Selling the family silver…

I know I’m bias but things really are going from bad to worse at Staffordshire County.

Hard on the back of yet further cuts to the beleaguered Youth Service we now appear to be in the early stages of Labour’s latest brainwave to raise a few urgently needed quid…. selling County owned farms throughout Staffordshire.

I’ve got farmers in my patch who are just recovering (well sort of) from the recent flooding to find they’ve had notice served on them to quit their smallholdings. The Labour County Cabinet are literally looking to sell the family silver. Like most people, my general impression of farmers is that they have a pretty good deal with the Euro-subsidies and the phrase ‘you never meet a poor farmer’ springs to mind.

Well the farmers I’ve talked to in the last few days are hard working with smallish farms and certainly, from what I’ve learnt, don’t have it easy one little bit. There’s little logic in Labour’s policy to sell off all the farms… they generate significant income for the County, they offer the first rung on the ladder for people entering the farming industry, they ensure our rural environment is cared for and they could offer the chance of more locally produced food.

The problem is that the leases the County provide for farmers are totally inflexible. They discourage diversity for farmers which in turn means the viability of the smaller farms is limited. Some innovative thinking and more flexibility to suplement farming with some tourism and leisure orientated diversification could allow much better viability for small holding farmers.

But no. It’s a great oppportunity for Labour to find a couple of hundred million pounds by selling off some capital assets. It’s wrong for a variety of reasons and Conservatives will fight the desperate cash grab all the way.

Click here to comment on this post