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 providing additional subsidies to dairy farmers for the purposes of keeping costs of milk down in the context of the rising cost of living.

Agricultural subsidies can distort the market and international trade and tend to provide short term, rather than long term solutions. The UK has obligations under World Trade Organization rules that affect agricultural subsidies and these are subject to financial limits.

For this reason, we are moving to a new fairer system of support for agriculture in England through our future farming programme. This will include the Sustainable Farming Incentive and other environmental land management schemes, and grants and ongoing payments such as the Farming Investment Fund, the Future Farming Resilience Fund and the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway. We have a strong and resilient food production industry in the UK and believe that more sustainable and productive farm businesses will lead to stable prices, including for milk, and a positive impact on the cost of living.

Defra and the Devolved Administrations continue to monitor and assess the impact of market developments across the UK, including the dairy sector through the UK Agricultural Market Monitoring Group (UKAMMG). The UKAMMG monitors the UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments, enabling it to provide forewarning of any atypical market movements. We have also recently increased our engagement with the industry to help gain a greater understanding of the impacts of the crisis in Ukraine and the situation across farming sectors.