Making predictions about politics is an increasingly challenging task, but with all the usual caveats there are a number of issues that seem likely to be on the rural agenda in 2025.
The first is an issue which burst into the news after the budget in October and which is not, for all the government would like it to, going away. The proposals are so fundamental to the future of family farms that it seems very unlikely that farmers will go quietly, but the Chancellor will be very wary of backing away from a headline policy announced in her first budget. There is probably a solution which upholds the Chancellor’s diagnosis that some people have been buying farmland to avoid inheritance tax, but which excludes generational family farms. Getting the government to accept that will, however, require a long campaign.
This issue has already poisoned the relationship between the new government and the countryside and will have a huge bearing on its approach to other rural issues. Defra Ministers have other items on their agenda including controversial commitments from Labour’s election manifesto. Those include pledges to ban trail hunting and snares, and to recover the full costs of firearms licensing.
On trail hunting, the Boxing Day media highlighted the challenge that the government will have in arguing that this issue is anything other than a reversion to the sort of prejudiced politics in the countryside that saw 700 hours of parliamentary time wasted on this issue under the last Labour government. Ministers were defensive in their response stressing that trail hunting was “not a priority”.
This is a difficult argument to land when the commitment to ban trail hunting was one of very few mentions of any rural issue in Labour’s manifesto. We also know that there will be huge pressure from the animal rights movement and the left-wing MPs for movement on an issue which Labour has promised to legislate on. Whilst this row will continue to simmer, legislation is more likely to appear in 2026.
The argument over the cost of firearms licensing is likely to raise its head much sooner in 2025. The basic principle of ‘full cost recovery’ for firearms licensing is itself not unreasonable and fees have not risen since 2015. What would be unacceptable, however, would to be to seek to recover the cost of the current firearms licensing system which could hardly be designed to be more inefficient. There are currently 43 separate licensing authorities, some of which are providing appalling service.
The difference in terms of the cost to gun owners of funding an efficient system versus paying for the current one would be hundreds of pounds on an individual application. If Ministers seek to extract all of the proposed savings from licence holders, rather than by making the system more efficient, it is likely to alienate another sizeable section of the rural community.
The third outstanding manifesto commitment is to “ban snare traps”. Labour did not consult on this policy before the election and the language it has used suggests it is not itself certain what it means. A blanket ban on all forms of cable restraints would do nothing to help the biodiversity crisis which the government is also committed to tackle. There is no logic in shedding tears over the plight of species like the curlew whilst legislating to ban a tool used by those who are most successful in working for the recovery of that and other species.
Labour politician Nye Bevan once famously said that politics is “the language of priorities” and in 2025 we will get an idea of what the new government’s priorities for the countryside really are.