Common Agricultural Policy

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for initiating this debate with what might be really perfect timing, in view of the impending announcements. We will obviously have to study the Commission’s proposals in great detail and very carefully indeed. My thanks also go to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, the great expert on this subject, for his wise words. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, was perhaps a bit too gloomy because there is a general feeling everywhere that there needs to be thorough reform to have a modern structure for the CAP for the future, in the next financial perspective period.

I think I am right in saying that anyway, on the latest figures, the United States farm support system, overall, and the Japanese one cost far more than the CAP. The CAP is reducing both in absolute amounts, in certain sectors, and relatively. I have noticed a general will everywhere, in Brussels and Strasbourg and in member states, that it may go down to about 35 per cent eventually—at least, in the foreseeable future. The budget restraints that all national member states, including Britain, are obliged to follow nowadays because of the financial crisis mean that there is general public opinion in support of this. It therefore has to be structured in a modern way.

I have some questions for the Minister which I hope he will have time to answer in this debate, because we are reaching towards sensible, rational conclusions. However, they have not been reached yet. First, should all farm-support outlays be CAP-only or partly national? I know that it is a difficult question and that there are differing opinions. If it is national, should it be just for the non-farm aspects such as carbon emission reductions and environmental improvements?

Secondly, I agree with others that we need to progress to more market-driven policies, as the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, said, especially to avoid artificial overproduction. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that excessive payments to large farmers should be avoided in the modern system; it is objectionable that it produces the amassing of extra wealth as a result of the support, and that is not the real intention behind it. The United Kingdom is in an embarrassing position because we have a number of very large farmers who get huge amounts of subsidy, whereas in France the total is greater but the support for individual farmers is much smaller. I declare an interest in that I live in France, and I notice how the farm sector there has reduced, as my noble friend Lord Greaves, said, to almost the same proportion of the population as in this country now.

Farmers require public funds if they are enhancing the collective public environment, especially where they allow footpath access to their sites. The issue of healthy food needs separate public funding when budget pressures allow in coming years, although there might be a period of restraint before we reach that.

I strongly agree with the intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who has now left the Chamber, when she stressed the importance of R&D. The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, endorsed that as well in his response. It is legitimate for part of the EU budget to be used to fund agricultural R&D. One cannot just leave it to the private sector—technical companies and the farmers themselves.

On the attitudes of the European Parliament, there appears to be strong support in that institution for the main First Pillar payments to be preserved, especially because of food security as well as efficiency without overproduction, and I agree with that. However, the objective criteria for any national payments in all countries to maintain the genuine single market have to be very carefully worked out by Governments, and again I would welcome it if the Minister felt able in today’s debate to reach any provisional putative conclusions on this extremely complicated and, to some people, provocative subject.

I welcome the ideas that have been mooted in various places, such as in the NFU briefings that we have received and among other bodies in Britain that are concerned with the future of this whole complicated area, about the notion of the staged convergence of current payments per hectare, to be reached, I hope, over the next perspective period that we are talking about, which ends in 2020. Real social dislocation and political unease arise when manifestly unfair differential payments are being made in different countries, particularly in the newer, poorer member states. The example of Poland has been mentioned, where there has been a great deal of understandable indignation. If we change the basis of the LFA payments, would they be pushed into Pillar 1? Would that be the logic? I imagine that that could possibly be the response of the British Government as these ideas unfold.

It is important psychologically for the British Parliament strongly to support the putative proposals as they are brought out and the final decisions that the Commission reaches in Brussels after the Council of Ministers has had time to discuss these matters and the Agricultural Council in particular reaches its own conclusions. That is important because of the unfair press in Britain about Europe in general—we remember with affection the legendary tabloid headline 50 years ago, “English student killed by German thunderstorm” to underline that position—and it is getting worse now among the tabloids, particularly the Murdoch ones. I include the Times in the category of “tabloid” nowadays, only without so many photographs. Their position is totally unfair, usually based on supposition and pretence rather than on actual fact. This poison of anti-Europeanism is affecting us in all sectors, and the CAP in particular has always been the whipping boy. If the UK Parliament, particularly in the other place, can show the courage to support enthusiastically the new, modern, reformed CAP structure, that would be a good thing.

As I said, if the proportion is going to fall, the amounts of money will still gradually rise once the present period of austerity has passed over. That means that some scientific and careful decisions have to be reached over the coming years. I believe that this debate today will help to guide some of our colleagues and experts in the other place as well to reach the right conclusions.