Agricultural Transition Plan

Matt Western Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point and I can confirm that that will be possible. We made some changes to the Agriculture Bill that was brought through this Parliament to ensure it could support farm diversification projects to help farmers add value.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Many farmers in my area of Warwick and Leamington and the villages around are really concerned. As far as they are concerned, they are in business—they have been farmers for generations to look after and steward the land, but also to look after their herds and to produce the grain and crops that we depend on. Their real concern is to do with livestock, where 80% of their income has come from the BPS—basic payment scheme—payments. They see the proposed changes as being all about preserving a landscape, not about preserving food resilience and their businesses.

[George Eustice]

It is important to note that since the advent of area-based payments the subsidy payments have been totally decoupled from production. Indeed, had we had our time again a better way to have done it might have been to introduce conditionality to the old payments that were there before. It is already the case that there are people who own a plot of land and claim on it but who are not actually producing food. The logic of our policy today is to focus the payments towards what farmers do with the land, not just dole out money based on how much land they own.