The Conservatives have pledged to cut the number of arms-length bodies overseen by the environment department.

Shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert said the party would cut down the 67 non-departmental bodies overseen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

“Defra’s quangos duplicate functions. They employ their own lobbyists. And too often they make work and waste money,” he said. “A Conservative government won’t duck these decisions. There will be fewer rural quangos.”

And there was specific criticism of the conduct of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), which incurred EU fines after failures in the operation of a farm payments scheme.

“Chaos in the RPA cost taxpayers more than £75m in EU fines. It plunged farmers into real difficulty. Yet no minister ever accepted personal responsibility,” he said.

Herbert also unveiled a commitment to get departments to procure more home-grown food, complaining that too little of the annual £2bn spent by the public sector on food went to British producers.

The government already has an initiative intended to encourage more locally sourced food production, but Herbert told the conference that the Conservatives would demand that departments procure food that meets British production standards.

“Every year the public sector spends over £2bn on food - but not a single rasher of bacon served to our armed forces is British. The Treasury buys barely half of its food from Britain. Downing Street doesn’t even know how much of its food comes from this country,” Herbert said. “I suppose that’s no surprise. Labour’s failure to back local produce is shameful.”

He said the commitment to source more local food would only be implemented as long as it did not add to overall departmental food spending.