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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of the replacement of the basic farm payment with Environmental Land Management schemes on pre-existing nature restoration schemes.

Farming in England is now going through the biggest change in a generation. We are phasing out subsidies so that we can invest the money in policies that work for farm businesses, food production and the environment. We are improving our farming schemes to make them more effective, fair, flexible, accessible and workable for farmers.

The Sustainable Farming Incentive focuses on supporting farmers to undertake activities to grow food whilst improving the environment and animal health and welfare. The Landscape Recovery scheme allows landowners and managers to take a more large-scale, long-term approach to producing environmental and climate goods on their land. Alongside these new schemes, we have expanded and enhanced the existing Countryside Stewardship scheme. This has been simplified and improved this year to include wildlife, upland wood pasture, and lowland peat offers, more efficient administration and fairer controls. Around 30% of English farmers are already in the Countryside Stewardship or its predecessor scheme, Environmental Stewardship, covering 34% of agricultural land. We have 32,000 live Countryside Stewardship agreements: a 94% increase from January 2020.

We intend to continue to improve Countryside Stewardship by making it easier to apply; by expanding and refining the scope of the scheme; by improving access for tenant farmers; by increasing access to Higher Tier agreements; and by targeting our funding towards actions in places where they can have the biggest impacts, in ways that are joined up across larger areas, and are designed to deliver outstanding results.