Farmer MP Sir Robert Goodwill on the benefits of MPs with outside experience and chairing the rural affairs committee

‘MP and lawyer’

‘MP and economist’.

However, there aren’t too many who wear the badge ‘MP and farmer’.

It seems apt then, that one of their small number has been elected to chair the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee, and will be a key figure in examinising the issues and scrutinising some of the policy decisions that matter most to countryside communities and the industries at the heart of their economies.

“I think it does help having some skin in the game and understanding the problems,” Sir Robert Goodwill believes.

The Scarborough and Whitby MP may now have a member of staff to help him out with his 250-acre North Yorkshire farm that has been in his family since 1850, but he “makes the major decisions” which keep the business running.

“By and large, I am working as an MP, but that’s not to say I can’t keep in touch” he tells The Yorkshire Post, making the case for why it is important to have external expertise among legislators.

“I think that a lot of people criticise Members of Parliament for having other interests and other jobs. I think it’s really important.

“I’ve got colleagues who are doctors, for example, who still work couple of days a month in the NHS as doctors and I think that is really actually very valuable and important.

“So too I think, is keeping the farm going, having an interest in it.

“I just bought my fertiliser for £630 pounds a tonne for next year, that means I have got skin in the game.”

Last month, Sir Robert, who has been in Parliament for more than 15 years, was elected to the top job on the Commons committee, having beaten four other Conservative colleagues to the position.

As well as the farm, his CV also includes a stint as a Minister in the department of the same name under Theresa May, focussing on agriculture, fisheries and food during the period when officials were attempting to negotiate post-Brexit deals.

During the election campaign for the committee post “some people said ‘well, you’ll know where the bodies are buried’” he quipped.

“To some extent, that’s true.

“But you know, I lived and breathed bovine TB, GM crops, the change of agricultural support from the old EU system to our new system.

“So I’m pretty much hitting the ground running, I understand many of the issues.”

He indicates that the same perhaps cannot be said for all of the hundreds of MPs in Parliament.

Although all “motivated by the most good reasons” such as wanting to help the environment and “pass on this wonderful country to the next generation,” he says that “unfortunately” not all of those involved in policy making are fully across the issues as they are experienced on the ground.

The Conservative MP says colleagues representing their constituents views, especially if there are lots of communications on a certain issue, motivate how some may make their decisions.

“Bovine TB is a classic example,” Sir Robert says.

“Rural MPs understand the problems particularly in the South-West and Cumbria where they have a problem.

“But urban MPs it doesn’t register on their radar at all.

“So if they get 200 emails saying let’s stop the badger cull they think well electorally it could be to my advantage to support these people.”

So, given he has been an MP since 2005, what does Sir Robert think this chairmanship could achieve that could not be done from the green benches anyway?

“One common feature of things that people said to me during the election for the chair for the select committee – particularly on my side of the house –was that ‘we need to put the, you know, the farming and the food back into Defra’.”

Sir Robert explained that he thinks that – especially with the war in Ukraine unfolding – there should be more of a focus on producing food sustainably in the UK, and there is a “ moral as well as an economic and strategic responsibility to ensure that the key purpose of British agriculture is to produce food and enhance the food security of this country and the world.”

“I think we’ve been maybe lulled into a false sense of security that we’ll always be able to get food from somewhere in the world, that food prices will always be cheap.

“And since the crisis in Ukraine, we’ve seen food prices rocket, and that’s having a real effect on inflation, and the cost of living. I think we’ve had a little bit of a wake-up call and understand the need that whilst yes, we must do what we can to preserve the environment, we must certainly pursue the sustainable farming initiative.”

It’s a big job, with the power to influence policy that will affect millions across the country, but how is Sir Robert looking towards the role?

“Coming from four generations – maybe even more than four generations of farming families here – with a degree in agriculture and a lifetime of experience, I hope that I won’t be making some of those schoolboy errors that people who don’t understand the industry in and outs quite as much may do.”