SOUTH Lakes MP pleas with the Government not to risk the farming community by cutting them off from their basic payment scheme.

Former Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron has issued a passionate plea on social media for the Government not to end basic payments, but to extend it for a few years longer before introducing the Environmental Land Management.

Tim said: “The Government's plans to transition from the old farming payments to the new farming payments could potentially kill off family farming in the UK, and devastate the landscape here in the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, and indeed devastate the positive impact that farmers can have in protecting our environment, and of course provide the food for our tables.

“All it would take is for the Government to carry on for just a few more years, maybe two of three years, paying farmers the old payments before the new environmental payments come in.

“The new scheme ‘Environmental Land Management’ is a good scheme.

“We are in favour of it.

“But it is stupid to do what the Government are planning to do and end basic payments before environmental payments are ready.

“Which of us could cope with losing a third of our income and nothing to replace it for two, three or maybe even four years.

“That’s what the government’s expecting of our family farmers.

"What underpins British farming and our wonderful landscape here in the lakes and dales is family farming.

"If you deny people an income for several years those people will go to the wall, they’ll have mental health crisis, they will fold, they will cease to farm.

"We’ll end up with ranch farming rather than the family farming we’ve got now.

“We beg of this government for a few pence more just over a few years to keep the basic payment scheme going so that when we have the new environmental scheme in place, you’ll actually have some farmers still farming to take advantage of them.”