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		The Agriculture committee Having run the family farm in Bridgwater, Somerset since he was sixteen, Neil has a practical understanding of the difficulties of farming. It was for that reason that Neil pushed to join the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Parliament. Having proved his worth on the committee, Neil was promoted to Agriculture spokesman for the British Conservative delegation in 2002. In 2007, he became the Chairman of the committee. This committee, as the name suggests, deals with all of the major issues to affect agriculture throughout the EU, and therefore has a huge impact in his region of the South West. The Committee has a competency on matters from the common agricultural policy, animal feed stuffs, legislation on veterinary and plant-health matters and rural development. For this reason it is vitally important that Britain's farmers have someone 'batting hard' for them in the Parliament. Neil has long believed that many of the rules and regulations are bought forward by people who have no real understanding of the impact they will have on the farming industry, and has been working to try to change this. Neil works closely with the National Farmers Union (NFU) and groups such as the Country Landowners Association (CLA) to ensure that the farming industry and rural communities have a voice in Brussels. However, to better understand the issues Neil visits farmers and rural communities all over the UK, and speaks regularly at agricultural seminars and farming conferences. Neil was at the forefront of the setting up of the European Parliaments public inquiry into the disastrous foot and mouth outbreak. (View article in the Guardian). Neil was extremely active in the campaign to end the illegal French ban on British beef. Neil took his protest directly to the French Government, and was arrested by French riot police for marching down the Champs Elysees in Paris alongside other Conservative MEPs. When the EU ban on British beef exports was finally lifted in 2006, Neil was the first to bring British beef to Strasbourg. In 2005 and 2006, Neil was active in the campaign to expose the plight caused by the British government's shambolic handling of the farers' subsidies under the Single farm Payment scheme.