Good afternoon,

before turning to the topic of visit we have had, the fantastic visit we’ve had here in India,

I just want to say something about the latest situation in Ukraine.

Because I know everyone is deeply concerned about events, the barbarism we have seen, that barbarism by Vladimir Putin in the Donbas region,

and in particular his brutal offensive against Mariupol,

which is why yesterday I announced we would be sending more artillery and doing everything possible to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves those areas.

And at the same time, the extraordinary fortitude and success of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people in resisting Russian forces in Kyiv,

means that I can today announce shortly, next week, we will re-open our embassy in Ukraine’s capital city.

I want to pay tribute to those British diplomats who remained elsewhere in the region throughout this period.

The United Kingdom and our allies will not watch passively as Putin caries on this onslaught.

And what I think we’ve seen here in New Delhi

is one of the world’s oldest democracies, and the largest democracy, sticking together,

And confronting our shared anxieties about autocracies and autocratic coercion around the world

and acting together to make our countries safer and more prosperous.

Our new and expanded Defence and Security Partnership

will enable India to strengthen its own domestic defence industry

as well as protecting vital shared interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Our collaboration on energy security

– including our new offer on offshore wind, the new UK-India Hydrogen Science and Innovation Hub and our joint work on solar power –

will help to reduce our collective dependence on imported hydrocarbons in favour of cheaper, more sustainable home-grown renewables.

And our Global Innovation Partnership will help transfer climate and energy-smart innovations to developing countries across the wider Indo-Pacific.

As we deepen the partnership between our countries, we won’t just make our people safer, we’ll make them more prosperous too,

creating new jobs, driving up wages, and driving down prices for consumers,

all of which will helps with the cost of living.

And our partnership with India is particularly powerful in achieving these things

because India is an incredible rising power in Asia,

with one of the fastest growing economies in the world

– already worth £2.25 trillion –

and set to be the world’s third largest economy by 2050.

India is also our biggest partner in the Indo-Pacific,

which is increasingly the geopolitical centre of the world,

with two-thirds of humanity, and a third of the global economy – and that share is rising every year.

Indian investment already supports almost half a million British jobs,

and with a population bigger than the US and the EU combined,

there is so much potential for us to take our trade and investment to a whole new level.

On this visit alone we’ve secured new deals worth £1 billion, creating more than 11,000 jobs.

And perhaps most significantly of all, we’re using our Brexit freedoms to reach a bi-lateral Free Trade Agreement,

and today Prime Minister Modi and I told our negotiators

to get it done by Diwali in October.

This could double our trade and investment by the end of the decade,

driving down prices for consumers,

and increasing wages across the UK by as much as £3 billion.

So what we have been getting on with here

is getting on with the job of delivering on the priorities of the British people,

deepening a friendship with a nation with whom we have profound ties of culture, language and kinship,

while making both our countries safer and our economies stronger.

Welcome to the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) April 2022 update. RPA recognises that this is a really challenging time for many rural businesses and we would like to share some updates with you and reflect on what has been achieved. Our updates include:

• the Sustainable Farming Incentive in 2022
• Landscape Recovery and Local Nature Recovery
• the Lump Sum Exit scheme

We have published our 5 Year Strategy which sets out our main objectives in delivering agricultural transition, meeting both customer expectations and policy needs, delivering environmental outcomes through a quality service and being an exemplar of the Civil Service’s Operational Delivery Profession working in practice.

We continued to deliver a range of services to rural businesses and developed and implemented new schemes and services. We launched the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) pilot with over 2,500 expressions of interest and more than 900 applicants.

RPA has continued to issue payments to farming and rural businesses through schemes such as the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ES). Over 100,000 eligible 2021 claims worth £1.8bn were paid – 92% by the end of December (2020: 89.5%). This represented 98.3% of BPS, 62.2% of CS revenue claims, and 64.6% of ES eligible claims.

We also received over 5,600 CS Capital grant claims worth £66.75m, which had helped to establish and maintain woodland and hedges, as well as much more.

We introduced a new approach for rural business that were due more than one 2021 scheme payment (combinations of BPS, CS, and ES). We wanted rural businesses to receive at least one payment in December, and over 98% did.