Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of Sub-Committee D. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, has given a very extensive introduction to this rather erudite matter. That is certainly going to shorten what I was going to say quite a lot and I am grateful to him. He is right to take us back to the history of the CAP, and it was perhaps right in the late 1980s and 1990s to utilise the surpluses that we had under the inadequate CAP policy of the time. But as he so rightly said, times have changed and reform of the CAP has taken place. I draw your Lordships’ attention to the committee’s report in 2008 on the future of the CAP, which states in paragraph 6:

“The mid-term review of the Agenda 2000 agreement resulted in the 2003 CAP reform, which marks the culmination of a gradual shift in farm support from product support to direct income support”.

So the CAP has changed, but that has not stopped some in the Commission trying to perpetuate the bad old ways.

A similar proposal to what we are looking at today was presented in the 2008-09 Session and the scrutiny reserve was lifted then. But the committee supported the then Labour Government in their opposition to the proposals and there was a blocking minority in the Council. Following discussions with the European Parliament, the Commission has tweaked its proposal and sent it back to us, and this is what we are discussing today. I would summarise the Commission’s proposal as grandiose empire-building by a few who wish to preserve their jobs in view of the 2013 spending review, which is coming up. I can see them all shuffling papers on their desks, looking to preserve their jobs.

There is no question in my mind that the justification put forward by the Commission is weak and very unconvincing. It fails on two grounds. It goes against the recent trend of CAP reforms, and there is the budget reform in 2013 that I have alluded to. It is quite wrong for the EU to be buying food on the marketplace rather than using intervention stocks. If the intervention stocks have dwindled, and rightly so, then the policy ought to be discontinued from the CAP point of view. If it is felt that this policy ought to continue, then—as the noble Lord, Lord Roper, said—it ought to be down to member states and Governments, but it is a social policy and not a common agricultural policy. It also fails on the grounds of subsidiarity because there is no justification that the Union can do this job better than member states. The fact that it is voluntary and that Britain has not been participating since the mid-1990s shows that it is not something the Union ought to take up.

I have two questions for the Minister. When we held this matter up for scrutiny a couple of weeks ago, we were informed that the Council had yet to adopt a position. I would be grateful if he could tell us what the position is in the Council and whether there is still a blocking minority for this, and whether the Government are still of the view that this is a social policy measure rather than a CAP measure.