Farmers: Competitiveness

Lord Douglas-Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

We have a number of plans to support food production, partly through the farming road map, which we are developing. We have appointed the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, to lead Defra’s farming profitability review, which will look at things like this. We are also looking at government procurement and buying British produce, which will support British farmers. There are a number of activities that we are currently doing.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

My Lords, within the senior Defra team—and, sadly, I include all the Defra Ministers—we do not have a single farmer or land manager. If we did, they would explain that the last Budget and recent policy changes have created a lose-lose outcome for British farmers and the British public. Is Defra monitoring the number of farms going out of business, the increase in food prices the public are having to pay and the inevitable decline of our home-grown food security?