IN the fourth edition of our New Year's Reflections; Bridgwater MP Ian Liddell-Grainger reflects on a good year for the Bridgwater economy, but hopes the rural sector can improve with Brexit and the impending Agriculture Bill.

I think we can look back on 2018 as the year when Bridgwater’s economic recovery really established itself thanks, of course, to the huge civil engineering project on the coast a few miles away.

Hinkley C was always going to bring real benefits to the local area and so it has proved, offering well-paid jobs and injecting millions into manufacturing and service industries.

To the point, in fact, where in economic terms Bridgwater can now challenge Taunton’s traditional role of county town. And the most satisfying aspect from my point of view is that this is not just some short-term blip in Bridgwater’s fortunes: HPC has given rise to a new local fund of expertise and skills: a powerhouse which will drive the local economy for years to come.

On the other hand that prosperity doesn’t extend everywhere. In rural Sedgemoor things are much less vibrant, mainly because of ongoing problems in the farming sector.

We are immensely fortunate in this area to be supplied with some of the finest locally-produced food and drink available anywhere in Britain, a fact we often overlook. But the farmers supplying us are being constantly squeezed between rising costs – often linked to regulation – and market prices which remain historically low thanks to the incessant price-warring between supermarkets which control 80 per cent of food sales in the UK.

I have three wishes for 2019. Firstly that more people support independent retailers, farm shops and direct-sellers because all three methods remove food chain costs and deliver better returns to producers.

Secondly that my fellow MPs deliver an Agriculture Bill that protects farmers from unfair competition, halts the sale of county council farms and encourages new young entrants to the industry.

And thirdly that after Brexit British farmers are encouraged to produce what the market needs, not what a distant bureaucrat thinks it needs, so that we can grow more of our own food and reduce what I regard as a worrying high reliance on imports with at least 40 per cent of what we consume currently coming from abroad.