A NEW Year, a new promise – this time Defra Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsom, who says that in post Brexit Britain, farming regulations will be scrapped and farmers set free to get on with the job of producing food.

Goodbye then to complex and overburdening environmental regulations; to bureaucratic definitions of what constitutes a hedge or a pond; farewell to mountains of needless paperwork and adieu to the queues of inspectors waiting at the gate to find fault with unsuspecting farmers.

She promised that the Government will be consulting farmers later this year on areas of regulation they would like to see reformed.

Well, they’ve got form for this at Defra. The “bonfires of red tape” we have been promised over the years should, surely, by now have left us with acres of smouldering piles of ash– but the reality has amounted to little more than the odd spark and occasional wisp of smoke. 

Just to reflect on what’s gone before; we had the admirable Macdonald task force in 2011 which recommended axing or changing hundreds of rules and regulations, but in spite of all the promise of that review, there was little real change on the farms and in the fields.

The unfortunate Jim Paice – sadly sacrificed on the altar of coalition politics – launched a consultation to take on red tape and regulation and called for opinions and ideas from the industry on ways to improve regulation as part of a wide ranging consultation. 

Then a new Environment Secretary Owen Paterson launched the Red Tape Challenge to consider how Government could make regulation less burdensome for businesses, agriculture, animal health and welfare, plant health and forestry.

This would not be a re-run of previous reviews and would not go over ground already covered, instead, it would review the “underpinning regulation” and remove or simplify unnecessary or outdated requirements and create a clearer and simpler regulatory landscape.

Marvellous, all of it but, of course, none of it actually happened. The promised rush of flame and smoke turned out to be a damp squib - so we might be forgiven for having that certain sense of déjà vous.

To be fair, none of Ms Leadsom’s predecessors had the advantage of a Brexit vote on their side. She assures us that by cutting the red tape that comes out of Brussels, we will: “Free our farmers to grow more, sell more and export more great British food whilst upholding our high standards for plant and animal health and welfare.”

Let us hope that, this time, they can at least find a big enough box of matches to light that long-awaited bonfire.