MPs’ committee adopts Alliance priorities

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee of the House of Commons has published its 2024-25 Strategy, looking ahead to its work programme throughout the rest of this Parliament. The strategy has taken on board and includes all the suggestions the Countryside Alliance presented to it. 

Select Committees are influential groups of MPs, mostly organised to reflect the responsibilities of government departments, that scrutinise those departments’ work on behalf of Parliament. At a time when the government has been accused of hostility towards rural interests on issues as diverse as firearms licensing and inheritance tax, the work of the EFRA Committee is vital. Engaging with it became a key priority for the Alliance as soon as the new Chair was announced as Alistair Carmichael MP (Orkney and Shetland, LD) and we were delighted when he accepted our invitation to speak at the Countryside Alliance fringe event at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in September, one of his first public engagements following his appointment. 

The Committee’s first order of business was to consult stakeholders and the public as to what its priorities should be. The Alliance responded enthusiastically. We suggested an early focus on determining the impact of changes to inheritance tax on family farms, a review of legislation affecting fly-tipping and rural crime, and longer-term examinations of how rural policy is managed within government and how decarbonisation policies are affecting the countryside and its communities. 

We were, therefore, delighted to see in the publication of the Committee’s strategy that all of these issues have been included. The Committee will focus its work on these key themes: 

1. The future of farming 
2. Reforming the water sector 
3. Animal and plant health 
4. Fairness in the food supply chain 
5. Fisheries and the marine environment 
6. Preventing waste and enabling a circular economy 
7. The work of the department and its arm’s-length bodies 
8. Supporting rural and coastal communities 
9. Weather and climate resilience

Our wish for an examination of the true costs of the Family Farm Tax was granted almost immediately, in an evidence session in December as part of the Committee’s inquiry into the future of farming. Otherwise, both the strategy document and the accompanying review of stakeholder policy priorities make clear that cross-governmental co-ordination of rural policy will be the key element of its theme of ‘supporting rural and coastal communities’, with rural crime and the impact of the net-zero transition also considered. Tackling waste crime will be reflected in ‘preventing waste and enabling a circular economy’.

Beyond the Committee’s consultation survey the Alliance has been engaging with key figures directly. Chief Executive Tim Bonner has met Mr Carmichael to discuss rural priorities, and I met the Clerk to discuss the Committee’s work. We continue to have regular contact with Committee members and staff and look forward to working with them to promote effective parliamentary scrutiny of the full range of government policies that impact Britain’s rural communities.