On Friday last week (4 September) the Countryside Alliance kicked off party conference season with a reception at the Reform UK Party Conference in Birmingham.
We were delighted to welcome James Evans, MS for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, and Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK and MP for Boston and Skegness, as speakers at the event. The reception was very well attended, with Senedd Members, county councillors from across the UK, press representatives, and many party members turning up.
It was encouraging to hear a strong line from both speakers on rural affairs, with promises to scrap the Family Farm Tax. Mr Tice also stated that Reform would put an end to the use of productive arable land for solar and wind farms.
The event also marked the launch of Reform UK's principles for their national agricultural and fisheries policies. The document comes ahead of planned engagement with the rural sector, which will be used to inform future detailed policy proposals.
The core principles the party state will guide their future agricultural policies are: farmers acting as environmental stewards, the importance of food security, restoring profitability through fairer supply chains and sensible regulation, reducing bureaucracy and creating a consistent policy framework, as well as prioritising British farmers as suppliers in public procurement and introducing clearer labelling for country of origin and production methods. The full document can be found here.
Over the next few weeks, the Countryside Alliance will be holding events at all the major party conferences, and we look forward to hearing what representatives from the Liberal Democrats, Labour, and Conservatives will have to say about how they will be promoting the countryside and supporting rural communities. Our next event will be on at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Brighton, on Monday 21 September.
You can find our full party conference schedule here.