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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies on a fully integrated, multi-sector, catchment based approach to water systems planning of the conclusions of the report by the National Farmers Union Integrated Water Management published in January 2021.

In April we published our Plan for Water, which sets out the importance of ensuring a clean and plentiful water supply. The Plan set out how we will take a systematic, local, catchment-based approach, in a coordinated and collaborative way to improve water management.

The Environment Agency and Defra are working closely with the agricultural sector on water resource management, water quality and flooding issues via multi-sector groups. For example, we are also supporting the creation of water resources management plans for agriculture, that will inform local catchment and wider regional water resources plans on our future water needs and help farmers improve drought resilience. We will also support farmer-led groups to identify local water resource schemes building on the success of projects like Felixstowe Hydrocycle.