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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of progress on rolling out the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2023 in (a) North Northamptonshire and (b) England.

We are rolling out the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2023 in a controlled way, making sure we offer everyone the right level of support.

We invited Basic Payment Scheme eligible farmers to register interest for SFI2023 with the Rural Payments Agency from 30 August 2023. Over 14,000 farmers have done so, representing one in six. This process is already being simplified, with the majority of farmers no longer needing to registrations of interest as of this week.

We started to accept applications from 18 September. I am pleased to confirm the first payments were made yesterday.