We asked you to submit your questions to candidates standing in the 2024 General Election.
From all your submissions, we chose 10 that represented the broad issues you wanted answers to.
We asked every candidate we had contact details for to respond.
We’ll be publishing them in the run-up to the General Election with the responses from the candidates who replied from each constituency.
These are the answers are from candidates standing in the Whitehaven & Workington constituency.
What will you do to stop run off from animal agriculture polluting lakes/rivers?
Jill Perry, the Green Party
While sewage pollution of our waterways gets a lot of publicity agricultural run-off is a much more significant source of river pollution.
Animal husbandry and agri-chemicals are significant contributors to phosphorus pollution of rivers in Cumberland. Therefore we need to triple the amount of support given to farmers to support them to transition to nature-friendly farming.
This would mean fewer livestock and a reduction in meat and dairy production, and payments linked to a reduction in the use of pesticides and fertilisers. Reduced animal numbers means we could create buffer zones adjacent to rivers to prevent run-off.
The current nutrient neutrality regulations get a lot of publicity but actually they are only designed to protect certain limited catchment areas and only aim to prevent deterioration, not to improve water quality.
They need to be extended and strengthened. We would also strengthen the DEFRA budget by £1.5bn to allow increases in the Environment Agency and Natural England budgets to monitor and protect our rivers, prosecuting where necessary.
Andrew Johnson, the Conservative Party
This seems to suggest that animal agriculture is solely to blame for polluting our waterways, when that is not the case. It happens naturally in non-agricultural settings.
But we can impact on run-off from the additional spreading of slurry/manure/artificial fertilisers through management, which the majority of our farmers do very well.
Much of our phosphate pollution is historic and difficult to shift. Farmers can also access schemes to cover the cost of trees, hedges and fences that can protect riverbanks from erosion. To solely blame farmers is wrong at a time when they need our support.
Chris Wills, Liberal Democrats
Lib Dems are the champions of stopping sewage. I’m grateful for this question though as it points to probably the biggest cause of UK water pollution and that is agricultural run-off.
The way our economy has been shaped by a poorly regulated capitalist model – well done Tories – has meant farmers have been increasingly pushed into producing higher yields, whilst being squeezed by the big supermarkets.
To achieve this level of production farmers have felt the need to use more, and ever more powerful, artificial fertilisers. The run-off from this is creating substantial water pollution.
Lib Dems will bring in a help and reward scheme for farmers to cut out the use of artificial fertilisers. Some farmers in the UK are already turning to more natural production with some highly promising results.
Josh MacAlister, Labour
We’ll support farmers to farm in sustainable ways, which is what a lot of farmers want to do anyway, but the current payment system doesn’t work.
The real challenge with pollution in our lakes and rivers comes from sewage being dumped by the water companies and that is something we have a comprehensive plan to tackle, by holding water companies and their bosses to account – criminally liable if necessary – blocking their bonuses and forcing them to clean up their act, and our rivers and lakes, with a tough new monitoring regime.
David Surtees, Reform UK
Cumbria Crack received no answers from Mr Surtees. Just before the election was called, he was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing six weeks of treatment, which he said had curtailed his ability to campaign.
