Jon Pearce

No. The message from this Government is that we are committed to farming, and to making it profitable and sustainable. That has to be the message that we send out to those young farmers. There is no doubt that farmers in my constituency have been struggling terribly for the past 14 years, working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, for very little reward. The last Government promised them the earth, but left them in the sheep dip. After all the Brexit promises, what they got was the Leader of the Opposition selling them out in trade deals with New Zealand and Australia. Boris Johnson promised farmers that subsidies would stay at 100%, but then the Government phased out the basic farm payment. The Opposition’s incompetence saw farmers miss out on £358 million that could have been in their back pockets when they desperately needed it, and then came Liz Truss. Her mini-Budget and all those unfunded tax cuts—a point that I will return to—crashed the economy, causing interest rates to rise and driving many farmers to the brink. Over 12,000 farmers and agricultural businesses were lost under the last Government, so we will not take any lectures from the Opposition about the farming industry.