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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that tenant farmers on short-term, restrictive Farm Business Tenancies will not be constrained from entering new Environmental Land Management Schemes by their landlords.

Our approach to environmental land management is the cornerstone of our new agricultural policy. Farming efficiently and improving the environment can go hand in hand.

The Government is working to ensure that the design of our future farming schemes is accessible to as many farmers as possible including tenant farmers. For example, we have designed the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme rules for 2022 to have shorter agreements and more flexibility, to better suit tenant farmers, and we have removed the requirement to demonstrate landlord consent. We are exploring and testing how our new schemes might work in practice across different types of holdings and different types and lengths of tenancy agreements.

As part of the development of our new schemes, we have considered the needs of tenants and worked closely with a number of organisations including the Tenant Farmers Association, Country Land and Business Association and National Farmers' Union. We are looking into the problem raised, and will work with these organisations and other stakeholders, to understand whether there is anything we need to do to ensure tenants are not excluded from schemes.

We are also working with tenants through our pilot, test and trials and user research.