Support for Farmers

Charlotte Cane Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

The farmers of Ely and East Cambridgeshire fill the breadbaskets of England. They also provide really good, tasty, healthy vegetables. You would think, therefore, that we would treat them with respect and try to support them, but one of my farmers told me that the mapping system did not agree with his maps. He had been trying to sort that out for some time before the SFI window opened, but having failed, he was unable to put in for the SFI. Will the Minister undertake to sort out the mapping system so that it works for farmers, and they do not find themselves in the situation that that farmer found himself in?

Another farmer told me that he and his agent were sitting at the screen trying to get his application in, but eventually the window closed before they had managed to do it. He is asking the Minister to have a proper long-term plan that not only says when the various windows will open but is also clear and up front about how much money will be in the various windows. If we keep opening the schemes with not even enough money to cover those people who already have environmental schemes, this is not going to work. There are going to be many, many farmers who fail to get the money that they need. These are people who are feeding the nation and managing our environment. In my area, that is a really fragile and beautiful environment and we should be helping them to continue to preserve it.

I do not think the Conservatives have anything to boast about. They promised that farmers would get the same amount of money after Brexit as they had done before Brexit, but what did they do? They came up with a scheme to take away the basic payments, and they stuck to it rigidly—that was one plan they could manage. What they did not do was bring in the promised environmental schemes and, as we have heard, they actually underspent by £350 million. That is utterly disgraceful.

My farmers hoped that with a change of Government, they were going to get a change of attitude and more support. Instead, they have seen the farce of the SFI scheme and the family farm tax. The changes the Government have introduced to that are welcome to some degree, but with land prices in Cambridgeshire, it will still affect an awful lot of family farms in my constituency. This Government need to put themselves behind our farmers.