Peter Gittins: I fear new Defra boss will change nothing
Peter Gittins © Peter Gittins With a new secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs announced, following Steve Reed’s departure, you’d hope the only way to go is up.
But nothing is guaranteed. Mr Reed’s time in office might go down in history, but for the wrong reasons.
His proposed inheritance tax reforms, which threaten to devastate thousands of small family farms, will be remembered as nothing short of an agricultural betrayal.
See also: Peter Gittins – the urban-rural divide is stark and dangerous
About the author
Now – ta-da! – we have another secretary, another set of promises.
That makes 10 different Defra secretaries in 10 years.
Each arrives with fresh words and lofty ambitions, but few manage to stay long enough to deliver. The latest is Emma Reynolds.
Like many of her predecessors, she appears to have little direct experience of agriculture beyond the occasional visit to a farm show.
Yet, as ever, she promises to improve farmers’ lives, while ignoring the elephant in the room: the inheritance tax changes that could wipe out generations of family farming.
I watched Ms Reynolds’ speech at the Labour Party conference and was struck by her claim that “Labour is the party of the countryside”.
Notice she didn’t say “the party for farmers”. There’s a big difference.
What I’d like to see in a Defra secretary – and any other rural policymaker for that matter – is someone with genuine interest in farming and rural life.
Someone who has spent time with farmers, attended livestock auctions, visited abattoirs, and sat in stakeholder meetings on food and land use policy.
Ideally, they’d have some hands-on experience, which might help to bridge the growing disconnect between policymakers and rural Britain.
Above all, we need someone with the courage to challenge the system – not just follow orders from above. Someone willing to say:
“Maybe we’ve got this wrong. Let’s fix it before it’s too late.”
It’s hard not to be reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm with any leadership change, where every change brings new promises of fairness and progress, and each failure is blamed on the predecessor:
“It was Snowball’s fault.”
Yet in reality, the new system turns out indistinguishable from or much worse than the last.
Overpromise, underdeliver, move on – rinse and repeat.