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Agricultural Transition Plan

My Lords, the Minister said that the Government were ring-fencing the £2.4 billion for ELMS, but the fact is that the basic payment scheme has been going down much more quickly than the sustainable farming incentive has been going up, so there is an inevitable gap in farmers’ incomes as a result of all that.

So I ask the Minister: how much of the £1 billion cut from farmers so far will they be able to get back this year through the ELM scheme? If he finds that the take-up is not the 70% that the Government aspire to, at what point will they go back and look at whether or not the factors are right and whether or not the payments are right? We all want it to be a success, but there is an awful lot of finger in the air at the moment, and we need to make sure that all that money does go back to the farming community to have long-term, sustainable farming enterprises in this country. So how much will they get, and at what point will the Government reconsider whether the amount should go up further?