Farming subsidies to continue for extra two years

The Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, has promised UK farmers that they will receive the same amount of subsidies form the Government as they do from the EU five years after Brexit.

Farmers currently receive around £3 billion a year from the EU in subsidies which are based on the land they manage.

This latest announcement will give them an additional two years to prepare for new payments, which will instead reward farmers for looking after the environment and making land more accessible to the public.

Mr Gove said the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy was “unjust” and “doesn’t really reward efficiency”.

He said that during the transition to the new system the Government would aim to reduce the largest subsidies, with a maximum cap or a sliding scale of reductions and insisted there would be a “smooth path” towards a new way of paying farmers when EU subsidies ended.

During the same conference in Oxford Mr Gove promised that standards in UK farming and husbandry would not be affected post-Brexit by a relaxing of standards, despite what some reports had suggested.