The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate and welcome the opportunity to respond. This is a really important issue for farmers and rural communities, as well as for flood prevention. The Government recognise the right reverend Prelate’s commitment to these issues and to agriculture. He has made a long-standing commitment to supporting farmers, and we appreciate the work he does on that.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, painted a pretty dramatic picture of what has happened in his locality in Devon because of flooding. I reassure him and other noble Lords that, although I do not have a magic wand and pots of cash, living in rural Cumbria I genuinely understand the devastating impact that floods can have on communities, homes and farmland.
The Government are mindful of the importance of farming to the country. British agriculture is fundamental to all of this Government’s missions. As we have heard, British farmers underpin our food and drink sector and support national food security. They create jobs and attract investment to our rural areas. They build economic resilience through nature-based solutions and play a crucial role in tackling biodiversity loss. They improve water and air quality and our resilience to climate change.
The Government also recognise the pressures that so many farmers are under. Climate issues have led to flooding in unprecedented ways, creating a real challenge for many farmers. A number of noble Lords mentioned climate change, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Russell. We are committed to maintaining food production and supporting thriving farm businesses, as well as protecting communities from flooding. As the right reverend Prelate clearly laid out, the impact of wet weather and flooding on farms is devastating and getting worse. It is becoming a real challenge for both farmers and government. Obviously, there were storms last year and this year, with a lot of wet weather—the summer was absolutely dreadful. In September, there was flooding, affecting properties right across the country.
Turning to some of the questions around this, I was asked by a number of noble Lords about the farming recovery fund and payments going forward from last winter and from spring this year. We are acutely aware of the challenges farmers have been facing because of this flooding. All farmers eligible for the initial farm recovery fund set up in April have been offered a payment. Unfortunately, further commitments around spending and the rollout of schemes is down to the spending review. I am sure that noble Lords will hear that an awful lot; I think we will all be very glad when it happens and we know where we stand on everything. I really appreciate the concerns that noble Lords have raised, including the right reverend Prelate, about the fact that this is an urgent issue, and we need to let people know what is what as soon as we can.
A number of noble Lords asked about the maintenance of existing flood defences. We are investing over £1.25 billion to build and maintain flood defences to scale up our national resilience. We will also review the programme with a view to ensure that flood risk management is fit for the challenges that we now face. Again, as part of the Government’s spending review we will look at this, but I can say that we have been spending over £200 million on maintenance, with an aim that our existing flood defences are kept in good order.
I want at this point to thank the people who work at the Environment Agency, local responders and many others, who work tirelessly to help communities when these incidents happen. We also sympathise very much with those whose homes and businesses have been damaged and who have faced so much disruption.
We also have to recognise that, as we adapt to climate change, farmers and land managers have an increasingly important role to play, and the Government very much welcome the willingness shown by farming communities to work together to better protect their local areas. I am aware of the project in Keswick—it is only up the road from me. We need to look at how we work with farmers to achieve these outcomes, because we want to support them to reduce the risk of flooding and coastal erosion through measures such as natural flood management. One way we could do this is through the ELM schemes, to provide payments to farmers to manage land and water in a way that can reduce flood risk to local communities. There are measures that benefit flood risk mitigation in all three components of ELMS: that is, the sustainable farming incentive, countryside stewardship and landscape recovery.
The floods investment programme was also mentioned. Under the current programme, the amount of funding a project can attract will depend on the damages it will avoid and the benefits that it will deliver. However, the impact of a project on agricultural land is included as part of the funding calculator and therefore is eligible for funding.
There are many actions within ELMS that farmers can apply for to protect and enhance the natural environment, and they can get payments for a range of actions to promote particularly flood management and prevention. These include support for water body buffering, soil health, farm woodland and hedgerows—all those things have been mentioned during the debate. The current Countryside Stewardship scheme offers payments, including the creation of small-scale run-off attenuation and storage, slowing flows in small watercourses, streams and on their flood plains, the creation of woodland and planting of hedges to slow flows, and the restoration of rivers and flood plains. We are expecting further flood risk benefits to arise when we roll out the updated higher-tier scheme; I hope that we will be able to provide more information on this fairly soon.
One of the two themes of the first wave of the landscape recovery pilot projects was restoring England’s streams and rivers, improving water quality, biodiversity and adapting to climate change. We hope that these will provide flood risk mitigation benefits to support farmers.
The right reverend Prelate mentioned the Minister, Daniel Zeichner, in his speech. It is a challenging time for budgets—it really is. However, I just want to assure noble Lords that the Minister is very serious about supporting farmers and looking to see the best way we can do that within the ELM scheme and other systems. I just wanted to reiterate that.
On the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, on the importance of working together collaboratively, that will be incredibly important as we move forward, because the tighter the budgets, the more we can work together and the more you can actually achieve. We want to optimise the ELM scheme to produce the right outcomes for all farmers, and I thank the right reverend Prelate for his words of support for the work we are trying to do on this.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned reservoirs. We of course have a commitment to build new reservoirs—they are very much needed—so we will look very carefully at the suggestions that she made.
On the flood recovery framework and farming recovery fund that was mentioned, the flood recovery framework is activated only when there is large-scale and widespread flooding—the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned that.
A number of questions were asked about the future of these schemes. I am ever so sorry, but I cannot really say anything until after the spending review. The same applies to the question from the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, around the underspend, as it is all part of spending review discussions.
On the Flood Resilience Taskforce, better communications were mentioned. Part of that is improved co-ordination and communications between central government and the different agencies on the ground that have to deliver schemes. We had a meeting on 12 September and the next one is going to be in January.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked about droughts. The Flood and Droughts Research Infrastructure was announced on the 31 August 2024. This is going to be a £40 million initiative and it is the first UK-wide network focused on understanding the impact of extreme weather conditions across the country, so there is work taking place on that.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, mentioned the need for water companies to work closely with farmers on flooding. We need to look at all options as to how we can work collaboratively, and we are doing a lot of work at the moment with water companies so it is something we need to look at.
We recognise the valuable role that farmers serve in this country. We want to do our best to back British farmers. The Minister, Daniel Zeichner, is working very hard to look at how we can make the ELMS work for farmers and for things like flood mitigation and food security. Getting all this right is a difficult balancing act, and we need to look at the best way we can achieve it. We want to do our best to support farmers in flood management and food security but also on prevention of flood. There are many schemes that can help support that, including the one in Keswick, which was mentioned.
I am very pleased that we had this debate. There have been some very interesting suggestions. I am sorry I cannot say more about funding; hopefully, at some point, we will have a much clearer picture and we can look at working together to get our best deal for farmers and flood prevention in the future.