Speeches by Reed.

“I know, incidentally, that the NFU president made those points to Maroš Šefčovič at Downing Street yesterday, so he is in no uncertainty about the importance of this and the strength of feeling.”

“We are pushing that very hard. I gave a commitment to the NFU president on precisely that just yesterday.”

“I am very optimistic. I recognise, first of all, what you have said about this and the previous Government. That is a very important agenda. It is very important for my ambitions to make the farming sector more profitable and that farms can get higher yields from the crops that they are growing. The way that we have ma…”

“It is due to be published after the summer recess, is it not?”

“I will give you a response, but my colleague here, who has some professional expertise in that sector, might have something to add to it. We are looking at food labelling as part of the food strategy. That is a piece of work that we are carrying out with stakeholders from right across the food and drink sector without …”

“Those are all very sensible things to look for in it. I have not seen it, so I cannot answer those questions, but any sensible strategy has an implementation plan attached to it so that we know what needs to change in law and when it will change. Those companies that are being required to carry out this testing need to…”

“Yes, those are in scope.”

“Sorry, David will comment on that. On your points, Baroness Batters has a small team that she is working with, and they are doing a lot of outreach work into the sector. It is hard to think of anyone who is better networked in the farming sector than Baroness Batters. Six months is enough time to get a piece of work do…”

“I will invite Emily to comment on the Natural England point. Is that in your remit?”

“You make some very fair points there, and I am happy to have conversations with my colleagues in MHCLG who are leading on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. As I was saying in my earlier comments about the land use framework, we want to support agricultural land being able to produce as much food as it can, and then…”

“We are not going to do that, because that does not just damage farming; it damages the entire economy. This Government will be responsible with taxpayers’ money. We are not going to treat it as if it is running out of fashion.”

“Yes, I can see why farmers are not happy, but it is very important that we control our budgets. This Government inherited a £22 billion blackhole because the previous Government did not control their budgets. They thought there was a magic money tree. They allocated funding that did not exist and hoped that future gene…”

“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?”

“The previous Government introduced an awful lot of friction at the border, having promised that they would not. This deal enables us to reduce that friction so that trade can flow more easily. I completely appreciate the need for rapid information to the sector so that it can plan, but, in the round, this is going to b…”

“The important thing to say to anybody from the sector is that, until they hear otherwise from Government, they will be required to comply.”