George Freeman MP: Climate Timeline

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George Freeman's Climate-related Tweets, Speeches & Votes

We've found the following climate-related tweets, speeches & votes by George Freeman in the last 90 days

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• 4 Dec 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  This is a hugely important strategic industry to the UK. It is key to our food security—now, gratifyingly, a Government priority—and it is completely key to the world’s ability to feed 9 billion mouths. We are a great agricultural research and technology economy, and the world is hungry for our innovations. Agriculture is also completely key to net zero. Agriculture and transport are the two dirtiest industries, and agriculture is moving more quickly than any, pioneering regenerative systems of agriculture and carbon-capturing systems. Those innovations are being driven by a new generation of young UK farmers, who are different from the post-war generation. They take their responsibilities to the broader planet and regenerative agriculture seriously.

  At the same time as agriculture being a key strategic industry, farmers look after our countryside and keep our rural economy healthy. All of those are achieved in the most extraordinary way, in an industry not dominated by big companies. This industry is made up of millions of small businesses. Moreover, they exist in the most extraordinary business climate. They operate on incredibly expensive assets—the land—which they never seek to monetise, as colleagues have pointed out, in an industry in which their costs are fixed. They invest in all their costs up front and wait hopefully for a price for their product, which is subject to the vagaries of the weather and of climate change. Most business people looking at that business model would say, “That is not a business I want to be in.” Why do our family farmers do it? They do it because it is a way of life and because it is deeply embedded in the values of their families, their countryside and their communities. It is about stewardship, and it makes it all the more remarkable that this Government have decided to attack that very bit of the agricultural economy.

  The former Labour adviser, John McTernan, let the cat out of the bag. He said that Labour has waited a long time to seek revenge for the Tory attacks on the miners, and it was going to attack the farming community now— [ Interruption. ] That is exactly what he said. The impact of the policy is clear; we only have to read the CLA and NFU briefings. I have met Gavin Lane, Phil and Sophie Ellis, Oliver Munday and Nigel Stangroom. Most of our average family farms will have to pay tax bills of £400,000, £500,000 or £600,000. Where will they get the money, when the businesses do not generate the profits to pay those bills? They will all have to sell land, but who will buy it? It will not be their neighbour, because they will be selling land, too. I fear that this policy was designed in the Treasury with the support of bits of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and DEFRA. The people hanging over Mid Norfolk waiting to buy the land are the big solar developers and the big mass housing developers.

  Full debate: Farming and Inheritance Tax

• 20 Nov 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  First, I want to suggest climate change. Earlier this year, we had the wettest seven months on record, and we have had the wettest past few years on record. That is what is driving the problem.

  There is then flooding on the ground, as we had last year; I will cite one example, at Mill lane in Attleborough. Four people who live next to a culvert have been flooded every year for the past 10 years, and their lives are misery. Last year, for the first time, 100 other houses were flooded because the culvert has been allowed to silt up gradually. Anglian Water handed over its riparian rights when no one was looking about 12 or 15 years ago, and no one was aware that those rights now sat locally in the town. The land-use practice upstream meant that the water was not being captured properly on the farm, and with a whole lot of new housing and climate change, there was then a big problem. It has taken a huge amount of work to set up the local Mill lane flood prevention group, and the community has cleaned out the ditches and dredged the river, with 70 tonnes of stuff taken out. It has been a huge project, for which I pay tribute to the local councillor, Taila Taylor, and others.

  Full debate: Flood Preparedness: Norfolk