How climate change and red tape could be jeopardising UK access to affordable food
It might be tempting, given how much coverage has focused on it recently, to assume the forthcoming changes to inheritance tax regime are the single biggest issue facing farmers these days.
But the reality is these tax changes come at a moment of extraordinary pressure, with farmers having to contend with a swathe of unsettling issues, many of which could prove existential for their livelihoods.
Put them all together and you realise that for many of those marching in the streets in London, inheritance tax isn’t the only problem – it’s more like the last straw.
Why does this matter for the rest of us? In part because there’s a deeper story here.
For decades, this country’s level of food security has been more or less constant. This country has produced roughly 60 per cent of our own food for two decades (the figure was even higher in the 1980s). But farmers warn that given all the pressures they’re facing, that critical buffer could be about to be removed, with domestic production falling and dependence on imported food rising.
Whether that eventuates remains to be seen. As of 2023 the amount of food supplied domestically was still 62 per cent of everything we consumed. But now let’s consider the challenges facing farmers (even before we get to inheritance tax).
The first of them comes back to Brexit.
Following Britain’s departure from the EU, the government is making dramatic and far reaching changes to the way it supports farmers. For years, those payments, part of the EU-wide Common Agricultural Policy, were based on the amount of land farmed by each recipient.
Alongside these main farm payments there were other bolt-on schemes – Environmental Land Management schemes, to give them their category name – designed to encourage farmers to do more to look after local wildlife. But these schemes were always small in comparison to the main land-based farm payments.
There were problems aplenty with this old scheme. For one thing, all told, it amounted to a subsidy for land ownership rather than food production. Nonetheless, for many farmers it was an essential support, without which they would have had to sell up and stop producing food.
Under Michael Gove, Defra committed to far-reaching changes to these subsidies. Farms across the UK would get the same total amounts, he said, but instead of the majority being based on how much land they were farming, a growing portion would be environmental subsidies.
When Labour came into government it committed to accelerating this process, with the result that by 2027, fully 100 per cent of farm payments will be for environmental schemes.
Whether this is the right or wrong move is a matter of keen debate within the farming community. Many farmers argue that the net impact of environmental schemes is to reduce the amount of land being farmed for food, and that the schemes serve to reduce their crop yields rather than increasing them. Defra, and environmental advocates, argue that unless the soil and local habitats are preserved and improved, Britain faces ever diminishing harvests in future.
Speaking of harvests, that brings us to another issue farmers are having to contend with at the moment – poor crop yields. The past winter was exceptionally wet, with the upshot that the latest figures just released by Defra show 2024 was the second lowest wheat harvest since comparable records began in the early 1980s.
Now, the whole point of farming is that it’s weather dependent – no two years are alike. It’s quite conceivable that 2025’s harvest bounces back from this year’s. But one projection made by climate scientists is that the coming decades could be wetter and more volatile, spelling more trouble for farmers.
On top of this is another challenge: trade competition. Following Brexit, the UK has signed two trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, which raise the quotas of how much food each country can export to the UK. Look at trade data and you see a sharp increase in beef and dairy imports from Australia and New Zealand.
In other words, UK farmers are having to contend with more competition even as they contend with worse weather and drastic changes to their funding model.
Nor is this where the challenges end. Because we might also be in the midst of something else: a secular slowdown in farming productivity.
Look at a very, very long-range historic chart of crop yields in the UK. You see a few interesting features. For most of our history, from the Middle Ages through to today, the amount of wheat we could grow in a given hectare of land was pretty low and pretty constant.
Now look at what happened in the second half of the 20th century. Thanks to a combination of artificial fertilisers, combine harvesters and other technological leaps, yields leapt by 200 per cent.
This extraordinary leap is the story of British farming for the parents and grandparents of those family farms tending the land today: ever increasing yields even as the government provided large subsidies for farmers. It was, in terms of pure yields, the golden age for farms – fuelled in part by chemicals.
But now look at the far right hand side of the chart – the past 20 years or so. The line is no longer rising so fast. Farm productivity – at least based on this measure – has slowed quite markedly. Yields are no longer leaping in the way they once were.
Or, to put it another way, it’s getting tougher to generate a return for each hour of work and each pound of investment.
Farmers have staged protests at government plans
This might all seem miles away from the day-to-day debates on farming today. But each of these factors matters. Together, they help explain why things are getting tougher for farmers.
But there’s a broader issue at hand here. Despite having left the EU and implemented far reaching policies such as these, this country hasn’t really had a proper debate about food.
Do we prefer to subsidise farmers in an effort to maintain our domestic food supplies at 60 per cent of our consumption? Would we rather ditch those subsidies and rely on imports instead? Should we favour the long-term health of the environment over short term food production?
These are chewy questions – and ones we really ought to be debating a little more. This isn’t just about inheritance tax…
Concessions on welfare are being discussed with rebel MPs ahead of a crunch vote next week, Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed.
The prime minister opened a statement about the NATO summit he has just returned from with a nod to the troubles he is facing at home.
Politics Live: PM offers olive branch to Labour rebels ahead of pivotal vote
Speaking in the Commons he said all colleagues want to get welfare reform right and “so do I”.
He added: “We want to see reform implemented with Labour values of fairness. That conversation will continue in the coming days.”
Sir Keir faces a difficult task as several MPs have told Sky News they are “sticking to their guns” after frantic calls from cabinet ministers on Wednesday failed to bring them on side.
One MP from the 2024 intake said: “Many are sticking to their guns. It’s now become more than welfare. They were too heavy with their calls this week and pressure on back benches.”
Another MP accused Number 10 and the prime minister of showing “utter contempt” towards the rebels’ concerns and said this “is only annoying people more”.
The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill aims to shave £5bn off the welfare budget by 2030.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Labour Party ‘agrees welfare needs reform’
This includes restricting eligibility for the personal independence payment (pip), the main disability payment in England, and limit the sickness-related element of universal credit.
The government’s own figures show 250,000 people could be pushed into poverty, including 50,000 children, because of the changes.
Ministers say this will be offset by plans to get more people into work, but while lots of MPs agree with that in principle they say it’s not clear how this will be achieved.
What are the rebels calling for?
More than 120 Labour MPs have signed a “reasoned amendment” arguing that disabled people have not been properly consulted and further scrutiny of the changes is needed.
The government initially stuck to its guns amid the growing disquiet.
But while outwardly confident, Sky News learnt that cabinet ministers were ringing MPs asking them to take their name off the amendment and warning of a potential leadership contest or general election if the government loses the vote on Tuesday.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Government’s battle over welfare reforms explained
What concessions could be reached?
Ministers have since hinted at attempts to reach a compromise, but it’s not clear what sort of concessions would satisfy the bills’ critics.
Sky News understands there has been discussions about watering down the changes to pip.
Under current plans, people will need to score a minimum of four points in at least one activity to qualify for the daily living element instead of fewer points spread across a range of tasks, as is currently the case.
Ministers have discussed lowering the new criteria to three points, but one MP told Sky News this is “still unacceptable” as it would not greatly reduce the number of people set to lose out.
Read More:
Reform would win most seats in general election, poll suggests
Another MP said they had not heard anything concrete on concessions yet, but added: “Frankly, personally, this has been so badly mishandled that short of pulling the bill and bringing it back later in the year following the impact assessment and with amendments, I don’t think my position will change going in to Tuesday at this point.”
Timeline for debate ‘unbelievable’
MPs are also annoyed that if the legislation clears the first hurdle it will then face only a few hours’ examination rather than days or weeks in front of a committee tasked with looking at the bill.
Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, has said following the second reading and vote on Tuesday 1 July, the bill’s remaining stages will take place in a Commons debate on 9 July.
She said the vote next week is for the principles to be considered, with the details to be “discussed and amended” at the next stages.
This appears to suggest the government is asking MPs to back the bill on Tuesday as a show of agreement on the principle of reform, with a promise that changes could be made later.
But it’s not clear whether this strategy will work given one of the rebels’ main concerns is that the bill is being rushed through.
One MP said: “The new line appears to be we all agree on the principle of reform so back at second reading and amend at remaining stages.
“One single day [for] all other stages of the bill is unbelievable.”
British national Kai West, known online as “IntelBroker,” has been indicted for allegedly selling stolen data on BreachForums, causing over $25 million in damages.
The Reform Party is on track to get the most seats if an election took place this year – with combined support for the Conservatives and Labour collapsing to less than half of the national vote, new in-depth polling suggests.
Analysts at YouGov have carried out their first Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification (MRP) poll since the last general election. The research is based on thousands of people, and links voters and characteristics to help with its projection.
It is not a forecast, but an estimate of what could happen. The next election is not set to happen until 2029.
Politics live: Follow the latest updates
This is the first such piece of research published by YouGov since the last general election, and is more in-depth than standard polling where people are just asked who they want to vote for.
With a sample size of 11,500 people, it found that if a general election were to happen tomorrow, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK would win 271 seats – the most of any party.
Labour would secure just 178 seats, less than half of the 411 it won last year.
The Tories would fall to fourth place behind the Liberal Democrats, with just 46 Conservative MPs projected.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, would gain nine extra seats to build a Commons caucus of 81 MPs, while the SNP would once again be the largest party in Scotland.
Both the Greens and Plaid Cymru would gain three seats each to both hold seven slots in parliament.
Read more:
Reform tops poll for first time
Badenoch confident she will lead Tories into election
If this scenario were to materialise, it would mean a coalition government would be needed, as no one party would have a majority.
It is unclear what any such coalition would look like. If Reform and the Conservatives teamed up, they would only have 317 seats – short of the 325 needed.
Theresa May won 317 seats in 2017, and attempted to govern with the support of the Northern Irish DUP support.
YouGov said: “Reform’s meteoric rise to becoming comfortably the largest party in a hung parliament is driven by impressive performances right across the country – including in Scotland.”
The two major political parties of the last century would between them have just 224 seats, fewer than Reform is set to take by itself.
Neither Starmer nor Badenoch fare well in the poll. Pics: PA
Possibility of rainbow coalition
Labour and the Conservatives would together have the support of just 41% of voters – down from 59% last year.
The report released by YouGov said: “That a clear majority would now vote for someone other than the two established main parties of British politics is a striking marker of just how far the fragmentation of the voting public has gone over the past decade.”
It added: “According to our data and methods, 26% of voters would opt for Reform UK, 23% for Labour, 18% for the Conservatives, 15% the Liberal Democrats, 11% the Greens, 3% the SNP, 1% Plaid, and 2% for other parties and independent candidates.”
According to YouGov, Reform came out top of the polls in 99% of their simulations, with the rest having Labour at the top.
Some 97% of simulations had a hung parliament – where no one party has a majority – as the outcome.
In around 9% of simulations, Reform and the Conservatives have enough seats together to form a government, while in only “a tiny fraction” do Labour and the Lib Dems have enough together to govern.
👉Listen to Politics at Sam and Anne’s on your podcast app👈
YouGov says “rainbow style coalition possibilities do appear”.
“For instance, combining the Labour, Liberal Democrat, and SNP totals produces a majority in just 3% of simulations.
“Adding the Greens brings this figure to 11%, while adding Plaid pushes it up to 26%.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike