Support for Farmers

James Naish Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

That is an issue I will come to, but what my hon. Friend says is absolutely the case. If we have a first come, first served system, then there is no assessment of the quality of bids. I am sure that pretty much all the applications were of a high quality, but differential merit was not taken into account. Farmers were excluded simply because they were milking or otherwise doing their job before the window closed.

The SFI was—I think the record will prove this—essentially set up to replace the basic payment scheme. It was implemented disastrously because it was designed disastrously. The Conservative Government failed even to spend the SFI budget when they were in power, underspending the allocation by £358 million. That is money that should have gone to support our farmers and to keep the promises made to them during Brexit—promises that have been broken.

Then, in March 2025, with absolutely no notice, this Labour Government closed the SFI programme for the year, leaving hundreds of farmers outside with absolutely nothing. The Minister at the time, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), is not in his place. I must say that, before his removal, he was becoming an increasingly important advocate for farmers within Government. He apologised for the closure of the SFI, explaining that the scheme was a good one, but that because the application process inherited from the Conservatives was first come, first served, funds were being allocated neither wisely nor fairly, as my hon. Friends have already highlighted.

I remain outraged at that closure in 2025, but the former Farming Minister’s point about the Tory’s first come, first served process is well made. A first come, first served process means that Government funding is allocated randomly at best, not achieving best value for the taxpayer. Even worse, it means that funding disproportionately goes to those farms that are big enough to be able to afford land agents, to be able to have a large farm staff, or to be able to spend much time away from farming to fill out forms. Meanwhile, farmers working 90 hours a week up Langdale, up Longsleddale or in the Eden valley, producing our food, caring for our countryside, with low incomes, get systematically shut out by accident or by design; the impact remains horrific either way.

The Government pledged to learn lessons from the 2025 disaster, so along came 22 September this year, when sustainable farming incentive funds ran out and the drawbridge got pulled up after less than six hours. I have spoken to hill farmers, protecting some of the world’s most epic landscapes but struggling with dodgy wi-fi in their valley so they got nothing. I have spoken to dairy farmers who just popped out to tend their cattle and got back to their computer to discover that they had got nothing. I have spoken to land agents, heartbroken and ashamed that the majority of small farms that they bid on behalf of had got nothing. There are farmers who had all their basic payment taken away and had literally nothing else to look forward to apart from the SFI, yet the system closed in less than a day and they got nothing. The Government have learnt nothing from the damage the Conservatives did, so will the Minister return with a scheme this autumn that ensures that farmers who had viable SFI applications are funded and not left out in the cold?

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

I think the hon. Gentleman missed out SFI window 1 in his description.

[Tim Farron]

There was indeed an SFI window earlier in the year, but the bulk of applicants were aiming for SFI window 2 in 2026, and of course a huge number of them were cut out simply because of the way in which the system was set up.

Liberal Democrats are determined to put this right. With our biggest parliamentary presence in this place in more than a century, we humbly seek to be in government after the next election. Should we be so, we will be determined to lead the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and we would reform the SFI so that every farmer was allocated a sum via the SFI consistent with the capacity of their farm. That money would be theirs to claim within a long window, so long as they submitted a compliant claim that demonstrated delivery of public goods. There would be no competition as to who could press “send” the quickest.

The failings of our farm payment system go far beyond the SFI disaster. At its foundation, this Tory-designed, Labour-delivered scheme is woefully flawed for one fundamental reason: they have given us a farm payment scheme, the bedrock of our agricultural policy, that—would you believe it?—actively disincentivises the production of food. What utter and complete madness. When Britain’s food security is more at risk than at any time since the last war, we now have a farm payment scheme in England that fails to support farmers to produce food. At a time when every other country in the UK and every country in the European Union does provide that support, England is the odd one out. We are failing our farmers and we are failing our people as we sleepwalk into no longer being able to guarantee that we can feed our country.

Effectively locking small farmers out of the farm payment scheme is socially unjust. It damages our food security, and it also damages our environment. Many farmers I have spoken to in Westmorland and beyond who have been excluded from the SFI and other schemes are so utterly demoralised and angry that they will now just turn their back on environmental schemes altogether. These are people who have been champions of nature-friendly farming, and whose parents and grandparents have spent decades promoting environmental responsibility on their farms. They do not want to turn their back on sustainable farming, but they have got to pay the rent and feed their kids somehow. An SFI delivered well could have brought every single farmer who had received the basic payment in the past into the environmental big tent. Instead, this combination of cruelty and incompetence leaves thousands outside in the cold, and we cannot now blame them if they choose to intensify and undo the good environmental work of generations that preceded them.

Liberal Democrats would reverse the banking tax cuts from the last Parliament and use a portion of that revenue to boost the environmental land management scheme budget by £1 billion. We would allocate an SFI sum to every farm, which would be theirs to claim. We would therefore maximise the number of farms inside environmental schemes, protecting nature, improving water quality, sequestering carbon, protecting urban areas from flooding, and providing access and enjoyment to the millions who visit the lakes, the dales and the rest of Britain’s beautiful countryside. We would revoke the Labour-Conservative consensus by finally making the production of food a public good, funding it as we should and starting the journey back to food security.

To be parochial for just a rare moment, the English Lake District was awarded world heritage site status in 2017. When UNESCO made that award, in its assessment of the beauty of those towering landscapes it gave as much credit to the farmers who shaped them as it did to the glaciers that carved them. For a millennium at least, our land has been curated, tended, moulded, protected and nurtured into producing the food that fuels each one of us. How short sighted is it to put all of that at risk?

To be personal, the loss of a basic payment, and the failure to include thousands of family farms in replacement schemes as funds instead gravitate to the big estates and the huge non-farmer organisations, has left many families back home in Cumbria bereft. I mean not just financially bereft, but deep heartbroken despair. Just think what it might feel like for if someone’s family had farmed their valley for generations, maybe centuries, and yet now it looks like the farm will be lost on their watch because of all this. Imagine the anxiety and the shame, the isolation—in every sense of the word—and the overwhelming desolation that there is nowhere to turn.

Thanks to the Farmer Network, RABI and young farmers’ clubs there are places to turn. But in this House today, we can choose to say to our farmers that we will stand with them too, that we are grateful to them for feeding us and keeping Britain beautiful, and that we will match those words with actions. Maybe there are Members who think, “Well, I haven’t got any farms in my constituency, so this isn’t relevant to me,” but I will tell them this: 100% of our constituents eat food, and so farming matters to them and to all of us—yet this place too rarely acts like it believes that. Today, we give Members the opportunity to affirm that they do.

Seventy per cent of England’s land mass is agricultural. If we are serious about tackling climate change and protecting our environment, we must start there, by motivating and including all of our farmers to be on the frontline for that fight, not locking them out, or demoralising and excluding them. In an increasingly volatile and uncertain world, Britain is less than 60% self-sufficient in food. That is terrifying. And yet we have thousands of farmers out there ready to meet the call, if only we did call. The Liberal Democrats present this motion to the House because British farmers are the best in the world, and the best farmers in the world deserve the best support.

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[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

Yesterday, the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), and I were once again out and about in the fields, talking to our hard-working farmers, this this time in Newbury. We spoke to them about the many hardships they face at the hands of this Labour Government. Week after week, from farm to farm, the message is the same: farmers are exhausted; they are worried; and they feel incredibly betrayed by this Labour Government. They do not feel that the Government are on their side or value the work that they are doing. They feel that the Government have turned their back on rural Britain. I welcome the debate, because it gives us an opportunity to say out loud in the House what every farmer in the country already knows: on Labour’s watch, it is our hard-working farming families who are paying the price.

Let me begin by addressing the fiasco that has been the sustainable farming incentive. As I said in this place just last week, I cannot stress enough how badly the SFI has been mishandled under this Labour Government—it has been a complete and utter debacle—and once again our hard-working farming families are the ones suffering. Let there be no doubt: this did not come out of the blue; there were plenty of warnings. The Government, having closed the scheme in March 2025, caused chaos, huge anxiety and additional financial pressure for our farmers.

[James Naish]

Does the hon. Member think it is better to close a scheme because it has overspent, or to underspend the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’s budget by £358 million?

[Robbie Moore]

What Government Members do not seem to understand is that when a highly sought-after scheme is closed, which is exactly what happened under this Labour Government in March 2025, demand inevitably builds up. That was coupled with the budget being reduced significantly. There was 18 months of this Government sitting on their hands, enabling demand to build. What was the result? When the scheme finally opened, it became a competitive scheme. On this Labour Government’s watch, it was “first come, first served”; those who got in were those who could press “send” the fastest. This Labour Government knew what the consequences would be, as was reported in The Times yesterday, but they carried on regardless. The result: approximately 40,000 farmers tried to get into the scheme, but only 12,200 were successful. The application window was slammed shut after just five and a half hours, all because the money had gone.

Last week, I stood in this Chamber and asked the Farming Minister very simple questions, but there were no answers. I will try again, so that he can address these in his summing up. The expiring agreements were worth more than £520 million, yet the SFI budget was cut to just £310 million. Where has the additional £210 million gone? It is vital that clarity and reassurance be given to our farmers. When will the Minister open SFI27? It is not good enough to say, “As soon as possible”; we need clarity. What will the Minister do for those who have agreements that are expiring, to stop the cliff edge in their cash flow? What budget has the Minister set aside for SFI27?

We must all remember that this situation comes on top of the Government’s disastrous decision to reduce de-linked payments dramatically, far more quickly than was ever agreed, to a measly £600 per farming business. I suspect that it costs the Government more in administrative charges to distribute those payments than it benefits each farming holding. Our farming businesses now feel the pain, financially and emotionally, as they struggle with their cash flow.

SFI is not some isolated incident; it is part of a pattern. Before Labour broke the SFI scheme, it crushed the family farm with its disastrous family farm and family business tax. Before the election, those on the Government Benches looked farmers in the eye and told them that they had no plans to change agricultural property relief and business property relief. In Labour’s very first Budget, which was its first opportunity to show rural communities up and down the country that it cared and understood them, it did not. It brought out the family farm and family business tax—a vindictive tax that strikes family farming businesses at their worst moment.

Each and every Labour MP who voted again last week to keep the family farm and family business tax should be ashamed of themselves. The narrative is, rightly, that there has been a partial U-turn—the threshold at which the tax applies has been raised from £1 million to £2.5 million—but that simply does not go far enough. Now, bizarrely, a person’s marital status can raise the threshold to £5 million. That seems ridiculous. Once the farmland, the farmhouse, the growing crops, the stocks, the machinery, the crops in store and the livestock have been valued, the value of a traditional farming business will be well above the £2.5 million threshold. That exposes any hard-working family farming business to an inheritance tax liability that they simply will not be able to afford. This was completely ill thought through.

That brings me to the Liberal Democrat motion before us, which only states that they regret

“the Government’s changes to Agricultural Property Relief”.

It makes no reference to business property relief. I thought that we were aligned on this issue, but clearly we are not. Many farming businesses rely heavily on business property relief. It covers trading assets not covered by agricultural property relief, including machinery, livestock, harvested crops and any rural diversification projects, including farm shops and holiday lets, so I am incredibly surprised that the Lib Dems do not also regret the Government’s changes to business property relief.

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[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

I refer colleagues to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

When the Labour Rural Research Group polled rural voters in the summer of 2025, 75% of them told us that their communities had been neglected over the past 15 years. Over half, 51.3%, said that agriculture and the rural economy should get more Government spending—a higher share than for any priority except the NHS. People really do care about this agenda, and it is important that we on these Benches remember that.

There is no doubt that there was exceptional demand for SFI26; that demonstrates farmers’ desire to invest in their soil, hedgerows, crops and wildlife. That was partly anticipated, which is why the Government allocated an additional £20 million in window 2, on top of the £50 million announced by the Prime Minister in August. I am pleased that, through this scheme, we have nearly £1 billion of investment in nature-friendly farming, as part of the £11.8 billion in funding for sustainable farming in this Parliament.

The good news is that SFI26 was allocated; the Tories did not manage that. But farmers had been preparing for months, and some were left part of the way through applications that could not be completed. The Government have acknowledged that too many farmers who hoped for an agreement have been left disappointed. I welcome that acknowledgement, but acknowledging a problem is where fixing it must begin, and we need to see the co-design of a new system very quickly. We need the IT systems at the Rural Payments Agency reformed, and we need a much clearer and more transparent road map for future application timelines.

I agree with the part of the motion that covers some of the failings of the previous Government. The motion

“regrets the previous Government’s decision to design the SFI on a first come, first served basis”.

It also regrets the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, and it is true that the Conservatives left a transition that was half built and half funded. On trade, the former Secretary of State, Michael Gove, has admitted that the Conservatives negotiated poorly with Australia and New Zealand.

There are therefore serious questions that need answering ahead of next year’s scheme. First, the National Farmers’ Union has said that any decrease in income jeopardises future business planning, so when will the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs commit to a date for SFI27? Secondly, there is potentially the gap mentioned earlier today: £520 million of agreements are due to expire. In the Minister’s view, is that accurate? If so, what are the Government doing about it? Thirdly, I seek clarity on the timing for those whose applications failed because of the system’s technical problems. Fourthly, on horticulture and smaller farms, SFI must work for market gardens and smaller growers; the 3 hectare minimum for SFI26 shut some of them out altogether. Can that be reconsidered?

[Mr Carmichael]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman is saying, but we neglect at our peril the sheer extra cost of administration for SFI, as compared with the basic payment scheme. Baroness Batters has remarkable figures on that in her report. Does he agree, to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), that one of the advantages of a more universal system is that it would be hardwired in for food production, and would be much cheaper to administer?

[James Naish]

The right hon. Gentleman speaks from a position of expertise. He is right that the more complicated we make a system, the more expensive it is to administer. I know that Ministers are looking into how a system that is not “first come, first served” might work; there are risks with that, and we should acknowledge that in this place. It is not a silver bullet by any stretch of the imagination.

I notice that the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), did not mention the word “profitability” in his contribution. However, that is an essential point in any debate on farming. Baroness Batters’ “Farming Profitability Review” notes that the farming budget in England has hovered around that £2.4 billion figure since 2007, but the input costs are forecast to be 30% higher this year than in 2020. We need to be clear about the essential mission for farming. The aim is a countryside where farms are less dependent on subsidy and scheme windows, and more independent, resilient and sustainable—for people, profit and our planet. That is the thread that ran through the Batters review, and it is also the thread that ran through the Labour Rural Research Group’s report on the rural economy.

[Samantha Niblett]

My hon. Friend is talking about recommendations for the SFI going forward. When I met Derbyshire NFU yesterday, there was some concern about a proportion of SFI that was not accounted for—I am sorry, I do not have my notes to confirm the figure. Derbyshire NFU said that one of the key challenges was that when we were part of the EU, there had to be clarity about what money was spent where, whereas now it finds it much harder to get transparency on money that has been invested. Does my hon. Friend agree that this might also be a recommendation to Government?

[James Naish]

Absolutely. There is a lot of muttering from the Lib Dem Benches, but I am sure that the Minister heard that point.

I will conclude, because plenty of people want to speak. We should be clear that we need to fix the SFI system, and I am pleased that the Government have given indications of how they plan to do that. We must end “first come, first served”, so that the system works more fairly, but we must also collectively recognise that we must do better on the issue of profitability. I welcome the work that the Government have done to date, but we must accelerate the implementation of the Batters profitability review. I hope that we can work across this House to put those points into practice.

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[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

It is an honour to close the debate on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. We chose to use our Opposition day to discuss support for farmers because farmers are the backbone of rural communities across the country, and today’s debate has shown just how deeply that is felt.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) opened the debate by explaining that the Liberal Democrats would reform the SFI so that it allocated every farmer a sum that was consistent with the capacity of their farm. That sum would be theirs to claim within a long window. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the Chair of the Select Committee, reminded us that we, and farmers, are in the middle of a perfect storm. We have heard from Members in all parts of the House about farmers who prepared SFI applications for months on end, only to be shut out in an afternoon. In Glastonbury and Somerton, this is not an abstract issue. It is about whether family farms can plan not just for next year, but for the years and generations ahead.

On 22 September, the second window opened, with £233 million in the fund. By 3.48 pm, it had shut. Farmers deserve better than a Glastonbury ticket scramble. At least festival-goers know when the fallow years are coming; farmers who missed out have been handed one with no warning at all. One farmer from Curry Rivel wrote to me describing the process simply as a “disaster”. The money has been shared out badly, not just too thinly. Window 1 left £3 million unallocated, but window 2 was oversubscribed within hours, and it was not an even scramble. A recent survey conducted by the Select Committee found that 60% of respondents could not submit before the window closed. Only 31% of those running farm businesses were successful, compared with 68% of land agents. That is a two-tier system. Those who can afford an adviser are waved through the farm gate, while those who cannot are left out in the field. Until it was privatised in 1997, ADAS gave farmers free independent advice, provided by the state. Today, those who cannot afford an agent are on their own.

That was not just bad luck. DEFRA’s own forecasts, made in April and May, modelled the window’s closing on its very first day; it predicted 12,200 applications. On the day, 12,204 were submitted, just four more than were forecast. DEFRA saw it coming, and nearly 2,900 farmers started applications that they were never able to submit. Others were let down by DEFRA’s IT systems. Tom Kimber, who farms at Higher Stavordale farm in Charlton Musgrove, had an SFI agreement that was coming to an end. He applied in window 2, and missed out because of technical problems. He was assured that farmers like him would be given a route back in, but he has heard nothing since. Tom wants to deliver for the environment, and demand for the SFI proves that thousands of other farmers want to, too, but their commitment is not matched by a Government who understand the scheme.

Last week, the Minister told the House that “first come, first served” will end. I welcome that, but one cannot feed a whole farm herd from a trough that is simply too small. The expiring agreements are worth over £520 million, but the budget across both windows is just £310 million; as the NFU has asked, where has the missing funding gone? Around 8,800 of this autumn’s applicants have agreements ending in February. Clare, who farms near Puckington, is one of them. For years, she has protected the river margins on her land, thereby slowing run-off, filtering pollution and giving wildlife space to thrive. SFI was meant to be her way forward, but now those margins have no funding.

Before I move on to the Conservatives’ utter failure to support British farmers, I remind the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), that the Liberal Democrats were the first party to oppose the family farm tax, which includes BPR and APR. The Conservatives cannot escape their share of the blame for the chaos that farmers face today. They designed SFI on a “first come, first served” basis, botched the transition from basic payment schemes, let farming budgets fall behind inflation, and signed trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand that undercut British farmers. However, this Government cannot keep hiding behind their predecessors. They chose to accelerate the phase-out of direct payments while stop-starting SFI, so farmers have no universal payment offer at all for the first time since 1945. The Government imposed the family farm tax, and cut the DEFRA and farming budgets.

The Liberal Democrats warned that this would happen. I wrote to the former Secretary of State in July, before the first window closed, to ask how the Department would stop window 2 meeting this exact fate. All of this is happening as our farmers face one of their worst years in memory. Mark Humphrey, who farms at Isle Brewers and chairs NFU Somerset, has described a torrid 18 months. Milk is down at 32p per litre, selling for 8p less than it costs to produce, and maize yields are down by 10% to 15%. Our farmers must be profitable.

However, Somerset shows what is possible with long-term certainty. Last week, I met Damon Bridge of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Greater Sedgemoor landscape recovery team on North Moor, near Langport, where farmers and conservation groups are working together across 4,000 hectares. This involves 20-year agreements, not a window that slams shut in an afternoon, but only a handful of landscape recovery projects have reached delivery. Farmers need to know that they will actually happen, because food security is national security.

All this comes back to one question: can this country feed itself? We produce only about 60% of the food we eat. Between 2019 and 2024, the farming budget was frozen at £2.4 million, while input costs rose by 44%. With war in Ukraine and conflict in the middle east, food security is national security, yet the Government still do not treat it as a priority.

[James Naish]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Dyke]

I will not, given the time.

I brought forward my Food Bill, which is now Liberal Democrat policy, to tackle this issue. It has binding targets for domestic food production, would ensure that an annual food security audit was reported to the House, and would take action to drive down food waste. We have long called for an extra £1 billion a year for environmental land management schemes, so that every eligible farmer who applies in good faith gets an agreement, there is a proper bridge for the 8,800 farmers whose agreements are ending, and we invest in the training and technology that cut farmers’ costs in the long term—not fairer rationing, but a bigger pot. The Chancellor has the perfect opportunity to deliver that money in next week’s Budget.

I have four simple questions for the Minister. First, what will be different next year to ensure that a family farm without an agent has the same chance as an estate with one, and will he look at restoring free independent advice services for smaller farms? Secondly, will he guarantee that farmers like Tom, who missed out because of DEFRA’s IT failures, will not lose out again? Has any money from window 2 been left unallocated, and if so, how much? Thirdly, will the Minister open SFI27 early in the new year, or even before that, and publish its budget now, so that no farmer with an expiring agreement faces a gap from April next year? Fourthly, will he press the Chancellor to use next week’s Budget to properly fund the schemes on which our farmers depend, and can he confirm that the DEFRA budget will not be cut? 

Our farmers have kept their side of the deal. They have adapted to the end of the basic payment scheme, prepared for scheme after scheme, and kept growing our food despite soaring costs, extreme weather, disease outbreaks and attacks that threaten their livelihoods. What they have not had is a Government, Conservative or Labour, who keep their side of the deal. This motion offers a way forward, with long-term funding for every eligible SFI applicant, a reversal of the farm family farm tax, a comprehensive national food strategy and an extra £1 billion a year for the schemes our farmers depend on, because a nation that cannot feed itself cannot protect itself.