Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether it is his policy that (a) the Environmental Land Management scheme and (b) transitional land management schemes will fund only practices that are higher than existing regulatory and cross-compliance standards and business as usual practice.

All farmers and land managers are expected to comply with all relevant regulation whether or not they are participating in the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme. The ELM will run alongside an effective regulatory regime to ensure legal regulatory requirements are met. This is the same for any transitional schemes.

The ELM is founded on the principle of paying “public money for public goods” to help achieve the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan and commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and will therefore not simply pay for compliance with legal regulatory standards.

We are working closely with a range of environmental and agricultural stakeholders to collaboratively design the new ELM scheme, including to determine exactly what the ELM will pay for.