Labour Party MP for Suffolk Coastal since (elected). An MP continuously since .
Parliament recordVoting recordWritten questionsEarly day motions
Entries on this tracker
134
Each filed under the party they sat for that day
Register entries
9
As currently published
Declared while sitting for Labour
£41,890
7 of 9 entries state an amount
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | MP | Suffolk Coastal | – present | elected | — | Party history |
Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present).
Every entry the member has in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, as Parliament currently publishes it. The wording and values are the member's own declarations; nothing here has been assessed by this site.
Totals add only the entries that declare an amount received: payments for work, donations, gifts, and funded visits (register categories 1.1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). Ongoing employment is listed but not added, because its figure is a rate rather than a sum received. Each entry is dated by when the benefit happened, not when it was registered, and placed under the party the member sat for on that date. A member who changed party therefore has a separate total for each.
| Date | Category | Entry | Declared value | Sitting for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Kevin Craig - £5,000.00 | £5,000 | Labour | Register record |
| date registered | 10. Family members lobbying | Matthew Riddell- Carpenter employed as Lobbyist | — | Labour | Register record |
| 2. Donations and support | Susan Clare Parsons - £8,250.00 | £8,250 | Labour | Register record | |
| 2. Donations and support | Anthony Trevor Langham - £8,250.00 | £8,250 | Labour | Register record | |
| 2. Donations and support | Countryside Alliance - £3,500.00 | £3,500 | Labour | Register record | |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | Anthony Trevor Langham - £390.00 | £390 | Labour | Register record | |
| 2. Donations and support | Susan Clare Parsons - £8,250.00 | £8,250 | Labour | Register record | |
| 2. Donations and support | Anthony Trevor Langham - £8,250.00 | £8,250 | Labour | Register record | |
| 8. Miscellaneous | I was elected as Chair of the Labour Rural Research Group (LRRG), a formally constituted group within the Labour Party focused on rural policy development and advocacy. This is an unpaid role. I provide strategic direction for the group and oversee its external engagement and staffing support arrangements. | — | Labour | Register record |
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The land use framework will help deliver faster, clearer and more co-ordinated decisions on housing and infrastructure, ensuring that our most productive farmland is safeguarded. As part of the implementation of that framework, we will complete a technical review of the agricultural land classification system by 2028.
I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for his speech. Farming is not simply another industry. Farmers produce the food that sustains us, manage much of our countryside and underpin a wider food and drink economy. Agriculture alone contributes £14.5 billion to the economy, while the wider food and drink sector contributed £153.2 billion in 2023. That does not just matter to the economy; maintaining domestic food production to at least current levels is integral to our national security. As the Prime Minister said in this House last month, farming and food production are part of this country’s sovereign production and manufacturing capacity, which we will need to strengthen in the years to come. We will need to depend on it, and therefore we need to strengthen it—that is a clear commitment. That is why this Government are committed to backing British farmers and maintaining domestic food production to at least current levels.
I thank the hon. Member for that important question. I can confirm that the Farming Minister and other colleagues have been in active conversation with the National Pig Association and are continuing that dialogue. Our farming road map sets out a long-term direction for the sector that is more profitable, productive, sustainable and resilient, and better able to withstand climate, market and geopolitical shocks. I want to acknowledge just how difficult this year has been. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson set out the extraordinary combination of pressures that farmers have faced this year alone: drought and water shortages, reduced grass and forage growth, difficult crop conditions, and higher irrigation and feed costs. At the same time, the conflict in the middle east has put further pressure on fertiliser and fuel prices.
I will remind the hon. Member that the last UK ammonia production facility closed under the Conservatives without any Government intervention. We recognise that resilience is not evenly distributed and that some farm businesses have significantly less capacity than others to withstand those short-term shocks. The impacts of climate change and drought have been particularly severe, with more than 80% of the country now in drought. The south-east and south-west experienced their driest period from April to September in more than a century, and pressure on water resources continues despite the rain that we are seeing today. We understand what that means on our farms—less grass, lower forage growth and new crop yields, pressure on irrigation and reservoirs, greater demand for livestock water, and, ultimately, greater uncertainty about the year ahead—so we have acted. In August, we introduced a package of drought support measures including temporary adjustments to environmental land management agreements so that farmers affected by drought could continue receiving payments while taking practical steps to protect their businesses. We also reminded farmers and growers that they can apply to the Environment Agency for temporary abstraction flexibility through local enforcement protections to help them to access water during dry periods where environmental impacts can be appropriately managed. Liberal Democrat Members ask now what we are doing on water and climate resilience, but the last time they were in government, they cut flood defence spending by a fifth within six months of taking office. We are taking water and weather extremely seriously. However, responding to one dry summer is not enough; farmers need greater long-term water security. That is why we are making up to £15 million available through a further water management grant to help to build farm reservoirs, which allow water to be stored when it is most readily available and then used to support food production during the drier periods. This will help to reduce reliance on direct abstraction when rivers and groundwater are under greatest pressure. We are also making it easier to build reservoirs by updating planning guidance and working with industry to review whether further planning reforms are needed. We have also simplified applications for longer-duration abstraction licences, helping farmers to secure finances for on-farm reservoirs by better aligning licence duration with investment and loan repayment periods. We have also brought forward the reservoir refill season from November to October for this year. We are also encouraging farmers to work together through water abstraction groups to strengthen local water resilience, while trialling dynamic abstraction in places like Cambridge, using real-time monitoring and data to help farmers to access water when it is available while also protecting the natural environment. Drought and climate change are not the only sources of uncertainty, though; the middle east conflict remains a significant source of disruption to fertiliser and red diesel prices. The continued pressures underline something fundamental: our farming system needs to become less exposed to global shocks and expensive imported inputs. That means not simply telling farmers to absorb higher costs, but helping them to become more productive and more efficient, with farming schemes including actions supporting variable-rate nutrient application, companion cropping, legumes and herbal leys, all of which can help to improve nutrient efficiency and reduce reliance on synthetic fertiliser.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. I will tackle the SFI later in my speech. The Farming Minister has been clear on many of the lessons that will be learned, but I will set them out further shortly. Across the sustainable farming incentive, countryside stewardship and higher level stewardship, 534,000 hectares are already using precision applications of fertiliser and manure. We have also increased fertiliser market monitoring and encouraged greater use of nutrient planning to help farmers optimise fertiliser use, and we are rolling out an online tool to help farmers use fertilisers more efficiently. Beyond DEFRA, the Treasury reduced the duty on red diesel earlier this year in response to price increases resulting from the middle eastern crisis. We are investing in innovation, because lasting resilience must ultimately come from producing more efficiently. For ’26-27, £123 million has been allocated to the farming innovation programme, with support for technologies and approaches that can raise productivity and strengthen resilience.
I will make progress, because I am coming on to something important. I want to address the issue of SFI26 frankly. I really do recognise the disappointment and frustration caused by the closure of the second application window on 22 September. The SFI is a scheme that the Government inherited from the previous Conservative Government. They designed this first come, first served scheme, sent a quarter of the money to 4% of farms and now complain that it was oversubscribed. When we inherited it, the scheme had no budget control and no proper alignment of SFI actions to environmental and sustainability targets, and it included that first come, first served application process. For 2026, we made improvements to the offer to ensure that more farmers could access funding. We made the offer simpler and more focused, with fewer actions while retaining actions for all farm types. We introduced a £100,000 per annum max agreement value cap to spread the availability of funding more widely. We also gave priority access to the scheme for small farms and farms without existing ELM revenue agreements. Those two groups had been under-represented in the SFI previously. This priority access through SFI26 window 1 remained open for two months. The SFI26 window 2 was open to all eligible farmers and land managers. It experienced exceptionally high demand and closed after around six hours once available budget had been allocated.
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing to engage with his local farming community. I will be talking about that more, but work is already under way to make those improvements and scrap the first come, first served element of the scheme. We anticipated stronger demand and increased the window 2 budget significantly over this summer. An additional £50 million was announced by the Prime Minister in August as part of the response to the dry weather that we saw, and a further £20 million was added before window 2 opened.
I will give way because it is the right hon. Gentleman.
The right hon. Gentleman is correct that modelling was undertaken. As a result of that modelling, a further £50 million was announced by the Prime Minister and a subsequent £20 million was announced by the Secretary of State. I recognise that the substantial demand remained unsatisfied when window 2 closed, and I understand how difficult that was for farmers who were ready to apply but did not have the opportunity to secure an agreement. Let me say this clearly: there will be future SFI offers, and we plan to make an SFI27 offer available as soon as possible.
I am sorry; I am going to make progress. To that end, we are working with the farming sector on how the scheme can be improved, and the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South, confirmed that we will scrap the “first come, first served” application. It is important to stress that the SFI is only one part of our support for farming. Across this Parliament, the Government have allocated a record £11.8 billion to sustainable farming and food production. That includes £788 million this year alone in new funding for farmers to boost farm productivity, develop cutting-edge technologies that will drive future growth, and maintain a healthy natural environment. Capital grants have provided £225 million this year for practical environmental improvements on farms. At least £50 million is available for new countryside stewardship higher-tier agreements. We have also committed £173 million in 2026-27 for productivity, equipment and innovation through the farming equipment and technology fund and the farming innovation programme. That represents an extensive ongoing commitment to farm adaptation and improvement. I hope that the Opposition support those aims. Our Government support is not only about grants. Farmers need thriving markets and fair returns for the food they produce. That is why we have established the Farming and Food Partnership Board, which brings together leaders from farming, food, retail and finance to focus on productivity, profitability, home-grown produce and national food security. We are taking action on fairness in the supply chain, too. Fair dealing regulations have been introduced for dairy and pigs, with further work covering eggs, fresh produce and crops. Our farming road map makes our long-term approach clear: we will maintain domestic food production at least at current levels; we will protect productive land for food production; we will support investment in technology and skills; and we will build resilience to the climate and geopolitical shocks that farmers are increasingly having to manage. That is because healthy soil, reliable water supply, efficient use of nutrients and profitable farm businesses are not competing objectives but the foundations of our food security.
Held . Recorded result: Lab Gain. Majority 1,070. 49,451 votes cast from an electorate of 74,522. Parties are as each candidate stood at the time.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jenny Riddell-Carpenter | Labour | 15,672 | 31.7% |
| Thérèse Coffey | Conservative | 14,602 | 29.5% |
| Matthew Jackson | Reform UK | 7,850 | 15.9% |
| Julia Ewart | Liberal Democrat | 6,947 | 14.0% |
| Julian Cusack | Green Party | 4,380 | 8.9% |
| Seat | Dates |
|---|---|
| Suffolk CoastalElected 1 time | – present |
| Post | Dates |
|---|---|
| Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs | – present |
| Committee | Dates |
|---|---|
| City of London (Markets) Bill | – present |
| Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee | – |
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