Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Thirty-First Report - Environmental Land Management Scheme
Public Accounts Committee
HC 639
Published 9 January 2022
Recommendations
5
The Department has not yet done enough to gain farmers’ trust in its ability to...
Recommendation
The Department has not yet done enough to gain farmers’ trust in its ability to successfully deliver the programme. Farmers’ confidence in the Department was severely damaged by a poor history of delivery under previous agricultural subsidy schemes, and the …
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HM Treasury
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Conclusions (30)
2
Conclusion
The Department has not established the metrics that it will need to determine whether ELM is contributing towards the government’s environmental goals. The Department has set out its high-level vision for ELM, which is to secure a range of positive environmental benefits and to help tackle some of the environmental …
3
Conclusion
We are not convinced that the Department sufficiently understands how its environmental and productivity ambitions will impact the food and farming sector over the next decade. Farmers will be required to free up land currently used for food production to produce environmental benefits, for example converting farmland to forestry. This …
4
Conclusion
Despite committing to delaying the early stages of SFI if either the Department or farmers were not ready, the Department has not specified what would trigger such a delay. Opinion within the farming sector is divided over whether the Department’s timetable is realistic or whether delaying the start of roll-out …
6
Conclusion
The Department is not doing enough to support farmers through the transition to the new schemes and alleviate any anxiety its plans are causing. The removal of direct payments would have reduced the average net profit of farms in England by 53% over the last three years to only £22,800. …
7
Conclusion
We are concerned that ELM will be too complex and bureaucratic, and will not cater for the full range of farm types and circumstances. The Department has used a process of ‘co-design’ to develop the scheme, working closely with both stakeholders and a panel of farmers. Stakeholders describe feeling very …
1
Conclusion
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (the Department) and the Rural Payments Agency.2 We also took evidence from the National Farmers’ Union, the Tenant Farmers Association, the Royal Society for the Protection …
8
Conclusion
The ELM scheme consists of three components: • The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which will pay farmers for actions to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way; 2 C&AG’s Report, The Environmental Land Management scheme, Session 2021–22, HC 664, 15 September 2021 3 C&AG’s Report, para 1 - 3 …
9
Conclusion
The Department has committed to making the first payments under SFI22 by Christmas 2022. Despite the tight timescales and continuing uncertainty around the launch of SFI22 next year, the stakeholders we heard from were divided on whether a delay to the roll-out and to the reduction in direct payments was …
10
Conclusion
In contrast, the RSPB told us that there had already been a lot of unnecessary delay to the roll-out of the scheme so far, which added to the urgency of getting the scheme right quickly. It explained that the roll-out of SFI22 needed to make sure it was sending a …
11
Conclusion
Given the serious problems the Committee has reported on previous agricultural payment schemes, and the impacts of COVID-19, we asked the Department whether it had considered a delay, and whether its timetable for delivering SFI22 included any contingency to allow this as some stakeholders had asked. The Department assured us …
12
Conclusion
The NAO found that Department does not have detailed delivery plans for the programme beyond March 2022, and has not carried out an overall assessment to demonstrate that SFI22 is deliverable.27 The Department told us that its current assessment was that it would be able to deliver to the timeframes …
13
Conclusion
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs has a history of failure when developing systems to support subsidy payments for farmers, and this history means that it is starting with a low level of trust from the sector.30 In 2016, the previous Committee examined the Department’s delivery of new …
14
Conclusion
The Department is developing the ELM scheme through a system of ‘co-design’, which they have now started to refer to as “co-creation”. This is working collaboratively with farmers and others to obtain continuous feedback and input as they iterate the design of the programme.34 Both the National Farmers’ Union and …
15
Conclusion
An important test of whether the Department’s approach will be successful is the pilot for SFI, for which applications opened in July 2021. The SFI pilot will test how farmers respond to the scheme’s design and systems, the approach to farm inspections and compliance, and ease of use of current …
16
Conclusion
The Tenant Farmers Association told us that its members participating in the pilot were finding the scheme guidance confusing, with an onus on farmers to decide what they think is best to enable the delivery of public goods.48 The National Farmers’ Union told us that it had received similar feedback …
17
Conclusion
As part of the new scheme, direct payments to farmers will reduce by 55% by 2024– 25 before being phased out completely. The NAO found that the Department expects the reduction in direct payments and introduction of its replacement arrangements to have a significant impact on profits for many farmers. …
18
Conclusion
We asked the Department what farmers were feeling about the new scheme and the reduction in direct payments. The Department recognised that while some saw the scheme as a “welcome opportunity to embrace a new future”, some feel very threatened by it and were anxious about the future.54 The RPA …
19
Conclusion
The mental health of farmers is one of the biggest challenges currently facing the sector. In October 2021, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution reported that almost half of the farming community (47%) were experiencing some form of anxiety, and 36% were probably or possibly depressed.57 In light of the Department’s …
20
Conclusion
The Department views 2021 as year one of seven in its efforts to regain farmers’ trust, but the NAO highlighted that it had had over three years since the first publication of its plans in February 2018 to start regaining the confidence of the farming industry. Farmers have been looking …
21
Conclusion
The Tenant Farmers Association also told us that young farmers had been promised that there would be a scheme specifically to support them to enter the farming industry, but that it had not seen this come forward. It asserted that the information that had been made available so far was …
22
Conclusion
The Department acknowledged that without the detail of plans, its confidence in the scheme could appear to be “just blind optimism as far as farmers are concerned”.63 Since then, the Department has published further information on how the Sustainable Farming Incentive will work in 2022, including payment rates for the …
23
Conclusion
The Department asserted that farmer confidence and trust in its plans is improving. The Farmer Opinion Tracker survey carried out in October 2020 found that only 30% of farmers said they had all or most of the information they needed to plan their business. The Department told us that its …
24
Conclusion
Although the Department has set out its high-level vision for ELM through six ‘outcomes’ set out in the 25-Year Environment Plan, it has not yet defined the specific objectives that it will be using to measure ELM’s success against this vision. HM Treasury’s Green Book highlights the importance of having …
25
Conclusion
The NAO recommended that the Department should urgently agree a clear, realistic and logical set of strategic objectives for ELM. We asked when we could expect these to be in place. The Department also acknowledged the importance of setting these objectives. It told us that it had developed a draft …
26
Conclusion
We told the Department that we were concerned about the lack of baseline data, and asked what data it will use to measure environmental improvements.70 In its written evidence, the Green Alliance emphasised the importance of being able to measure outcomes in order to demonstrate value for money. It recommended …
27
Conclusion
ELM and other agricultural policies are expected to contribute to government’s environmental objectives, such as species abundance and the 25-Year Environment Plan. However, the RSPB highlighted that there is no overarching vision for agriculture in England or for how ELM will contribute to these wider objectives.73 The recently published net-zero …
28
Conclusion
In addition to the six environmental goals set out in the 25-Year Environment Plan, the Department expects the Future Farming and Countryside Programme to help improve farm productivity. It explained that its work to improve productivity would focus on the resilience of the sector and enabling “the least productive farmers …
29
Conclusion
We asked whether the design of ELM meant that land would be taken out of production and the UK would therefore either need to import more food or food prices would rise as a result. Professor Rob Fraser told us that the UK was a large net importer of food, …
30
Conclusion
The Department told us that it did not think that ELM’s focus on environmental management would result in the UK importing more food. It explained that the scheme was also designed to boost productivity so that, despite taking land out of production to deliver environmental benefits, farmers can produce more …
31
Conclusion
The Tenant Farmers Association told us that the introduction of the new scheme was a major concern for its members, and that it would be important that the scheme contained options to meet the specific needs of both tenant farmers and of small farms. It emphasised that these were not …