Liberal Democrats talk countryside with the Alliance

The Countryside Alliance joined the Liberal Democrat Party Conference on Sunday 15 September for the first in this year’s programme of party conference events, each under the heading The Future of the Countryside in a New Parliament. 

 The cavernous but busy hall saw large numbers of party activists and others gather to hear from the new chairman of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Alistair Carmichael MP; the newly elected MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, David Chadwick MP; and the Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford and author of the highly rated new book, Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health, Professor the Baroness Willis of Summertown. Tim Bonner, the Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, chaired the meeting. 

 Following Tim’s introduction, framing the discussion through the lens of the Alliance’s Rural Charter, Professor Willis opened by enumerating the six major demands that the countryside faces: biodiversity and conservation, climate change mitigation, food security, housing, and access to the countryside for the sake of improving people’s health. Because these demands often compete, the government must take a far more joined-up an approach than it currently can, with relevant policy areas sitting within a broad range of departments. She therefore recommended that the government establish an Office for Countryside Management to sit across all of them. She went on to advocate simplifying land management schemes and for the government to be clear in linking countryside access to health benefits, and that land management is intrinsic to delivering them. 

 Mr Chadwick portrayed rural communities as central to the Liberal Democrats’ identity, with many of the party’s gains at the last election coming in rural areas. He returned to a central theme of his earlier campaigning: that too many people are leaving rural areas because they do not see the right opportunities in remaining. He was concerned that the government had made no pledge to raise the agricultural budget, for which even environmental groups, often seen as opposed to agricultural interests, are now arguing. He was particularly keen to see more people encouraged into arable farming, both to address the UK’s imbalance in fruit and vegetables and as a means of encouraging young people to move back to the countryside, and he raised continuing problems with rural connectivity in terms of transport and digital links. 

 Mr Carmichael said that the last Conservative government had only started caring about food security 18 months before the election, having failed to set up an agricultural support scheme that prioritised it. He expected his committee to be operational within a little over a month, with agricultural funding to be one of the first issues it addresses. Other priorities would include water management and the range of rural issues that fall under the remits of government departments other than Defra, including transport and the role of supermarkets. He warned against substituting imports from overseas systems with lower environmental and animal welfare standards for domestic food production, placing British farmers at a disadvantage against foreign competitors. He also called on urban communities to develop a better understanding of how important rural communities are, particularly with respect to food. 

 There followed a lively period of questioning from the floor, touching on as diverse a set of issues as land use governance, livestock farming, responsible access to the countryside and inter-village paths. Only the pressure of time could bring the discussion to a close. 

 Our party conference programme will continue with the Labour Party in Liverpool next Sunday, 29 September, before concluding with the Conservative Party on Tuesday, 01 October.