MP set to table motion opposing Net Zero attack on UK farming

Carla Lockhart MP • July 16, 2025

Upper Bann MP and DUP Agriculture and Rural Affairs spokesperson, Carla Lockhart, is set to submit a motion in Parliament highlighting the damaging and disproportionate impact of the UK government’s Net Zero policy on farmers and rural communities.

The Early Day Motion (EDM) will condemn what it describes as the “excessive and unrealistic demands” placed on the agricultural sector under the current Net Zero strategy, warning that farmers are being used as a political scapegoats, while global polluters and multinational corporations remain untouched.
 
Ms Lockhart’s EDM calls on the government to abandon its current Net Zero approach, which she says delivers “negligible climate benefit” at the cost of UK food production and security, economic stability, and rising financial pressure on taxpayers and consumers.
 
Speaking on the issue, Carla Lockhart MP said: “Farmers are being hung out to dry by a government obsessed with targets that make headlines but don’t make sense. Net Zero is being used as a blunt instrument against UK agriculture, a sector that feeds our nation, sustains our rural economy, and already upholds some of the highest environmental standards in the world.
 
“Meanwhile, the real polluters, global corporations and major emitting nations, carry on unchecked. The cost of this political vanity project will be paid not just by farmers, but by every family in the UK via their taxes.
 
“I am tabling this motion to say enough is enough. The government must abandon this reckless approach before it irreparably damages the backbone of rural communities and our food security.”
 
Carla Lockhart’s motion is expected to attract support from across the UK’s rural and farming constituencies, with mounting concern that Westminster’s Net Zero policies are detached from the realities of food production and economic viability in rural Britain.

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