MP Reed’s farming cuts get Keir barred from Clarkson’s pub

Tories, environmental groups and a TV celebrity go on the attack as £130m cuts to rural budgets are next in Labour’s austerity plans.

Croydon MP Steve Reed OBE could be the real reason that his party leader, Keir Starmer, has been banned from Jeremy Clarkson’s new pub in Oxfordshire.

The former Top Gear presenter and Sunday Times columnist opened The Farmer’s Dog in Asthall just before the August bank holiday. After the success of his Amazon Prime series, Clarkson’s Farm, it seems Clarkson’s Pub is the obvious follow-up.

Clarkson claims that his pub serves only British produce – with the exception of tonic water, which has imported quinine. The pub is, Clarkson says, an effort to boost British farmers, and its produce is all sourced from a farming co-operative in the Chilterns.

And in a publicity stunt around the time of opening, Clarkson announced that Prime Minister Starmer is banned from the Farmer’s Dog, saying that the new Labour government has no understanding of rural affairs and declaring them to be “a hopeless bunch”.

Clarkson said in a radio interview of Starmer: “He’s banned. Actually he’s the first person to be banned. He’s actually on a board in the hall, he’s banned.”

On Starmer’s Labour’s approach to the rural economy, Clarkson said: “He hasn’t done much to endear himself to me yet.”

Streatham and Croydon North MP Reed is Starmer’s cabinet member for the environment and rural affairs. Reed was given that front bench brief in 2023, being shunted out of a role with the Home Office, reputedly because of repeated clashes with Yvette Cooper, now the Home Secretary.

This week, Reed was the target of a Tory assault, when his lack of experience in rural affairs was highlighted in a national newspaper, with the opposition spokesperson saying that the environment secretary “cannot pretend to understand” the countryside.

Since being elected in July, the new Labour government has refused to end the two-child benefit cap and this week removed the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners. Now, Reed and Labour are also proposing as much as £130million-worth of funding cuts for farmers.

Steve Barclay, the shadow environment secretary, claimed Reed is “unable to comprehend the challenges facing rural communities”.

And while Reed has acquired a nice new pair of Hunter-style wellies, the Tories highlight that he has only ever represented inner city areas, such as Lambeth and, since 2012, as MP for Croydon North, described as “the 497th least forest-covered constituency in the country, with tree cover of just 3%”.

That, say Reed’s supporters in Croydon, is an unfair characterisation of the area.

“We’ve got lots of trees,” said one Reed loyalist, “and our open spaces are very popular.

“Some of our parks, like Norwood Grove, are so popular, they even get used after dark.”

Reed has spent part of this week pumping out propaganda, including a Hollywood-like mini-movie featuring himself (“There’s a whole heap of bullshit in there,” according to one less-than-impressed observer), while claiming to “Back British Farming”.

“The new government will restore stability and confidence in the sector, introducing a new deal for farmers to boost rural economic growth and strengthen food security,” Reed said in one of his DEFRA-issued social media posts.

But Conservatives believe that the cuts to the farming budget risk harming British nature and food supplies. “The truth is Labour don’t understand rural communities, and it never will,” Barclay, who represents North East Cambridgeshire, wrote in the Torygraph this week.

Labour, Barclay said, “is the party that chose Steve Reed, the member for Croydon North and the former Lambeth council leader, to make decisions about the future of our countryside”.

Barclay was critical of Labour’s London-centric leadership team, saying that Starmer and Reed “cannot pretend to understand the unique set of challenges that rural people face”.

Conservation groups have also warned that Labour’s proposed £130million cut from its nature-friendly farmland budget could mean around 239,000 fewer hectares for sustainable agriculture.

The cuts to the farming budget by Reed’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are in response to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s demand for government departments to reduce spending.

But nature groups say that the loss of the farming grants will be counterproductive.

After Britain left the EU, farmers were no longer part of the common agricultural policy, which paid grants according to the acreage they farmed. Instead, the devolved nations have set up their own farming payments system. In England, this is the environment land management scheme (Elms), which pays farmers to support nature by, for example, letting hedges grow wilder, or sowing wildflowers for birds and bees on field margins.

A report last month found butterflies, birds and bats are among the wildlife being boosted by the English scheme, and some areas had increased their bird numbers by 25%.

Nature groups said financial support for sustainable agriculture needed to be increased, and certainly not cut, if the targets to halt species decline by 2030 were to be met.

Alice Groom, the head of sustainable land use policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: “Whilst we recognise the financial challenges government faces, investment in nature-friendly farming is critical, not just to meet our legally binding nature and climate targets, but also in order to underpin our national food security and the health of the economy.

“A £100m reduction in funding would see 239,000 hectares less nature-friendly farmland, and a failure to invest in nature and climate is predicted to shrink the economy by 12% – an impact greater than covid and the financial crash.

“As the latest independent research has found, we need to increase the agriculture budget in England, from £2.4billion to £3.1billion a year, if we are to ensure the future of our vanishing farmland birds and wildlife, clean rivers and thriving farming and rural businesses.”

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is actually based in the borough, please consider paying for it. Sign up today: click here for more details

If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

As featured on Google News Showcase

We offer FREE ads to community groups when they have members who are paid subscribers to Inside Croydon

Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here

Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network

Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London