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 an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a land-matching scheme, similar to schemes in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland, to match existing farmers with younger farmers to manage joint financial and operational ventures.

As part of our engagement work with stakeholders to co-design a new entrant scheme we will explore and discuss the merits and impacts of establishing a land matching service drawing on the examples from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and other countries. We will report more details of the outcomes of our co-design process for a new entrant scheme in the summer of 2021 and aim to launch the scheme in 2022.