In a keynote speech at the World Wide Fund for Nature in Surrey, Gove gave broad indications of what will replace CAP in the UK after Brexit.

While he re-stated the Government's promise to maintain the current level of farm payments until 2022, he added: "But that support can only be argued for against other competing public goods if the environmental benefits of that spending are clear."

Scrutiny of abattoirs

Gove named afforestation, the protection of biodiversity habitats, higher standards of animal welfare and carbon sequestration among the priorities to attract farm supports in the future. He also vowed to "improve scrutiny of what happens in our abattoirs" and "examine the future of live animal exports".

While this does dot appear in the published script of his speech, Gove is reported to have mentioned volatility risks in agriculture and the need to have policy in place to manage this, potentially in the form of insurance or margin protection mechanisms.

“Financial assistance and mechanisms which can smooth out the vicissitudes that farmers face make sense,” the BBC quoted him as saying.

He also made repeated references to the farmers' role in managing uplands, which indicates plans to support hill farmers to avoid land abandonment.

Play to the crowd

The title of Gove’s speech is ‘Delivering a Green Brexit’ and it was weighted towards policy for wildlife and countryside management, as he was addressing environmentalists.

The MP for Surrey Heath also criticised CAP, saying it was one of the areas where "the EU has most clearly failed to achieve its stated environmental goals". It "puts resources into the hands of the already wealthy" and "encourages patterns of land use which are wasteful of natural resources,” Gove argued.

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