Member

We are not being asked to approve a minor technical change; we are being asked to accept something that is causing huge damage to the sector, with nothing to replace it. We recognise that, in the Commons Select Committee chaired by my honourable friend Alistair Carmichael MP, the Minister, Daniel Zeichner MP, committed to announce a new scheme in July 2025, but I wonder whether, somehow, the date of that event—1 April—is significant. If we now look at the Defra website, we find it says that the new SFI will open for applications only in 2026. The Minister at that committee was unable to answer for the uncertainty of budget shortfalls of thousands of pounds for small farms—small farms that we think might have to wait from March until July, but the Defra website says something else at the moment.