Speeches by Reed.

“Liz Truss tried that, and it crashed the economy and made it worse.”

“I am just explaining why I am listening to people in the countryside and why we are taking the action that we are taking.”

“Yes. I know she does not like my answers, but I have been listening to people in the countryside, and this is what they want us to do. That has involved taking difficult decisions. You cannot just wish the difficult decisions away and only do the nice things. Difficult decisions have to be taken to fix the foundations …”

“You can create a case study to back up the argument that you want to make, but that case study could also involve somebody transferring ownership seven years before death and then the IHT liability is zero. The best thing we can do is rely on the one place where we have hard data, which is from HMRC. These are actual c…”

“DEFRA does not carry out impact assessments on tax measures—that is just how it is. We can see what is going on in farming. I can see the low levels of profitability in farming, and many of the changes that we are looking to make are intended to boost the profitability of farming. I do not think it is a very good argum…”

“Yes. I do not think it is appropriate to share the detail of individual conversations. I have had many conversations with all of the devolved Governments to make sure that we are working closely.”

“Sorry?”

“This is a Government that believes in devolution, and I think giving the devolved Administrations more control over their resources supports devolution. I think your party supports devolution as well.”

“I agree very much with the points you are making. Within the £5 billion over the next two years for sustainable farming, of course, sits SFI. A lot of farmers have said that they have found it difficult to get into SFI, so we are simplifying it, making it easier to get into and increasing the number of actions that SFI…”

“Yes. Biosecurity is essential to farming, isn’t it? We have seen issues already with avian influenza in Yorkshire—hopefully contained to that one incident because of rapid intervention. We have seen bluetongue, and hopefully, the very cold weather we have just got will help to deal with that. But by putting in restrict…”

“Yes, of course I recognise the strain, but we had to plug that multibillion-pound black hole in the public finances—”

“Whatever happens, the consumers will not be taking on the up-front capital cost, because the purpose of the review is to bring in investment from private sector investors into the sector, who will then be looking at a long-term, low but fair return on that investment. That is how we can keep customer bills affordable d…”

“Yes, with that context understood, something in the budget therefore had to give. It was important to protect SFI because that is transitioning farming to a model that will be more environmentally and financially sustainable. Those are benefits that we want the farming sector to get, but also it is more nature-positive…”

“My colleague, who has a head for detail, is here with me. She will give you the exact numbers.”

“Would you like us to send that information to the Committee or to the individual member?”

“Yes, sure.”

“I think you heard earlier—so I won’t repeat all of it—that we are trying to simplify SFI, so that it is easier to get into, particularly for those farmers who have told us that they found it very difficult to get into in the first place. We are also dramatically increasing the number of actions that you can get funded …”

“Yes, I do, because most farmers will not be affected by it. I have already explained—I won’t do it again, because the Chair will rap my knuckles—the various interventions that we have to help farmers become more profitable and to incentivise them to invest, because they will get a return on that investment faster.”

“We need co-ordination across Government to get this right. Within DEFRA, early in the new year, we will publish a consultation on the land use framework that will look at how we balance nature’s recovery with food production. Those are the parts that DEFRA will be responsible for. There are other spatial strategies in …”

“I think it will have to, because in some cases, the same land is used for multiple purposes. But at least by going out with these consultations and developing these strategies, and by defining what it is we want to achieve, we are much more likely to be able to achieve it. I will make a more general point. I am talking…”