While living in an urban town most of my life, I have previously lived in a rural area and recognise the huge importance of the countryside to our national life.  Both urban and rural living have pluses and minuses, but both are needed to sustain the other in today’s world. 

The governing Labour Party are an urban-based party and have little understanding of the countryside.  In the same way that none of the Labour Government’s Cabinet have any real experience of working in business, the vast majority if not all of them (I would expect) don’t represent any predominately rural constituencies. 

This matters because this lack of understanding of the countryside is leading to bad policy decisions.  Our countryside is under attack from Labour politicians who don’t understand it.  The government are planning a huge concreating over of much of our countryside to accommodate record population growth, rather than address the issues contributing to it.  Make no mistake, the west of Ifield proposals are nailed-on to happen under Labour.  

Then there’s farming.  Our food security is important and the Covid pandemic and its aftermath, showed we can’t always take having all types of food readily available for granted.  We already import between 42% and 50% of all the food we consume, which doesn’t feel very environmentally friendly.  This makes us very vulnerable to future unforeseen global events.

Our farmers not only feed us, they play a huge role in managing and looking after the countryside, and a significant national economic role, being the backbone of the rural economy.  We need to produce more food domestically, not less.  The Labour Government’s attack on farmers is wrong.  A farmer’s life is not easy and has many challenges, but the ability to pass on the family farm to the next generation is what makes a lifetime of hard work rewarding.  Labour’s budget changes to inheritance tax will force farmers to sell off land to pay new huge tax bills.  This could be the ending of the British family farm as we know it.  It’s wrong and I stand in solidarity with our farmers.                     


Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

20th November 2024