On Sunday (27 September) the Countryside Alliance held its Campaign for the Countryside Reception at Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.
We were delighted to welcome Adam Jogee MP, Maya Ellis MP and Noah Law MP as speakers. The event was well-attended by Labour MPs, councillors, party members, and representatives of rural organisations.
The central message of the event was that to achieve "growth in every postcode", as Prime Minister Andy Burnham has promised, rural areas must be included.
Noah Law, MP for St Austell and Newquay, highlighted some of the problems facing rural communities, saying:
"Over the last 25 years, rural Britain hasn't grown, essentially. We've had all of this growth in the centre, in the cities... but for parts of the country like mine, we've been essentially flat, if not going backwards. And that's ridiculous, when you think about the opportunity that we sit on."
He continued:
"Our job this conference is to make sure that we get those opportunities highlighted to Treasury Ministers, to our Prime Minister and all throughout government to make sure that government knows where that opportunity is, that it's got the tools to help us act on it, to work across the Parliament, work with out local businesses, work with people that know rural communities, and go out there and seize it."
Maya Ellis, MP for Ribble Valley, a member of the Labour Rural Research Group (LRRG) that comprises 46 rural Labour MPs, highlighted some of the organisations priorities for the next year.
They included providing long term certainty for farmers in terms of government funding; continuing to assess the impact of the Family Farm Tax and seeing if the raises to tax thresholds, pushed for by the LRRG, are working or if there are still negative effects from the policy; expanding investment in farm productivity and resilience; making sure that public procurement strengthens British food supply chains; ensuring that local government funding takes rurality properly into account; investing in rural transport; accelerating the delivery of affordable rural housing; and closing the rural connectivity and energy infrastructure gap.
Adam Jogee, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, pointed out that rural constituents "want to be recognised, to be listened to, to be understood and to be part of the decision-making process", and welcomed the Countryside Alliance's new Campaign for the Countryside, saying:
"We now have the opportunity, as this campaign provides, to reach out, to listen, to respect, to understand and to engage. And not just in God's Own County, Staffordshire, but up and down the country as well."
Tim Bonner, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, stated:
"It's really so important that the countryside stands together, that across rural organisations and across the rural community we speak one voice, because that's the only way we're going to cut through to government and to Ministers"
You can find our full party conference schedule here.