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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding redirected from the Basic Payment Scheme to new schemes as part of the Government’s Agricultural Transition Plan has been spent on additional staff and contractors for her Department.

The farming budget in England is an average £2.4bn per year to 2024/25. We are now two years into our 7-year transition period where we are phasing out farm subsidies and instead investing the money in farming and the environment. The budget available for the sector is the same. We are committed to being transparent about the budget and how it is spent. We included in the Agriculture Act a requirement for government to publish an annual report about the budget, and we did this for the first time in 2022. Future Farming and Countryside Programme annual report, 2021 to 2022 (HTML version) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

That report set out that during 2021/22 a total of £2.294bn was spent, including £2.274bn being paid to farmers and land managers. £20m was spent on Technical Assistance to support the design, implementation and delivery of schemes within the programme, including staff and contractors, representing less than 1% of the total spend. That amount aligns with the levels spent under CAP.

There is not a like for like comparison of the reductions applied to Direct Payments being invested in new schemes in a given year since the original composition of the £2.4bn included RDPE schemes as well as Direct Payments and the budget is an average across this Parliament.