• Chancellor reiterates UK’s unwavering support for Ukraine during discussions with global counterparts at International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington D.C.

• Rishi Sunak also held talks with Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and called on partners to “go further and faster” in their support for the war-torn country.

• In response to global inflation and supply chain issues Chancellor also urged counterparts to continue their co-ordinated action to support shared cost of living challenges.

Rishi Sunak held a series of meetings with partners from the G7 and G20 during the trip – where he discussed the ongoing response to the war along with the resulting inflationary and supply chain challenges faced by economies across the globe.

He also held talks with Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and reiterated the UK’s unwavering support for the t war torn-country’s people and economy – committing to continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in their hour of need.

It came after representatives from the UK left the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting alongside US and Canadian allies in protest against the war as the Russian delegates spoke.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said:

The UK is unwavering in our support to the people of Ukraine and has committed to make over $2bn of financial, humanitarian and military assistance available to Ukraine.

I urge all likeminded international colleagues to step up, deliver and go further and faster in their economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

As finance Ministers we face common challenges – a global supply squeeze, rising prices, and the cost of Putin’s aggression.

It’s more important than ever that we coordinate our efforts to minimise the impacts on ordinary people at home.

Speaking during the IMF Committee meeting on Thursday morning, Rishi Sunak announced his aim to channel $2.5billion worth of Special Drawing Rights, an international reserve asset (equivalent to £2.6 billion) to the IMF’s newly established Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), and urged others to also step up in providing resources to ensure the RST is up and running by the IMF Annual Meetings later this year.

The RST fills a crucial gap in the IMF’s toolkit, providing affordable long-term financing to low income countries and vulnerable middle income countries to address challenges such as climate change, energy security and pandemic preparedness. It will play a vital role in providing financing to combat climate change and bolster energy security, including for Ukraine and other countries worst affected by the war.

The Chancellor also announced the UK will impose further bans and tariffs on Russian imports. Over the coming weeks, the UK will ban additional Russian goods from reaching UK shores, including wood and glass, and will also be imposing tariffs on additional products, such as diamonds and rubber. With these new measures, the UK will be imposing import restrictions on Russian goods worth over £1 billion.

During the two-day series of meetings, G7 Finance Ministers also acknowledged the war against Ukraine is causing severe disruption to the global economy – impacting inflation and the cost of living at home. Mr Sunak called on his international partners to work together to monitor these global pressures and pushed his partners to take co-ordinated global action where possible to support the resilience of our economies.

Further information

• Whilst in Washington DC, the Chancellor on Wednesday 20 April:

o Had a bilateral with Serhiy Marchenko, Minster of Finance of Ukraine

o Attended the G7 Finance Minsters and Central Bank Governors Meeting

o Attended a G7 Finance Ministers Dinner, hosted by Janet Yellen as the US Treasury

• And on Thursday 21 April:

o Spoke in the IMF Committee Plenary

o Met with a series of International counterparts including, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Lawrence Wong, Minister of Finance, Singapore, Paulo Guedes, Minister of Finance, Brazil, Sri Mulyani, Minister of Finance, Indonesia and Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Gita Gopinath

• The UK’s total over $2 billion support package for Ukraine is broken into

o Around $500 million in economic and humanitarian grant support for Ukraine. This comprises: a £220 million (c.$290m) package of humanitarian aid, making the UK a leading bilateral humanitarian donor; a c.£75m ($100m) fiscal support grant, channelled through the World Bank Trust Fund; a £100 million (c.$130m) grant to support Ukraine’s energy security and reforms,

o Almost $1 billion in guarantees on World Bank lending to Ukraine, unlocking additional WB financing on a 1:1 basis over the coming months. These financial guarantees are subject to parliamentary approval.

o Over £450 million (c.$590m) in lethal and non-lethal military aid, including thousands of anti-tank weapons

• The Special Drawing Right (SDR) is an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement other reserve assets of member countries.

• A flagship UK policy priority during the UK G7 presidency, the Resilience and Sustainability Trust is an IMF mechanism to provide finance to low income and vulnerable middle-income countries to build economic resilience and ensure a sustainable economic recovery. It was established last week to aid vulnerable countries with long term structural challenges, and will become operational by Autumn this year, and the UK will look to agree with the IMF the delivery details of the Chancellor’s aim to channel over £2.5bn in the coming months.

• Please see more details on the latest import sanctions announcement here.

• The bridge and embankment will be constructed above the height of the existing floodplain
• It will provide access to a more resilient road in times of flooding

Building of the new road embankment and a 30 metre-span bridge, to carry vehicles over the new creek network on the west of the Lower Otter valley in Budleigh Salterton, enters a new phase next week.

The concrete foundation piles for the bridge are now complete and building upwards will begin. This includes the construction of the piers and supports of the bridge (abutments) and the earth embankment for the road itself which will go across the valley parallel to the existing road.

The embankment will eventually be 2.5 metres higher than the current South Farm Road – the same level as the nearby White Bridge – lifting it above the level of the floodplain.

Dan Boswell, Lower Otter Restoration Project manager for the Environment Agency, said:

This is a fascinating opportunity to see civil engineering in action.  Although it will look very big initially, after about 4 months the surcharged embankment will be re-shaped and reduced in height before the final road surfacing is constructed.

Towards the end of the year, the new embankment will be connected to White Bridge before it crosses the River Otter – White Bridge will remain unchanged. To minimise disruption while the new road is being built and connected, later this year a short section of temporary private road providing access to the east of the river will be built. The new bridge is expected to be complete during the autumn.

The project is part of the €26 million Promoting Adaptation to Changing Coasts project, which also has a similar scheme underway in the Saâne Valley in Normandy, France. In Devon it will see current grassland, created during historic reclamation work, replaced with 55 hectares of intertidal mudflat and saltmarsh, plus a net gain of more than 2 hectares of broadleaved woodland and 1.5 kilometres of hedgerow.

Building the embankment involves temporarily ‘over-building’ or ‘surcharging’ the structure to around 4.5 metres (an extra 2 metres) in order to compress the underlying ground to ensure that the material under the new road is sufficiently strong to carry it.

The French arm of the project is in the Saâne Valley in Normandy and includes building a new water treatment works and moving a campsite at Quiberville.

It is thought that up to 70 estuarine sites in northern France and southern England may benefit from the PACCo project, by following the model being used on the Lower Otter and Saâne Valley. A “how to” guide is being developed as part of the project to help organisations decide if a similar scheme would benefit their areas.

The European Regional Development Fund is providing funding via the Interreg VA France (Channel) England programme.

Good morning,

Thank you for the warm welcome. It gives me great pleasure to be here with you all today at the Agri-Tech Centres conference.

As the Minister for Science and Innovation at Defra, I am so excited about the potential for technology across the agri-food sector, and I really believe that the opportunities are endless.

I have travelled around the country I have been to events such as today and indeed travelling across to Dubai and across the world we do lead and we need to be brave and we need to shout about it. If we can take that and our enthusiasm and drive the sector forward we have something quite fantastic to offer the world.

I’m particularly pleased that so many of you are here today – so that we can share that knowledge and collaborate because there is no point in having bright ideas if we don’t actually expand them within our own networks but more broadly. Now those challenges we face, some of the most pressing challenges that we face are omnipresent in all our lives and I’d argue as we design the solutions everybody has sustainability at the forefront.

Just recently, I attended Expo 2020 in Dubai – it was absolutely phenomenal to discover a whole range of projects with international partners, from the reduction of methane emissions in livestock, and feed alternatives, to deregulation in the genetic technologies space.

I want to start by taking a moment to reflect. Recent events in Ukraine, and the impact of the Covid pandemic, are a stark reminder, if we need one, that domestic food production matters. It gives us national resilience. We do have a high degree of self-sufficiency, but I want to say here and now that we will always support our farmers and growers, and importantly our innovators.

Of course, food production and environmental protection go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin. The steps we are taking to encourage a more sustainable model of agriculture are also helping the resilience and profitability of farm businesses – but innovation is crucial. And, for fear of repeating myself, super exciting.

I am proud that the UK is playing a leading role when it comes to innovation. Whether it’s the Hands Free Hectare, now Hands Free Farm at Harper Adams, agricultural technology at the John Innes Centre – who knew that peat could be so interesting, The National Institute of Agricultural Botany with its work on climate resilient crops, the James Hutton Institute in Scotland and its work on vertical farming they are doing, or the work of Rothamsted Research on genetic technology, we have an awful lot to shout about in relation to R&D and we also have so many dynamic farmers and growers adopting these technologies, but we need to help them trust them and adopt quicker.

But, as we look to the future, that need to go further and faster to address the challenges that we all face – is obvious. Whether it’s food production in a changing climate, how we meet net zero by 2050, and even how we address some of the challenges we face around issues like labour supply – and I look forward to publishing the automation review and our response shortly. No single thing is the answer, we need to look and make sure though, that we have the right pieces.

We are making significant investments to unlock innovation and translate our world-leading research into practical, farmer-led solutions that help them invest in their businesses, improve productivity and profitability, and boost environmental sustainability and resilience, and move towards net zero emissions.

We have just increased the Farming Investment Fund for small technology grants from £17 million to more than £48 million – supporting over 4,500 farmers with their investment plans this year. But I would argue demand is outstripping supply. There is so much energy and so many bright ideas out there. Alongside that boost in funding, we have also provided £25m for round one of the large technology grant offer – Improving Farm Productivity, which supports farmers and growers to invest in robotics and automation technology to increase farm productivity and efficiency. Last month, we opened applications for a further £20.5 million from our Farming Innovation Programme.

The Farming Futures Research & Development Fund will provide up to £12.5 million for innovation projects that help boost a climate-smart farming sector.

And the Large Research & Development Partnership competition will offer up a further to £8 million for collaborative, business-led R&D projects, benefiting farmers and growers across England, and importantly the innovators thinking of ideas to support them, benefitting everyone, with a focus on the future commercialisation of new solutions. Like last October’s opening rounds, both will be delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

We are therefore making a significant investment and this support will continue over the coming months and years, but in building on our food security, resilience and ambition for net zero we need to ensure that our funding trajectory offers best value and that all parts of the innovation jigsaw, which currently feels like all the little pieces in a box without the picture, is really put together in a way which really allows people to understand what that picture and what that opportunity gives us.

There is a wide world out there full of opportunity for our innovators, but they also need proof of concept, so our farmers need to help.

I have never met so much excitement, enthusiasm, bravery, great ideas, but kept so quiet. Please shout, please tell everyone how good you are at what you do. Because I am one voice, and if you can amplify that voice and explain to people why we might change, how we can use innovation, why science matters.

It is part of that broader picture for helping our customers on the journey, but also to helping to inspire young people to look at Agri-Tech and everything it offers, as far as reading the world, and being inspirational.

I visit a lot of schools and very rarely do young people say “oh I want to go into Agri-Tech”, they should, and I often, coming from a rural part of the country, tell them they should. Because it is one of the most exciting parts of science, and it does so much good.

It not only looks after the welfare of animals, but you have that combination of the health of humans. You have really large challenges out there, whether it is climate change, challenges with obesity, we can change the way we do things, we can innovate because we are good. And I want you to help me amplify that message about why we need to do this.

Now we are looking to unlock the potential of gene editing in England, which will allow us to breed drought and disease resistant crops which perform better and with fewer inputs. Reducing the cost to farmers as well us reducing impact on the environment, as well as helping us develop crops that can adapt to the challenges of climate change.

Water scarcity, I know that better than most coming from the East of England, will be a major impact not only in this country though. This is where we can look across the world.

Recently on the trip to Dubai, understanding that their food security is about 15%. Looking at them trying to grow things and the challenges that face the nation, and breeding crops that can help them overcome those challenges.

How water scarcity will be that major impact on climate change, and it will mean that land in some parts of the world that can currently be farmed, will no longer be viable unless we can get that breeding technology right, and keep pace with both the challenge of climate change and also the challenge of delivery.

Elsewhere, we are currently supporting and investing in research and engaging with partners to develop a robust evidence base on the soil carbon market, including considering several robust methodologies and techniques for monitoring, and verifying and reporting on changes in soil health. This would cover carbon storage and maintenance in natural and farmed landscapes.

Today’s event is a great chance for us to come together – government, industry, in all its various forms, and academia – and consider the opportunities that agri-tech and innovation can bring, not only to this room, not only to your businesses, but to the broader and wider society, both in this country, but across the world. Because, together, I feel certain that we can foster the potential that exists and we can nurture it, because that is what many of you in this room do. We can watch it grow and we can send it out into the world to say look at what we can do. So, I wish you a very good conference, and a power to your elbows to keep on doing what you are doing. Thank you.