No 10 has confirmed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has seen Jeremy Clarkson’s statement regarding the farming business and intends to reply.
Earlier today, the 62-year-old broadcaster and TV host urged the government to make farming a priority during the next sitting of Parliament.
‘Thanks for this Jeremy, the PM has seen this and his response is incoming,’ the official No 10 account said on Twitter.
Farmers have been advised to diversify, but local authorities are preventing them from doing so, according to Clarkson.
Following the production of his television series Clarkson’s Farm, the former Top Gear host and current host of Amazon’s The Grand Tour has become an advocate for the farming business.
Clarkson’s attempts to grow crops and care for livestock on Diddy Squat, the land he owns in the Cotswolds, are chronicled in the series.
Clarkson said in a video geared at officials at Number 10 Downing Street that the issue of local governments preventing farmers from diversifying ‘has to be addressed.’
When a farm diversifies, it moves away from traditional farming methods in order to broaden its product line, expand its functions, and potentially boost revenues.
‘Hi, I am Jeremy Clarkson, and in the next Parliament I would like to see the government prioritising farming’, he said in the video.
‘We have been asked to diversify [but] when we try to do that the local authorities tell us we can’t.’
The outspoken Clarkson’s call for action comes shortly after he claimed in his Sunday Times column that he had been unfairly blocked from selling crayfish in his farm shop.
‘You go down to your own lake… haul in a net full of delicious morsels, and then sell them to passing families as a healthy snack,’ he wrote.
‘Except I can’t do that because this isn’t a free country.’
However, the crayfish found on Clarkson’s property are non-native American crayfish, which cannot be trapped without the permission of the Environmental Agency.
This is owing to the problems that illegal crayfish traps generate, such as the harmful effects they have on the crayfish population and the threats they pose to other wildlife, such as otters and water voles.
Trapping the crayfish without written permission is regarded as a potentially prosecutable offense, according to the government’s website.
Nevertheless, fans are grateful for Clarkson’s efforts, with one fan thanking him for ‘using his platform to make needed changes’.