Rachel Reeves exiting No10 after Ca (Image: Getty)
The Environment department is “one of the biggest losers” across Government following Rachel Reeves’s Spending Review, MPs and campaigners have said. The Chancellor gave the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) ￡2.7billion for sustainable farming and nature recovery for the final three years of this parliament.
But Defra's day-to-day resource budget is set to fall by 2.7% in real-terms over the next four years, the Treasury has confirmed. Shadow Farming Minister Robbie Moore MP said: “Labour have just slashed the farming budget.
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“Defra is one of the biggest losers across all government departments in today’s Spending Review. And that was clear today. Not a single mention of farming by the Chancellor in her speech.
“It is clearer than ever that Defra Secretary Steve Reed — an MP for one of the least rural constituencies in the country — has been intentionally installed in his place by Labour to execute their vindictive policies without question. The government must provide immediate clarity to our farming community and detail exactly where these cuts will fall. British farmers deserve better.”
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Ms Reeves failed to mention farmers once during her nearly hour-long Spending Review in the Commons.
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Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride accused the Chancellor of further betraying rural communities.
He said: "It is not enough to have hit the farmers in our country with a family farms tax. Today what we see in black and white is a choice to make further cuts to the vital grants on which farmers rely.
"A huge betrayal of farming communities, and something of which her MPs in rural areas will have to go back to their constituencies to explain."
And the Liberal Democrats accused Ms Reeves of putting farmers “at the back of the Treasury queue”.
But the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) president Victoria Vyvyan and the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) broadly welcomed the announcements on Wednesday.
NFU President Tom Bradshaw said: “While the Defra Secretary of State has listened and managed to maintain the overall funding for farming and nature recovery, from what we can see so far, the ￡100 million cut to farming means farmers and growers will need to do more with less.”
Beccy Speight, chief executive of the RSPB, warned she was “concerned” that Defra is being tasked with tackling the increasing challenge of the nature crisis with shrinking resources from the Treasury.
She said: “There is still a need to continue to invest in nature, the wildlife people love is being pushed to the brink, the wild spaces we all care about are under threat, and climate change is changing our seasons with hotter summers and wetter winters bringing implications for us all. These are areas Defra must tackle, and the Treasury must recognise the need for investment in our natural infrastructure as part of our wider economic growth and improving the life of everyone in the UK.”
Farming payments in England have switched from EU-era subsidies, which were based on the size of land farmed, to funding for measures that boost nature and reduce input costs, such as pesticide use.
But the biggest plank of the new approach, the SFI, was abruptly closed to applications in March after the money was all spent, and a reformed scheme will not reopen until early next year.
Figures published by the Treasury to accompany the spending review show that while total department budgets are forecast to grow by an annual average of 2.3% across the period of 2023/24 to 2028/29, there are sharp variations between individual departments.
The Government allocated ￡2.7 billion a year in sustainable farming and nature recovery until 2028-29.
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The farming and countryside programme will receive ￡2.3 billion, which was the same average spend under the previous Conservative government, and up to ￡400 million from additional nature schemes.
Elsewhere, the Government has committed ￡4.2 billion over three years, 2026-27 to 2028-29 to build and maintain flood defences.
This will average ￡1.4 billion each year and is a 5% increase compared with the current spending review period, Defra said.
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