Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Lord Carter of Coles Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Coles]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for moving today's Motion. The EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment, which I chair, gave detailed consideration to the proposal in relation to the scheme for food for the deprived, which is the subject of the report now before the House. However, I am sure that your Lordships will share my appreciation of the knowledge and insight into the wider political and institutional context which the noble Lord, Lord Roper, has brought to this debate, not least in his role as chairman of the EU Select Committee.

It may be of interest if I quote from the website of the European Commission. The Commission's agriculture and rural development directorate-general states that the scheme was:

“Originally designed to provide surplus stocks of farm produce (‘intervention stocks’) to needy people, the scheme was amended in the mid-1990s to make it possible to supplement intervention stocks with market purchases in certain circumstances”.

In looking forwards, the Commission goes on to say, and this is very apposite:

“Now that surplus stocks are extremely low and unlikely to increase in the foreseeable future, the scheme should allow market purchases on a permanent basis, to complement remaining intervention stocks”.

I need hardly remind your Lordships of the consequences of the common agricultural policy 20 years ago when, as the noble Lord, Lord Roper, said, we had mountains of butter, milk, sugar, cereals and so on. At that time, it was a practical solution to let charitable organisations in participating member states distribute those goods to the poorest sections of the Community. For all that the process of reforming the CAP still has further to go—my sub-committee expects to look closely at reform options from the Commission at the end of the year—it is fair to say that the changes made since the 1990s have been constructive and far reaching. As the Commission has said, surplus stocks are now very low, and they are expected to remain low.

For the proposed EU scheme to work in future, food needs to be purchased on the market and then put into the distribution system. Twenty years ago, the scheme was based on the availability of surplus stocks; now, with no stocks, it looks as if we will just go out and purchase it. This transformation begs questions about the scheme's efficiency and about its relationship with the CAP. The Commission claims that the scheme helps to meet the CAP's objectives of stabilising markets and ensuring that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices. We could discuss those claims, but they are not the issues on which this report turns. The central issue is our subsidiarity assessment.

Why should the European Union be considered to be in a better position to determine the nutritional needs of deprived members of member states' communities, and to respond to those needs, than national, regional or local governments? For example, here the Government have introduced the Healthy Start scheme, and I hope the Minister will say more about it. I mention it only because it seems to me to exemplify the role of a member-state Government in looking at the need in the population for which they are responsible and designing an appropriate scheme to meet those needs.

As we acknowledge in the report, member states' participation in the scheme is voluntary and, although the UK has not participated since the mid-1990s, the Commission states that 19 member states currently do. I am tempted to repeat the saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch, not because the scheme rests on cofinancing between member states and the Commission, but because, if we fail to flag up what we see as a failure to comply with the principle of subsidiarity, we risk paying a longer-term price in terms of blurring the lines between actions appropriate for EU involvement and actions which should rightly stay with member states at national, regional or local level.

The sub-committee was clear in its view that this proposal does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, and I hope that your Lordships will share that view.