The platform’s self-selected voters gave the drought package a decisive Yes, yet the argument that landed hardest was a warning about insufficiency. The room backed immediate help while leaving open whether the measures could repair the deeper failures behind the crisis.
The floor’s strongest Yes case began with urgency but resisted treating grants as a settlement: “Farmers need drought support now, but grants should not be the long-term answer.” Other Yes voices tied that support to food security, arguing that farmers are “as important as armed services for defence of country”, while another wanted the money ring-fenced for prevention.
The No case was less a rejection of helping farmers than an indictment of the scale and record behind the package. The chamber’s highest-rated objection said, “You can't fix years of neglecting” reservoirs and irrigation with a small intervention; another called it “Drop in the bucket”, so the two sides often argued past each other, one about emergency relief and the other about accumulated neglect.
Reservoirs were the practical dividing point: a No voice said “we have enough rain its poor management of that rain”, while Yes voters pushed drought prevention, better farming strategy and a response to climate change. The debate also acquired a conspiratorial fringe, with one intervention alleging “state actors light fires to feilds”; its joking replies about a “tinfoil shortage” signalled that this was not where the room’s weight lay.
The wider argument is familiar in substance, if not settled in this vote: how to protect domestic food production while adapting land use to a harsher climate and demanding value for public money. The verdict endorsed the bridge, not necessarily the road beyond it.
13 Opinions
Badly drafted question. Amounts to c.£54 per farmer! There are other movies /cuts pending which cancel this insult out. No MP would work for the often subsistence level of returns many farmers make. No holidays no expenses. Labour is intentionally destroying livelihood of farmers to confiscate their land and allow criminal vultures like Gates & Blackrock to buy for solar or data centres. Like Soviets Labour is destroying our food supply energy & industry for UN Agenda 2030
Drop in the bucket. And embarrassing gesture trinket politics AGAIN.
Emergency support is needed for our food producers, but we also need a long term plan that acknowledges the impact of climate change, build environmentalism into farming strategy and is worked out with farmers. The land and its products belongs to us all, and we need it managed in all our interests, including sustaining the livelyhood of those who produce our food and help manage our wildlife and its environment
If you divide the amount by the number of farmers it is about £224 per farmer. I do not see how it will really help. You can't fix years of neglecting (no new reservoirs, lack of irrigations etc.) with some laughably small amount. People were able to farming on the Egyptians desert 6000 BCE, we surely can do it here and now.
YES I would however insist the money should be ring fenced to be spent on drought prevention measures & nothing else..
Farmers who produce food are as important as armed services for defence of country. If its growing trees ,windmills or solar panels NO !
MI5 and 6 should stop having state actors light fires to feilds and de-railing trains in the name of climate change. More resevoir should be built to cope with drought we have enough rain its poor management of that rain leading to poor crop yeild. It has been a bad year. Keep the head. It will be wet again.
Farmers need drought support now, but grants should not be the long-term answer. British farming needs a fair market: stop cheap imports undercutting our producers, protect food security and give UK farmers a real chance to feed our own country profitably.