We're rolling up sleeves to work with farmers - PM

The government is "rolling up its sleeves" and working with farmers, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said.

He told reporters during a visit to Barrow: "In the budget last year we put £5bn into farming, that was a record amount of money."

On the same day in the House of Commons, Tim Farron, the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, highlighted the struggle upland farmers in Cumbria were facing.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said Sir Keir, who was visiting the BAE Systems site, had told reporters: "We've also set out a roadmap in relation to farming, which has been broadly welcomed. So we're rolling up our sleeves and working with farmers and we'll continue to do so."

The prime minister went on to say: "I want to go further in the procurement because I think that more British food should be used when we're procuring large-scale procurements that the government is able to do."

Speaking in the House of Commons, Farron brought up the reform of the Agricultural Property Relief (APR) inheritance tax.

This enabled small family farms to be handed down through the generations without paying inheritance tax, but from April will be levied on assets over £1m.

Farron said: "Is the farming minister aware that some of the farmers who will be worst hit by the APR changes are those who farm in severely disadvantaged areas in the uplands around our country, where typically property values are high, and incomes are extremely low.

"Is he also aware that his own department's figures show that at the end of the transition, the average hill farm income will be 55% of the national minimum wage."

In response, Minister for Farming Daniel Zeichner said: "He is right to say that the schemes we inherited did not reward those areas as well as they should.

"That is why in our announcement a few weeks ago, we increased the higher-level stewardship payments by £30m, which will be of particular advantage to people in his area."