Labour has been accused of hypocrisy after a minister previously slammed the Tories’ proposed cuts to nature-friendly farming as a “mindless act of vandalism”. Farming Minister Daniel Zeichner took aim at the then Conservative Government when rumours were swirling over plans to scrap nature-friendly farm subsidies while speaking at a Labour Party Conference fringe event in 2022.
It comes as fresh reports suggest the nature-friendly farming budget is set to be slashed by Rachel Reeves in the UK spending review, with only small farms allowed to apply. Victoria Atkins MP, Shadow Environment Secretary, said: “In the least surprising news of the day: Labour said one thing to get into government and did the exact opposite in power.
“After the family farm tax and stopping farm payments without warning, this is yet more gaslighting by Labour on rural and coastal communities.
“Having mismanaged the economy, the Chancellor is going to use her spending review to make farming even harder than it already is under this government’s chaotic farming policy.
“Labour’s lack of understanding about our rural communities is putting our nation’s food security at risk. They need to come clean about their definition of a ‘small farm’ so they do not catch more farmers by surprise with their shambolic mismanagement.
“It is a betrayal as they are upending the principled approach of rewarding farmers for looking after the land whilst growing food which is a clear Brexit benefit – or should be.”
Sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed to the Guardian the post-Brexit farming fund will be severely cut in the spending review on 11 June.
It would be part of a swathe of cuts to departments, with police, social housing and nature funding expected to face the brunt.
But speaking on a panel in 2022, Mr Zeichner said: “We are clearly in a moment of some turmoil in terms of government policy on all these issues.
“After a period going back through successive Secretaries of State, possibly back to Michael Gove’s 25-year environment plan and the various pieces of legislation that sort of fitted round it… you could see a kind of framework for going forward… some kind of process for moving away from the Common Agricultural Policy to a much more environmentally friendly form of farming. Very hard to know where that actually stands today, obviously there’ve been lots of comments and speculation in the press, but certainly my view is that if the government were to tear all that up, I described it as ‘an act of mindless vandalism’.
“I think there’s a huge amount of work that’s gone into it, it’s far from perfect in my view, I think Sustainable farming Incentive uptake rather suggests that this is a complicated policy that is not necessarily attractive to enough farmers at the moment, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t improve it and tweak it.”
