Select committee: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Recommendation 18
Second Report - Environmental Land Management and the agricultural transition
Published 28 Oct 2021
Paragraph 96
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)
Past experience has shown the potential for failures in digital delivery to do real damage to farmers’ trust in Government. We recognise that Defra has decided to initially use a simplified version of existing systems rather than attempting to build something from scratch. However, the Government’s plans for ELM are far more ambitious than previous schemes, and concerns have previously been raised that it will find itself playing catch-up if it realises too late that its systems are not suitable. This must not be allowed to happen. Defra should explain in its response its approach to ensuring that it will have suitable and scalable IT systems in place to deliver the full ELM scheme from 2024.
From: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Second Report - Environmental Land Management and the agricultural transition (HC 78), paragraph 96, 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.