Benn claims Labour is ‘backing British farmers’

He said the document promised a ‘fair future for rural Britain’ and claimed rural communities in Britain were ‘healthier, wealthier and safer thanks to Labour’.

The document spells out how the Party wants British farming to be ‘profitable and competitive’ and reiterates Labour’s key farming policies, including:

• Working with the industry to eradicate bovine TB through the development of a badger and cattle vaccine and using the best available science.
• Continuing to seek reform of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) to facilitate the creation of fairer and better functioning agricultural markets.
• Only regulating when necessary and keeping regulations constantly under review.
• Creating a Supermarket Ombudsman in order to protect farmers and food suppliers from unfair and uncompetitive practices by major retailers.
• Working with the food industry and retailers to ensure proper food labelling.
• Introducing cost and responsibility sharing for animal health.
• Working with the industry to reduce carbon emissions by three million tonnes over the next decade
• Working with the industry to implement the Agri-Skills Plan.
• Improving productivity and domestic production in sectors on the model of the pigmeat taskforce and fruit and vegetable taskforce.
• Preserving and reforming the Agricultural Wages Board to ensure agricultural workers continue to get a fair deal.

The manifesto also promises a ‘new framework for managing our land’ that will help cope with the competing pressures like greater food production and protecting the natural environment to housing and natural flood defences.

It spells out how Labour would seek to support rural communities, expand rural economic activity and safeguard rural public services.

Policies geared towards these aims include a commitment to universal broadband coverage by 2012, help to support local pubs, shops and facilities and new powers and support for affordable housing.

The manifesto stresses how a Labour government would retain the Rural Development Agencies, which it says, ‘drive investment into rural areas’.

It highlights the Government’s record on banning the ‘cruel sports’ of fox hunting and hare coursing but pledges to ‘support angling and responsible shooting’.  

Launching the document, Mr Benn said: “We’re backing British farmers and food producers - our largest manufacturing sector, employing 3.6m people - with a supermarket ombudsman.

“And we’ll help small businesses and rural communities by making sure high-speed broadband is available and changing planning policy so that local communities can run the services they need - like pubs and village shops.”

The Conservatives outlined their farming policies in a document entitled ‘A New Age for Agriculture’ at the NFU conference in February. The Liberal Democrat’s manifesto for farming and the uplands was launched in mid-April.

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