Select committee: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Recommendation 2
Second Report - Environmental Land Management and the agricultural transition
Published 28 Oct 2021
Paragraph 21
Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Environmental Land Management and the agricultural transition All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Considerable uncertainty remains about how the 7-year agricultural transition will affect English farming. As direct payments are withdrawn, there is a risk that farmers will resort to less environmentally sustainable methods to make up for lost income, leave the sector or go out of business entirely. We are concerned that Defra has not published a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of its policy, and the Secretary of State himself acknowledged to us that we know who will lose money but not how many will take up the new schemes. The Secretary of State also told us that land rents “might” adjust downwards, but has not adequately demonstrated this. The Department needs to make a detailed and comprehensive assessment of the economic and environmental impacts of removing direct payments. Defra should publish an impact assessment, covering plausible scenarios, detailing how the transition from direct payments to ELM will impact the viability of farm businesses, broken down by sector and by region. Defra should also detail the anticipated environmental impacts if the delivery and uptake of ELM falls short of its ambitions, for instance, if farmers decide that it makes more financial sense to intensify production than to enter into ELM.
From: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Second Report - Environmental Land Management and the agricultural transition (HC 78), paragraph 21, 28 October 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 20 January 2022 (deadline 28 December 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and says it "strongly agrees" that the agricultural transition must work for farmers and contribute to environmental objectives, while declining some specific recommendations.
- On the phasing out of Direct Payments, the Government says it is "not planning to change the profile of Direct Payments reductions", stating that suggesting otherwise would create "unnecessary and unhelpful uncertainty".
- On the budget, it will honour the £2.4 billion annual commitment to 2024/25 but is "unable to commit" beyond that, as future budgets will be decided by future governments.
- On engagement, it agrees it "can and should do more" to explain how engagement has informed scheme design, and plans to increase engagement activity in 2022.
- On whole-farm standards, it does not mandate entering whole farms into the Sustainable Farming Incentive, citing challenges, but is "continuing to investigate" land management plans through the pilot.