Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Lord Carter of Coles Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roper]

That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on the amended Commission Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EC) No.1290/2005 and Council Regulation (EC) No.1234/2007 as regards distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union (COM(2011)634, Council Document 15054/11) (23rd Report, HL Paper 217).

[Lord Carter of Coles]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, I beg leave to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper. It fell to the EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment, which I chair, to carry out detailed scrutiny of the latest proposal in relation to food for the deprived. In doing so, we were conscious of the consideration which we gave a year or so ago to the previous version of the proposal. Both the sub-committee and the EU Committee itself, which the noble Lord, Lord Roper, chairs, took the view that the changes made to the latest proposal did nothing to remedy the failure to comply with the principle of subsidiarity.

It is tempting to use this occasion to talk about the common agricultural policy as the evolving backdrop to the scheme to distribute food to deprived persons but, since time is limited, I will make only two remarks in this respect. First, when the scheme was initiated in 1987, a largely unreformed CAP generated excesses of butter, milk powder, beef, sugar, rice and cereals—the so-called food mountains—which allowed food to be released to charitable organisations in participating member states. Those days are long gone. Surplus stocks are now very low and in recent years the scheme has in fact relied on open-market purchases of food, so the link between the scheme and the CAP, clear enough in the past, has become more and more tenuous in the present.

I hope that your Lordships will take the view, as the committee has done, that the task of tackling deprivation faced by our fellow citizens rightly falls on the member states, not on the EU itself. No one should downplay the scale of the challenge on social protection across Europe. Data on expenditure in that regard in October this year—I am relying on data from Eurostat, the European Commission's own source—showed that, in 2009, the 27 member states spent over €3 million million on this support. That is, greater than the figure 3 followed by 12 zeroes of euros: a colossal amount of money. Compare the scheme for deprived persons that is being proposed here of €500 million or so. Doubtless that can buy a great deal of food, but in respect of the total spend by member states it is not of great significance.