Support for Farmers

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ben Goldsborough]

My hon. Friend makes an impassioned plea against the flag-washing that we see in the United Kingdom. One of my concerns is that we are getting into a very easy situation of exporting our morality when it comes to food production. We cannot continue down this alley of increasing our standards to a certain level while other nations are undermining theirs. All that does is put our farming communities in a situation where they cannot fight against that race to the bottom. I would appreciate it if, when the Minister winds up, he would say what discussions he and his colleagues have had with our European partners, especially on the SPS agreement, to ensure that there will be a level playing field—when, for example, neonicotinoids are used in Hungary. Also, vitally, what are they doing to ensure that there will be a long transition period in the United Kingdom? We have an issue with black-grass, and if we lose our herbicides from our market, our yields will be harmed hugely.

In conclusion, today’s debate looks at the symptoms, not the causes. I urge the Minister to explain in his winding-up remarks what we are going to do to fix the underlying profitability issues.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call John Lamont, after which the speaking limit will drop to four minutes.

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[John Lamont]

The right hon. Member had his time to have his say, but he refused to deal with this issue. The Liberal Democrats have had their say, but have refused to justify their failure to stand up for the farmers and try to stop this. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. The hon. Member is obviously not giving way.

[John Lamont]

According to the Liberal Democrat motion, farmers are “deeply concerned” about the impact of CBAM on fertiliser costs. Too right they are, and I welcome the Liberal Democrats’ late conversion, but noting concerns in a motion is no substitute for standing up for farmers when it counts, and that is when we vote. The party that tells farmers it is on their side does not then stand up to stop these extra costs, but just walks away. You cannot champion farmers in this Chamber and then abandon them when the vote comes.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am now introducing a four-minute speaking limit.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Mr Gareth Snell, changing your seat in the Chamber does not mean I cannot hear or see you.

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[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I am pleased that the Liberal Democrats are leading from the front for our rural communities by having this debate. Norfolk is a rural county and a farming county. It is also a county right at the forefront of the climate and nature emergency. Right along our coastline, which is the fastest eroding in north-west Europe, we see residents facing the loss of their homes and villages facing the loss of their identity as rising sea levels increase the speed of erosion in villages such as Happisburgh and Trimingham. Our precious natural environment with rare chalk streams and species found nowhere else in the country is at risk of collapse without action on the emergency facing them.

One of our strongest allies in tackling the climate emergency is farming, and that is why the SFI is so important. Farmers are custodians of the natural environment; they care for it, they look after it and they will pass it on to generations after them. They want our natural environment to be protected and our climate to remain stable, not just for the greater good but because it is vital to keep their farms viable.

The importance of the scheme cannot be overstated. It is a crucial part of keeping our rural environments healthy and protected, and of enabling farmers to do so too. How on earth, then, can it be right that the process for securing the funding was such a catastrophe? A mad rush, online queuing and effectively a sell-out event in a matter of hours. I know the Prime Minister is keen on Manchesterism for the whole country, but I do not think my farmers knew that meant making SFI applications follow the same system as getting Oasis tickets.

That farce speaks to a much deeper issue. I strongly believe that there is a lack of understanding of the workings of rural life and rural communities because they do not fit neatly into Whitehall’s prescribed models or spreadsheets. Securing funding for sustainable land management might make the difference between a farm being able to employ someone to work the land and not. If that person is not employed, they will not bring their family to the local village to live. That means that perhaps their children do not attend the village school, which then cannot make the numbers work within the funding formula. Those young people would not be able to stay and start a family themselves even if we were to tackle the cost of living crisis, which is significantly sharper the further from a city someone is. When working-age people cannot afford to live and thrive in rural and coastal areas, everybody loses.

As things stand, our communities are as vulnerable to erosion as our coastline, and we need powerful representation at the heart of Government to stand up for them. Just like in our natural environment, our rural communities are deeply interconnected. We are an ecosystem: we rely on symbiotic relationships, on food chains and on a stable environment. When the science of rural life is disregarded and the knock-on effects are ignored, we end up with calamitous decisions such as this.

So much of this situation is down to how Whitehall works, or does not. Food security, climate change, coastal erosion, flooding, farming policy, environmental protection, rural communities—in North Norfolk all our affairs are rural. Yet real change on these issues cannot be handled by DEFRA alone. Those are the things that matter to people, to the lives we lead, and they cut across the silos of Government. I firmly believe that if we had a better understanding of rural life across Whitehall, disasters such as the one we saw with the SFI scheme would just not be allowed to happen. An urgent, fundamental reassessment of how the state is supposed to work for rural communities is needed, because at the moment it simply does not.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call John Cooper, after whom we will drop the time limit to three minutes.

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[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Farmers in Taunton and Wellington have been hit incredibly hard by this debacle. For residents, farmers and visitors to my part of Somerset alike, the hedges, field margins and wildflower meadows funded by the sustainable farming incentive are the very fabric of the countryside that we know and love, from the Quantocks to the Blackdown hills and across my constituency. Yet all of that has been put under threat simply because of a badly mismanaged system that this Government could and should fix.

I met local farmers out on the levels in my constituency the week before last. I want to thank them for the work that they do 365 days a year, putting food on our tables, caring for our countryside and bringing employment to our rural areas. Let me relate just two of the cases that they raised.

The first case is that of James Hebditch of Lillesdon Court. He is not a last-minute farmer—his fields have been registered with the Rural Payments Agency for years—yet on 22 September, a glitch on the Government portal suddenly rejected one of his fields. He was faced with an impossible choice: apply without it or try to amend and resubmit his application. By the time that he could navigate the error that the portal had made, the whole thing had closed and his entire application was lost. He was caught out by the Government’s own system on land that the RPA already had on its books. When farmers are fighting a failing portal, they do not have time to sit on hold for hours. The consequences of that failure are devastating. The hedges and habitats that James maintained for years under previous schemes will likely have to be ripped up just for his farm to remain viable and profitable.

Tom Pope of Staple Farm said:

“With no replacement scheme we will be forced to consider ploughing up some of our environmental areas…to return them to arable production. Some of these areas have a huge variety of wild flowers and provide a brilliant habitat for insects and birds. It will break our hearts”.

Somerset is one of the hardest hit areas for bluetongue, with 156 confirmed cases. Add to that the fact that direct payments are capped at just £600 this year, diesel has topped £2 per litre, the heavy burden of the family farm tax, a 32% spike in ammonium nitrate costs and the Conservative-designed upcoming carbon border charge on fertiliser from January, and the result is that farmers have been pushed to the very brink of viability and much else. To make matters worse, the Government ran all this scheme on a first come, first served basis. That is not a serious way to run a £930 million public programme. At least if people do not get Glastonbury tickets, they are not required to plough up a wild flower meadow afterwards.

Finally, I call on the Government to take four key actions. There should be no cliff edge. They must extend agreements to SFI27, provide a second chance and certainty on the SFI, and protect farmers from substandard imports. Our farmers protect our countryside—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order.

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[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

You are summing up what so many of my farmers are facing. I have one farmer in Sandridge who says that he is closing his doors because he feels that the Government are not listening. There is also an impact on the environment. For Guy and Susannah in Great Gaddesden, the shortfall because of the extreme weather means that there are 6.6 million fewer bowls of porridge from one farm. Does my hon. Friend agree not only that that is important, but that this is a crisis moment? The Government have to listen, because this is about not only farmers, but our food security.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Ms Collins, I was not summing up, because I was not speaking. “You” and “yours” do not count.

[Anna Sabine]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

Funding decisions such as those really matter for farmers in rural communities, but they also matter for the environment. Today the Government have announced that Jackdaw is going ahead—a stark reminder of the UK’s continuing dependency on gas and how far we must still go to reach net zero. If we are serious about getting there, farmers are part of the solution. The SFI rewards the kind of sustainable choices that we want farmers to make more of, yet many of the farmers who want to protect nature are being locked out of the very funding that makes it possible.

British farmers are the foundation of rural communities such as mine, and they are key allies in tackling climate change in this country. The Prime Minister promises growth in every postcode, but he cannot even ensure that farmers in my postcode receive funding to help to feed our country. Will the Government finally support farmers and guarantee long-term funding for all eligible SFI26 applicants?

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. We seem to have gained some time, so Charlie Maynard has five minutes. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”]

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.] The latest round of the sustainable farming incentive was a disaster for small farmers, including many in my constituency. They were counting on this money as a lifeline after another impossibly difficult year. As one local farmer wrote to me:

“It is madness to set a deadline and then require a field-by-field online application process with a limited budget and first come first accepted”.

No public money should be allocated this way, let alone money that farmers were relying on to stay afloat. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to scrap first come, first served for 2027.

What is most disappointing is that this chaos was entirely predictable. The Government abandoned the rolling scheme. The sector warned loudly that the Prime Minister’s extra £50 million would barely touch the sides, and the scheme ran out within six hours. Of course, the Conservatives laid the groundwork for this. They began phasing out the basic payments scheme the support farmers had relied on for years, long before its replacement was ready. They cut farmers’ income first and asked questions later, while hundreds of millions in the farming budget went unspent. Labour has inherited that mess, but it certainly has not fixed it.

Farmers now face a perfect storm. The summer’s heat and drought are projected to cause the worst harvest on record. That follows a drought-hit 2025 harvest, and a 2024 harvest that was washed out. Farmers expect to balance bad years against good years, but three awful harvests in a row is unsustainable, and as the climate crisis deepens, there is no reason to think that next year will be better. Meanwhile, farming costs are rising at about twice the rate of inflation, with fertiliser up by about 35% in a year. The Government list food as one of the 13 critical national infrastructure sectors, yet the farmers who are at the start of the chain receive support that is wholly inadequate.

Farmers need a payment system that rewards both growing food and restoring nature. They also need help to invest in resilience measures, such as better irrigation and on-farm reservoirs. Will the Government not only review the process and budget for next year’s scheme, but say what additional funding they will provide, to help farmers adapt and future-proof their businesses?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.