Direct Payments to Farmers (Crop Diversification Derogation) (England) Regulations 2020

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, there are large sums of money involved in this statutory instrument. Those figures were not mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum or by the Minister, so I am very grateful to the civil servants for confirming to me that in 2019, the greening fund amounted to just over half a billion pounds. That is public money to deliver greening schemes to protect the environment—protection that is needed now more than ever, due to the impacts of climate change evident in the extreme weather that we have been seeing. Indeed, as the Minister said, it was the severe floods in February, which prompted the derogation in this statutory instrument; since then, we have had the sunniest May on record.

This is a pretty blunt tool to exempt all farmers from crop diversification requirements. While I accept the case for supporting farming businesses, it is not a great signal during the first year we are outside the European Union that public money is to be retained while not delivering environmental goals. The two need to go hand in hand.

Now that we are outside the European Union, I welcome the Government’s Agriculture Bill and the proposals of public money for public goods, including environmental goals. But given that the Bill has no accompanying introduction of new powers to better regulate farming and land management, building on the current baseline standards, how are we to guarantee that those environmental ambitions will be delivered? We had the Government-commissioned Stacey review of farm regulation in 2018. When will we see government proposals to ensure the delivery of the environmental ambitions that we expect farmers to undertake in future, in return for public financial support?