In 2022, during the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss, there was speculation that her government intended to shift away from focusing on the environment in the post-Brexit settlement for agriculture. That focus had been built over several years through legislation including the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Environment Act 2021. Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) were said to be at particular risk of cuts.

That period coincided with the Labour Party Conference, where the Countryside Alliance held a panel discussion that included Daniel Zeichner MP, now the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs.

Naturally enough, Mr Zeichner wanted to comment on the reports. He said:

“We are clearly in a moment of some turmoil in terms of government policy on all these issues. After a period going back through successive Secretaries of State, possibly back to Michael Gove’s 25-year environment plan and the various pieces of legislation that sort of fitted round it… you could see a kind of framework for going forward… some kind of process for moving away from the Common Agricultural Policy to a much more environmentally friendly form of farming.

 

“Very hard to know where that actually stands today, obviously there’ve been lots of comments and speculation in the press, but certainly my view is that if the government were to tear all that up, I described it as ‘an act of mindless vandalism’.

 

“I think there’s a huge amount of work that’s gone into it, it’s far from perfect in my view, I think SFI uptake rather suggests that this is a complicated policy that is not necessarily attractive to enough farmers at the moment, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t improve it and tweak it.”

This week the press began to report speculation that the current government is planning something highly reminiscent. The Guardian quoted Defra sources who claimed the government is planning to limit ELMS to small farms only after the current settlement runs out next year. Afterwards most farms would not be able to access that money, leaving them no longer being paid to farm in an environmentally friendly, possibly regenerative way.

At this juncture the reports are unconfirmed, and likely to remain so until the Chancellor announces the Spending Review on 11 June. They are, however, yet another example of the uncertainty British farmers now face because of shifts in government policy.

The Budget in November brought the changes to inheritance tax reliefs that have become infamous as the Family Farm Tax. In March, the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) was suddenly closed on the basis that the uptake had been too high and the fund exhausted, despite Mr Zeichner having in 2022 attacked the then-government because uptake of that same scheme had been too low.

If the government wants to meet its environmental targets, rural areas are essential, and farmers will need proper funding to play their part. The government says it knows that food security is national security. Its actions must match its words.