How will you ensure the protection and enhancement of UK food security, support sustainable farming practices, and balance food production needs with environmental commitments and renewable energy installations?
Make no mistake about it, food production and food security is an absolute priority for me. Farmers are the custodians of our countryside and the agricultural industry is the glue that binds our rural areas together. If farms are not profitable, they will end production, and we would see food prices go up and the rural way of life destroyed – it’s as simple as that. This would be bad for rural communities, bad for consumers across the country, and would make us more reliant on imports, posing risks to our national security.
The Conservative Party under my leadership would reflect this. However, I believe it is in the industry’s interest to produce food in as sustainable a way as is reasonable and possible. Clearly, rural areas also have a role to play in decarbonising our energy grid and lowering energy costs, but it should be for landowners and local communities to decide whether to change agricultural land into, say, a solar farm. Diversification benefits farmers, but we must try and balance their needs and the needs of the wider public. Given the importance of our food security, though, I do think that solar farms should be limited to land not suitable for agriculture wherever possible.
What specific policies will you implement to support rural communities, in areas such as maintaining broadband and mobile coverage, addressing rural crime, improving rural public transport and banking facilities, and ensuring housing for local residents while preserving rural character and landscape?
I am committed to maintaining and reforming post-Brexit rural subsidies, to make sure farmers can be productive and earn their living
What will be critical is investing in national infrastructure for the benefit of all of our communities. Transport links and banking facilities are a life source for rural economic growth. We have made strong progress in recent years rolling out coverage and good broadband access across the country and that work must continue, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas.
I am also committed to increasing the supply of housing, without tearing up the green belt or ripping up planning laws in rural areas. While I have never been forced to block a development, our green spaces are an invaluable part of the national inheritance for our children, and our children’s children, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Building the right homes in the right places means that where there is higher demand in cities, logically the concentration of new homes should be built there. We need new housing in towns and cities, while ensuring rural areas can preserve their character and that community consent is upheld.
How will you support the economic development of rural areas beyond farming, including initiatives to boost local businesses, enhance public services, and create job opportunities to ensure the vitality and sustainability of rural economies?
I’ve had the privilege of representing Tonbridge since 2015. It is a beautiful constituency in Kent, the Garden of England, so I understand how dynamic our rural economy is, and how important it is to support rural businesses.
It can often be harder to set up a business in a rural area than in an urban one. Infrastructure – particularly digital infrastructure – is key. Investment by the previous Conservative governments into 5G and broadband have been vitally important, and I want to see this investment continue and grow. Under my leadership, the Conservative Party would be the guardians of the countryside – and part of that role needs to be keeping a watchful eye on this Labour government, to make sure they aren’t cutting any more investment from rural areas. Having won seats like South West Norfolk, Labour have a duty of responsibility to rural areas on a scale they have never had before, and they have failed at the first hurdle. We have already seen them cut road projects and hospitals across the countryside since they were elected in June, and I want our party to stand up to those like them who don’t value our rural economy.