Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2026

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I first draw the House’s attention to my registered interests as a farmer and landowner who is also in receipt of delinked and other government payments. I am very grateful to the Government Chief Whip for moving this debate to a civilised time this evening; I think that is much appreciated by all noble Lords. I thank the Minister for outlining this SI, although we regret its introduction. Indeed, it is now at the end of this Session that we are about to lose significant agricultural expertise from this House, which keenly understands the impact of legislation such as this on the ground and in our close-knit communities.

When in government, we replaced the basic payment scheme with delinked payments based on historic BPS claims. We intended this to be gradually phased out by 2028 in favour of environmental land management schemes, where farmers and landowners receive payments only for public goods, as outlined by the Minister. The reductions we put in place put these delinked payments on a gradual glide path to zero in 2028. This Government dramatically accelerated that decline last year and have continued at a similar rate this year. This, in effect, ends the seven-year transition well before the 2028 deadline that farmers had been led to expect, undermining their budgeting.

We support the long-term transition, but not at this accelerated pace. Conflict in the Middle East has caused uncertainty over fuel prices and fertiliser and a shortage of industrial CO₂. Grain prices remain at low levels, undermining profitability for our arable farmers. However, it is not just external factors that are adding pressure to farmers. Deliberate choices made by this Government have left farmers more vulnerable. The early closure of the SFI application window last year, the family farm and business tax, increased employer national insurance, and the Government’s refusal to consider our cheap power plan to lower energy costs all have a cumulative impact.

I note that the Government are set to spend £100 million to reopen the Ensus bioethanol plant in Teesside to mitigate CO₂ disruptions. But this might not have been necessary had the Prime Minister not, in effect, sold out the UK’s bioethanol industry at the last minute in the UK-US trade deal. These plants provided a valuable source of demand for our farmers producing wheat. Closing them down to benefit American ethanol producers means that we are now supporting American maize or corn farmers at the expense of our own farmers. The deal reduced British tariffs on a quota of 1.4 billion litres of US ethanol, when the total market size for bioethanol in the UK was coincidentally 1.4 billion litres. These are not events outside the UK’s control; these are government choices. This SI reduces the direct financial support farmers receive at a time they need it most.

Ultimately, this SI does not help farmers precisely at a time when global events and this Government’s choices threaten their viability—let alone profitability. I beg to move.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to support my noble friend and challenge the Government on how they are going to spend the money they are going to allocate. While I can understand the wish to have a transition, it is right that it has to be done at a sensible pace. The really big disappointment of the farming community is that the alternative schemes the Government are bringing in are not the kind of schemes that are particularly attractive to many farmers or that promote the production of more domestic food.

I would hope that the Government will have a rethink now. Do the Government not understand there is currently a crisis in world trade and the supply of food in the months ahead because of the difficulties of getting fertiliser out of the Gulf area, the damage being done to chemical and fertiliser plants by more than one war and by the very acute trade disruption with no immediate signs of being resolved? Those I have heard from in the farming industry tell me that not only are fertiliser prices extremely high but there is no visibility as to when they will be able to buy serious quantities of fertiliser again at sensible prices. As we know, without proper fertiliser applications, yields will plunge and there will be a further shortage in food provision.

It is a tragedy that this century there has been a big decline in the amount of home-produced food that farms have been able to make because of the grant choices of the EU and successive United Kingdom Governments. I would have thought that now is a wonderful opportunity for a rethink to place at the very centre of agricultural subsidy policy, in line with many other countries around the world, the need for more domestic, reliable supply and production.

The Minister reminded us that some small pots are available for those important topics of innovation and new technology. I agree that there can be a new agrarian revolution; it was this country that launched the original one. There is now huge scope for mechanisation with robotics and drones and all the other things that can come in. However, the amount of money being offered in these small grant schemes is very small and unambitious. We have some great farms and some great farmers. Many of them would like to have access to serious money for that big investment and that pioneering technology that could start to make the difference.

I urge the Government to think again: put food production as the central issue that we need to deal with; understand the urgency of the collapse both in British farming and in the wider world market because of the interruptions to fertiliser and other chemicals; and do something to make available the money they are saving by the rundown of the existing ground system in a more intelligent and purposeful way, so that farmers can get decent money to rebuild their ability to feed us.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, my maiden speech in 2019 was on the impact of Brexit on food and agricultural produce, with a focus consistent with my interests as a Devon farmer on the Devon cream tea. It is fitting that my final words are on matters agricultural and the delinked payments regulations—the final decoupling of our agricultural subsidy regime from the common agricultural policy.

When I joined the House, one of the silver linings of the Brexit storm clouds was the promise of autonomy over agricultural policy, which we sought to deliver through the Agriculture Act—scrutinised largely online during those dark days of the pandemic. The birth of environmental land management and the sustainable farming incentive promised a brave new world of public money for public goods, under which the blunt instrument of CAP area payments would be replaced by the agile deployment of Defra’s budget to allow British farming to increase productivity and sustainability in equal measure.

During the passage of that Bill, this House reiterated multiple times the long-term nature of agricultural business and the need for certainty and continuity in government policy to enable farmers to adjust their business models at an appropriate pace, consistent with the annual harvest cycle, their very narrow margins and their necessarily long-term investment strategies. Despite the hard work of many at Defra and the Rural Payments Agency, that continuity has not materialised. Farm and food businesses have been battered not only by the pandemic and by wars in Ukraine and Iran, but by extreme climatic events, drought, flooding and government policy that has become even less clement than the weather.