Farm support ‘will be for environmental benefits’

Cabinet secretary says there has to be benefits to nature and countryside

Farmers will have to earn subsidies after Brexit by agreeing to protect the environment, according to UK environment secretary Michael Gove.

Mr Gove criticised the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for too often rewarding the “already wealthy” as he outlined future plans.

He revealed farmers will be paid for delivering benefits to nature and the countryside rather than based on the amount of land they farm.

The UK Government has promised to keep overall subsidies at the same level until 2022, but Mr Gove indicated money would not simply be handed out.

He pledged to ensure farmers are “generously” supported for “many more years to come”, but added: “That support can only be argued for against other competing public goods if the environmental benefits of that spending are clear.

“We need to take the opportunity that being outside the CAP will give us to use public money to reward environmentally-responsible land use.”

On the current CAP, Mr Gove said: “It rewards size of land-holding ahead of good environmental practice and all too often puts resources in the hands of the already wealthy rather than into the common good of our shared natural environment.”

Opposition politicians wasted no time in going on the attack.

SNP MSP Stewart Stevenson branded Mr Gove’s speech an “unambiguous Tory threat to continued agricultural support funding after 2022”.

He added: “The Tory Government has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to champion Scottish farmers’ interests, and we cannot let them use Brexit as cover for a naked power grab that will leave Scotland’s farmers worse off.”

Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron also hit out at Mr Gove, claiming the best way to protect British farmers was to defend the UK’s membership of the single market.

He added: “If high tariffs and lower subsidies put small farmers out of business, it will be the end of the family farm as we know it.”

We need to take the opportunity that being outside the CAP will give us ... MICHAEL GOVE ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY