Former foreign secretary James Cleverly has warned that Labour’s proposed changes to Agricultural Tax Relief pose a threat to national food security.
He made his comments at a press conference at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall after farmers held a wartime themed demonstration against the changes. “I do worry that this Government is really blase about food and farming, because it cannot envisage a circumstance where there is even a moderate disruption of UK accessibility to core foods, particularly carbohydrates,” the Conservative MP for Braintree said. “If they’re right, well, I’m not sure I still agree with driving farms out of business. If they’re wrong, the stakes are so high it is unconscionable.”
Arguing that the government should treat agriculture and horticulture in the same way as the automotive industry, he called Rachel Reeves’ tax grab “one of the most stupid and counterproductive proposals I have ever seen”.
“One of the problems we’ve had for a number of decades is we’ve stopped being scared about things that we should be scared of,” he continued. “Because we haven’t had food shortages in the UK in living memory, we’ve kind of convinced ourselves that that can never happen. I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think it’s necessarily likely to happen, but it’s not something that is helpful to think of as being impossible.
“We had a nasty food inflation spike when Ukrainian grain exports were disrupted, even temporarily. It will be politically catastrophic for the Labour Party. That’s the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of government
