Ministers face Commons showdown over ‘shambolic lottery’ of SFI rollout, as farmers left high and dry by Government

EMBARGO: Immediate Release

- The Liberal Democrat Opposition Day motion today [21st October] warns UK farming is left without universal access to agricultural support for the first time since 1945
- SFI 2026 budget ran dry in under six hours after a virtual queue scramble, locking out thousands of family farms
- Lib Dem MPs demand an emergency funding guarantee, an extra £1bn annually for environmental schemes, and the scrapping of the Family Farm Tax

Ministers are facing a high-stakes parliamentary showdown as an Opposition Day debate brought by the Liberal Democrats challenges the Government over the "chaotic" collapse of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) 2026 rollout, warning that Britain's post-Brexit agricultural transition has broken down.

The motion follows the opening of SFI26 Window 2 on 22nd September, which saw the scheme’s entire funding allocation drained in under six hours. In scenes drawing furious comparisons to high-stakes concert sales, agricultural portals crashed under peak demand, reducing access to vital environmental and farm-support funding to a virtual lottery.

Thousands of agricultural businesses that spent months and thousands of pounds conducting soil surveys, mapping land parcels, and restructuring crop rotations were kicked off the portal without any warning.

The Parliamentary Motion lays the blame on both Conservative and Labour in government, condemning the former Conservative Government for designing SFI on an unfair "first-come, first-served" basis, signing trade deals with Australia and New Zealand that undercut British standards, botching the phase-out of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and for their £358 million agricultural budget underspend. It directly criticises the current Government for accelerating direct payment cuts, slashing the core Defra budget, introducing changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and leaving farmers without a universal support scheme for the first time since the Second World War.

Liberal Democrat Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Spokesperson, Tim Farron MP, said:

"Turning the bread and butter of British farming support into a scramble is an insult to those who have spent months planning, investing, and preparing land to deliver for nature.

"Between the botched system created by the Conservatives, the crushing blow of the family farm tax, and the Labour Government pulling the plug on SFI within a matter of hours, family-run businesses are being pushed to the brink.

“This opposition day motion is a clear opportunity for MPs across the country to back their farmers - if the Conservatives seriously think Labour is on the wrong course for rural Britain we challenge them to show up in force and support the motion.

"Ministers must stop passing the buck, guarantee funding for every eligible applicant who was shut out, and commit the extra £1 billion a year our countryside desperately needs. You cannot run national food security or environmental restoration on a digital lottery decided by who happens to have the fastest broadband connection.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

The Opposition Day motion calls on the Government to take three immediate corrective steps:

Guarantee SFI Funding: Provide long-term funding guarantees to all eligible applicants who were locked out of the 22 September portal.
Scrap the Family Farm Tax: Fully reverse the damaging changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) to safeguard succession and capital investment on family farms.
Commit an additional £1 Billion Annually to ELMs: Provide an additional £1 billion per year to properly fund Environmental Land Management schemes, matching domestic demand and the true costs of environmental stewardship.