Speeches by Reed.

“Absolutely, I am. The European Court of Justice has a role, but it does not have jurisdiction over the UK. That is reserved to the UK Parliament. It is the UK Parliament that will take any final decisions on these matters, not the European Court of Justice. It is common—I mean common to the point that it exists in ever…”

“We have inherited a scheme that was uncapped and un‑prioritised, so we have to change that. We will do it with the sector. Whenever a budget is allocated, we are not going to spend money beyond the allocated budget, which was the implication behind the scheme that we inherited. The Government need to control the…”

“Those are precisely the reasons why we need to reform the way that these farming budgets work.”

“At the end of that year, the Treasury will have reallocated it, under the previous Government. It is not there any more. The thing that we need to get right, and the thing I think we did get right, is that I was determined that we are not going to allocate money for farmers and then not give it to farmers. In a way, we…”

“No. There is not just a fund of unspent budget that waits there until someone thinks of something to do with it.”

“I think that it was underspent for something like three years in a row under the previous Government. At the end of each year, the money that is underspent does not just sit in the Treasury. It gets reallocated. The previous Government reallocated it, so it is not there.”

“Yes, we will. The intention is to support more farmers to transition to nature-positive models of farming, and that includes organic.”

“Yes, but I am very keen that, as part of the farming roadmap, we are much more explicit about how we support farmers through that transition to a more nature-positive model of farming, for the two reasons I said before. It is better for nature, but also for farm resilience. Did you want to add anything to that, Emily?”

“I will ask Emily to comment as well. When you say “close the scheme”, it was only closed to new applicants. Remember, there are more farmers already in the scheme than at any point in its existence previously. All those people continue to be paid, including for the actions that you are talking about, so it would not be…”

“I do not have a set view of how this should be done yet. I want to work with the sector and representative bodies such as the NFU and others on the new scheme. It needs to be capped, because there is only a limited amount of money allocated under the budget, so you cannot keep spending it when it has been fully allocat…”

“The reason I did not say “every single farmer” is because of what I said earlier on. We inherited an uncapped, un-prioritised budget. Money was allocated to it and there was no mechanism to stop that budget being overspent. Indeed, in many previous years it had been seriously underspent, so money that should have gone …”

“No, it should not squeeze future budgets. The way it works is that, once you are in the schemes, the schemes roll forward for multiple years. The phrase goes, “They closed SFI”. It is only closed temporarily to new applicants. Everybody in it—and we have a record number of farms in SFI now—is continuing to be paid in t…”

“These are multi-year contracts they are entering into, so the bulk of it, because it is for more than the current financial year, will come from future allocations under the budget for the SFI scheme. We will find residual elements that fall within the current year within the departmental budget, but I need to know fir…”

“I will bring in my colleague, who I feel is itching to say something. I have been reassured that those 3,000 have been contacted. They will be given an appropriate amount of time to make their applications. In terms of the error itself, I am very keen that there should be no repeat of that, so I have the team working w…”

“You are right. Trust has been damaged. I would point out, with the greatest respect, and recognising that a mistake was made and that we have apologised for that as Ministers, that there is now more money in the hands of more farmers under SFI than at any point under the previous Government. Although the scheme was clo…”

“Yes.”

“We will provide that information as soon as we can. You will appreciate that we need to work through the process for reforming it so we do not end up with the kind of uncapped, ill-defined scheme that we had before. It needs simplifying and we need to make sure it is prioritised for those who need it the most. That wil…”

“We will find the money for that from our own budgets inside DEFRA. That is the right thing to do. The intention always was, and remains, that, when we have done some work, properly engaging the sector on how we need to reshape SFI for when it reopens, it will reopen. Many applicants had not got their application in on …”

“Also, there is how it happened. There was a notice on the online forms, a message that was sent to applicants, telling them—wrongly, because it was not part of the scheme—that they would have six weeks’ notice before the scheme closed. We were not aware that that notice was on there. It was a legacy from a previous sch…”

“These were very strangely designed budgets. It is the reason we are having to reform them. They were not prioritised in any way and were not capped. It is quite strange to inherit budgets that are in that shape. We would not have designed them in that way, so we are looking at how we reform them. We will be working wit…”