Angela Eagle
speaker
239 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 22 May
Angela Eagle’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Over the last few years, the last few governments and this one, we haven't had much success in talking to ministers.
So it seemed to us one of those weathervane moments when our request to talk to Farming Minister Angela Eagle about what's happening to our veg and fruit business got an immediate yes.
Minister, we gather you've confirmed that the horticulture sector plan is actively underway, but we don't know much about the specifics.
Can you give us some examples of what policies you and your team are considering for this plan?
Well, the first thing we're doing is consulting with the sector itself because we want this growth plan to really be industry led.
I'm not pontificating to them about what they should be doing.
So we're having meetings with them to talk about their view of what needs to be done to help them grow and improve resilience.
We're at the beginning rather than the end of that work.
But I have to say there's a lot of enthusiasm being shown by the sector as a whole that we're doing this work with them.
Well, you might even say, you know, that we're kind of, you know, BBC arm of doing the consulting because we've been around some places.
And one thing we hear is that horticulture, especially, you know, ones that use glass houses for tomatoes and so on, that they need, they say, to be treated as an energy intensive industry with the same financial help as other industries are getting.
Unfortunately, the current issue is that the industrial classifications don't really encompass food.
And so we are having that discussion in government.
We're very well aware of the issues that they're facing and we're working with them.
to see what we can do to be of assistance in that area.
Some of this is about those energy standing charges, which is about transforming the grid.
It's not actually being caused by the increases in fuel prices, although it's being exacerbated.
If we're going to have a resilient food system, which is what the present business in the Middle East and Ukraine have shown us, these things are really crucial.
A lower percentage of the fruit and veg that we eat in this country is now grown here.
And I worry about that, which is why we are...
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