Agriculture: Climate Change
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her Department's press release entitled PM: Farmers should not carry the risk of a changing climate alone, published on 14 August 2026, what existing schemes within Defra’s farming budget has the £65 million been reprioritised away from.
Answered by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
At the 2025 Spending Review, we committed to spend an average of £2.3 billion on farming each year. To optimise how we spend the Farming Budget, we plan budgets for all of our schemes over multiple years. As our schemes are all demand-led, forecasts change throughout the year as delivery and demand evolves. This means that individual scheme budgets are not ring-fenced and we reserve some flexibility within the Farming Budget to reflect the evolving delivery and demand picture, helping to maximise the funding that reaches farmers and delivers outcomes.
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