36 Tory MPs have called on the Prime Minister to redirect farm spending towards environmental and public concerns, once the post-Brexit funding guarantees expire in 2020.

The MPs are the latest in a line of stakeholders to use the Brexit vote as a pretext for calling for and end to the current subsidy regime, which sees almost £3 billion in public funds going to farmers each year, mostly to large landowners as area-based payments for owning land. The Tory MPs want to see this system scrapped “in favour of paying farmers for delivering services for the environment and public good”.

Last month, chancellor Philip Hammond guaranteed that funding for farmers and research institutes would be preserved until 2020, but an earlier debate in the House of Lords saw peers from both main parties (a number of them recipients of CAP funds) agree that continued farm spending in line with the European model is unlikely to be maintained in an independent Britain. Since that time, the National Trust and a coalition of over 80 charities, professional organisations and research institutes representing over 1 million people have called on the government to use Brexit as an opportunity to reinvent farm spending as a means of ensuring public money goes towards public goods.

In their letter, the MPs also call on the Prime Minister to retain protections for wildlife and water quality once Britain has left the EU. During campaigning ahead of June’s EU Referendum, many leave campaigners, including Tory rebels, claimed EU legislation was holding farmers back. Since then, commentators have said a regulatory bonfire is an unlikely prospect, particularly if the UK wishes to continue trading with partners in the EU.

Signatories to the letter include a number of prominent Conservatives, from former London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, to former Defra secretary Caroline Spelman, former environment minister Richard Benyon and the chair of the EFRA select committee, Neil Parish.

In the letter, which can be viewed here, the MPs list some of the Conservatives’ past environmental achievements, including the 1956 clean air act.

On Tuesday, Sam Barker, Director of the Conservative Environment Network which coordinated the letter, commented, “We have a once in a generation opportunity to create new… environmental protection, and to target any taxpayers’ money where taxpayers want it to go. Reshaping subsidies will create new income streams for farmers. A new Nature Act will help us restore landscapes and wildlife, and be a fitting continuation of the Conservative’s 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act.”

Richmond MP Zac Goldsmith added, “Done properly, Brexit is a massive opportunity for our environment. We are urging the PM to put existing EU environmental protections into British law and to honour the green manifesto commitments we made before the election in full. But more than that, Brexit allows us to repatriate and reform the environmentally disastrous Common Agriculture Policy to make sure farm subsidies are there to pay for environmental and public services.”