Rural Communities: Government Support

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I also thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this important debate and for her excellent speech.

Rural communities and farming go hand in hand, as farmers are the backbone of our rural economy. Glastonbury and Somerton is home to more than 800 farms, and a quarter of England’s agricultural holdings and a fifth of England’s total farmed area are in the south-west. Agriculture employs over 60,000 people in the region, with many more indirectly affected by the industry. However, since the Budget, the only topic on farmers’ minds is the lack of support from the Government. They tell me that they did not think their plight could get any worse after the last Conservative Government—because that Government “just didn’t care”—but it has.

This Labour Government do not even seem to want to understand the agricultural industry. Yesterday’s announcement, with no notice, to halt the sustainable farming incentive has sent shockwaves through farming circles. It beggars belief that the largest farming trade body, the National Farmers Union, had only 30 minutes’ notice of the announcement. The absence of warning and communication will only further alarm farmers across the country who are feeling anxious, left behind and forgotten.

The sudden closure of an important scheme has left thousands of farmers cut off from funding, and I worry about the impact this will have on nature-friendly farming. The scheme is vital to incentivising farmers to carry out their work for the public good, such as managing flood water and storing slurry safely—this is of extreme importance in Somerset, given the high threat of flooding.

A beef farmer from Wick, near Langport, recently told me that he has “no confidence” in the Environment Agency to protect his and other people’s land from flooding—it is too slow to pump water off fields, which increases the risk of flooding when it next rains.

The closure of the SFI will now make it more difficult for farmers to put flood management measures in place. The scheme had more than 37,000 live, multi-year agreements, and it had the highest demand since it began. The Government have not announced any plans to replace it. This announcement comes at a time when farmers are already losing the vast majority of basic payments this year, and they should rightly be rewarded for good environmental work.

[James Naish]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Dyke]

I will not, because of time. Given that the SFI has now finished, will the Department publish the scheme’s key performance indicators and how they were met? Or will it keep farmers in the dark again?

The Liberal Democrats are deeply disappointed by Labour’s decision to compound the damage done to our farmers by the Conservatives, who left the farming budget with an underspend of hundreds of millions of pounds. Yet again, smaller farmers will be hardest hit, especially hill farmers and those earning significantly less than the minimum wage. We want to see the Chancellor urgently reverse the changes, and we want to see £1 billion a year in support for farmers. We want clarity from the Government about the impact of cutting SFI on farmers’ incomes, nature restoration, food production and rural communities.

Sustainable Farming Incentive

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am afraid I was genuinely dismayed, but perhaps not entirely surprised, by what I found when I came into the Department. We have spent the last six or seven months trying to get control of the situation because if we have a scheme that is not capped or managed, or has no budgetary control, there is a problem. The figure of £5 billion overall is the biggest amount for farming that we have had. We will make sure the money gets out to farmers.

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

Coming at a time of record low confidence in farming, many farmers in Glastonbury and Somerton will feel that the sudden closure of the SFI scheme will bring them closer to closing their farm gates for the very last time, and at a time when food security is at an all-time low. What communications will go to affected farming businesses and what support will DEFRA give to those who are dealing with vulnerable farmers at the sharp end?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I do not agree with some of the hon. Lady’s question, because the food security report published at the end of last year did not bear out her analysis. The Rural Payments Agency has written to farmers today setting out exactly the situation to give people reassurance.

Bathing Water Regulations

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered bathing water regulations.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir John. It is a privilege to open this debate, and fantastic to see so many hon. Friends and Members. I am grateful to all of them, as well as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), and the Minister, for their time this afternoon.

We are fortunate in this country to have beautiful natural landscapes. We are blessed with an abundance of beautiful beaches, inland lakes and rivers, pre-eminent among them the River Tone, which runs through Taunton and Wellington. We are lucky to have French Weir and Longrun Meadow as one of the 27 new bathing water sites. I sincerely thank the incredible volunteers, the Friends of French Weir Park, who worked with me to apply for and achieve designated bathing water status there last year.

That means that for the first time we know the river’s water quality. It is variable and now proven to be poor, generally speaking. We now have that information because it is publicly available, and we can work towards getting the investment we need to improve the water. I am sure there are similar groups across the country in the constituencies of other hon. Members.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this important debate. I know how much he enjoys a dip in the River Tone. The River Parrett in Langport is a well known and loved body of water for swimming and water sports, which I hope will soon become a designated bathing water site. Sadly, polluters discharged sewage into it 54 times in 2023, amounting to 453 hours of pollution. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial to support such sites to obtain bathing water status, so that they are safe for all who wish to use them?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend and neighbour is absolutely right. We need to see more bathing waters not fewer. That is one of the concerns I have in this debate. Bathing waters are not just places where people swim; they are part of the identity and lifeblood of our communities across the country. As in my constituency, they are places where people come together for swimming clubs, rowing clubs, kayaking, paddleboarding, or just to enjoy the natural beauty of the river.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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

Yet another wet winter across Somerset highlights the need for the Government to urgently deliver solutions to mitigate the impact of flooding on farmland and protect domestic food production. The Brue headwaters multi-benefit project, facilitated by the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West, is working with farmers and landowners in Bruton, Charlton Musgrove and Wincanton to address flooding issues and to hold workshops that focus on natural flood management, to slow the flow of water across the upper Brue, thus reducing flooding, sediment run-off and the associated pollution of water- courses. Despite those efforts, many farmers in the catchment, and indeed the county and the country, are angry at the level of inundation of land that could be prevented by better flood management. How will the Minister work to support farmers, build flood resilience and protect food security?

[Emma Hardy]

The hon. Lady is right to point out how angry farmers are and how they feel they have been let down by the previous Government on flood defences. The previous formula allocated funding only based on numbers of properties protected and paid little regard to rural areas. She also mentioned one of my favourite themes: natural flood management. We recently held a roundtable on that, with representatives from the NFU and the Country Land and Business Association, to talk about how we can better protect our rural areas in a more nature-friendly way.

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

I have had many victims of domestic abuse write to me, following lengthy periods of inaction from the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other organisations, which have left victims at risk and feeling horribly anxious. How will the Minister ensure that prosecution rates improve and victims have confidence in the criminal justice system?

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Member makes an important point. I am sorry to hear of the examples that she raises. This Government have a historic mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and we are taking a series of important steps to work towards the increased number of prosecutions that she refers to. For example, we are introducing specialist rape and sexual offences teams in every police force; working to increase referrals with the recently launched domestic abuse joint justice plan; fast-tracking rape cases; and introducing free independent legal advisers for victims of adult rape. I referred earlier to domestic abuse protection orders, and the first convictions for breach of them are already being seen.

Public Services: Rural Areas

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Smith]

Absolutely. I welcome the fact that the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), is looking at the formula for how grants are made to local authorities in rural areas. Fundamentally, there should not be a penalty to living in the countryside or in a rural area. It is not an indulgence; it is vital to the future of our country, so we need public services in rural areas.

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

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for his comments. We know that it costs more to deliver services in rural areas, yet rural councils are set to receive 41% less central Government funding than urban councils in the local government finance settlement that is coming up. Does the hon. Member agree that the settlement formula should consider rural deprivation alongside clustered deprivation to ensure that rural areas receive the services they deserve?

[David Smith]

People would expect me as a Member of Parliament for a rural area to say it is absolutely essential that we consider the peculiar circumstances, geography, logistics, the long-term challenges and the rural deprivation, which really does exist, when considering grants to local authorities in rural areas.

I will move on to education, which is another of the four areas I want to discuss. Assuming that children can get to school, having just talked about transport, we need to ensure that they can go to a good school that sets up their future and energises the local community, but when the school provision in rural areas suffers, so does the whole town or village, because there is no business or transport link more significant than the nearby secondary school.

The town of Berwick is extremely reliant on its one secondary school for the nurturing of the necessary skills and qualifications for the town’s economy, so when the school struggles, the town struggles. A report from 2017—I think it still stands—noted:

“Berwick is one of Northumberland’s most deprived towns. It has a vulnerable economy characterised by poor quality job opportunities, part time working, low wages and very limited education facilities.”

Berwick does not just need a better school; it needs a school that can generate a revival in a beautiful but isolated town that has no A&E, no major employer and minimal further education. Right now, Berwick deserves, and has the opportunity to build, a new world-class educational campus on the secondary school site that combines learning with further education, vocational study, special educational needs provision, local enterprise and primary healthcare. That makes the slow progress of Conservative Northumberland county council’s plan to rebuild Berwick Academy frustrating for parents, students and the whole community.

The further education point is important. North Northumberland students keep pace with their national peers up to GCSE level, but at A-level and higher education level they begin to struggle, because further education opportunities are few and difficult to access. One constituent in Berwick told me about their son who wants to be on a sports course in Newcastle that would set him up to go to university. The council is able to provide basic transport, but only to a course in the closer town of Ashington, which would not provide him with qualifications for university. Instead, his family are paying £15 a day for his transport to the educational opportunities that he needs—an unsustainable amount for basic provision.

Farmland Flooding

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jerome Mayhew]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. One of the beauties of the environmental land management scheme brought in by the last Government is that it has three stages. There is the in-field sustainable farming incentive, countryside stewardship, which has the in-farm elements, and the landscape recovery tier, which anticipates exactly that—I would describe them as in-valley projects. It is right that we should look right across a watercourse in those discussions, but it needs to be done in consultation with farmers, who should not have this imposed on them by a lack of drainage on the part of the Environment Agency.

Where there is flooding of productive farmland, it is necessary for the Government to build on the farming recovery fund, which was instigated by the last Conservative Government. That provides up to £25,000 a farm for an uninsured loss event. I welcome the Government’s announcement that they will provide an additional £10 million to that fund, but that is the start, not the end, of what needs to be done, so that farmers who suffer uninsurable loss to their farmland—their productive livelihood—are compensated.

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

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. I represent Glastonbury and Somerton, and part of my constituency lies on the Somerset levels and moors. Somerset is always at the forefront of flooding. In fact, 91% of Glastonbury and Somerton is agricultural land, so we depend on our farmers to store floodwater on their land to prevent our homes from flooding. Does he agree that we should properly compensate our farmers when they store water on their land, and that we should provide schemes with an extra £1 billion a year, so that farmers have the resources that they need to provide resilience not only for farming, but to our homeowners and residents across the county?

[Jerome Mayhew]

The hon. Lady is right in concept, in that where there is uninsured loss of productive farmland caused by flooding, the last Government was right to create the farming recovery fund to compensate, at least in part, for those losses. As for flooding by agreement, if I can describe it as that, that happens on the Somerset levels as part of the landscape recovery agreement there—it is called the Adapting the Levels project. That needs to come with sufficient funding under the environmental land management scheme, and I will address wider funding concerns later.

Farms can have a role in minimising flooding, and they can do that in-farm as well as further down the watercourse. But the Government must continue to work with the Conservatives and with the environmental land management scheme, which the previous Government set up, to recognise and support this.

We start at the top of the watercourse. Where available, there is upland peatland restoration. Peat bogs, when they are in good condition, are essentially like giant sponges, not just for water but for carbon storage. When they are in poor condition, the cycle goes into reverse, both for water and for carbon emission. Riparian buffers, which can be planted and maintained next to watercourses, slow the flow of water off the land and absorb a percentage of it.

More importantly and more interestingly—I was about to say for farmers like me, but I am not a farmer—for people involved in farming, there are the in-field developments, which are becoming increasingly mainstream and have developed from the regenerative agricultural movement. They are based around soil management. We always used to describe this as the heavy metal approach—that does not refer to our taste in music, but is instead about plough, drill and till, which has been the “traditional” method of agriculture since the second world war, where the inputs come out of a sack and horsepower is relied on to manipulate the soil.

The problem with that, apart from its very significant impact on biodiversity—that is a debate in its own right—is that this leads to collapsed soil structures and then we need to go into subsoiling. The more metal we use, the more heavy metal we need to use, and that destroys or very substantially limits the ability of the soil to absorb and then retain water. That has the short-term impact of increasing run-off, leading to flash flooding in a way that did not happen when I was a boy. It also has a knock-on impact in the summer. If there is a soil structure that is not capable of absorbing and retaining water in the winter, it becomes water-hungry in the spring and summer, and there is parching in a way that affects yield and costs money in irrigation to compensate for that.

There is a movement called the regenerative or min-till movement, where that approach has been challenged. By minimising the impact on soil—the disturbance of soil through metal—the soil structure can be increased, retained and developed. That creates spaces in the soil in which to absorb water, but it also has a secondary impact, which is the mycorrhizal interaction of live roots. That secures carbon and improves the sponginess of the soil.

All those things are great because as absorption is increased, the speed at which that water is emitted back into the watercourse is reduced. Allied to that is the use of cover crops during the winter. Having live roots in the water and a structure that prevents run-off and soil erosion in the winter is enormously important. There is also contour ploughing—that is, ploughing along the contour, not up and down it, as a matter of course. That is basic physics, but it helps to retain water on the land and slows its emission down into the watercourse. These are all things that the farm can do in-field to help its cause, and also to retain water for lower down the watercourse.

A second option, suitable for less valuable land that is not the best quality or the most fertile, is to accept seasonal water, along the lines followed by a traditional water meadow. Watercourses can be re-wiggled—I am not sure if that is a technical term—to slow down the flow of water in appropriate areas. By accepting floodwater, farmers are able to re-establish traditional meadows, but they need to be compensated because they are giving up productive land, albeit less productive land, to provide a social good. The whole concept of the environmental land management scheme was public money for public good.

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[Sarah Dyke]

rose—

[Matt Rodda]

rose—

Foot and Mouth Disease

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

This is an unusual outbreak, in a sense. It is a very small herd of 20 water buffalo. What is unknown to the German authorities at the moment is how they got infected in the first place. Extensive work is going on in Germany to try to understand that. The difference from 20 years ago is that we now have much better science to be able to trace where it may have come from. Extensive work is going on across Europe, because it is a threat to the entire continent. I can assure my hon. Friend that every avenue is being explored to try to make sure that we understand how this has happened and that it goes no further.

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

As a farmer’s daughter, I fully remember the sickening impact of the last foot and mouth outbreaks across Somerset and Dorset, particularly on farmers’ mental health. The culling restrictions resulted in 73% of farmers experiencing depression and anxiety following the last outbreak. Now, almost one half of the farming community are already experiencing anxiety. What plans do the Government have to support farmers who may be impacted by this disease or any other biosecurity risk?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I know she takes these issues very seriously and we have discussed them before. Let me be clear: this is an outbreak in Germany at the moment. We are doing everything we can to ensure it does not extend into our country. Of course people are concerned and worried. Should it develop further, which we are absolutely determined to make sure does not happen, then we will look at further measures to help and support people, but we are not at that stage.

Rivers, Lakes and Seas: Water Quality

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Catherine Fookes]

I agree entirely. The Government’s mission is growth. We need to see the cleaning-up of our waterways as an integral part of our growth mission.

We know that tackling diffuse pollution from agriculture will be a hard nut to crack, with farmers already under pressure, but we have examples of good practice in the Wye. For example, Avara is already shipping out 75% of the chicken waste from its Herefordshire chicken farms along the Wye. That is to be welcomed, but it does not solve the long-term problems of too much phosphate in our rivers.

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

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I represent Glastonbury and Somerton, and a large part of the Somerset levels and moors is in my constituency. Somerset is always at the forefront of flooding, and many of my farmers are always battling flooding. Grants such as the slurry infrastructure grant helped my livestock farmers ensure that nutrients such as phosphates do not enter the watercourses. That improves the viability of our farms, the health of our soil and the cleanliness of our rivers. Does the hon. Member agree that it was wrong for DEFRA to pause access to those grants?

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. Lots of Members wish to speak today, so we could end up with a two-minute limit on speeches. I ask Members to keep their interventions very short, otherwise the limit will go down to one and a half minutes and then down to one minute.

Flooding

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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

Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. New Environment Agency modelling shows that one in four properties in England, including an additional 39,000 homes in the south-west, could be at risk of flooding by 2050.

Like many across Glastonbury and Somerton, I watch this happen in real time. Residents are on high alert, they are anxious and their mental health is suffering. Knole is a small hamlet between Langport and Somerton that previously never flooded, but last winter nine homes flooded every month. With just 40 houses in the hamlet, such incidents have a huge impact on the local community. One affected resident told me they had to watch the ingress of water through every wall in their house. Another said they were unable to return home until mid-summer after last year’s winter flooding. Their experiences and those of many residents across Somerset, and those set out in the national flood risk assessment, show that heavier rainfall and rising sea levels already threaten 2.4 million properties, so will the Minister commit to ensuring that agencies such as Natural England and the Environment Agency are properly funded to deal with flooding and future flooding?

[Emma Hardy]

The hon. Lady is right to point out the impact on people’s mental health. I urge her to invite communities that experience repeated flooding to look at the Build Back Better scheme. They could be able to access an extra £10,000 to make their homes more resilient to flooding. As I said, this is something that I care deeply about, as does the Department, which is why we are investing £2.4 billion in delivering, improving and maintaining flood defences.

Biosecurity

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for securing this really important debate. We have heard about a range of biosecurity threats. Each of them has real potential to undermine our national security by disrupting our access to food, making our workforce sick, or crippling our export market. What concerns me most, however, is not any single one of those diseases or pests; it is what would happen if the UK were to be hit with two or more outbreaks concurrently.

The likelihood of that happening is greater than ever. We must recognise that threats such as bluetongue, avian influenza and virus yellows, alongside bovine TB, are part of the new normal and that our biosecurity defences need to have enough capacity to deal with them, as well as future threats such as African swine fever, simultaneously. That means ensuring that the Pirbright Institute and the APHA site at Weybridge are fit for purpose, that we are recruiting and retaining enough vets and border control staff, that there is sufficient rendering capacity to dispose of culled animal carcases, and that we have a proper border control strategy. I was alarmed when Dr Christine Middlemiss, the UK’s chief veterinary officer, warned the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee earlier this year that parts of the Weybridge APHA facility were at risk of being taken out of service. I welcome the additional funding that the Government have promised for the facility, and I seriously hope that the £208 million is enough not only to fund a much-needed refurbishment but to transform Weybridge into a facility that will protect the UK from the biological threats of tomorrow.

Our nation’s biosecurity defences must consist not just of buildings but of people. Despite the important role that vets and allied professionals, such as meat hygiene inspectors, play in protecting us from disease, and despite the clear evidence that there is a shortage of them in agricultural supply chains, the Government’s workforce data is poor. Unlike the United States and Australasia, which are facing similar shortages, we do not even know the scale of the problem, let alone how best to solve it. What we do know is that 45% of vets leaving the industry have less than four years’ experience, that the attrition rate in abattoirs is rising by 11% each year and that many of our veterinary schools are struggling to get two qualified applicants for clinical teaching roles.

Workforce shortages are a key challenge facing the veterinary profession, and these problems are particularly pronounced in rural areas such as Glastonbury and Somerton. Solutions such as creating new vet schools and increasing the number of university places will take at least five years to shift the dial on our vet workforce. That is why it is critical that the Government transfer work visa policymaking from the Home Office to other Departments such as DEFRA.

Improving our biosecurity will ensure that we can continue to prevent major infectious disease outbreaks, which are expensive and harm our international reputation, but it will create opportunities too. The two most widely discussed problems in agriculture are business viability and climate change, and what is often forgotten in these conversations is that vaccinations can play a part in supporting both. As we have heard in this debate, diseases such as bluetongue, Schmallenberg virus and avian influenza can lead to stunted growth in livestock. They fail to reproduce, they abort and they are more likely to die. I spoke to a farmer in Barton St David recently, and they told me that that just means more inputs for lower outputs, and for consumers it means more expensive food. He also said that it means more damage to the environment as well.

Research from my alma mater, Harper Adams University, shows that controlling avian influenza reduces greenhouse gas emissions by almost 16% per kilogram of meat without the need for culling. Following several successful campaigns from industry bodies, most livestock farmers now accept the benefits of regular vaccinations and parasite control. However, our inconsistent domestic vaccine capacity is preventing them from doing so. For example, this summer, sheep farmers saw yet another shortage of enzootic abortion vaccinations and continued shortages of orf vaccinations.

Covid-19 demonstrated that the UK is a vaccination superpower that can develop and procure the best proactive defences against new threats. It also showed us how vulnerable we are if we do not have access to vaccines. I urge the Government to bolster our vaccination production capacity by introducing a research and innovation fund to support new and emerging technologies. Innovation must also be fostered within Departments and Government bodies.

It is worrying that imports of illegal meats have doubled to almost 70,000 kg this year, which leaves us particularly vulnerable to African swine fever and foot and mouth disease. Although this must be tackled first and foremost by developing a joint strategy with Europol and Eurojust, the Government could also slash the demand for these illegal imports by allowing food producers to provide cuts and products favoured by different communities safely. For example, if skin-on lamb was produced in the UK, the incentive to import it illegally would fall to near zero.

Safeguarding the public must be one of the Government’s top priorities following 14 years of Conservative failure. Farmers’ confidence levels have slumped to a record low, and part of their restoration must be to provide biosecurity measures that will protect the UK from both existing threats and the threats of tomorrow.