Farmers: Flooding Compensation

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I have recently attended a number of meetings on this specific subject, and the intention last week was to get the first element of this fund out and available to farmers. We have this issue under constant review and I hope that, if there are further announcements to make, we can make them very shortly.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Earl Cathcart (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I come back to the right reverend Prelate’s question about food security. The Minister talked about food production being constant and mentioned ELMS, but that also looks at flood relief schemes for farmers that take more land out of food production. The increase in climate change and the storms we have been seeing have really worrying implications for food security, and I genuinely do not think that measuring food production constants is going to solve the problem. We need a long-term food security plan that takes account of the implications of future storms and flooding.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be very well aware that there is a trade here between the environmental gains we are looking to enact and protecting our food production. One of the main aims of ELMS is to improve productivity, and a lot of the funding through ELMS is driving better productivity—higher yields from smaller areas of land—so that we can then allow land to be available for nature and improve our biodiversity.