Speeches by Zeichner.

“I hear the hon. Gentleman, but the fact that we have so many people in agreements, and so much land being farmed within them, shows that many people in this country have absolute confidence in what we are doing.”

“This process has been going on for five years now. Perhaps the hon. Member should have looked a bit more closely at what was about to happen.”

“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question, but I point out to her that this scheme relates to England. The different devolved Governments have different schemes. She asked about international aid. The key thing for us is to ensure that we support our farmers here, which is why we are spending a record £5 billion …”

“The hon. Gentleman and I have had many exchanges across the Chamber over the years. I would be very happy to speak to his farmers and to talk to him about the important work that we are doing on supply chain fairness.”

“The hon. Lady raises an important point. SFI is only one part of the set of Department’s schemes to work with farmers on nature restoration. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), has told me that £300 million is available for pea…”

“I think there is still a misunderstanding about how these schemes work. If there is a first come, first served scheme and people have known for weeks and weeks—months—that it would be full at some point, there comes a time when we have to make a decision. If the Department is working within its budgets properly, it can…”

“I hear the hon. Lady, but I repeat that we have 50,000 farmers in ELM agreements. The majority of farmers are already working with us to make that change to environmentally friendly farming. It was never clear how many farmers overall would make the transition into the new schemes. Obviously, it is not a matter of comp…”

“I was going to say that I was grateful for the hon. Member’s question, but I am not sure that I am. I invite him to come and talk to people who are engaged in nature-friendly farming, who benefit from these schemes and who are undertaking the transition, for which I give the previous Government credit for starting. We …”

“The hon. Lady raises an important set of points. We now have 75,000 km of hedgerow within these schemes. The basic point is that we have a fixed budget and, just as with the capital grants, when they are spent, they are spent. Another set of grants will be available, and I invite her constituents to apply at that point…”

“We made the decision yesterday because we reached that point.”

“Over the next few months, through the spending review, we will review how we can improve the scheme to avoid the very point that the hon. Gentleman has just made, and I will report back to the House later in the summer.”

“I completely disagree with the premise of the question, as the hon. Gentleman will probably realise. He is right to say that we need generational change in farming, and there are a number of ways in which that can happen—”

“I am not laughing. This is a very serious point. I am genuinely concerned about the future of the farming sector if we do not get generational change. We will look closely at how we can do that. The £5 billion budget that we secured was a very good first step for stability.”

“It should have been clear to people for a long, long time that this transition was coming. It was the move away from a system based on entitlements for every farmer through the basic payment scheme to a system that relied on people applying to what was essentially a fixed budget. I agree with the hon. Lady and many oth…”

“I am astonished by the hon. Lady’s contribution. She should be celebrating the fact that so many farmers are now farming in an environmentally sensitive way. I invite her to help us ensure that these schemes work better in future. This is actually a cause for celebration of the benefits of the environmental land manage…”

“Let me repeat the point: this is not about communication. If we suddenly say that a scheme with a fixed amount of money in it will close in two or three weeks, we would get a surge in applications and have to close it the same day. That is a flaw in the way the scheme was originally designed, and we want to do better i…”

“The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I refer him to the food security report. There has been no change to the amount of money available. The £5 billion budget is there; this is a discussion about who gets it.”

“Again, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the point that I made earlier. If we started a consultation on a first come, first served scheme, everybody would apply that day and we would have to shut it at that point. That is a flaw in the way the scheme was designed.”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words, and I suspect that we shall renew our acquaintance in Westminster Hall this afternoon. I can assure him that this announcement will make no difference to the funding arrangements for Northern Ireland.”

“indicated dissent.”