Government not playing fair with CAP reform

‘Fairness for taxpayers, fairness for the environment and fairness for farmers,’ has been the mantra of Westminster Ministers as they outline the UK Government’s stance on CAP reform.

So who have they been trying to kid?

Very few UK farmers will see any fairness in the Government’s plans to cut their direct payments by 20 per cent to fund rural development measures when elsewhere in Europe that money will go straight into farmers’ pockets.

It is one thing to argue for CAP funding to be gradually shifted away from direct payments towards rural development, as UK Ministers have been doing for some time.

But it is another entirely to do it unilaterally in a way that will blatantly disadvantage your own farmers, not to mention fly in the face of Defra utterances to support productive farming.

Yet this is precisely what the UK Government is asking for the power to do, as talks on CAP reform become more meaningful.

So what is going on?

There appear to be two drivers behind the UK’s requests for the flexibility to move as much as a fifth of direct payment money across to rural development – flexibility few, if any, other member states will take up (in fact a number are looking to move funds the other to boost direct payments).

 One is the long-held philosophical view within HM Treasury that Single Payments are somehow ‘dead money’ that line the pockets of aristocratic landowners and ‘slipper farmers’, yielding no benefit to the taxpayer. Agri-environment schemes and other rural development measures are simply ‘better targeted at public goods’, is the official Government line on this.

The other driver is cash flow. The UK has always had an historically low share of EU rural development funds.  Under current allocations, there would simply not be enough cash in the pot to fund the UK’s, and particularly England’s, ambitious agri-environment scheme plans over the next decade or so.

The flexibility sought by the UK would conveniently allow these schemes to be funded by slashing direct payments to farmers, rather than continuing the current expensive Treasury match funding of ‘modulated’ money. A neat solution in the Age of Austerity.

 But surely, as the UK farming unions point out, the answer should be to fight harder for a fairer – to taxpayers, the environment and farmers – share of the rural development pot in ongoing EU budget negotiations.

Because the biggest concern in all of this would be if the UK’s request was a signal it has effectively given up on getting a fairer deal on rural development from Brussels.

That would simply be unfair on everybody.