Rishi Sunak backs protesting farmers at Welsh Conservative conference

By David Deans

BBC Wales political reporter

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has publicly backed protesting farmers in Wales.

Mr Sunak met campaigning farmer Gareth Wyn Jones and others outside the Welsh Conservative conference in Llandudno.

“We’re going to do everything we can because we’ve got your back,” the Conservative prime minister said.

Protesters are unhappy with the Labour Welsh government proposals to change farm subsidies, which will include a requirement to have trees on 10% of agricultural land.

Farmers will also be required to earmark another 10% for wildlife habitat.

The Welsh government, which is consulting on the scheme, has argued it is necessary in the fight against climate change, and that the programme could be adjusted after the end of the consultation.

Mr Sunak made the comments after a speech where he claimed the Welsh people were being “treated as Labour’s laboratory”, and he claimed there was “enormous anger” over Wales’ 20mph policy.

Gareth Wyn Jones, who met Mr Sunak, had posted on X, formerly Twitter, the day before that he had received death threats.

He said in a video he was planning to “step back” from the farmers’ protests because he had to think about his family.

Mr Jones said he met a police officer about the latest death threat, which he described as the “fourth or the fifth” he had had.

BBC Wales has asked North Wales Police to comment.

The Welsh government has said that the new farm subsidy scheme is necessary in the fight against climate change.

Protests have escalated over the Sustainable Farming Scheme in recent days and a demonstration is expected to take place in Cardiff next week.

Since Brexit governments in the UK have had to decide what to do with farm subsidies, and whether to replace schemes previously set out by the European Union.

Mr Sunak met a crowd of protesters outside the conference venue, where a row of tractors was parked across the road.

He told Mr Jones: “It’s absolutely not right, the impact it will have on your jobs, your livelihoods, your incomes and food production around the country. It’s simply wrong.”

In his conference speech, Mr Sunak also attacked the Welsh government over its 20mph speed limit policy, and its record on the NHS and education.

“Why are Welsh children being let down and getting the worst results in the United Kingdom? Why are Welsh farmers being abandoned?

“And why do they want to spend £120m more on 36 more politicians in Cardiff, but can’t provide a penny of funding to support steelworkers in Port Talbot?”

“Wales is proof that when Labour run something, they run it badly.

“I’m sorry that you, the Welsh people, are being treated as Labour’s laboratory.”

Mr Sunak said he knew “last year was hard”, but “we’re pointing in the right direction”.

He said inflation was down, energy prices had come down significantly and mortgage rates had started to fall.

He claimed that because of progress in the economy “we have been able to afford tax cuts”.

Mr Sunak accused Labour of holding values that “aren’t those of the British people, which is why they also can’t see how unfair it is that people can arrive in our country illegally and not be removed”.

He accused Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of causing “chaos and confusion over the £28bn eco promise”.

Meanwhile David TC Davies, Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, said he did not believe dire polls predicting disaster for the party.

In his speech, he said: “They tell us we’re finished, that we can’t win.

“I will have absolutely none of it, none of it. I don’t spend much time looking at what opinion pollsters are saying because I’m busy doing other things.

“I don’t know who these opinion polls are speaking to. But when we go out, as we do every weekend… the people that we meet are telling us that they are fed up with this Welsh Labour government.”

On Thursday, a Welsh government spokesperson said: “In Wales, we have maintained the Basic Payment Scheme at £238m in 2024, which was not easy in the financial circumstances. It is something farmers asked us to do in order to provide stability and we listened.

“The UK government has not maintained BPS at the same levels in England and, unlike what the UK government has done in England, we are not proposing to bring forward fragmented schemes. We have developed the Sustainable Farming Scheme, in partnership with the sector, in a way which is designed to support all farmers in Wales through a Universal Baseline Payment.”

They added: “The Welsh government is committed to supporting the agriculture sector in Wales and we have been very clear working in partnership with the farming sector is key. We will continue to do so.”

By Gareth Lewis, BBC Wales political editor

As Rishi Sunak strode to the stage dozens of tractors and hundreds of farmers rumbled along the promenade.

It is the Welsh Labour government, not the Conservatives at Westminster, which makes decisions on farming here, but the farmers were keen to make a political point.

As was Mr Sunak, who picked up on what he called their “visceral anger”, having attacked Labour’s farming subsidy plans on Thursday.

With the Tories facing the potential of a Welsh general election wipe out, the prime minister will try to seize every political opportunity.

And that will involve attacks on Labour’s record in Wales – the NHS, education, speed limits, more politicians and now farming.

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