Dame Angela Eagle

I will not get into the decimation of Devon; I will leave that to the hon. Lady. I have clocked the existence of county farms. I think they are a good thing and I have sought some advice on what we can do to support them sensibly, because they are a way for people to get into farming that we should cherish. I have taken a lot of interventions, so I will now press on and say a little about the future vision for farming, because supporting farmers is also about building more profitable businesses and stronger partnerships from farm to fork. We are doing that by modernising capital grants, which will be open to apply for from July, with £225 million available, which is 50% more than in 2025. These grants will help farmers to upgrade infrastructure and deliver practical improvements, including to hedgerows, water quality and natural flood management. This year, £120 million will be available in farming grants to boost productivity innovation, consisting of £70 million through the farming innovation programme and £50 million through the farming equipment and technology fund. I also want to talk about the Batters review and its 57 recommendations. We have already announced that we will take forward a number of the review’s recommendations, including the formation of a Farming and Food Partnership Board. Indeed, that board has already met and decided that horticulture will be the first agricultural sector to have a sector growth plan, which will be developed as part of the board’s work. I agree with the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth that we need to consider what we can do make the growing of fruit and vegetables more resilient; he pointed out that that is the sector where we have the most difficulty in generating resilience. The Farming and Food Partnership Board is also looking at the poultry sector. We will continue to develop our farming road map, which will be published later this year alongside our formal response to the rest of the recommendations of the Batters review. This road map will set the course for farming in England up to 2050, setting out how farming will evolve in response to changing markets, technologies and environmental pressures. In developing the road map, we have held workshops, meetings and listening sessions across the country, to ensure that it reflects what farmers need on the ground to plan for the future. I think that this is the first time since the second world war that a Government have tried to set more of a Government direction for agriculture, so that we can work with the farming sector to ensure that we can increase resilience and give food security the proper priority it deserves. By definition, some of that work means that we have to look through the near-term pressures and problems that the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth has raised today. However, it is important strategically that we are able to do that. I also want to respond to the concern raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley). The Government take the issue of mental health support for farmers very seriously. We are tripling the previous funding for mental health and wellbeing support for farmers, and a new fund, which overall will be worth £1.5 million over three years, will be introduced. We want this investment to help farmers to deal with the pressures and potential isolation that they face. It builds on our commitment to improve business resilience through the £30 million farmer collaboration fund, because we think that self-help and peer help are often the most important ways to get through to farmers. That has been a very quick look around the system, Mr Turner, but I hope that it gives some idea of the work that DEFRA is doing for farming. Question put and agreed to.