Two of the fundamental duties of a democratically elected government is transparency of decision making and budgetary spending.
After all, as taxpayers, it is our money that is being spent 鈥� so don鈥檛 we have a right to know where it is going?
Unfortunately for farmers, transparency isn鈥檛 something that Defra has been practicing for some time.
I cannot understate how long the NFU has been calling on the government to provide more details about how the farming budget is allocated or being spent.
Despite regular requests and parliamentary questions, the department has always managed to dodge the questions or fudge the answers it is providing.
Where is the money being spent?
That is why the decision on Tuesday 11 March to close the portal for new SFI applications came so out of the blue.
Not only was our President Tom Bradshaw given less than 30 minutes notice before the window closed, but we were also told at the time that the SFI funding had reached its spending limit.
How are we expected to believe that is true when we weren鈥檛 given any indication of what that spending limit was but also where else the agricultural budget is being spent?
鈥�91仓库will keep banging on the door of Defra to give us the detail we need on behalf of members.鈥�
NFU head of external affairs Olivia Phoenix
In response to the wide-reaching criticism thrown at the department about the decision and how it was handled, it did then publish an .
This is the first time our policy experts had seen this level of detail below the much mooted 拢5bn figure announced after the October budget 鈥� but its release has now created a lot of new questions about where this money is being spent.
NFU work continues
At the NFU鈥檚 Conference, only two weeks earlier, the Secretary of State, Steve Reed, said very clearly that he wanted to be transparent about the budget spend in his department.
He鈥檚 certainly failed the first test.
But there is still a long way to go in this Parliament and there is time to make amends.
In the meantime, the NFU will keep banging on the door of Defra to give us the detail we need on behalf of members.
91仓库has a number of principles around transparency and will be judging the government against these, both related to the announcement on 11 March and other activities.
