The Liberal Democrat manifesto 2024 – For A Fair Deal – was launched by leader, Ed Davey, on Monday 10th June.
Watch our interview with Julia Aglionby, Liberal Democrat candidate for Penrith and Solway
Many will be cheered by the inclusion of policies such as an extra £1bn for farmers in England to deliver Environmental Land Management schemes, alongside commitments to plant 60m trees a year, restrict junk food advertising, address ‘greenwashing’, and strengthen the Groceries Code Adjudicator.
Overall however, there is a sense that a big picture narrative is missing. Many of the dots are individually present, but they’ve often not been joined – for example, an understanding of the critical importance of soil health and agricultural land management in addressing the climate, nature, health and nutrition crises is not reflected.
While the manifesto says, “Farmers are key allies in tackling climate change and the nature crisis”, the commitments outlined in the manifesto nudge at the edges of existing policies, rather than necessarily describing a bold vision for revived rural communities and infrastructure to deliver high quality nutrition, nature regeneration and jobs.
On Food and Farming
The manifesto says, “Farmers are key allies in tackling climate change and the nature crisis, caring for and restoring the countryside while producing high-quality food for our tables.”
“Too many families simply can’t afford enough healthy, nutritious food. Ultra-processed foods, high in saturated fat, sugar and salt, are usually much cheaper than healthier foods – contributing to serious health problems, especially among poorer households.”
They say, “We support the move to public money for public goods, but many farmers are seeing their incomes threatened as old payments are cut and new payments are not fully rolled out or properly funded. Meanwhile, farmers have had to contend with increases in bills for energy, fertilisers and feed.”
Policies include:
- Accelerate the rollout of the new Environmental Land Management schemes, properly funding it with an extra £1 billion a year to support profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming.
- Introduce a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition.
- Maintain high health, environmental and animal welfare standards in food production and guarantee that all future trade deals will meet them too, ensuring that Britain’s farmers and food manufacturers are not put at an unfair disadvantage.
- Give Britain’s farmers the ability to trade with our European neighbours with minimal need for checks by negotiating comprehensive veterinary and plant health agreements.
- Support farmers properly in restoring woodland, peatland and waterways, creating new natural flood protections and managing land to encourage species recovery and carbon storage, while producing food for the table.
- Investing in rural and coastal infrastructure and services, including local abattoirs, so that communities are viable and can attract and retain workers, particularly from younger age groups.
- Strengthen the Groceries Code Adjudicator to protect consumers from unfair price rises and support producers.
- Ensuring farmers receive proper, independent advice about how to transition to new environmental farm payments schemes, with proper funding for advice
services. - Supporting farmers to reduce the pollution of rivers, streams and lakes
On the Natural Environment
The manifestos states that “Protecting our precious natural environment lies at the heart of the Liberal Democrat approach. Everyone should be able to enjoy open green spaces, clean blue rivers and the beauty of Britain’s coast.” But, it says, “The UK is facing a nature crisis. One in six species are threatened with extinction from Britain.”
The manifesto addresses nature in some detail, but as a largely separate entity from agricultural land use, and doesn’t really connect farm management with climate mitigation and adaptation, water availability or biodiversity regeneration.
The words ‘regenerative’ and ‘agroecology’ don’t appear in either the Food and Farming or Natural Environment sections.
Policies include:
- Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of our natural environment and ‘double nature’ by 2050: doubling the size of the Protected Area Network, doubling the area of most important wildlife habitats, doubling the abundance of species and doubling woodland cover by 2050.
- Plant at least 60 million trees a year, helping to restore woodland habitats, increase the use of sustainable wood in construction, and reach net zero.
- Strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection and provide more funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect our environment and enforce environmental laws.
On nature-based solutions – The LDs say that they will ensure that nature-based solutions form a critical part of our strategy to tackle climate change by:
- Restoring our peatlands as a carbon store, and banning the use of horticultural peat and the routine burning of heather on peatlands.
- Protecting and enhancing our temperate rainforest.
- Creating and restoring habitats like salt marshes, mudflats and seagrass meadows to guard against coastal flooding and erosion and absorb carbon emissions.
- Tackling ‘greenwashing’ by introducing new Blue Carbon and Soils Carbon Standards that are properly enforced and accredited.
- Working with international partners to fight deforestation around the world.
- Creating a real network of marine protected areas, ensuring that they are fully protected from damaging and destructive activities, protecting and restoring blue carbon and ensuring climate resilience at sea.
- Make planning work for our natural environment and ensure that developers pay their fair share by ensuring new developments result in significant net gain for biodiversity, with up to a 100% net gain for large developments.
On natural capital – these emerging markets do not really feature, except in relation to ‘greenwashing’ (above). Nutrient neutrality is not mentioned and biodiversity net gain is referenced only briefly (see ‘Planning’ below).
Peatland and is referenced for its potential to store carbon.
In terms of forests, the manifesto says the LDs will, “Plant at least 60 million trees a year, helping to restore woodland habitats, increase the use of sustainable wood in construction, and reach net zero.”
Commenting on the natural capital elements in the manifesto, Kim Connor Streich, COO of Greenshank Environmental, said, “It would have been good to see the Liberal Democrats address our nascent Natural Capital markets addressed more directly. Establishing national markets in water quality, flood management and biodiversity hold the ability to unlock essential environmental protections with minimal public investment. Any legislation needs to bring the development sector along with the environmental sector. I am yet to see detailed proposals, but requiring 100% BNG uplift too soon, even just on large developments feels out of touch and would impact viability of developments, especially while the market is establishing. The direction of travel feels right, but the details will matter if we are to ensure natural capital can be a force for good in the long term.”
Health and nutrition
The Liberal Democrats say that they plan to regulate certain foods (policies put forward by groups like Sustain), and they commit to “a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy”.
Many food NGOs believe that a national strategy to improve public nutrition could be transformative – but there is no mention of the impact of food production standards on nutrition, the role that nutrition plays in education, attainment and work, or the way in which the NHS can save money in the longer term by transforming itself from a sickness service into a wellness service.
Policies include:
- Introduce a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition.
- Establish a ‘Health Creation Unit’ in the Cabinet Office to lead work across government to improve the nation’s health and tackle health inequalities
- Expand social prescribing
- Protect children from exposure to junk food by supporting local authorities to restrict outdoor advertising and restricting TV advertising to post-watershed
- Extend the soft drinks levy to juice-based and milk-based drinks that are high in added sugar
Rural Communities:
The Lib Dems commit to appointing a cross-departmental Minister for Rural Communities but there is no detail about how this role might improve rural lives and opportunities.
GP surgeries, broadband, housing and bus services are mentioned briefly.
Planning policies include:
Build the homes people desperately need, with meaningful community engagement, by:
- Expanding Neighbourhood Planning across England
- Building ten new garden cities
- Encouraging the use of rural exception sites to expand rural housing
They say that they will make planning work for our natural environment and ensure that developers pay their fair share by ensuring new developments result in significant net gain for biodiversity, with up to a 100% net gain for large developments.
Commenting on the planning section of the manifesto, Aidan Van de Weyer, Senior Planner at Lanpro Services, said, “From a planning perspective, the top lines in the Lib Dem manifesto are really positive. The delivery target of 380,000 homes year is welcome – but ambitious. The manifesto says that this can be achieved through community-led initiatives and the creation of ten new garden cities – as Labour has done. So it will be interesting to see in what respect the Lib Dems plan to achieve this differently to Labour.
“The Lib Dems have come up with a concrete proposal for solving the resourcing problems of local authorities: allow councils to set their own fees for planning applications. The impact of this will vary depending on how much freedom is given to councils. But with substantial freedoms allowed, this risks creating a two-tier planning service: wealthy, attractive areas get well-resourced planning teams, while quality in less affluent areas drops as councils compete to bring in development – perpetuating the rich/poor divide which already impacts far too much in our planning system.”
Watch our interview with Julia Aglionby, Liberal Democrat candidate for Penrith and Solway