Direct Payments to Farmers (Crop Diversification Derogation) (England) Regulations 2020

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Direct Payments to Famers (Crop Diversification Derogation) (England) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 475).

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, in this novel proceeding. It is good to be here. If hon. Members cannot hear, they can wave a hand; we will manage.

This statutory instrument will remove the crop diversification requirements from the direct payment scheme in England in 2020, which means that farmers in England will not be required to grow more than one crop in order to receive their full greening payment. Although it is hard to remember, England experienced prolonged wet weather last autumn and winter, which had a serious impact on farmers’ ability to comply with the greening rules. This SI presents a sensible and proportionate response to that situation, and it is fully supported by farmers and landowners.

The SI is made under article 69(1) of regulation 1307/2013, which was incorporated into domestic law for 2020 by the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020, and relates to this year only. We are continuing to act in accordance with the EU legislation that has been rolled over, in line with our decision to operate an equivalent direct payment scheme for this year in order to maintain the state aid exemptions that were laid out in the withdrawal agreement.

I want to say a bit more about the wet weather that came upon us over the autumn and winter; that will hopefully make it clear to hon. Members why this SI is so necessary. We really did have extreme wet weather last winter, and it had a very significant adverse impact on farm communities. Large areas of farmland were under floodwater or were severely waterlogged. It left farmers thinking over the winter that they might have the option of planting spring crops, but those plans were pushed back by yet more rain following two severe storms in February, which left land flooded and waterlogged again.

From September 2019 right through to February 2020, England experienced significantly higher rainfall than the long-term average. In February, when farmers were preparing to enter the period when they would normally plant spring crops, rainfall was at 267% of the average. Where farmers could not even get to flooded land, or land was simply too waterlogged to plant on, there were obviously significant difficulties with cultivation. That meant that it was very difficult for some farmers to meet crop diversification requirements.

Without this SI, there would have been penalties for not meeting the greening element of direct payments, which is worth approximately 30% of a claim. Farmers welcome our approach, and industry stakeholders such as the National Farmers Union have told us that it

“will make a huge difference to thousands of farmers in England”.

The Country Land and Business Association has also been very supportive of our decision. We hope the derogation will provide much-needed relief for the thousands of farmers who have not been able to plant the crops that they wished to plant this year.

The SI is about supporting farmers who faced a very difficult cropping season. I stress that the derogation is not a covid-19 response measure, but in the context of what is going on, it is all the more needed. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

I always enjoy debating with the hon. Gentleman. He will be glad to know that the document to which he referred is known throughout the Department as “Daniel Zeichner’s favourite document”, if I may use the hon. Gentleman’s name. We spent many happy hours on the Agriculture Bill Committee discussing it. I hope I will deal with all his points; if I do not, I am happy to follow up in conversation afterwards.

On the serious matter of when the decision to make the policy change that led to this SI should have been taken, the answer is simply that as the wet weather continued and Storms Ciara and Dennis kept raining down on us, the Department concluded that the mitigations that had initially been recommended were not plausible, and were not a sensible course of action for farmers to take. For example, as I said earlier, spring cropping became in no way a sensible solution.

We continued to monitor the weather between September and February, and to evaluate all the available options. The Rural Payments Agency published guidance in January on how farmers could meet the rules, or use existing exemptions that were built into the greening scheme where applicable. However, shortly after the really big, named storms, a general derogation became sensible. We continued to consult with stakeholders, but the legislation had to be introduced by early this month to ensure that farmers remained compliant with the rules, so the reason was to do with the weather and legal complexity.

I turn to the environmental impact of this change. I am confident that removing the three-crop requirement for this year will not have a negative impact on the environment. It is generally recognised and well documented that the three-crop rule and crop diversification rules do not deliver the environmental or climate-related outcomes for which they were designed. I refer the hon. Gentleman to what I hope might become a favourite document: the European Court of Auditors’ 2017 special report on greening. That document bears inspection, because it makes it clear that greening has been something of a blunt instrument, to use his terminology. While he is right that monoculture is not the way forward, we do not want to end up with a system that uses binary rules in such a way.

On the hon. Gentleman’s questions about the future farming programme, I reassure him that rotation will be in there, as he would expect. This derogation, however, is necessary because of a prolonged period of wet weather and flooding across England. As the wet weather got worse over spring, it became clear that the problem covered all regions. I accept that that is unusual, but we have good, detailed evidence that it was a real problem for the whole of England. That was something else we had to monitor continually. That is why the derogation is appropriate.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, this year we are operating under retained EU legislation and maintaining an equivalent scheme to the basic payment scheme. For future years, the Agriculture Bill provides us with powers to modify legislation and remove the unnecessary bureaucracy associated with that scheme. He will also know that we want to remove that bureaucracy at the earliest opportunity. Simplification for next year could, for example, see the removal of some or all of the greening requirements, including the crop diversification rules.

The regulations, which amend retained EU law to remove crop diversification requirements for this year, are welcomed by the farming industry as a much-needed measure to support England’s farmers in the aftermath of the very bad weather over the winter. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.