‘Cumbria Day’, an event hosted jointly in Parliament by the county’s six MPs, has once again been a great success. Businesses from across Cumbria travelled to Parliament to showcase the fine food and drink produce that the county has to offer.
Cumbria Day was set up in 2013 to give the businesses of Cumbria the chance to promote the best of the county and themselves. MPs from across the country attended the event, all praising the high standard of Cumbrian business. The House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, even made a special guest appearance.
Each of Cumbria’s MPs invited two businesses from their respective constituencies to represent them at the event, with Tim inviting Mint Drinks and Dent Brewery.
As well as the variety of food and drink businesses in attendance, Cumbria Day also saw local partners sponsor the day, helping to make it a success. Sellafield Ltd sponsored the transport, helping to ensure the safe transit of the produce to London, while Taste Cumbria sponsored leaflets on the day, providing information to all visitors to the event.
Tim Farron said: “It was great to see Cumbria Day well attended by MPs from around the country where they got to see some of the great businesses we have here in Cumbria.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm and I hope it will help boost the county’s business and tourist trade.
“I want to thank all the businesses who travelled down to Parliament for the day, in particular Mint Drinks and Dent Brewery.
“They were able to show some of what South Lakeland has to offer.
“Events like this make me particularly proud to represent such a diverse constituency.
“I would also like to thank Sellafield and Taste Cumbria for their sponsorship – without them Cumbria Day would not have been possible.”
Speaking at the event, Rory Stewart MP said: “Everything about this is Cumbrian – Cumbrian livestock, fed on Cumbrian grass, watered with Cumbrian rain, and made by Cumbrians into great Cumbrian food. For me the future of Cumbria, particularly east Cumbria, is about really embracing our landscape, our soil and our produce.
“We should be proud of the engineering in West Cumbria but that’s not the whole story and I sometimes worry that when we talk about economic development in Cumbria that is all we talk about.
“What will really make us unique, white different to anywhere else in the country, in the next 20 to 30 years is going to be our landscape and food because, frankly, so much of the rest of the world is getting wrecked. It’s getting over developed, it’s getting destroyed and we’ve been lucky to keep one of the most beautiful environments in the world.”
