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 her Department's White Paper entitled A New Vision for Water, published on 20 January 2026, what estimate she has made of the average annual cost of complying with the environmental permit regime for an average cattle farm.

An environmental permit would require regulated businesses to apply measures to reduce pollution. The cost of complying with a permit would depend on which pollution measures they would be required to adopt, which would depend largely on the type of farm and the risk it poses to the environment.