent with British farmers and producers.
- Address the serious and growing problems with farm payments –
with three quarters of farmers worried that the Government’s new
schemes won’t keep them afloat.
- Invest in agricultural skills – with a wage subsidy to create
new apprenticeships in farming and other industries this year.
Starmer will go on to argue that ten years of Conservative
ideology has weakened the foundations of rural communities,
hollowing out services and failing to invest in infrastructure.
He will say Labour’s proposed British Recovery Bond would allow
longer-term investment to tackle the “permanent insecurity” faced
by businesses, farmers and landowners in flood-hit communities.
Committing to a new relationship with British farming and rural
communities, the Labour leader will say that “Labour’s history
owes as much to the countryside as it does to the city.”
Starmer will also announce that he has tasked Labour’s Shadow
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
, to lead a review of Labour’s rural policy in the
coming months. He will praise the NFU’s Back British Farming
campaign and highlight Labour’s drive to protect Britain’s high
food and farming standards.
Setting out Labour’s commitment to return to farming and rural
communities, is expected to say:
“This is the first time a Labour Leader has addressed the NFU
conference since 2008. Thirteen years ago.
“And I think that’s indicative of the perceived distance that’s
grown up between Labour and the countryside.
“It’s more perception than reality, because in the last year
Labour stood with British farming and stood up for rural
communities, from fighting for high food standards, to protecting
family farms.
“But it’s a perception that we can’t ignore any longer. And we
won’t ignore any longer.”
He will add:
“No Party can claim to represent the country, if we don’t
represent the countryside.
“Let me begin by reminding us all that Labour’s history owes as
much to the countryside as it does to the city.
“Keir Hardie, my namesake and the first Labour leader, was the
son of a farm worker.
“The post-war Attlee Government introduced the Agricultural Wages
Board and passed the 1947 Agriculture Act that shaped farming for
decades to come.
“And it’s a little-known fact that my first holiday job, at the
age of 14, was on one of the local farms near where I lived.
“Farming matters, to Labour, to the British people, and to the
families and communities that make farming possible.”
On Labour’s proposals for a new British Recovery Bond, he will
say:
“Last week I set out the case for a new British Recovery Bond. To
provide billions of pounds for local communities, jobs and the
infrastructure of the future.
“Let me explain what this could mean for rural communities.
“In December last year, I visited South Yorkshire to see how
local communities had been rebuilding after the 2019 floods,
which had devastated many rural areas.
“I met families who had seen their homes destroyed, their
businesses closed….and more than a year after the floods were
still trying to rebuild their lives.
“Their resilience was amazing. But what shocked me most was that
many of those families had come to accept that every few years
this kind of thing could happen.
“That creates a permanent insecurity. And huge damage to local
economies.
“We have to change this – and to see flooding not as an emergency
to respond to year after year but as a crisis to prevent.
“That can only happen if you have a government willing to invest
in the long-term, and to work with businesses, farmers,
landowners and local communities to build the infrastructure
necessary to provide security and certainty.
“This kind of investment: long-term, green, targeted at areas
starved of government funding for a decade, and designed to build
security, resilience and prosperity for the future, is exactly
what I have in mind when I say that Recovery Bonds could be used
to build the infrastructure Britain will need in the decades to
come.
“And it’s what I mean when I say this has to be a recovery that
works for all parts of the economy and all parts of our country.”
Ends
Notes to editors:
- Keir Starmer’s speech to the NFU Conference will take place
at 12:30, Tuesday 23rdFebruary 2021.
