Bradley Thomas

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. As he rightly points out, we are at risk of large-scale industrial energy production installations becoming the new cash crop, displacing valuable agricultural land across our constituencies. I want the House to be aware of a comment from a constituent who wrote to me last night: “I have never written a personal email to an MP before but feel so strongly about the recent changes announced in the budget that I couldn’t let them go. Although on paper we might appear ‘rich’ the reality is we only make enough money each year to support…2 families and don’t have ‘millions’ in the bank. We pay our taxes like every other working person does. Every spare penny we get we invest in the farm to make it better for the next generation but after the budget announcements last week feel that that was a waste of time. I am beginning to think that the best option for my family would to be to sell up and move abroad to a country that appreciates its farmers and food.” That is devastating, and I want the Government to reflect on those words very carefully. I recall the Prime Minister’s words in his first speech in Downing Street, where he said that he wanted the Government to “tread more lightly” on our lives. Sadly, the Government are doing anything but; they are ruthlessly bearing down on every facet of British society in the most ideological fashion. I call on them to scrap the family farm tax and instead support British farmers. I also call on the Government to reverse the changes to tax on pick-up trucks, which are the workhorses of the countryside and of tradesmen and women across the country. Although much of the debate has focused on farms, it is important to highlight that there is more to the rural economy than just our farmers. The countryside makes up more than 90% of the UK’s land. It is home to millions of people in our country and it contributes more than £270 billion per annum to our economy, from farming and horticulture to stewardship of the land and countryside sports. For our rural economy to thrive there needs to be sufficient infrastructure to attract people and businesses to those areas, including further investment in rural connectivity and mobile coverage. Finally, our rural economy cannot exist if our rural areas are developed over. New housing developments cannot come at the expense of our green belt. Some 89% of land in my constituency is formally designated as green belt, but the target being imposed by the Government will directly result in thousands more homes being built on high-quality green-belt land in my constituency, which will undermine food security and our rural identity. We must stand up for our rural communities and for farmers, and we must protect our countryside. I will always defend farms, the rural economy and our rural areas during my time in the House.