Daniel Zeichner
MP for Cambridge · Labour · United Kingdom
“Just a few months earlier, the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board published research showing that the growth corridor has produced 740 university spin-outs—almost 70% more than the fabled Bay area in America—and produces more scientific publications per resident than anywhere else in the world.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the optimism and confidence that the Budget brings, but I add one word of caution. The success and strength of cities such as Cambridge, and of the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, is based on the strength of our universities.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I understand and appreciate that there are long-term structural issues, but it is dangerous to allow universities to get so close to the financial brink, and it potentially undermines the success of the Ox-Cam corridor and cities like Cambridge. We should be optimistic about our future.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As I said, I think it goes back over decades, and it needs to be reversed. I thought the most radical measure in the Chancellor’s statement was the fiscal devolution. I am someone who, along with many others in the Chamber, has argued for business rates retention over many years. I look forward to seeing how that plays out.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Gentleman, although I am not sure that the Liberal Democrats are always quite so bold when it comes to local decision making. It is a pleasure to support the measures announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I have known him for many years, and he certainly knows Cambridge well.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That goes some way towards explaining how we can be a country that, by international and historical standards, is well off, yet has a general sense of unhappiness. The fragmentation and privatisation of public services and spaces, widely attributed to decisions made in the 1980s, have come back to haunt us.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), with us, and he will know full well how difficult it is to drive these rural issues from DEFRA. I made a particular pitch to be the rural Minister in Labour’s team in the Commons—which is different from before—and I am absolutely determined that these rural issues get a fair hearing.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing the debate. The number of speakers shows how much interest there is, and many points have been covered—too many for me to cover in a short time, although I will do my best. Both Front-Bench spokespeople—the hon. Members for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore)—raised the issue of the SFI, which I addressed in a statement earlier today. I thought the shadow Minister started so well when he talked about the challenge that faces any Government, given the cross-departmental nature of these issues. We are honoured to have a former Secretary of State, the right hon.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have done a number of visits in my first few months that have shown me the importance of applying the Government’s missions in rural areas—particularly our aims to grow the economy, develop clean energy and tackle crime. I went to Northumberland to see the excellent work of the national rural crime unit. I spoke to a number of farmers who have sadly had expensive equipment stolen, and I spoke to volunteer crimewatch groups. I have also been to Warwickshire recently to see the positive effect that can be achieved through community shops and community initiatives that ensure that community facilities are in place, such as village halls. I will be doing many more visits around the country and seeing many more of those.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We made the decision last night, based on many months of following the budgets, but as I explained earlier, the logic of the change to the system is that if there is a fixed amount of budget, I am afraid there comes a point when the system is full. Members have raised many other issues, but because we have a three-hour Backbench Business debate on farming in the Chamber tomorrow, I will move on and thank the hon. Member for South Devon for bringing this debate forward. I had an opportunity to visit her lovely constituency very early in my tenure as Minister. I thought she gave a very good account, as did many other Members, of the broad range of challenges faced in rural areas. I am committed to the rural brief.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is right. It is long overdue. I have had detailed conversations already with colleagues in the Home Office about how we can take this issue forward, and there will be further announcements in due course. We have been looking at a range of issues that are important to rural areas, but we recognise that there are very specific challenges, a number of which have been touched on today. We also know that direct support through funding programmes is important. That is why we announced last week that up to £33 million will be directed to the rural England prosperity fund and used to help businesses in rural areas to expand. That will create jobs, kick-start the rural economy and help to improve local infrastructure and essential services.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Through the shared rural network, which has helped to deliver 4G mobile coverage to 95% of the UK a year ahead of target, we are continuing to deliver 4G connectivity to places where there is the kind of limited coverage that has been described. We know that there are still parts that lag behind, and we will work with the industry to deliver improved coverage to those communities via the shared rural network.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We fully appreciate that that can be much more costly and time-consuming, leading to the frustrations that have been described. I listened closely to my near-neighbour, the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), when she spoke about local bus services. She will know that the mayor of the combined authority in Cambridgeshire has used powers to move to franchising for bus services. We have set out wider plans for the future in our bus services Bill, which will give local leaders the tools they need to ensure that bus services reflect the needs of the communities they serve. The digital issue, which the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) has just raised, is central to our view of the future. It was also highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Ossett and Denby Dale (Jade Botterill).”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Member is absolutely right to raise that important point, which I will come to in a moment. I was about to mention the £5 million in funding for capital grants for the refurbishment and development of community-owned assets such as village halls and community centres. That funding will also support rural housing enablers, who are very important in bringing forward sites to provide affordable housing. We are also providing further funding for Actions with Communities in Rural England to provide advice and support to rural communities and voluntary groups such as those that I mentioned visiting recently. I recognise the descriptions from a number of colleagues of the need to travel further to access work, education and training.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The response to the consultation reflected on the higher costs of housing delivery in rural areas and the fact that we want more affordable housing in those areas as part of our ambition to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation. We will consider how policy can better promote rural affordable housing and wider exception site policies as part of the work we do to introduce those policies later in 2025. Hon. Members touched on energy costs, which are a huge challenge for rural areas. I am very aware that fuel poverty rates are higher in rural communities. Many homes are off the gas grid and are therefore more susceptible to fuel price fluctuations. The hon. Member for South Devon asked about the index of rural deprivation report. I am told that it will be published later this year.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is a very long-running debate that goes back over decades. I will do all I can to persuade the Chancellor of the needs of rural Britain. Project Gigabit continues to be rolled out. It is delivering gigabit-capable broadband to many UK premises, many of which are situated in rural communities that are not in the commercial roll-out plans. Hon. Members touched on housing. Access to genuinely affordable homes is absolutely essential. The current housing shortage is driving up rents, leaving some of the most vulnerable without access to a safe and secure home. We are reforming planning policy, but I will not try to cover that complicated problem in one minute. Last year, the Government ran a consultation on the national planning policy framework.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am absolutely determined to drive forward the rural agenda across Government. This debate gives me some confidence that there is support across the House for that endeavour. I am absolutely determined that rural areas will play a key role in delivering the national missions the Government have set out and will share in the benefits they bring.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Most importantly, we need to work with clinicians and local communities to ensure that we get those systems right. Finally, local government is a huge issue that cannot be covered in one minute, I am afraid, but we are making available significant new funding. That includes £1.3 billion in the local government financial settlement for 2025-26, including £600 million to support the most deprived areas, including in shire districts, through the new recovery grant. Alongside that, our commitments can be judged against a guarantee that no local authority will see a reduction in its core spending power in 2025-26, after taking account of any increase in council tax. That will provide protections so that all authorities, including district councils, can sustain their services between years.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The health service is a hugely important issue, and I very much agree with the point my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) made about the 8 am scramble. He is absolutely right, and that is just as important in rural areas as anywhere else. His point about dentistry was very well made; it is being addressed, but much more will need to be done. Demographics show that as people age, many move out of cities to coastal and rural areas. They will need more care, but they increasingly live in places where it is more difficult to provide it, and that needs to be reflected in the way we approach these issues. Integrated care systems will have a role in designing services that meet the needs of local people, but I heard the point about the algorithm; I will go away and look at that.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am afraid I will not give way. I am very conscious that I will run out of time. We will need to look at skills and opportunities in rural areas. I was very struck by the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) made about schools. It was all too typical of my experience of the way rural communities often feel they are left out. We are planning to expand our childcare and early years system, drive up standards and modernise the school curriculum. We will boost rural and agricultural skills by reforming the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy. We will also be opening new specialist technical excellence colleges to give rural people a chance to develop the skills they need to empower rural businesses to play a bigger role in the skills revolution.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We announced a new set of policies at the National Farmers Union conference last month aimed at improving farm profitability, securing our food security, and protecting nature. Through our farming road map, we are creating the conditions for farmers to run profitable businesses that can withstand future challenges. This decision is about investing in long-term stability. It is about a future where farmers are supported to run profitable businesses, and where public money is used in a better way to better restore nature and to secure long-term food security.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We will work closely with the sector to design an improved scheme so that they can tell us what works best for their businesses. We will also put in place strong budgetary controls so that SFI is affordable to the public purse. The revised offer will align with our land use framework to better target SFI actions fairly and effectively, focusing on helping less productive land contribute to our priorities for food, farming and nature. The underlying problem facing the sector, however, is that farmers do not make enough money. The Government are changing that. [Interruption.] Opposition Members may laugh but businesses do need to make money; they might need to know that.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But this is an opportunity to improve how we do that under a fair and just farming transition, which supports farms to be profitable businesses in their own right through fairer supply chains, better regulation and greater market access, and directs public funding in a fair and orderly way towards the priorities that we have set out on food, farming and nature. We will be strategic in how we design our schemes, and responsible within the available budget. This is about using public money in a way that supports food production, restores nature and respects farmers as the business people they are. SFI can and must work better for all farms and for nature, and I will set out the details of the revised SFI offer following the spending review, including when it will open for applications.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If they entered into a three-year SFI agreement earlier this year, they will be paid until 2028. If they submitted an SFI application but this has not yet started, that will also be honoured. All farmers who took part in the SFI pilot will be able to apply for an agreement. With the high uptake of the scheme, however, the fact is that it is now fully subscribed. This Government inherited SFI with no spending cap, despite a finite farming budget, and that cannot continue. We will continue to support farmers to transition to more sustainable farming models including through the thousands of existing SFI agreements over the coming years and a revamped SFI offer.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have responded directly to calls from the sector to roll out a new higher-tier scheme, and to increase payment rates so that higher-level stewardship agreement holders—many of them upland farmers—are fairly rewarded for their work. More than half of all farmers are now in schemes, with 37,000 live SFI agreements and 50,000 farmers in ELM agreements. Under the SFI, 800,000 hectares of arable land are being farmed without insecticides, 300,000 hectares of low-input grassland are managed sustainably, and 75,000 km of hedgerows are being protected and restored, which is a huge success for nature. I thank all farmers involved and reassure them that all existing SFI agreements will be honoured. Farmers will continue to be paid under the terms of their agreement for its duration.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is £1.8 billion for customers already in agreements, £1 billion for farmers now in SFI agreements and a further £150 million for farmers in the SFI pilot. Labour has got that money out of the door and into farmers’ pockets. We have invested it to bring thousands more farmers into environmental land management schemes, which were vastly underspent by the previous Government, to make a record number of capital items available for the coming year to help farmers carry out actions under the SFI and countryside stewardship, with £600 million available for productivity, animal health and welfare innovation, and other measures to support agricultural productivity, as well as 50 landscape recovery projects across the country.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the sustainable farming incentive. We stand on the edge of an unprecedented global transition for British farming. From leaving the European Union to the challenges of climate change and geopolitical events, we are asking more of farmers than ever before: to continue to produce the food that feeds the nation and to protect the environment on which our long-term food security depends. We are determined to create the conditions for farm businesses to be profitable and succeed. We are proud to have secured £5 billion for farming over two years: the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Basically, if you set up schemes without proper budgetary controls, you end up in this kind of position. We have had to take the hard decisions that the previous Government ducked.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Well, really! I had hoped that the shadow Secretary of State would understand how the schemes that her own Government created actually work. Let me explain the problem that we inherited—there are some on the shadow Front Bench who, I think, understand this better than her. This time last year, these schemes were undersubscribed; they are now oversubscribed. It is not a complicated thing to say that, when the budget is spent, a responsible Government responds to that. The budget is spent. [Interruption.] The budget has been spent and what we are doing in a sensible, serious way— [Interruption.] Conservative Members should actually be celebrating the fact that so many farmers are now taking up these schemes. I am confident that we will be able to sort out the mess that we have inherited.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She makes absolutely the right point. We should be reassuring people out there that farmers who are in schemes are absolutely safe and are carrying on as before, but the basic point is that when a scheme is full, it is full.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Again, I am disappointed in the hon. Gentleman’s comments. He is a thoughtful person, and he and I have debated these issues many times. I am sorry that he did not welcome the uplift in higher level stewardship payments, which he and many others have been asking to see for a long, long time and which will benefit upland farmers. I take him back to the many discussions that we have had about the importance of getting the farm budget out to farmers. That is what has happened. The full budget is actually being spent and that should be celebrated.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend asks an important question. This is, of course, an EU legacy scheme, and we are considering the best way of taking that forward in the future, but we are absolutely committed to supporting and working with the horticultural sector.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I am always happy to visit Lincolnshire; I have done it on a number of occasions. But on the question of how we allocate our land, it is important that we ensure that the new land use framework works effectively, as that is the most rational way of making those decisions.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend touches on the critical point. The schemes that we inherited had no way of prioritising properly; it was a first-come, first-served scheme. Therefore, the kind of farmers she describes were disadvantaged. We have had to work with a scheme that we inherited. I was very clear when I took over that we would not immediately overturn the existing system; we wanted to give people confidence about the future. However, when we come to redesign the scheme, we can design it better to address the issues that she has raised.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗