Question 1 How will UKIP support production and sustainable farming that delivers a countryside rich in wildlife?

Question 2 How will UKIP put nature at the heart of the way we use and manage our land?

Question 3 What is UKIP’s policy towards the marine environment, including the designation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)?

Prof says . . .

Question 1 Our most fundamental policy affecting food production and the care of the countryside is to withdraw Britain from the European Union and thereby regain control of our farming and wildlife policies.

Specifically we support an expansion of British food production in harmony with nature, encouraged financially by a combination of price support for products which can be sold in the market, plus environmental management payments, such that no farmer will receive less than they are getting under the present EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).  Replacement of the CAP would be accompanied by a massive simplification of the attendant claims form filling.

No one will be paid for set-aside, but if farmers choose to make parts of their land into a properly-designed wildlife reserve or re-establish hedgerows say, then where this was consistent with overall food production, it would qualify for an environmental management payment.

UKIP is opposed to the diversion of food growing acreage (principally sugarbeet) to supply the feedstock for biofuels.

UKIP will encourage the development of the Royal Agricultural College at Cheltenham in widening the scope of its training, particularly in rural sustainability and land management, and to encourage the flow of young people into farming.

Question 2 The financial and training systems we envisage (see answer to question 1) will automatically put nature at the heart of the way land is used.

However, UKIP does not support a centralised command approach to this question.  Besides farmers and organisations like the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, there are many agencies, public and private, who may be expected to play their part and be listened to.  This includes parish councils and gamekeepers for instance.

Thus we believe that Natural England’s remit is far too wide and we would certainly reassign its responsibilities for coasts and rivers to a specific Coasts and Rivers Agency managing a £30 billion 20 year programme for protecting our coasts and rivers from erosion and flooding, in conjunction with existing local agencies and initiatives.  The creation of lagoons for wildlife as well as for people’s recreation would fall within the Agency’s scope.

Question 3 As with land use, UKIP’s most fundamental policy with regard to the marine environment is to leave the European Union, and thus the Common Fisheries Policy which controls virtually everything we do on our own share of the Continental Shelf.  We will thus recover control over all our internationally designated sovereign waters as defined in the Continental Shelf Act 1964 – broadly the North Sea and the English Channel out to the median lines with Norway and the EU countries bordering these waters.

By this change we will be able to re-establish our fishing industry for now and for future generations in harmony with our own conservation objectives.  We will ban all forms of “industrial” trawling which will in itself be the single biggest act of conservation of both fished and unfished species that you can possibly have.  We will establish moveable “No Take Zones” (NTZs) allowing fish to spawn.  The Marine Protected Areas will be established as part of the overall plan of conservation for the whole of our Continental Shelf.  Unlike the present EU controlled fishing arrangements however, we will be free to design these and the NTZs to harmonize with our fishermen’s objectives to rebuild their industry.