Daniel Zeichner MP: speeches

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Speeches

26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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Of course, the hon. Gentleman will know that there was never clarity on the pace of that transition. I can also tell him that, despite his assertions earlier, the announcement on the changing level of delinked payments was actually made back in October—but I will make some progress now. It is astonishing that, listening to the Opposition, a person would not understand that the amount of money going into the system is exactly the same as before—in fact, it is more. The question is how it is distributed. There are legitimate grounds for a discussion on that, but that was never done by the previous Government. We inherited schemes and we have had to work with them. We will try to improve them, because I have many criticisms of them myself, but these are the previous Government’s policies that we are implementing. In fact, the previous Government should be proud of some successes because we now have 37,900—maybe 38,000—people in SFI. We initially inherited a situation which was under-subscribed; it is now oversubscribed. That is a success. The question for the future is how we can find ways to bring more people in to it. The Opposition need to understand that once the budget has been spent, it is spent. We cannot keep spending time after time. That is a basic principle that they did not seem to understand in general when they were in government, and they are illustrating that again today. I am interested to know whether they understand the consequences of voting against the legislation today, because I can tell them what those are.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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A figure is a figure—£5 billion. Many thought that that would not be achieved in the spending review, and I am very proud of it. We are happy to be able to provide that amount of money, which is actually going out to farmers, rather than being held back as it was under the previous Government, who failed to spend the money.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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No—I am going to conclude now. Delinked payments are not the answer to the long-term challenges farmers face, despite the Opposition’s hankering after them. This Government will not shy away from making the right and tough decisions to build a profitable and sustainable farming sector and to deliver Britain’s food security. Reductions in the 2025 delinked payments are necessary so that we can fund our committed and planned spend under our other farming schemes, which support sustainable food production, exactly as I have laid out, including meeting the unprecedented demand for capital grants, which will reopen in a few months’ time. The money released from the reductions to delinked payments is being fully reinvested through our other schemes. I reiterate that every penny is staying within the sector. This instrument is the essential next step as we continue to move away from the failed, untargeted payments of the past. It enables us to invest in the long-term future of farming while delivering for nature. I commend the regulations to the Committee. Question put.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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We will find ourselves arguing over definitions. Many farmers will now be environmental land managers and will be able to get money for schemes that protect nature. We have allocated £1.8 billion in 2025-26 for the environmental land management schemes. That will boost Britain’s food security and accelerate the transition to a more resilient and sustainable farming sector. We are on track to spend the budget in full. Furthermore, record numbers of farmers—50,000 farm businesses—are in our environmental land management schemes, and more than half of all farmed land in England, more than 4 million hectares, is now managed under such schemes. That includes about 38,000 live multi-year sustainable farming incentive agreements. We expect to publish more information about our revamped SFI offer following the spending review. The new countryside stewardship higher tier offer will open for applications from invited farmers and land managers this summer. The stand-alone capital grants will also reopen this summer after a short pause. We are investing in about 50 landscape recovery projects, which were awarded funding through rounds 1 and 2. We recently announced increased payment rates for higher level stewardship across a range of options from this year. We are also extending the farming in protected landscapes programme until March 2026. That extension will support farmers in protected landscapes in transitioning towards profitable food production at the same time as delivering nature recovery and mitigating the impacts of climate change. We are continuing to invest in farmers through our other grant offers, with up to £110 million available in new grant competitions starting this spring. That includes up to £47 million for farming equipment and technology fund grants, as well as up to £63 million available for farming innovation programme grants. Those will help to improve productivity, trial new technologies and drive innovation in the sector. We are also expanding the animal health and welfare pathway, with more funded vet visits now available to farmers. Also, I am pleased that more than 26,000 farmers have made use of free one-to-one business support through the farming resilience fund to help them through the agricultural transition. By investing in healthy soils, abundant pollinators and clean water, the Government are investing in the foundations that farm businesses rely on to produce high crop yields and turn a profit. Adopting the sustainable farming practices rewarded under our schemes will also help farmers to reduce their input costs. Reducing delinked payments as planned enables us to make those investments through our other schemes. That will serve the best long-term interests of farming. We are also developing a 25-year farming road map to make the sector more profitable in the decades to come. As we set out in our “Plan for Change”, we are focused on supporting farmers, supporting rural economic growth and boosting Britain’s food security.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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I praise you for your forbearance, Mr Twigg; at one point, I thought you might move a closure motion yourself, because we have strayed a long way from delinked payments. In fact, we seem to be back in the general farming debate from a couple of weeks ago. I am astonished at Opposition Members’ complete lack of understanding of their own policies. I remember sitting in the shadow Minister’s seat five years ago, discussing the Agriculture Act 2020. Indeed, I raised some of the same points that the shadow Minister raised today. However, we are in a transition from the previous scheme, which paid out to everybody—the common agricultural policy and the £80,000 scheme—to a different scheme. It was always the case that some people would not get the money.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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A technical reason why an impact assessment was not produced is that this is not a regulatory provision; however, we publish regular statistics on farm incomes and other data related to farm businesses. That includes the farm business income statistics published on 14 November 2024, and the plethora of farming evidence packs, which I refer Conservative Members to. I am sure they will find plenty of information available, including the recent figures, which suggest that farm incomes last year were rather better than previously. I hope we can proceed on the basis that we are moving to a different system, which is about environmental land management. I recognise the impact that the changes will have on some farmers, which is why we are trying to introduce them in the fairest way possible. We are applying the reductions in payment bands in the same way as the income tax bands work, which means that those with the broadest shoulders will see the highest reductions. I assure the Committee that every penny of the reductions in delinked payments stay within the sector. The planned reductions will help to fund investment in environmental land management schemes and our other grants for farmers. Our support for farmers remains absolutely steadfast. We have committed £5 billion to the farming budget over a two-year period, with £2.4 billion of that for 2025-26. That includes the largest ever budget directed at sustainable food production and nature recovery in our country’s history.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman is right up to a point, but he is missing the point of the agricultural transition, which is a move to environmental land management payments. The economic impact is a secondary consequence. All those figures were there, however, and still hold good.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I will come to broader arguments about what we are putting in place in a moment, but the reason why it appears that no impact statement was done is that impact statements were done earlier in the process, when this was all looked at as a consequence of the Agriculture Act 2020 being passed. I am happy to point him back to all the charts and figures that were available at the time and have been available throughout.
26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 13 February. They set out the reductions that will apply to delinked payments in England in 2025. The reductions are part of the transition to more targeted public investment, supporting farmers to boost nature and sustainable food production. The Government will support businesses to be more profitable, addressing the underlying problems. Delinked payments do not achieve that. Delinked payments do not offer and have never offered good value for money for farmers or the taxpayer. They are part of the move away from the basic payment scheme that saw 50% of the money go to the top 10% of farms, while doing little for food production or nature. We are now in the fifth year of the seven-year transition away from those subsidies, and some of us have been involved in these same discussions year on year over those five years. The reductions to delinked payments set out in this draft instrument were announced last October. They accelerate the end of the era of payouts to large and wealthy landowners simply for owning land.
20 Mar 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs · Hansard source
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I suggest that the shadow Minister goes out and speaks to a few more people, because I was stopped in a local village just this weekend and encouraged — [ Interruption. ] I am not going to name names, but he should check with some of his Conservative candidates in elections. They said, “Keep on going, you are doing the right thing.” The situation is not as the shadow Minister describes. He might do well to look at the figures for projected farm business incomes for this year, which show that in many sectors, those business incomes are doing rather well. That probably explains why people are not as exercised about it as him.
20 Mar 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs · Hansard source
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I hear the hon. Gentleman’s complaint, but I have been to Devon in my role before, and I will come to Devon again. I am always happy to meet farmers. I have spent quite a lot of time at this Dispatch Box answering questions from Conservative Members, so perhaps fewer questions will mean more time to go out and meet farmers.
20 Mar 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs · Hansard source
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Around 500 claims each year will be impacted. Our reforms will mean that farmers will pay a reduced inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the standard 40%, and payments can be spread over 10 years interest free. Farm-owning couples can pass on up to £3 million without paying inheritance tax. In our view, this is a fair and balanced approach, and should be seen against the backdrop of the Government committing £5 billion for farming over two years—the largest budget directed at sustainable food production and nature’s recovery in our country’s history.
20 Mar 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman always speaks with passion about his constituents, and I absolutely understand those concerns. He is right to say that the schemes we inherited did not reward those areas as well as they should. That is why in our announcement a few weeks ago, we increased the higher level stewardship payments by £30 million, which will be of particular advantage to people in his area. I agree with him, and the schemes we inherited were not good enough. That is why we are revising them.
20 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Looking ahead, the future can be very exciting for farming, but as the Secretary of State said, we have to establish farming as a profitable sector. We will work with the hon. Gentleman’s farmers to ensure that vision is realised.
20 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am sure that my hon. Friend’s cats, who I am told are called Clem Cattlee and Mo Meowlam, will be delighted to hear that the Government are looking very closely at the Animal Welfare Committee’s opinion on the welfare implications of current and emergent feline breeding practices. I can assure them that we are carefully considering the committee’s recommendations.
20 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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rose—
20 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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This is why we will be introducing a land-use framework—to ensure that we can make rational decisions about how land is used to best effect.
20 Mar 2025 · Prioritising British Produce: Public Bodies · Hansard source
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As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law), the first thing we needed to do was establish how much we are actually buying, and that is now in progress. I absolutely get the point about the urgency. The question is why doing this took the previous Government so long when they shared our ambition. We are determined to make this happen.
20 Mar 2025 · Prioritising British Produce: Public Bodies · Hansard source
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I am grateful for the question from my hon. Friend. We are absolutely determined to make the best of this opportunity, not least because the previous Government did not know how much we were actually buying. The Secretary of State has announced that we will monitor the food bought in the public sector, and that will inform our policy of making sure that British farmers make the most of the opportunity for public procurement.
20 Mar 2025 · Prioritising British Produce: Public Bodies · Hansard source
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The new national procurement policy statement sets out requirements for Government contracts, and favours high-quality products that we believe British producers are very well placed to supply. This will support our ambition to ensure that half of the food supplied for public sector catering comes from local producers, or those certified to higher environmental standards.
13 Mar 2025 · Farming · Hansard source
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I am the farmers’ friend.
13 Mar 2025 · Farming · Hansard source
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I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and congratulate him on securing this very important debate on the future of farming. I will not say that I agreed with all his conclusions in his opening comments, although I listened to them closely, but I thank him and his fellow members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for their continuing work. I look forward to meeting his Committee in time. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to talk about the very important role that farming plays in this country, because food security is national security, and our commitment to farmers is absolutely steadfast. It is the hard work of the UK’s farmers that puts food on our tables and stewards our beautiful countryside. As we all know, though, the sector is facing high costs and tight margins. Farmers have struggled to get enough workers to pick fruit and veg, and frankly, they have been sold out in past trade deals. Farmland is increasingly at risk from severe flooding and drought, and this all comes as we face the biggest transition for farming in generations, moving away from the basic payment scheme towards more sustainable methods of farming. The underlying problem in the sector is that farmers do not make enough money for the hard work and commitment that they put in. We are absolutely committed to making farming more profitable, and that approach will underpin our 25-year farming road map and our food strategy, through which we will work in partnership with farmers to make farming and food production sustainable and profitable. That road map stands on three principles, the first of which is a sector that has food production at its core. The role of farming will always be to produce the food that feeds our nation. The instability that we have seen, both relating to Ukraine and during covid, shows that food security truly is national security. The second principle is a sector in which farm businesses are more resilient and able to withstand the shocks that disrupt farming from time to time, whether it be severe flooding, drought or disease. We will help farmers who want to diversify their income to put more money into their business, so that they can survive those more difficult times when they come.
13 Mar 2025 · Farming · Hansard source
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We have been far more transparent in disclosing how the budgets work than the previous Government. The figure was disclosed last night, and the shadow Secretary of State can look closely at that. As she will know, we have to monitor things closely over multiple years. What we cannot and will not do is play fast and loose with the nation’s finances. We are taking no lessons from the Conservatives about how to manage public money in this country. This is about using public money in a way that supports food production, restores nature and respects farmers for the effective business people that they are, while ensuring that we stick to our budgets. We are also improving other farming schemes. The Government have announced an increase in higher level stewardship payment rates across a range of options for this year. We will reopen the ELM capital grant scheme and open the rolling application window for the countryside stewardship higher tier later this year. We are continuing with the important landscape recovery projects that were awarded funding in rounds 1 and 2, as well as some of the other funds referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury). It is those three strands that will create a resilient, profitable sector for decades to come. I look forward to continuing this important discussion with Members from all parts of the House.
13 Mar 2025 · Farming · Hansard source
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I am going to make some progress, because I know that time is short. The third principle is a sector that recognises that restoring nature is not in competition with sustainable food production, but is essential to it. On our first strand—food production—our new deal for farmers is supporting them to produce food sustainably and profitably, and we are making progress. Statistics released earlier this week show that average farm business incomes across the country are forecast to rise in the first year of this Government. That is welcome news, but we recognise that there is more to do. That certainly will not happen overnight, but over recent weeks, we have announced a series of new policies. We are extending the seasonal worker visas for five years, and we are making the supply chain fairer, an issue raised by my hon. Friends the Members for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter). In the next few weeks, we will see new regulations for the pig sector, making sure that contracts clearly set out expectations and only allow changes if they are agreed by all parties. Of course, we are also introducing a new regulator alongside the Groceries Code Adjudicator, building on the work of the existing regulator—the Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator, which is already in place. We are using the Government’s own purchasing power to back British produce, working with the Cabinet Office to create new requirements for Government catering contracts to favour high-quality, high-welfare products that British producers are well placed to provide, as was outlined very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley). That will mean that British farmers and producers can compete for a fairer share of the £5 billion a year that the public sector spends on food, with that money going straight into farmers’ bank accounts to boost turnover and profits. We will never lower our food standards in trade agreements, but will promote robust standards nationally and internationally, and will always consider whether overseas produce has an unfair advantage. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) and by others. We are investing in the UK agri-technology sector, and I listened closely to the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman)—there is always much that we agree on. As we announced last month, we are looking to put in a further £110 million in farming grants, and we are also strengthening the wider British tech sector, a point that was made well by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer). These reforms will support farmers to make more money from the food they produce. On the second strand, diversification, farmers must be resilient against future challenges if they are to remain financially viable and strengthen food security. We know the threat from flooding, drought and animal disease, as well as the geopolitical tensions that increase demands on our land for energy generation. We are investing to help farm businesses build resilience against animal diseases that can devastate livelihoods and threaten our entire economy—we are all mindful of the issues with bluetongue and avian flu. On the recent case of foot and mouth that we saw in Germany and the one in Hungary, I spoke to the Hungarian Minister earlier this week, and we have put in place all the appropriate precautions. As ever, though, if the shadow Secretary of State wants a briefing with the chief vet, that is always available in these cases. We are investing over £200 million to set up a new national biosecurity centre, modernising the Animal and Plant Health Agency facilities in Weybridge, which will be vital for protecting farmers, food producers and exporters from disease outbreaks that we know can be devastating to businesses. We are helping keepers of cattle, sheep and pigs in England to improve the health, welfare and productivity of their animals by expanding the fully funded farm visits offer. We have also announced new ways to help farmers to remain profitable and viable, even in a challenging harvest. We will consult on national planning reforms this spring to make it quicker for farmers to build new buildings, barns and other infrastructure to boost food production, and we will ensure that permitted development rights work for farms to convert larger barns into whatever is required or suits their business planning, whether that is a farm shop, a holiday let or a sports facility. We are working with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero so that more farm businesses can connect their own electricity generation to the grid more quickly, so that farmers can sell surplus energy and diversify income. The third element is nature. Restoring nature is vital to food production; it is not in competition with it. Healthy soils, abundant pollinators and clean water are the foundations that farm businesses rely on to produce high crop yields and turn a profit. Without nature thriving, there can be no long-term food security. That point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy). We now have more than half of all farmers in environmental schemes. That includes 37,000 live SFI agreements, meaning that 800,000 hectares of arable land is being farmed without insecticides, 300,000 hectares of low-impact grassland is managed sustainably and 75,000 km of hedgerows are being protected and restored. That is important for nature. We have already had a discussion about the SFI cap. It is set at £1.05 billion for 2024-25 and 2025-26. As we discussed yesterday, that cap was reached this week with a record number of farmers in the scheme and 37,000 live agreements. Every penny is now paid to farmers or committed for payment through existing agreements or submitted applications. We will continue to support farmers to transition to more sustainable farming models, and we will announce details of the revised scheme after the spending review.
12 Mar 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source
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indicated dissent.

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