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 adequacy of the amount of notice the National Farmers' Union was provided with before his Department announced that the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme would be closed to new applications.

As with all demand-led schemes there comes a point when they are fully-subscribed. We ensured farmers and their representative bodies were made aware when that happened.