𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

As a rural MP I know what farming means – both for British food security, and for our rural way of life.Farming is etched into our landscape and history. But British farming won’t always exist simply because it always has.

Every year it seems to get harder, and people who have farmed their whole lives are deciding to pack it in. The very last thing our British farmers needed was a Labour government seemingly ideologically opposed to farming and with no idea where our food comes from. The Family Farm Tax tells us all we need to know about Labour’s approach to farming.

As Conservative Party leader I have made sure we have fought it every step of the way. We rallied, we marched, and we forced votes against it in Parliament.

And we did this because we understand that farming isn’t a job, it’s a way of life. It’s a vocation passed down through generations.

Farmers pour their heart and soul into their farms and Labour just don’t get it.

We are the only party with a fully-funded plan to reverse the Family Farm Tax.

We can do this because we have set out £47 billion of savings and I have a Golden Economic Rule, through which every pound saved will be split between cutting the deficit and cutting taxes or funding key priorities like abolishing the Family Farm Tax.

I know that successive Conservative governments didn’t always get it right, but I am putting economic growth and productivity at the centre of Conservative Party policy, and that means ensuring better productivity and profitability for farmers too.

We want farmers to invest in new ways of producing food. We want our farmers to get on with doing what they do best – unburdened by people with clipboards.

But they aren’t going to make that investment without certainty or wrapped in red tape.

And they certainly aren’t going to do that while having to put money away to pay the Family Farm Tax.

My farming rescue package has three key elements.

The first is slashing red tape.

Regulation has morphed into a maze that blocks flexibility, growth, and common-sense decision-making. Farmers feel it’s designed to catch them out.

So, we will review each and every one of Defra’s 34 – yes 34! – arms-length bodies. And we will cut back the regulators that hinder rural communities.

The second part is making fuel cheaper.

The UK pays four times what businesses in the US are paying for electricity. UK farmers simply can’t compete on price.

Net Zero dogma has meant the UK is deindustrialising. But through our Cheap Power Plan we are going to bring down bills by axing the Carbon Tax, scrapping wind and solar subsidies, replacing the Climate Change Act and drilling in the North Sea.

The final part is getting serious about rural crime.

More and more farmers are waking up to stolen tractors, stripped vehicles, and tools taken straight out of vans and barns. I’ve met farmers pushed to breaking point by repeated theft.

Courts treat it as a minor offence. Stolen goods are openly sold at car boot sales and online. Criminals know they won’t face consequences.

Our plan is clear: tougher sentencing for tool and agricultural vehicle theft, create Rural Crime Taskforces across the country, and shut down the resale markets that make this crime profitable.

The government can’t control the weather, but it can help in some small ways. Labour are clobbering our countryside, my rescue plan will do the opposite.

Protect farmers, keep their bills down, and get out of the way to make sure they’re free to get on with doing what they do best: producing the food this country relies on.

The Conservatives believe in British farming. We will always back our farmers. And we will protect the countryside that feeds our country and makes Britain what it is.