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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will instruct the Environment Agency to prioritise water for food production when assessing winter abstraction applications.

The Environment Agency (EA) allocates water to abstractors through an abstraction licensing system to secure the proper and efficient use of water resources while having regard to the reasonable needs of all applicants. The EA abstraction licensing system does not favour one use of water over another.

The EA is proactively working with the agricultural sector to provide additional access to water where needed, including by considering applications to abstract outside of normal licence conditions.

Defra and the EA work closely with agricultural sector groups, including the National Farmers Union, on Farming Transformation Fund grants to be awarded for construction of new reservoirs.