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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 3 November to Question 85521 on Farmers: Mental Health and Productivity, for what reason the Department does not intend to undertake such research.

We undertake research where evidence does not exist to inform the policy decisions we take and our future research priorities will in part be guided by the Farming Roadmap when that is published next year. We know from working with farming charities that there are significant impacts from poor mental health in farming and have utilised their research, such as the Big Farming Survey, to understand the factors influencing mental health and resulting from, including productivity.