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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy to ensure that the Countryside Stewardship scheme will not make any farmer on the previous Entry Level Stewardship scheme financially worse off.

There are currently 5,838 entry level Environmental Stewardship agreements. In 2018 4,939 expire, and the rest in 2019. Farmers in these agreements will continue to get their payments for the lifetime of the agreements.

We encourage farmers leaving entry level Environmental Stewardship in 2018 to consider applying for Countryside Stewardship. We have introduced four new offers for wildlife on arable, lowland grazing, upland and mixed farms. These new wildlife offers are non-competitive, the form is shorter and we have reviewed and simplified the supporting evidence requirements.