Calum Davies: How Welsh farmers forced Labour to retreat from its absurd subsidy plans

Calum Davies is a Conservative councillor in Cardiff and previously stood for the Senedd in 2021.

As the Senedd breaks up for the summer for the final time before the next devolved elections, the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay is attempting to put right one of its countless wrongs from earlier in the term.

The Welsh Government is bringing in a permanent farming subsidy system to replace the temporary placeholder one that was installed following Britain’s exit from the European Union. As one can imagine, a party populated by urbanite academics, public sector lifers, and trade unionists who obsess over Palestine more than Powys do not have a great relationship with rural Wales.

Whilst much has, rightly, been made of the national Labour Government’s cack-handed attempt to revise inheritance tax laws – which has meant land-owning farmers who derive a modest-at-best income from that land are lumbered with enormous tax bills that threaten the existence of the family-owned business – Labour’s tin-ear was ringing already in what is considered to be the UK’s farming heartlands.

Despite growing up in Carmarthenshire, Mark Drakeford led a bizarrely anti-rural government. Of course, this is the natural consequence of the leftist academic dogma that guided his administration. It was conviction, not pragmatism, that led him to back Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership ten years ago.

This meant that when this subsidy plan was first presented to farmers, it included a clause that meant payments were dependent on ten per cent of the farm’s land being dedicated to tree planting. Such a move could force productive agricultural land out of use, devaluing the asset from which farmers derive a living, and even breach the terms of the insurance on the land; the Welsh Government’s own estimates admitted the reforms would have meant 5,500 job losses and a £200m hit to the rural economy.

When this met with the expected opprobrium such a reform would deserve, the Welsh Government would respond that the scheme is not compulsory, so farmers did not have to do it if they did not want. Obviously, this meant they wouldn’t get the cash. The problem with this is that the returns on farming are so meagre these days that the subsidies are a lifeline for farmers.

According to the BBC, most rely of them on these payments, with an average of two-thirds of Welsh farm income coming from subsidies in 2020/21. They’ve even become a necessity for richer farmers with better land, as has been brought to public attention in Clarkson’s Farm.

Without them, the business is simply not viable. Consequently, the farms will wither away across swathes of rural Britain. This would be particularly devastating in rural Wales, where low population density mixed with little public service capacity and few skilled employment opportunities is causing serious depopulation, in turn seeing high streets become deserted and schools closing.

I know it because I have seen it. I come from a multi-generational farming family in an area where farming is not just a job but a way of life.

We got here because policymakers who do not understand those communities have been put in charge alongside a civil service class and a left-leaning lobbying industry who also don’t have experience of rural life. It’s no coincidence that Drakeford’s Deputy Climate Change Minister banned roadbuilding and had a background running a state-funded cycling charity.

They would argue that the initial subsidy structure was to incentivise farmers to diversify the use of their land for the common good. In reality, it leveraged farmers’ precarious financial position to deliver the goals of the green lobby without any recognition of some fundamental truths.

These would be that food production is in itself a public good; that farming is already a means of positive land management; and that farming is good for species conservation. Whilst I am sad to say the last Conservative government was also guilty of imposing eco-requirements on farmers for their subsidies in England, Labour in Wales took it to another level.

This is all the more egregious because Labour MSs – although not its MPs maybe – argue that devolution is a positive because it allows Wales to make its own decision when those in England were not right for it. Farming is the backbone of the rural Welsh economy but instead of protecting it from eco-zealotry, Welsh Labour turbocharged it.

The new farming scheme presented last week has finally been changed to provide greater recognition of farmers, including the innate social value that comes with their work, as called for by farming unions. It is an improvement on what came before for sure.

However, we should not forget how we got here. Welsh Labour had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point. Their refusal to acquiesce while Drakeford was in charge eventually boiled over into the largest protests the Senedd has ever seen. Farmers were doing this in Wales before we saw tractors making their way into Westminster. Ironically, Reeves’ tax hike may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back as Welsh Labour realised they could no longer sustain their assault on farmers on so many fronts.

They were also pushed by an ideological tussle in Welsh Labour. Drakeford retired as first minister last year, making way for Vaughan Gething, who was on the opposite end of the spectrum to his predecessor. But his ignominious collapse after an internal but public split in the Party led to Eluned Morgan’s rise; she has had to pursue a more conciliatory agenda given she was elected unopposed and has yet to secure a public mandate.

Throughout all of this, only the Welsh Conservatives consistently backed farmers against the greater excesses of Labour’s reforms. As Darren Millar, the Party’s Senedd group leader, highlighted in First Minister’s Question last week, the initial proposals were concocted with Plaid Cymru as part of their Cooperation Agreement (aka unofficial coalition deal). Labour and Plaid claim to represent Welsh interests, but their record of betraying farmers is clear for all to see.

The softened reforms will likely go ahead now, this time without the ten per cent tree coverage requirement. Sadly, Labour and Plaid still get their ideological win: they’re spending taxpayer money to plant 25 million trees somewhere elsewhere instead… in Uganda.