Editor’s View: Budget doesn’t live up to PM’s farming pledge
Andy Burnham © Alamy When new prime minister Andy Burnham visited Cornwall on 15 August to see how farms were coping in the middle of the drought, he revealed £65m of Defra’s existing funds would be deployed to help English farmers.
Two months on and £50m of the money has been and gone in the Sustainable Farming Incentive debacle and the £15m for reservoirs is still not accessible, although he told the House of Commons on Wednesday (28 October) that the window would open very shortly.
See also: Farmers offered little in Chancellor Healey’s first Budget
About the author
More significant than the money, though, were his words – that it was “hopefully a good first start but more to come”.
But more than 10 weeks on from that pledge being made, our industry is still waiting for it to be fulfilled. And all hopes that this week’s Budget would be that moment have been dashed.
Gone are the countryside’s hopes that Labour would use this moment to quietly finish the reversal of their hated amendments to inheritance tax.
Gone are the NFU’s hopes of any of their five key asks of the chancellor being listened to, including interest-free loans for farmers, an increase in the Annual Investment Allowance, and enhanced capital allowances.
And gone is NFU president Tom Bradshaw’s patience in his comments that this week’s fiscal event “feels like tinkering while Rome is burning” and that “the phrase ‘food security is national security’ feels nothing but a hollow promise.”
Indeed, the only mention of farming in the entirety of John Healey’s speech was when he confirmed that the lower rate of fuel duty would be extended through until next July.
Beyond that, the only winners linked to farming will be the self-employed dads who are now eligible to claim statutory paternity pay for the first time – a handy £194 a week for two weeks.
“Cash has never been so tight on farms,” said Ceres Rural’s “cheerful” Charlie Ireland at the Conservative Party conference last month, hopefully repeating that message when he went in to see the environment secretary Angela Eagle a few weeks later.
And in their annual report published this week on Companies House, farm management company Sentry said that “a fundamental acceptance that UK agriculture has reached a new reality is essential.
Crop performance expectations need to be recalibrated and will be unsurvivable for many UK food production businesses”.
So, more than 100 days into their tenure, if this week’s Budget was not the moment for the prime minister and his chancellor to deliver the promised “more to come” then when will it be?
We have the Brussels summit in November, at which details of the dynamic alignment deal on standards will finally be revealed (I am as sick of writing this as you are of reading it) and a promised Burnham speech before Christmas to reveal a 10-year plan.
There will be no escaping agriculture in the former and we will have to wait and see whether it materialises in the latter, but I am not holding my breath.
Warm words have carried the prime minister a long way so far.
Every week that passes where they are not backed up by action will corrode the small stock of good will that he currently enjoys.