Debate contribution: Areas with Natural Constraints (Payments) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr John Blair on 23 March 2026.

MLA

Mr John Blair

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

23 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Areas with Natural Constraints (Payments) Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5465348

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I will not give way again so soon. I hope that Members understand that. Those factors lead to the next fundamental difficulty that Alliance has with the Bill: its complete lack of environmental safeguards. The Member's explanatory notes highlight the potential environmental benefits of upland and constrained farms, but the Bill reflects none of that. In the current context, that is not acceptable. Climate change has already affected Northern Ireland agriculture with more frequent extreme rainfall, flooding and unseasonal weather, impacting on farm incomes and viability. We also face serious challenges with ammonia and phosphorus pollution, the health of Lough Neagh and wider biodiversity decline. In that situation, the environment cannot be treated as an afterthought. As a minimum, there should be clear conditions and standards around stocking densities, soil and peatland protection, water quality, habitat management and an explicit link to schemes such as Farming with Nature and to the new farm sustainability standards that the Minister intends to introduce in 2026. I am left wondering whether the Member was willing to work with the Minister to include some of those measures in the Bill in the first place. In the context of the climate and biodiversity crisis that I mentioned, we should help farmers in marginal, constrained areas to pivot towards maximising the delivery of environmental public good alongside sustainable food production, not locking in a blunt, area-based payment that simply recreates the old model. That leads me to our next major concern: funding. Departmental budgets are already seriously stretched, particularly in the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. The explanatory and financial memorandum acknowledges that an ANC scheme would cost around £11·4 million per year, with costs rising over time to keep pace with inflation. To put that into context, that is more than double the amount ring-fenced each year for the restoration of Lough Neagh, which stands at around £5 million per annum. The Bill provides no new funding, and the Minister would therefore have to find the money in DAERA's existing, highly constrained, budget; indeed, that is acknowledged in the financial memorandum provided with the Bill. It would be irresponsible to sign up to a new, inflation-linked annual spend on that scale without being clear about where the funding comes from. I note in that regard that the draft legislation provides for that inflationary uplift to ANC payments, whereas no other agriculture scheme enjoys a similar automatic uplift. I am particularly concerned that funding might be diverted from beneficial and urgently needed programmes such as environmental improvement and animal welfare initiatives. Those are precisely the areas that we should be scaling up, not cutting. There is also, as I mentioned, the realistic prospect of a negative financial impact on other areas in the agri sector. Opposing the Bill does not mean turning our backs on farmers in upland and constrained areas. I recognise the depth of concern among those farmers about their livelihoods, communities and the future of their family farms. However, the Alliance Party cannot support the Bill at Second Stage, because the Alliance Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs already supports farmers in constrained areas through initiatives such as the farm support and development programme and the others that have been mentioned and because there is little evidence of land abandonment or a drop in productivity since previous ANC payments ceased. Further reasons not to support the Bill are its failures to integrate environmental standards at a time of climate and nature emergency and to offer a credible, sustainable funding plan to a Department with budgets that are already under intense pressure. Alliance will continue to work constructively with the Minister, farmers and stakeholders to ensure that all farmers — upland and lowland — are properly valued and supported and that our spending advances rural prosperity and environmental responsibility. For those reasons, the Alliance Party will vote against the Bill at Second Stage.

652 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:07 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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