{"id":132500,"date":"2024-09-11T18:53:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T18:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/11\/dont-cut-nature-friendly-farm-fund-urge-ex-tory-ministers\/"},"modified":"2024-09-11T18:53:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T18:53:07","slug":"dont-cut-nature-friendly-farm-fund-urge-ex-tory-ministers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/11\/dont-cut-nature-friendly-farm-fund-urge-ex-tory-ministers\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t cut nature-friendly farm fund, urge ex-Tory ministers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Four former Conservative environment secretaries have warned the government against cutting a fund that pays farmers in England to plant woodland and improve water and soil quality alongside producing food.<\/p>\n

The Environmental Land Management Scheme (Elms) was devised by then-minister Michael Gove following Brexit to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy. <\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Guardian reported<\/a> that Labour ministers were planning to cut the fund by \u00a3100m. <\/p>\n

A Department of Food and Rural Affairs source told the BBC “no decision had been made” on the budget. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Writing to the Telegraph, the former ministers said the scheme had become “increasingly popular” and urged ministers to keep the farming budget “intact or – better still – increase it in line with inflation”.<\/p>\n

They added: “Farmers across England are now paid public money to deliver public goods… this can help them to become more resilient to nature loss, the biggest long-term threat to our food security.”<\/p>\n

The former ministers said the reported cut would “reduce the amount of farmland under the new schemes by 239,000 hectares in England at a time when food security and our natural environment have never been more important.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The letter was signed by Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Therese Coffey and Theresa Villiers along with six other former Conservative farming and environment ministers. <\/p>\n

It comes after a government report<\/a> confirmed there had been a \u00a3358m underspend in the agricultural budget across last three years.<\/p>\n

National Farmers’ Union President Tom Bradshaw said news that the money had not been spent was a “kick in the teeth”.<\/p>\n

He said the underspend was not because “the investment isn\u2019t needed” but a result of problems with the implementation of the scheme. <\/p>\n

The previous Conservative government said the aim of the fund was to reward farmers for delivering “public goods” and making “a significant contribution to the environment”. <\/p>\n

The fund supports farmers and landowners to carry out projects such as large-scale tree planting and restoring coastal habitats. <\/p>\n

In January 2022, the Public Accounts Committee criticised the scheme for failing to provide enough detail, meaning farmers had been unable to take advantage of the money available. <\/p>\n

Kitty Thompson from the Conservative Environment Network said cutting the budget was “as short-sighted as it is foolish”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The letter from former Conservative ministers came on the same day that Conservative leader Rishi Sunak pressed the prime minister to make other commitments in relation to farming. <\/p>\n

Speaking in Prime Minister’s Question Time, he asked Keir Starmer to introduce a national food security target into law and to ensure good quality agricultural land would be used for food production rather than solar farms. <\/p>\n

Starmer said he took food security “very seriously” but did not commit to introducing a legally-binding target. <\/p>\n

The NFU has long-called for such a target to ensure enough food is produced in the UK. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Shutterstock Four former Conservative environment secretaries have warned the government against cutting a fund that pays farmers in England to plant woodland and improve water and soil quality alongside producing food. The Environmental Land Management Scheme (Elms) was devised by then-minister Michael Gove following Brexit to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy. Earlier this month, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[3177,553,3287,7310,5215,1397,106393,12583],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132502,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132500\/revisions\/132502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}