Pay promise to farmers on land allowed to flood

MPcriticises£ 3,000offerfor15- acresite

THE GOVERNMENT is willing to pay farmers more than just their lost income for allowing their land to flood under new agriculture plans, Environment Secretary George Eustice has said.

It comes after Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, raised the case of a North Yorkshire farmer who was offered £ 3,000 if he would allow a 15- acre site to be flooded as part of the Government’s flagship land management scheme.

Mr Parish said the compensation was “nowhere near enough” .

Last month, Mr Eustice explained how farmers could be paid for allowing their land to be flooded at certain times of year in return for payment, in order to reduce the risk of towns and cities downstream from bearing the brunt of heavy rainfall.

But Mr Parish told the minister he had been on a Zoom call with Floods Minister Rebecca Pow and

Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake about an area of 15 acres in North Yorkshire that the Government wanted to flood.

He said the farmer had been offered “something like £ 3,000 in total” and added: “It’s ridiculous if it’s going to affect most of his farm, he’s not going to sign up to that. I just make the plea to you that you can’t make them overly generous but you will need to make them generous enough and you will need to incorporate enough land.”

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, Mr Eustice said he did not know the specifics of the case, but he said: “Certainly the thinking behind our new Environmental Land Management scheme is that we would be seeking to change rewards away from an approach called income forgone, where you compensate the farmer for any loss of income, towards valuing what it delivers by way of public good.”

He added: “So I’m very clear on this, that if some of these upstream solutions using soft defences or natural floodplains or nature- based solutions, if those are really deliver for reducing flood risk down in some of those more urban communities, then it can be a really cost effective way of doing it. And yes, we’re willing to pay more than just the income forgone, so we will be looking closely at these sorts of measures.”