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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to support the farming industry with changes in the level of milk price payments to primary producers.

The Government recognises that dairy farmers have faced a range of challenges in recent years including the impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a result, output prices reached record highs in 2022 and early 2023 due to the exceptional increase in input costs, although these have since fallen back to more historic levels. We have provided a range of support to the dairy sector during this period. This has included the advance of Basic Payment Scheme payments, a delay to the implementation of an industry-led scheme relating to the use of urea fertiliser, cuts to fuel duty and VAT, the Energy Relief Scheme, an increase in the Employment Allowance, and action on business rates to reduce bills. At the recent No 10 Food Summit, we also announced a £1m bespoke export support fund for the dairy sector, with a particular focus on support for SMEs.

We continue to monitor the dairy market and to work closely with producers, processors, and retailers across the sector to encourage recognition that the burden of rising costs can often fall heavily on farmers, and that these costs should be shared fairly across supply chains. We want all farmers to get a fair price for their products and following our supply chain fairness review of the dairy sector we have brought forward plans for contractual regulation in the sector to strengthen fairness and transparency, ensuring farmers are treated fairly.  It remains our intention to introduce the regulations to Parliament later this year.