Labour will today claim the rural economy is to lose £9million under Government plans as it launches an attack on coalition policies undermining the countryside.

Shadow Rural Affairs Secretary Mary Creagh is to stake Labour's claim as the "party of the countryside" in the wake of controversial Government proposals over forests and planning.

Labour is fighting to save the Agricultural Wages Board, which sets pay and conditions for thousands of Westcountry farm workers, and will point to the Government's own assessment revealing a £9 million drop in spending as a result.

But a defence of Labour's 13 years in power, in which time they were criticised for hapless handling of the foot and mouth crisis and closing post offices, was dismissed by coalition MPs.

In her conference address at the Labour party conference today, Ms Creagh will hit out at the "same old Tory unfairness" damaging rural areas.

Of the wages board, which the Government claims is out-dated, the Western Morning News understands she is expected to tell delegates it will hurt those in an industry where "four out of five workers has no company pension scheme for their retirement".

She will add: "The Government calculates it'll take £9million a year of spending power out of the village high street. That's not the Plan B the economy needs, that's the same old Tory unfairness.

"And we are not going to let the AWB be scrapped without a fight."

She goes on: "George Osborne's Plan A is having a huge negative impact on the countryside. He is making it harder to earn a living, harder to raise a family, harder to run a business."

Also to be ditched as part of the Government's "bonfire of the quangos" is the Rural Advocate, leaving the countryside without an independent voice for the first time since the First World War.

In a briefing with journalists before the speech, Ms Creagh said she will be "re-stating Labour's proud history of being the party of the countryside".

She added: "A year ago people might have had a wry smile if we had said that – I don't think anyone is questioning that now."

The Government was forced into a U-turn on selling off public forests last year, and has faced criticism from the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and the National Trust over reform to planning guidance dubbed a "developer's charter".

In the briefing, Ms Creagh launched a scathing attack on her counterpart, the Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, over Government cuts.

She said: "Any Secretary of State who is the first to settle in a comprehensive spending review immediately shows a degree of political naivety.

"Any Secretary of State that accepts a 30 per cent cut will hamper their or a successor's room for manoeuvre over the next five years.

"That settlement has set the tone and the pace for every decision that comes out of Defra. They've got no budget and all sorts of awkward policy decisions have flown from that settlement."

Questioned by the WMN, Ms Creagh dismissed criticism of Labour's guardianship of the countryside as more "rhetoric" than reality.

She said: "We allowed a narrative to develop that was somehow against the countryside, which we weren't.

"There were certain defining issues where there were issues surrounding the handling of foot and mouth and the fox hunting ban which alienated – no doubt – some of the voters who voted for us in 1997 and 2001."

She pointed to planning policies under Labour that allowed houses to be built in rural areas, halted rural school closures and brought children's centres to rural villages for the first time.

But Liberal Democrat MP Martin Horwood said the claims over the countryside were "a bit rich", and suggested a "road to Damascus conversions", and Tory MP Laurence Robertson described Labour's position as outrageous.