Struggling farmers could swing rural vote in General Election
Anna Blackaby looks at the big issues facing UK agriculture and its political importance ahead of the General Election.
Quangos, Government cost-cutting and badgers are among the issues likely to be big vote-swingers in the region’s rural communities at election time.
In many respects, the problems facing farmers in the West Midlands are no different to other sectors.
Complaints about the paperwork emanating from the numerous quangos that have sprung up in recent years, as well as fears that the axe will fall on the wrong part of Government support, will resonate with many in other sectors.
But as farming is so intricately tied up with food supply, energy security, climate change and wildlife protection, many of the questions the sector raises are politically divisive.
One of the most serious problems at the moment is bovine TB, a disease that ends in the culling of thousands of cattle a year. The West Midlands is among the worst-affected areas in the country and currently forms the frontline of the disease as it edges up from the South-west and across from Wales.
Farmers say the Government is beholden to the wildlife protection lobby as it has long resisted calls to implement a cull of infected badgers which spread the disease in the countryside, as has been done successfully in Ireland.
Labour has instead focused its efforts on vaccination, a measure many in agriculture believe will take too long to arrive and will see farmers continue to suffer while it is being developed.
Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, have promised a badger cull, targeting infected animals.
Harry Johnson, a Warwickshire arable farmer and NFU county chairman, said he would like to see all the political parties take a “robust view” on controlling bovine TB.
“It’s a huge cost to the Government. Not a lot of the public are aware that it’s approaching £100 million a year in compensation and control, and it’s escalating year on year. More than that is the human cost of the disease, with families that have built up pedigree herds over a lifetime seeing them taken away and slaughtered. It’s a tragedy,” he said.
