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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of proposed changes to the delinked basic payment scheme on the profitability of farming businesses.

The Government has committed to support farmers through a farming budget of £5 billion over two years, including £2.4 billion in 2025/26. Accelerating the phase out of Direct Payments will allow us to focus more of this funding on Environmental Land Management schemes, which will boost nature and sustainable food production. This will enable farmers to make their businesses more sustainable and resilient, including those who have been often ignored such as small, grassland, upland and tenant farmers.

We publish regular statistics on farm income in England and other data related to farm businesses. For example, on 14 November 2024, we published our Farm Business Income statistics (Farm business income - GOV.UK), which looked at how farm business income has changed in 2023/24, including the contribution of Direct Payments and agri-environment payments to farm incomes, including analysis by farm type. Farming evidence packs have been recently updated including key statistics and farm performance (Farming statistics evidence packs - GOV.UK). These set out an extensive range of data to provide an overview of agriculture in the UK, and the contribution of farm payments to farm incomes, including analysis by sector, location in England and type of land tenure.

We will continue to carry out appropriate and timely assessments of our interventions to inform policy development.