Found: The Countryside Stewardship scheme is dependent on claimants’ behaviour.

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 list all Government investments in the farming sector in Christchurch constituency since 1 April 2023.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has supported the farming and rural sector through payments under a range of schemes.

Since 1 April 2023, the RPA has released through schemes and grants approximately £326k in the Christchurch constituency. A breakdown of these figures is in the table below.

There are no species recovery or landscape recovery projects funded within the Christchurch constituency.

There are no live Conservation and Enhancement Scheme agreements.

The Dorset peat project is Defra funded. However, there are no peat restoration sites within the constituency boundary – sites at Cannon Hill and Holt Heath are close to the boundary.

The only project to highlight which falls within the constituency is the Salisbury to sea (Christchurch Harbour) fish barrier removal study, which also incorporates floodplain reconnection opportunities funded by Network Rail but is being managed and contracted by Natural England in partnership with the Environment Agency.

Except for New Forest Higher Level Stewardship there are no other funds that Natural England is aware of linked to New Forest National Park which overlaps at the east boundary of the constituency.

There are Countryside Stewardship agreements funded and associated investment of time by Natural England staff locally on agri agreements and Catchment Sensitive Farming (Stour and Avon catchments) within the Christchurch constituency.

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 including a grant scheme for saltmarshes in the Nature for Climate Fund.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The UK recognises the important role that saltmarsh can play in climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience. Saltmarsh habitats are also richly biodiverse, benefit fish stocks and provide a crucial buffer from coastal flooding.

Building on this recognition, the UK Government is supporting blue carbon restoration efforts through various initiatives, for example by providing £640,000 funding for domestic blue carbon habitat restoration.

This includes funds to support the development of a Saltmarsh Code to help drive investment flows from the private sector towards nature. This funding has also increased the capacity of the Restoring Meadow, Marsh and Reef initiative (ReMeMaRe), helping to create a pipeline of restoration projects in saltmarsh and other key estuarine and coastal habitats.

Defra has set up the UK Blue Carbon Evidence Partnership in partnership with the Devolved Administrations to address evidence gaps that currently prevent the inclusion of saltmarsh habitats in the UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory (GHGI). Inclusion of saltmarsh in the GHGI and the development of a Saltmarsh Code will allow blue carbon to be marketed and traded as a carbon offset, leveraging private investment into these vital natural carbon stores.

In addition, funding has been made available for saltmarsh restoration through the Landscape Recovery and Countryside Stewardship Environmental Land Management schemes. In the ELMS Countryside Stewardship scheme approximately 5,000 hectares of saltmarsh is being maintained or restored to a good condition.

The £750m of Nature for Climate funding is due to end in March 2025 and the Programme will be delivering against its agreed Business Case in that time. The Fund’s impact is being evaluated and any future funding for Trees, Peat and Saltmarshes will be a matter for the next Spending Review. We are continuing to explore further means of supporting saltmarsh restoration.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken to support the conservation of the red squirrel population in (a) general and (b) Romford constituency.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Government remains committed to taking action to recover our threatened native species and has set a world-leading target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. Defra, Natural England and the Forestry Commission are signatories to the UK Squirrel Accord which aims to protect, identify and strengthen existing red squirrel populations, expand their current range, and promote better understanding and support for their conservation.

Under the Countryside Stewardship scheme, financial support is available for farmers, foresters and land managers to support the recovery of red squirrels, such as funding for the management of grey squirrels. Conservation of the species is targeted to red squirrel stronghold areas in the north of England.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 28 December 2023 to Question 5955 on Agriculture: Flood Control, how many countryside stewardship grants have been awarded to farmers since 5 January 2023.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

There are currently around 35,000 live Countryside Stewardship agreements. Of these, 8,200 new agreements started in 2023 and 8,600 agreements are starting in 2024. Actions to help with flood control measures are worth around £4.02 million in live agreements.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to conserve UK agrobiodiversity to prevent (a) genetic erosion and (b) species extinction.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We are already implementing a set of targeted schemes to improve the environment and productivity. Investing in the natural environment will help us reduce future risks related to the loss of biodiversity. In 2024 in our combined Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship Scheme offer we are introducing new and updated actions to further support species recovery and management.

We are addressing conserving agrobiodiversity through our commitments to conserve genetic resources on under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Activities to protect and conserve livestock genetic resources also include encouraging sustainable breeding programmes through Zootechnical legislation, monitoring populations of pedigree livestock including native breeds which are published in an annual UK National Breed inventory and protecting eligible native breeds at risk from culling during notifiable disease outbreaks.

The Government recognises the important role local abattoirs play in supporting native breed farmers and the wider rural economy. In December 2023 Defra launched the £4 million Smaller Abattoir Fund to boost the sustainability and efficiency of red meat and poultry smaller abattoirs across England.

To conserve plant genetic resources for food and agriculture Defra funds three plant gene banks, the national collections for fruit, vegetables and peas, which conserve and provide access to plant genetic material.

In situ conservation of forest genetic resources has started to be delivered by voluntary designation of 17 gene conservation units by the Woodland Trust. Ex situ conservation of forest genetic resources has been achieved through both seed banking and by clone banks. The UK National Tree Seed Project, led by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew has conserved seed collections of the UK native trees from populations across the UK. Forest Research and the Future Trees Trust have set up and mange clone banks for improved forestry material.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to increase payment rates for the (a) Higher Level Stewardship and (b) Upland Entry Level Stewardship schemes.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We do not have plans to update prices for Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) or Upland Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) agreements. This is because these agreements are made on a whole farm basis and payments work differently in those schemes.

From the 1st of January 2023 we made it possible for customers in HLS leave their agreements early, without recovery of payments, and enter another land management scheme and we will continue to support these moves. The new scheme must be of equivalent or greater environmental value than the HLS component of their existing agreement. Agreement holders can also apply for a Countryside Stewardship, Sustainable Farming Incentive and/or a Landscape Recovery agreement for any land that does not already contain a HLS option, they can be next to each other but must not overlap.

Found: budget re -profiled into future y ears utilising HMT’s budget exchange mechanism; this relates to the countryside

Found: The Countryside Stewardship scheme includes actions that can form part of a regenerative or restorative

Found: Countryside Stewardship scheme A scheme to provide financial incentives for farmers and land managers

Found: Some field margins are subject to a countryside stewardship scheme : the Ecological Assessment Report

Found: Countryside Stewardship scheme A scheme to provide financial incentives for farmers and land managers

Found: Farmers benefitted from an improved Countryside Stewardship scheme which saw them being paid even more

Found: A simplified Countryside Stewardship scheme is proposed.