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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to HCWS1230, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the proposed reforms to the Sustainable Farming Incentive on levels of domestic food production, farm profitability and the distribution of scheme payments; how the revised scheme will address the previous concentration of funding; and when revised actions, payment rates and transitional arrangements will be published.

Some of the main improvements the Government is making to the new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) offer are:

• A simpler and more focused offer, with fewer actions and less complexity. There will still be plenty of choice – but with a stronger focus on actions that support sustainable food production.

• SFI must work alongside food production, not displace it, so the Government will limit how much land can be put into certain actions and review payment rates for others. These changes will make funding go further, allowing more people to benefit from agreements.

Previously, 90% of SFI spending went on fewer than 40 of the 102 actions available and a quarter of SFI money goes to just 4% of farms. This is not fair. Therefore, Ministers are considering ways to address this, such as introducing an agreement value cap, and are making improvements to the offer to ensure more farmers can access funding.