Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the number of (1) farmers, and (2) their direct employees, for the latest date for which figures are available.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Farmers are defined here as full time and part time principal farmers, business partners, directors and spouses. All other agricultural workers are defined here as regular employees, salaried managers and casual workers who were working on the holding on 1 June 2023.

Agricultural workforce in England in 2023

Notes

(a) Commercial holdings are those registered with the Rural Payments Agency for payments or livestock purposes and with significant levels of farming activity (as recorded in responses to the Defra June Survey of Agriculture or the Cattle Tracing System). Holdings are only included if they have more than five hectares of agricultural land, one hectare of orchards, 0.5 hectares of vegetables or 0.1 hectares of protected crops, or more than 10 cows, 50 pigs, 20 sheep, 20 goats or 1,000 poultry.

Full data series for agricultural workforce are published here for England. A copy is attached to this answer.

Similar figures for the UK are available at gov.uk.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the number of full time equivalent personnel employed by DEFRA to administer farming and horticultural grants and subsidies in England on the latest date for which figures are available.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.

Defra’s Grants Hub data does not hold a ‘Farming & Horticulture’ flag so it would not be possible to quickly pull together a list of schemes in scope of this question.

Manually reviewing the schemes and deciding if they fit or not, without a standard definition of what counts as ‘Farming & Horticulture’, would require a degree of personal judgement and therefore yield some inaccuracy. It would then be necessary to validate the list with teams to ensure they are ‘Farming & Horticulture’ grants.

From experience of similar requests, this would push the cost to disproportionate (ie greater than the HMT-set limit of £850 for a PQ answer).

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following the announcement on 4 March of the establishment of an inquiry into third party litigation funding, when they expect to announce the terms of reference, the members of the inquiry panel and the timing of the review.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Lord Chancellor has invited the Civil Justice Council, the body responsible for overseeing and co-ordinating the modernisation of the civil justice system, to undertake a review of third-party litigation funding in England and Wales. The CJC has agreed to undertake the review and will be announcing terms of reference and other information shortly.

Found: King’s Bench Division” LORD BLUNKETT BARONESS CHAKRABARTI THE LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER LORD

Found: Clause 46 LORD BLUNKETT BARONESS CHAKRABARTI THE LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER LORD HODGSON OF

Found: After Clause 127 LORD HODGSON OF ASTLEY ABBOTTS 63_ After Clause 127, insert the following

Found: LORD BLUNKETT BARONESS CHAKRABARTI BARONESS BURT OF SOLIHULL LORD HODGSON OF ASTLEY ABBOTTS

Found: After Clause 127 LORD HODGSON OF ASTLEY ABBOTTS 63_ After Clause 127, insert the following

Found: After Clause 127 LORD HODGSON OF ASTLEY ABBOTTS _ After Clause 127, insert the following new