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Written Question
Agriculture: Christchurch
Tuesday 26th March 2024

Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)

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.

Basic Payment Scheme

Countryside Stewardship Scheme

Environmental Stewardship

Sustainable Farm Incentive

Other Grants

Total

£218,516

£57,616

£21,286

£5,602

£22,802

£325,822

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.


Written Question
Nature for Climate Fund: Saltmarshes
Friday 22nd March 2024

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

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.


Written Question
Agriculture: Energy and Inflation
Tuesday 12th March 2024

Asked by: Steven Bonnar (Scottish National Party - Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill)

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 with Cabinet colleagues to provide additional support for (a) energy and (b) inflationary costs for the agriculture sector.

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

The Energy Bills Discount Scheme provides all eligible businesses and other non-domestic energy users with a baseline discount on high energy bills for 12 months from April 2023 until 31 March 2024. A higher level of support is provided to some Energy and Trade Intensive Industries that are particularly exposed to energy cost increases due to their energy and trade intensity and are therefore less able to pass these costs through to their customers due to international competition.

Tackling inflation is one of this Government’s priorities. While inflation has more than halved, it remains a challenge, which is why we continue to monitor all key agricultural commodities and work with the food industry to address the challenges they face. The UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group monitors UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade, and recent developments.

The Government is supporting farmers through a range of measures. In recognition of the challenges faced with inflation and rising input costs, we are updating prices in our environmental land management schemes with an average 10% uplift. We are making the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) simpler, with more choice about what farmers can do and more actions made available, to better reflect the full spectrum of farming interests. What is more, 50 new actions are being added to our environmental land management schemes, many of which support food production, making it easier for the Government’s support to fit into farmers’ business plans. Specific actions in the SFI, such as different cropping systems, better plant management methods and other Nutrient Management and Integrated Pest Management actions, will support farmers in improving soil health, reducing their reliance on costly inputs.

We are also keen to support farmers through technology to help them lower their costs. More grants will be launched this year to help farmers grow more, sell more and make their businesses more sustainable and resilient for the future. We will also look at ways to make grants and schemes even easier to access, including the potential to streamline the application process for schemes. Farmers can now apply for SFI and the Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier through one single application, meaning they will have the same actions and get the same support with less paperwork.

Full expensing, which was made permanent at Autumn Statement 2023, allows companies to claim 100% capital allowances on qualifying plant and machinery investments (for example, high tech agricultural equipment) in the year the expenditure is incurred. The Government announced at Spring Budget 2024 that we will seek to extend full expensing to assets for leasing when fiscal conditions allow and will publish draft legislation shortly.

We are continuing to keep this all under review to make sure it works for and rewards all farms in all parts of the country.


Written Question
Environmental Land Management Schemes
Tuesday 12th March 2024

Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has plans to review the effectiveness of the Environmental Land Management scheme.

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

The Impact and Value for Money Evaluation of ELM is a vital component of our reporting commitment under the Agriculture Act (2020) and it builds on our experience of delivering, monitoring and evaluating agri-environment schemes over the last few decades, working closely with farmers, land managers and wider industry stakeholders and research specialists. We are in the process of both developing and delivering on our monitoring and evaluation plans for each of the Environmental Land Management schemes, recognising the phased rollout of the schemes.

More specifically, in the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot, land managers are supported through monitoring and site visits to track how they are delivering their outcomes, with final reporting on the impact and value for money of the SFI pilot being delivered in 2025. Monitoring and evaluation of the SFI23 offer is underway, working closely with land managers to understand their experiences in the scheme and their ability to deliver effectively, and this year we will begin utilising a mixed methods research approach using field surveys, modelling and expert assessments of the effectiveness of the sustainable management achieved under the scheme to assess the impact of this offer. Countryside Stewardship has a long history of impact monitoring and evaluation, with data collected spanning nearly 25 years for some holdings within the scheme. This work continues and will adapt and combine with the SFI monitoring and evaluation programme as the Combined Offer is realised. Within Landscape Recovery, each project is responsible for developing and delivering on their monitoring, evaluation, and learning strategy and there is also scheme-level monitoring and evaluation which is helping us learn about scheme effectiveness to enable ongoing improvements. Cross-cutting impact monitoring and evaluation will utilise various methods to establish the aggregate impacts of the schemes over the long-term and help determine the value for money of ELM as a whole.


Written Question
Peatlands: Environment Protection
Monday 11th March 2024

Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)

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

To ask His Majesty's Government whether payments to farmers in England to rewet upland peat are sufficient (1) to offset management costs and provide income to the farmers, and (2) to ensure levels of restoration activity that are consistent with short-term and long-term targets.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Payment rates are based on the income forgone and costs to the farmer. In January, we announced that we were increasing the payment rate for rewetting moorland peat in Countryside Stewardship from £25 to £181 per hectare. This significant increase will ensure appropriate payment to farmers as well as incentivising rewetting of vitally important peatland.

The Nature for Climate Peatland Grant scheme has provided £35 million of funding to financially commit us to restoring approximately 27,000 hectares of peatland. This scheme is funding a significant proportion of our short-term target of restoring 35,000 hectares by 2025.

The Government’s Environmental Land Management schemes will help us meet our longer-term target to restore 280,000 hectares of peatland by 2050. In particular, the Landscape Recovery scheme will provide successful projects with funding to support large-scale peatland restoration. Payments made to land managers under Landscape Recovery projects will be benchmarked against rates paid for similar activities under existing Government schemes, such as Countryside Stewardship, to ensure payments to farmers are appropriate.


Written Question
Environmental Land Management Schemes
Friday 1st March 2024

Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many farmers had agreements under the Environmental Land Management Scheme as of 26 February 2024.

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

As of 26 February, the Rural Payments Agency had offered 14,035 Sustainable Farming Incentive (including SFI Pilot, SFI 2022 and SFI 2023) agreements with 12,903 accepted and 48,665 agreements under the Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship schemes. Farmers can have more than one agreement in schemes.

In addition, from the launch of the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme (July 2021) to the end of 2022/23 (March 2023), there were over 5,000 farmers and land managers engaged in the programme and over 2,500 projects approved.

Further to this, there are also 22 projects in Round One of the Landscape Recovery Scheme, with a combined total of 266 landowners and 51 tenant farmers. There are 34 projects in Round Two of the Landscape Recovery Scheme; however, the number of landowners and tenant farmers cannot be confirmed yet, as they are currently being enrolled onto the scheme.


Written Question
Hill Farming: Environmental Land Management Schemes
Wednesday 28th February 2024

Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)

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

To ask His Majesty's Government what further steps they plan to take to support and protect upland and hill farmers to offset any loss of income they face under the new environmental land management schemes.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Upland farmers play a vital role in managing some of our most important and iconic landscapes, which are valued and recognised by the public. In addition to farming, the management of upland landscapes can provide many environmental benefits and ecosystem services, including clean air and water, carbon sequestration and flood risk management.

Upland farmers are well placed to benefit from our Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes, which are designed to maintain sustainable, productive land which delivers for both farmers and the environment.

The schemes under ELM have been designed to be as accessible and attractive to as wide a range of farmers as possible. We continue to work closely with a range of environmental and agricultural stakeholders to collaboratively design our new approaches to ensure they are fit for purpose.

Support for small farmers, including upland farmers, includes the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) Management Payment. At the recent National Farmers Union Conference, the Prime Minister announced that this payment will be doubled to a maximum of £2000 per year. At the Conference the Prime Minister also announced the biggest ever package of grants this year, to boost productivity and resilience, which will total £220 million. Upland farmers will be eligible to benefit from this, through increases to the Improving Farming Productivity scheme and the Farming Equipment and Technology fund. And the Prime Minister announced that the Government is also increasing funding for grassroots mental health support, because we know what a tough job farming is; and providing funding to support food producers by redirecting surplus food into the hands of those who need it.

This builds on support already in place for upland farmers. Upland farmers can get paid for over 130 relevant actions under Countryside Stewardship and the SFI from 2024. This will include new moorland and upland peat actions, with considerably higher payments for moorlands in good environmental condition. They can also extend their Higher Level Stewardship agreements for five years if they have one that can run alongside any Countryside Stewardship or SFI agreement they have, allowing them to get paid for more actions and take advantage of recent price increases. And they can apply for Countryside Stewardship Wildlife Offers for a range of management options that focus on providing habitats for farm wildlife.

Upland farmers in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty or National Parks can apply for the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, which funds farmers to support nature recovery, mitigate the impacts of climate change, provide opportunities for people to discover, enjoy and understand the landscape and its cultural heritage, or protect or improve the quality and character of the landscape or place. And upland farmers can continue to benefit from the Landscape Recovery scheme, creating the landscape scale and tailored environmental land management change we need for our targets. So far 56 successful projects have been selected for Rounds 1 and 2 of Landscape Recovery, demonstrating the Government’s commitment to funding that delivers environmental benefits in harmony with food production. Defra will open a third round of Landscape Recovery in 2024.


Written Question
Biodiversity
Tuesday 30th January 2024

Asked by: Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Conservative - Life peer)

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

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to expedite the delivery of the apex goal set out in the Executive Summary of the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 to halt the decline in biodiversity and achieve 'thriving plants and wildlife'.

Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

We are committed to meeting our ambitious target to halt and then reverse species decline and are accelerating action towards delivery.

In June last year we launched a multi-million-pound Species Survival Fund to provide early progress towards our species abundance targets and support the recovery of declining species. The fund will support projects focussed on the creation and restoration of wildlife-rich habitats, including on protected sites.

Through Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme Capital Grant Scheme, launched April 2023, we have also provided £14.5M of funding for 63 projects delivered in partnership with 74 different organisations to take action to halt and reverse the decline of 150 rare species, including the critically endangered European eel and the Greater Mouse-eared bat.

In November we announced the 34 projects selected for the £25 million second round of our Landscape Recovery scheme. These projects will collectively restore more than 35,000 hectares of peatland, sustainably manage more than 20,000 hectares of woodland, including some temperate rainforest, create over 7,000 hectares of new woodland and benefit more than 160 protected sites (SSSIs). This builds on the success of the first 22 Landscape Recovery projects which are already underway, aiming to restore more than 600 km of rivers and targeting the conservation of more than 260 flagship species. This is alongside increased incentives, announced in January, for farmers to deliver environmental outcomes which will support habitats and species through our Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship schemes.

We are also rolling out Nature Recovery Projects across the country to create improved and better-connected habitats for wildlife and improve public access to nature. In July 2023 we launched a further six projects covering over 176,000 ha of land across England. These projects build on the G7 legacy project in Cornwall launched in 2021 and the five other nature recovery projects launched in 2022 which together span around 120,200 hectares.


Written Question
Squirrels: Conservation
Monday 22nd January 2024

Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)

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.


Written Question
Countryside Stewardship Scheme
Friday 19th January 2024

Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)

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.