A Yorkshire farmer was offered just £3,000 by Government to allow his land to flood as part of the Environmental Land Management scheme

Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said the farmer in North Yorkshire believed the compensation he was offered was "nowhere near enough".

Environment Secretary George Eustice was outlining how farmers could be paid for allowing their land to be flooded at certain times of year in return for payment in order to reduce the risk of towns and cities downstream from bearing the brunt of heavy rainfall.

It is part of the Government's Environmental Land Management scheme which will replace the current system where farmers get subsidies from government based on the size of their land.

Mr Eustice told the committee that identifying 'soft defences' where land can flood naturally would "take the pressure off the watercourse, and therefore limit and reduce the impacts further downstream".

He said: "Increasingly this is what we've got to be doing, rather than just going into towns and cities and building the walls higher to try and keep the water back when things go wrong. We need to be moving upstream and trying to come up with some of those softer defences.

"It would have to be part of your catchment plan, you'd have to identify the right areas of land because if you're going to pay farmers to flood, you've got to have the right sites that work for that catchment."

He said government officials were still working out what price should be paid and on what basis but "what you would effectively do is pay farmers a fee for allowing their land to be flooded".

Mr Parish told the Minister he had been on a Zoom call with Floods Minister Rebecca Pow and Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake about an area of 15 acres that the Government wanted to flood.

He said: "But the trouble is, they're offering the farmer very little money and with a fairly flat land, even if it's only the 15 acres that floods, it does affect all the other land around him.

"And so, if he's cropping or whatever and if the flood was a certain time of the year as you will know, some times of year, it wouldn't matter, other times it would, you never know.

"And so his argument, this farmer, is that the compensation is nowhere near enough. And I think the plea I would make to you and I did the same with Rebecca yesterday, is to say, I think you need to look at it really strongly.

"I wonder whether this scheme in Yorkshire could start to be looked at as somewhat of a pilot as you move forward. Because you can't pay farmers ridiculous money, I get that, but if you don't pay them enough, they are not going to sign into the schemes.

"And you know what the jungle drums are like in the farming community. Yorkshire maybe a long way from Somerset or Devon or Cornwall, but it won't take long for the jungle drums to beat."

He said the farmer had been offered "something like £3,000 in total" and added: "It's ridiculous if it's going to affect most of his farm, he's not going to sign up to that. It is something I think you have to get right because I want to take the farming community with us and I'm sure you do as well.

"I just make the plea to you that you can't make them overly generous but you will need to make them generous enough and you will need to incorporate enough land."

Mr Eustice replied that Ms Pow would be looking at the case closely, but said the Government would "be looking at different different types of incentives and looking at the rates that we pay for things. So this would extend to payments that we might make on floods as well".

After the hearing, part of the Efra committe's inquiry into flooding, Thirsk and Malton MP Mr Hollinrake told The Yorkshire Post that the farmer in his constituency believed the payment should be around £150,000 to take into account the impact on his land.

He said: "We need to get this compensation right and it is not right at the moment. It doesn't take into account the whole farm effect."

The ELM scheme is described as the cornerstone of the Government’s new post-Brexit agricultural policy.

Founded on the principle of ‘public money for public goods’, Ministers say it will provide a powerful way of achieving the goals of the Government's 25 Year Environment Plan and commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, while supporting our rural economy.

The scheme means farmers and other land managers may be paid for delivering public goods such as clean air and reduction of and adaptation to climate change. Tests and trials are already running before the full roll-out of the scheme in 2024.