St Ives General Election candidates on Brexit, farming and fishing

Here we ask the candidates standing in St Ives for their views on two subjects – Brexit and Farming & Fishing.

The Liberal Party candidate was invited to take part, but we have received no response. Efforts to contact The Common People candidate have been unsuccessful.

Brexit

Alana Bates – Labour

Labour will re-negotiate a Brexit deal that protects worker’s rights, the environment and our NHS within three months of coming to power. We will put that deal to the people within six months for a confirmatory vote. Remain and our credible leave option will both be on the ballot paper. Unlike the Tories who want a hard Brexit and the Lib Dems who want a hard remain, only Labour is offering a second referendum to let the people decide now they know what Brexit will look like. I support a confirmatory vote on any deal because I believe it is the only way to bring our divided country back together. 

Ian Flindall – Green

For 45 years we have peacefully worked with our neighbours, developed common standards of animal welfare, work-place safety and food safety. We have developed common strategies to reduce pollution to the environment, rivers and seas. We have together guaranteed human rights and democracy. We have pooled markets to provide unparalleled opportunity and economic prosperity. Together we have immense bargaining power and have established advantageous trade arrangements all around the world. We have common healthcare services and poorer regions such as Cornwall are targeted for joint funding from the EU budget. We travel anywhere in Europe without hindrance to invest, to find work or simply to holiday.

This united front has overcome the rivalries of the past and will be vital in meeting the challenges of the future. The biggest challenge of all is upon us – that of impending climate catastrophe. We will need all the concerted effort we can muster to have a chance of avoiding its worst effects.

But we have voted to leave this common endeavour for greener grass.

It is Green Party policy to ask the people to have another vote to either approve the arrangements now negotiated or to remain in Europe.

Andrew George – Liberal Democrat

UK voters have been ignored and misled for too long. The people should be given the right to agree the final deal with the EU.

The Conservatives created this mess. Their preposterous negotiation position, their catastrophic mishandling, their contracts with ferry companies with no ferries have made Britain an international laughing-stock.

There isn’t a painless way out of the chaos and division the Conservatives have led us into – but the Liberal Democrats are best placed to unite our divided country.

That’s why highly respected MPs from both the Conservatives and Labour deserted their parties to join us. We’re a haven for decent, moderate people.

No, I don’t support the party line to revoke Article 50. That wouldn’t happen anyway. A final confirmatory vote is the only plausible way forward now. However, all parties must sign-up to implementing the outcome immediately after the vote.

Brexit is a distraction. There are more important matters to resolve. Health, education, climate crisis, welfare, housing, agriculture, business… These have been side-lined, so the Conservatives can continue arguing among themselves over their favourite subject… obsession with the EU.

Cornwall’s agricultural, fishing, tourism and other sectors will be harmed, not aided by Brexit. A vote for Andrew is a vote to prevent a damaging hard Brexit.

Derek Thomas – Conservative

Against all the odds Boris Johnson has negotiated a new deal with Brussels and I am confident that a Conservative Government can finally get Brexit done. 

The deal provides a means to leave smoothly at the end of December 2020 and will also enable the UK to start new trade deals with other non-EU nations.

Settling Brexit will also provide much-needed certainty for our fishermen and farmers so that they can get on with building the sustainable industries that will feed us in the future.

The attractiveness of government’s approach for Cornwall, via funds such as the Shared Prosperity Fund (to replace EU funds) and the recent Towns Fund for Penzance and St Ives is the determination to raise living standards and improve social mobility.

The issue of our membership with the EU must be resolved and I back the plan to get the revised withdrawal agreement through Parliament in January. We can then develop our relationship of trade and co-operation with our EU friends, as intended when Britain first voted on this in the 1970s.

Any other outcome than a Conservative election win and the UK will be doomed to more years of uncertainty and valuable resources will be wasted at a time when there are so many other challenges.

Farming & Fishing

Alana Bates – Labour

Labour will protect the UK from cheap imports by ensuring that we set the highest standards in food quality and welfare. We would reallocate funds to support smaller producers and we would give higher fishing quotas to small vessels.

Travel to the UK for migrants working on farms should be protected. Labour supports a move away from highly-intensive, environmentally-damaging farming methods and is committed to promoting best practice in cruelty-free animal husbandry and to ensuring better enforcement of agreed standards. Labour will seek to end the ‘cage age’ of outdated farming practices that cause animals distress and restrict natural behaviour. We will provide meaningful support for farmers moving to higher welfare standards.

Labour will also give a £4.5m funding boost to fight hare coursing, fox hunting and other wildlife crimes. Farming and fishing are both important to the Cornish economy and I think it is really important that the farming and fishing industries are supported.

Ian Flindall – Green

Our small Cornish family farms are in crisis. Returns are pitifully low. Many have gone out of business. Yet many are delivering environmental improvement through EU-funded schemes. Some are encouraged to diversify, mainly into the tourist business as if the production of food wasn’t enough. The result is that the farms are eventually broken up and sold in the hope of enjoying at least a few pensionable years.

Farm gate prices are low because supermarkets are able to stipulate the prices paid and to import from around the world.

We will ensure that the cost of deforestation and pollution will be reflected through tariffs on imported food from outside the EU.

If we want our beautiful Cornish countryside to be looked after and to flourish we must put the heart back into farming, keep our farming families on the land and realise the true value of locally produced food.

Our fishing policy focuses on stock sustainability and the creation of marine reserves which allow populations to thrive and spread further afield.

The farming industry has declared a target for agriculture to be carbon neutral by 2040. We will swing behind that target.

Andrew George – Liberal Democrat

Understandable industry concerns about fishing rights were shamelessly used to peddle Brexit ideals. We were promised that leaving the EU would give us more control over our quotas and our fishing waters.

The fishing industry has, frankly, been put on the slab with Johnson’s proposed deal. It leaves the industry vulnerable, as we will have less say in how fishing waters are managed.

Any MP who votes in favour of Johnson’s Brexit deal will be selling out our fishing industry. Andrew will support the fishing communities in his constituency by rejecting this betrayal.

Agriculture remains Cornwall’s biggest industry. Andrew supports the Rural Powerhouse, which aims to support Cornwall’s farmers. Its missions include subsidies for sustainable farming, access to broadband, and improved apprenticeship schemes.

Andrew has supported local farmers by leading the campaign to establish a supermarket watchdog, the Groceries Code Adjudicator. This has powers to scrutinise, expose and fine supermarkets that break fair trade rules when dealing with small suppliers, protecting Cornwall’s farmers and growers.

Andrew will ensure that Cornwall’s vital food-producing industries will have a strong and clear voice in Westminster.

Derek Thomas – Conservative

Boris Johnson’s deal gets us out of the disastrous Common Fisheries Policy, a policy that has inflicted huge damage on our fishing fleet.

It will be up to the UK to decide what fish is caught, who catches it and where it is landed as we end unfair fishing quotas and breathe new life into our coastal fishing communities such as Newlyn where more than £20 million of fish is landed every year in an industry worth almost £100 million to the Cornish economy.

The farming sector in west Cornwall can also look forward with confidence as financial support moves away from the size of the farm towards environmental land management under the UK agriculture policy; a recent NFU (National Farmers’ Union) report has shown how the UK agri-sector can achieve net zero emissions through measures such as increasing woodland and hedgerows, maximising the use of smart technology and introducing crops like hemp. On land not suitable for food production Rewilding Britain states that six million hectares of ‘recovered nature’ would absorb 10 per cent of harmful emissions.

This will present some exciting opportunities for farmers in west Cornwall to diversify and enhance our beautiful natural environment but support from government is vital and I will continue to stress to ministers the importance of giving farmers the help they need to make the necessary changes.