Common Agricultural Policy

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to speak after the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

Food security delivered by a viable farming industry and the sustainable management of our natural resources must be compatible. It would appear that the CAP does its best to ensure that they are not. Greening is a lie. The proposals are not greening proposals. Modifications that are being made in the proposals to pillar one can be said to be greening in nature, but the proposals do not constitute the greening of the CAP as a whole. Only 13% of the funding under pillar one goes to specific greening measures. In many cases, good farmers are doing those things anyway. The real objection is that money is being used for subsidies around Europe instead of being used to encourage farmers to improve their practices and run better businesses. That is the tragedy of the CAP’s current structure. The CAP budget is €57.7 billion, which is around 40% of the EU budget. It is staggering that the money is being used predominantly to reward productivity and to increase product, and not to incentivise better businesses and improve the wider environment.

I compliment the Minister—I do not always do so—for the way in which he has handled the debate. He not only took a lot of questions, but sought to engage the House. There is broad consensus in the House on the position that the UK Government would like to get to in Europe. The tragedy is that the 27 different countries have very different farming industries. Many of them have a vested interest in having subsidies prop up their ineffective farming industries.

The key issues are on the use of funds. The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) was right to correct what I said earlier—10% modulation was compulsory and 9% was voluntary in the past. That meant a total of 19% modulation as opposed to the 15% voluntary modulation that the Government propose. The difficulty is that the 15% is 15% of less, and the 19% was 19% of more. The will have a dramatic impact on advancing the environmental stewardship schemes and the green elements of our budget will be dramatic.

I take on board the points made by the Chair of the Committee and the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire about how the proposal will impact on farming businesses in the UK. This is not a zero-sum game, but if we put the money into the schemes that hon. Members would ideally like—the greening schemes that will improve our environment—we will, to an extent, disadvantage our farmers, because they compete against their counterparts in Europe with less subsidy. It is as simple as that. We might all believe that that subsidy is wrong and should not exist—subsidies should not exist to prop up failing industries—but it exists none the less, which is a disadvantage to our farmers.

[Dr McCrea]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not have time, I am afraid.

The Chair of the Committee was absolutely right to put the central question: what is the Treasury going to do? Will it allow enough funds to DEFRA to ensure that we can put the money that is needed into the environmental schemes to support the natural environment White Paper it produced last year and to support our farmers, or will DEFRA budgets be cut in such a way that our farmers and the environment suffer? That is the question.