National Farmers’ Union

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The situation for pig farmers affected by this is serious. That is why we continue to work very closely with the industry. There was a perfect storm of a loss of exports to the Chinese market, disruption to CO₂ supplies and a temporary shortage of labour in the processing sector. We have been working hard on that with the private storage aid, the slaughter incentive payment and a package of measures to address these unique circumstances. On 10 February, my colleague Victoria Prentis chaired a pig summit and she is doing another one on 3 March. We are working really hard to resolve the problems in this sector.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I speak as a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee and, in fact, in relation to a letter that Minister Prentis sent us in relation to ELMS. She says that the Government are exploring how they can best support leverage of private finance into ELMS. The recent spending review set an ambitious target to raise £500 million in private finance every year to support nature’s recovery to 2027, rising to £1 billion by 2030. Exactly how will the Government commercialise the environmental land management scheme?