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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions his Department had with farmers before freezing the capital grant scheme.

The Capital Grants scheme has been closed to new agreements following unprecedented demand this Autumn, which would use all the available funding. We are forecast to spend more on capital grants this year than ever before. This is only possible because we allocated the largest ever budget for sustainable food production through the farming budget. In the first week of December, we paid £343 million into the rural economy, benefiting more than 31,000 farmers. We currently are reviewing the Capital Grants offer to ensure funding goes further to improve outcomes for food security and nature conservation and will provide an update in early 2025.