Shuffle

In Parliament yesterday, @DanielZeichner confirmed that he has known about this cliff edge for 5 years, and waved away criticism that closing the SFI scheme should be considered a sudden move. If we take him at his word, then this means in the 8 months since he assumed office he has deliberately done nothing about this issue. He has allowed farmers to put in a huge amount of effort and money preparing for SFI applications, knowing that some of them won't make it. He felt it was more important to avoid a rush of applications than to warn people, say in October last year, that applications would be cut off. It means he has been having review meetings on the issue, where they decide not to close the scheme as it approaches 70%, 80%, 90% of capacity, while his team prepared changes to the website so it could be shut on a moment's notice. It meant the system had been promising to give six week's notice to applicants before closure knowing that was false. Rather than the SFI debacle being a badly managed mess, it suggests deliberate cruelty. What sort of person keeps encouraging people to get into line for environmental projects knowing he is going to slam the door in their face? If the sudden closure of the scheme was "working as intended", what does that say about their regard for farmers? An alternative version would be that @SteveReedMP sent him to Parliament yesterday to try to obfuscate his way through this mess, and no-one thought through the implications of his position statement. Which do you think is right?