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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on the reduction of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution from agriculture into the water environment in the last four years.

Significant action has been taken in the past four years to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution from agriculture, including:

• increasing funding for Environment Agency (EA) farm inspectors to deliver over 4,000 site inspections per year, particularly targeting inspections in catchments where protected sites are in an unfavourable condition.
• providing £1.3 million per year between 2021 and 2025 to the EA to pilot methods to improve farmer compliance and environmental outcomes, through our Testing Approaches to the Regulation of Agriculture project.
• expanding the successful Catchment Sensitive Farming partnership with over £30 million of extra funding to cover all farmland in England to offer advice and guidance on mitigating pollution.
• launching the Slurry Investment Grant providing at least £13 million this year to support investment in covered slurry stores in the highest priority areas of England.

We have now made plans to go further. On 29^th January we introduced a legally binding target to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution from agriculture into the water environment by 40% by 2038. Our interim target will reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution by 10% nationally and 15% in catchments containing a protected site in unfavourable condition due to nutrient pollution by 2028. Plans to ensure we achieve our legally binding target and interim target include paying farmers to adopt more sustainable farming practices that can improve water quality. In 2023 we will offer six new Sustainable Farming Incentive standards which will pay farmers for protective measures including in-field flower-rich strips, companion cropping and grassy field corners.

The Environment Act 2021 creates a new statutory cycle of monitoring, planning and reporting on environmental improvement, based around the long-term Environmental Improvement Plan, which sets out our target and how we will achieve it. The Government must report annually on what it has done to implement the Environmental Improvement Plan and on whether the natural environment (or particular aspects of it) has improved. That report will also consider the progress that has been made towards meeting targets.