Labour’s new environment team says it will take on big businesses and supermarkets in order to halt pollution and stop farmers from being ripped off if it wins the next election.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been criticised in the past for being too soft on polluting companies, and not using its full powers to stop water companies from spilling sewage. Farming groups have also criticised its close relationship with supermarkets, when farmers have felt ripped off by rising prices not being passed down the supply chain to their struggling businesses.
The Labour Defra team is getting ready to release its strategy for governing if the party wins the election next year. Shadow ministers say they would take on big businesses by handing out criminal sanctions to chief executives who run polluting companies, and fixing the supply chain so farmers are paid a fair price for food sold in supermarkets.
Labour sources said fighting for justice for neglected rural communities, who have had their local areas polluted, and been ripped off by big businesses such as supermarkets, was a key part of their election campaign. Winning rural and coastal seats is likely to prove crucial to the party’s chances of commanding a majority.
Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, told an event at the Labour party conference in Liverpool that he would get tough on the CEOs of companies that repeatedly contaminate the environment, making them personally criminally liable for pollution.
Reed told an event hosted by the thinktank Onward: “Where you’ve got such widespread law breaking, which is what’s going on there, I think you have to take action of that kind and I see this as fundamentally very pro-business as well. It’s very pro-business because good decent businesses, the vast majority of businesses, operate within the legal regulatory framework.
“That’s the level playing field that makes business and the economy work properly. If you get some businesses that can get away with breaking the law, or making additional profits that way, then you haven’t got a level playing field. So it supports business by stopping businesses that are breaking the law from having that advantage.”
Reed also promised to expand the powers of regulator Ofwat so that water bosses who fail to meet high environmental standards on sewage pollution will have their bonuses blocked. He said: “With Labour, the polluter – not the public – will pay. We will give Ofwat the powers to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses until they have cleared up their filth.”
The shadow nature and rural affairs minister, Toby Perkins, has promised to stop farmers from being ripped off by supermarkets.
A report released last year by the charity Sustain found farmers were making less than a penny for every loaf of bread or block of cheese sold in supermarkets. With rising costs from inflation, farmers are struggling to make ends meet.
Perkins told an event at the conference: “I think we have to bring the supermarkets into this question as well, because clearly the pressure to drive down costs all the time within farming is significant, and the price that they are able to gain from supermarkets in the UK isn’t always comparable with what farmers overseas will be able to get. I’m aware that many farmers and food producers feel badly let down.”
This issue has been raised by experts over the past two years, where food shortages due to the climate crisis, as well as spiralling costs, have highlighted problems with the supply chain.
