Conservative Party agriculture spokesman Bill Wiggin MP has stunned the industry by calling for planning permission for soft-fruit polytunnels and worker accommodation.
Taking an extraordinarily parochial view, the elected member for Leominster - a constituency which also includes S&A Produce and the largest manufacturer of polytunnels in the UK, Haygrove Tunnels Ltd - has declared he has not eaten strawberries in four years as he would rather go without than eat fruit grown under plastic in the UK.
He gained national press coverage for his call earlier this week for a boycott by consumers of polytunnel fruit, but later declared on BBC Radio 2 that he had been misquoted. “The key thing we would like to see is regulation, planning permission,” Wiggin told presenter Jeremy Vine in a live debate with British Summer Fruits chairman Laurence Olins on Tuesday. “[There is] deep-felt frustration that there is no forum for people to say what they think.”
Olins told Wiggin that the sector was “disappointed” that as a national agriculture spokesman for a national party what was driving him was a potential loss in value of his constituents homes.
“We are a law-abiding industry dominated by family farms doing our utmost to meet ever-increasing consumer demand for strawberries and we are doing that while being sensitive to the countryside,” said Olins. “Our message to growers is to farm responsibly and to abide by the protocols and take note of the latest guidance from the NFU which is a very clear document on how to deal with polytunnels. If growers do not, we are in danger of being judged as an industry by the standard of the least responsible growers.”
Also in the media spotlight is temporary accommodation for migrant workers and reports that the workers themselves are being taken advantage of, have been slammed as “simply not true” and “wrong”.
Conditions have reportedly been described by workers as “a prison” and “not good” but S&A’s Graham Neal said: “People can come and go when they want - 4,000 of them don’t appear by magic, they have come because they want to. Being a large farm, we have to do things right. We do not have a choice not to. From our point of view we are trying to build proper facilities and we would welcome the opportunity to put in 2006-style facilities as opposed to being restricted by 1940s regulations and having to house seasonal workers in caravans.”
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