Agriculture: Government Support

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord]

If I were an uplands farmer represented by my hon. Friend, I would know that I had a fervent advocate in him. He is right to raise the issue of commoners; I spoke with one last Friday who said that the sustainable farming incentive IT system has yet to be adapted for payments to people who farm on common land. I had the same experience with people who I represent in Luppitt on the Blackdown hills in Devon.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Many farmers are relying on SFI, but it closed to new applications in March and is yet to reopen, and there is no clarity about the future budget. Delays in payments to those who have agreements have caused significant concern to many of my constituents who have faced cash-flow issues. Does my hon. Friend agree that greater clarity must be provided to farmers on the future offer across various environmental schemes, as well as a commitment to improve the efficiency of payments?

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to that issue. Last year, farmers were devastated by the overnight closure of the sustainable farming incentive, which came with no notice. I welcome the Secretary of State’s pledge at the Oxford farming conference in January that there would be no further unexpected closures of that scheme, but I did not get the sense in my conversation last week that confidence has been restored fully since that overnight closure of SFI.

Small producers are disproportionately disadvantaged under the new SFI scheme. Payment caps raise serious issues about long-term farm profitability. The system appears not to have been designed around farmers and what they want, but rather around bureaucracy and administrative convenience. The Liberal Democrats would invest in agriculture, including an additional £1 billion a year to support sustainable, domestic food production, improving our skills, resilience and supply, rather than leaving our farmers at the mercy of global markets.

Thirdly, I would like to talk about planning concerns. As I understand it, there are delays in the planning systems across local authorities that are preventing farmers from doing the right thing. Last week, I talked to one who had applied for a cover on a slurry store and was still waiting, eight months later, for a verdict on whether he could go ahead and make the modification.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I think I have just said that that is precisely what I want to do. Again, if the hon. Member has any insights that she wishes to share, I am more than happy to hear them.

When I visited Harper Adams University recently, I noted that it now has a campus in an urban area. Consequently, people are likely to come across it in a way they were unlikely to come across that venerable old institution’s original building, which of course it still inhabits. That extension of the university into an urban area is a good idea.

I can see that the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) wants to intervene, so I will give way to her.

[Caroline Voaden]

I just wanted to make a brief intervention on the issue of entry into farming. Devon county council has several farms and it is very keen to use them as a way to get young people into farming, especially those who do not have a family farm of their own. It is quite worrying what might happen to those county farms if Devon county council is divided up in the local government reorganisation process. Is there is any way that they could be protected through the decimation of Devon, which might happen over the next year through LGR?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I will not get into the decimation of Devon; I will leave that to the hon. Lady. I have clocked the existence of county farms. I think they are a good thing and I have sought some advice on what we can do to support them sensibly, because they are a way for people to get into farming that we should cherish.

I have taken a lot of interventions, so I will now press on and say a little about the future vision for farming, because supporting farmers is also about building more profitable businesses and stronger partnerships from farm to fork. We are doing that by modernising capital grants, which will be open to apply for from July, with £225 million available, which is 50% more than in 2025. These grants will help farmers to upgrade infrastructure and deliver practical improvements, including to hedgerows, water quality and natural flood management. This year, £120 million will be available in farming grants to boost productivity innovation, consisting of £70 million through the farming innovation programme and £50 million through the farming equipment and technology fund.

I also want to talk about the Batters review and its 57 recommendations. We have already announced that we will take forward a number of the review’s recommendations, including the formation of a Farming and Food Partnership Board. Indeed, that board has already met and decided that horticulture will be the first agricultural sector to have a sector growth plan, which will be developed as part of the board’s work. I agree with the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth that we need to consider what we can do make the growing of fruit and vegetables more resilient; he pointed out that that is the sector where we have the most difficulty in generating resilience. The Farming and Food Partnership Board is also looking at the poultry sector.

We will continue to develop our farming road map, which will be published later this year alongside our formal response to the rest of the recommendations of the Batters review. This road map will set the course for farming in England up to 2050, setting out how farming will evolve in response to changing markets, technologies and environmental pressures. In developing the road map, we have held workshops, meetings and listening sessions across the country, to ensure that it reflects what farmers need on the ground to plan for the future.

I think that this is the first time since the second world war that a Government have tried to set more of a Government direction for agriculture, so that we can work with the farming sector to ensure that we can increase resilience and give food security the proper priority it deserves. By definition, some of that work means that we have to look through the near-term pressures and problems that the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth has raised today. However, it is important strategically that we are able to do that.

I also want to respond to the concern raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley). The Government take the issue of mental health support for farmers very seriously. We are tripling the previous funding for mental health and wellbeing support for farmers, and a new fund, which overall will be worth £1.5 million over three years, will be introduced. We want this investment to help farmers to deal with the pressures and potential isolation that they face. It builds on our commitment to improve business resilience through the £30 million farmer collaboration fund, because we think that self-help and peer help are often the most important ways to get through to farmers.

That has been a very quick look around the system, Mr Turner, but I hope that it gives some idea of the work that DEFRA is doing for farming.

Question put and agreed to.