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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to enable agri-environment agreement applications before the current agreements expire.

Farmers with existing agri-agreements can apply to enter the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) if the activities under each scheme are compatible and they will not be paid twice for a similar activity on the same area of land at the same time. We are fully committed to making the Environmental Land Management schemes work for all farmers. We will confirm plans for further rollout of the schemes as soon as possible.