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16th March 2008

Conservatives Will Roll Back Bureaucracy

Any future Conservative government will take immediate action to cut away the layers of bureaucracy and red tape which have been tying the hands of farmers for a generation but have grown even more quickly over the past ten years.  So says Northeast MSP and farmer Alex Johnstone who hopes to make the move from Holyrood to Westminster after the next election.

Speaking to a farming audience in Stonehaven earlier this month, the MSP who has previously served as Scottish Conservative Spokesman on Environment and Rural development said;   “Responsibility for implementing European regulation in Scotland lies with the Scottish government and the Scottish Parliament and over the last five years the number of new regulations has increased by more than 20% a year. For most farm businesses this has led to time and effort being diverted away from core farming activities into pen pushing and form filling at a time when they could least afford it”.

“Most of the blame for this however, does not lie in Scotland where successive governments have tried to minimise the impact of regulation.  We need to see less regulation coming from Europe and this can only be achieved by changing attitudes in Brussels”.

“A future Conservative government in Westminster wants to see a less hands on approach to regulation where compliance to EU regulation is measured by outcomes rather than the rigid compliance to process which currently characterises the regulatory regime”.

“Conservatives also want to reign back particular regulations such as the nitrates directive which prevents farmers from applying manure to their fields at certain times of the year but are applied much more so in Scotland than they are such as in countries such as Holland or Denmark where pollution is a much bigger problem”.

“Its time we began to trust farmers to do the right thing instead of trying to micro-mange the environment and the farming industry.  We will force Europe to adopt a new approach which focuses on results rather than the form filling and multiple inspections we currently have to put up with".