Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support he plans to make available for farmers and land managers prior to the roll out of the Environmental Land Management scheme in 2024 to enable the delivery of environmental public goods.
We will continue to offer an improved and simplified Countryside Stewardship scheme until 2024. We continue to see a sustained high level of engagement with the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, and it provides a stepping stone to the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme. From next year, as well as supporting farmers through schemes including a farming resilience fund and sustainable productivity programme, we will be testing and piloting ELM. We are considering what elements of ELM we could make available as part of the transition to the full rollout of ELM in 2024, which could include incentives for sustainable farming. We are currently working up these proposals in more detail.