Examination of witnesses (Questions 380 - 394)
TUESDAY 3 NOVEMBER
MR MARK
HUDSON, MR
TONY BAILEY
and DR MARIE-HELENE
BANETH
Mr George
380. But, presumably, you would agree that,
practically, and in Objective 1 and Objective 2 areas, the rural
development plans should be coincidental with the boundaries of
those areas, otherwise you might get some contradictions in planning
terms?
(Mr Hudson) Possibly; how much support will come from
Objective 1 and Objective 2 to the rural areas remains to be seen,
if I may say. We know we are likely to have some Objective 1 areas
in the UK, we hope we are, anyhow, West Wales, Cornwall, possibly
South Yorkshire, I believe, but how much support will come from
Objective 2 to the rural areas, I think, is a matter of some concern.
381. But you would agree that, wherever possible,
the two programmes should coincide, as far as possible?
(Mr Hudson) That would seem to make sense.
382. And what preparatory work would you recommend
that rural communities involve themselves in, at this stage, in
preparing for what needs to be a finished plan by the end of next
year?
(Mr Bailey) Again, I think it is probably a better
question than the quality of the answer. This is because there
is a very prescriptive route here, in Agenda 2000, in terms of
what is being done; it has obviously been thought about by the
Commission; there has not been very much communication of what
the Commission will require downstream. And I agree that it is
entirely timely. People will be concerned—by people, I mean
those in government responsible for communicating this—that
this changes; we have not got an agreed Agenda 2000, we have to
recognise that, at the moment. There has been a great deal of
difficulties, and things can change. Nevertheless, I think, particularly
in the structural area, there is an important message here that
needs to be put out, to, particularly, local authorities and down
to parish levels, that there will be a requirement for a very
formulated plan process, and they probably ought to be thinking
about that. We still come back, to the level of resources; are
we simply switching the 5b type activity to this now, which all
the signs suggest, or are we thinking of something much greater?
But I agree that there is something missing in telling local authorities
and parish councils, and the communities in the rural areas, of
the type of plan that will be needed.
383. So you would agree there is very little
going on now in terms of planning?
(Mr Hudson) To my knowledge, little.
Ms Keeble
384. You mention in your evidence, and you have
said repeatedly, that there is not enough funding for this objective.
Could you say by roughly how much you think it is underfunded,
just to give some sort of idea of the scale of underfunding?
(Mr Bailey) The amount of money that is going in at
the moment is a direct switch, so that the activity that has gone
on right across Europe on the old accompanying measures, the early
retirement scheme and all that, has simply been switched across.
And also the 5b, 5a money has simply been switched across. Now
I am very conscious of the point that Mr Todd made, who said could
you spend all this new money if it came. There is an issue there,
but we are really then talking about what debate is going on,
what has been the problem, and we have talked also about the administrative
difficulties in getting 5b going. It seems to me that 5b is coming
to an end just when we have the administrative machinery in place
to actually deliver it; that is a pity, but that has been work
that has been developed, and so we start from that point. How
much? Ms Keeble, I do not have a figure that we would put in,
in the year 2000, for that; what I do have is a longer-term figure,
where we are saying that if CAP money is coming, in terms of rural
development, then we are thinking of something like 30 per cent
of the CAP funding being made available to rural development measures
throughout the European Union.
385. Yes, I take that point, but that assumes,
and what you have also said in your memo., that the money from
the CAP support gets switched over to rural development, so that
the amount of money that goes on agriculture and accompanying
measures, and so on, remains the same. But what I take from what
you have said is that you think that the amount of money is inadequate;
is it inadequate by 10 per cent, 20 per cent, just some idea of
the scale of the underfunding?
(Mr Bailey) I think you have to start a process. For
example, if the scaling is up to a billion pounds sterling, and
these are big numbers, but in the UK, and it is something, I do
not know, of the order of fifty million now, over that ten years
you can see the incremental scale that you would go for if you
followed this model that the CLA has been presenting to you this
morning. You cannot do it by a sudden change of availability,
you would have to bring other things in; for example, are some
of the infrastructural issues that I have talked about this morning
eligible? Would they legitimately become part of rural development?
It is when we get those answers that we can then start putting
some money to it.
386. I was just asking, simply to see if you
had an idea of the scale. Would you accept that, for some people,
the idea that there is simply a switch of money from the price
support into redevelopment is not perhaps what they are looking
for, because they might be looking for a reduction overall in
the amount of money that is spent on agriculture and related issues,
and what is your rebuttal to that, because that is certainly something
the Committee has talked about quite extensively, as you have
probably heard?
(Mr Bailey) Yes, I understand that point, and let
me be very clear that the CLA's agenda on this is to keep the
level of resources that is going into rural Britain now the same.
When we are speaking in Europe, as part of the European Landowners
Organisation, we give the same response: that we believe that
the rural areas need this level of funding. What I would say would
be the difference is that we would not be seeking to exchange
a supported agriculture for a support to some other industry.
When we talk of rural development help, we are talking of pump-priming,
of getting things in place, of the infrastructure, of the services
that I have talked about, and I believe that we have to start
the debate now. Maybe we are late in starting that debate, of
what these issues should be. But let me be absolutely clear, the
CLA's view is that the level of resourcing that is going into
rural areas now should be protected in the future.
387. And, presumably, one of the reasons why
you welcome the funding for Objective 31 being out of the Guarantee
rather than Guidance budget is because, in the long term, it holds
a prospect for more money for rural areas; would that be right?
(Mr Bailey) It holds a prospect for switching, you
are absolutely right on this, because, a point that has already
been made, to Mr George, we do not believe that the rural areas
of the UK are going to get much out of Objective 1 and Objective
2. And, again, that is true for many countries in northern Europe,
and explains, if I may say, Chairman, some of the German resistance
to changing the measure of support now. They simply do not believe
that that funding would be made available through other forms
in Europe. They think the money would just simply move south and
to the new countries, the CEECs, on accession. So there is a point
there. Yes, if it becomes part of the Guarantee then it becomes
part of DGVI's budget, and as and when compensation is reduced,
for whatever reasons, for political reasons, or whatever, it can
be transferred to the rural development and the environment, we
have been a bit light on talking about that, fund.
388. In your evidence, you very helpfully put
the breakdown of structural assistance by country; now, presumably,
all of this would come under the new rural development fund. Would
you see Britain's proportion as being roughly the same, so that
in the distribution between the countries would you see any sort
of dramatic increase in our share of funds, is that what you are
looking for, or would you simply see the protection of the level
of funding that there is currently broken down, as it is now,
by country?
(Mr Bailey) That is an extremely difficult question,
and I realise I am not giving you the kind of answers that you
are looking for. But we start where we start, and it would be
for different countries to justify these. We do not see a common
policy in rural development to the extent there is a common policy
in agriculture, because the needs of the countries across a European
Union of 15 are different; a European Union of 20 are going to
be totally different. So within rural development there will be
a tremendous range of where the choice of use of those resources
will take place, whether it is environmental, which may be very
large in the UK, to very social, which will be very large in parts
of the south of the Community.
389. You have mentioned, and people have mentioned
previously, and you have dwelt on quite heavily, the use of this
money is actually paying for basic infrastructure services; when
we went to Brussels, it was a discussion about hospitals, you
mentioned schools and roads, and so on. When the Secretary of
State came last week, he said he saw those types of spending as
really being part of other government projects. What would you
say to that, and what would you say to the criticisms that some
people might have that rural areas would be getting undue protection,
if they were to get, for example, hospitals and schools funded
out of special budgets from Europe that were not accessible to
people in other parts of the country?
(Mr Bailey) I understand that view. The CLA would
argue a case. There have been some very interesting debates over
the past of whether there is such a thing as a rural economy,
or whether now the economy is integrated between town and country.
I think that it is very difficult to argue too long about a rural
economy. But it would be true to say that there are some special
aspects about economic activity in rural Britain. Mark Hudson
has made the point, earlier, that rural Britain varies very considerably,
from semi-urban to very remote areas. I do not have any difficulty
in saying that, if services, if infrastructure is holding back
the rural development policies of which we have been talking in
this room this morning, in British rural areas, I have no difficulty
in some of that funding going into those areas. There are other
objectives, there are structural funds, for putting money into
urban areas, into industrial areas, as part of European policy;
that will be claimed by those Departments of State, by our DTI,
by our Department of Education, they will all be claiming that,
to put it in. I see no need to apologise for the Departments of
State in the UK responsible for rural policies and issues saying
"This is a rural policy area that will need to be properly
funded", to put it, and the UK rural areas should have that
share of it. This debate will have to go on, both in this country
and it is happening in Europe. We have seen signs of the shift
already in Europe, because there is no longer a dedicated rural
objective; this is why I think we would defend our case for the
resources that are available, and are being transferred to the
Guarantee fund. If money comes out of the support system there
is a legitimate case for those funds to be expended in British
rural areas.
390. I have got just one last question, which
is, there is an awful lot of this financing, well, it will be
co-financing, will it not, and the Government here would have
to provide 50 to, I think, 75 per cent of it? Now also you have
put, very helpfully, the employment levels, and we, very noticeably,
have got the lowest percentage, and have had since 1960, and I
suspect before, of people involved in agriculture. What would
your argument be to people who say why should we use mainstream
government funding, that could be used elsewhere, to support these
projects, when actually employment in this area is so low, and
the problems of dislocation might be very much less than in some
of the urban areas where we have industries that are contracting?
(Mr Hudson) If I may make a comment there, you are
quite correct, the figures do show employment in agriculture being
low compared with most other European countries, if not the lowest,
but, of course, there are other industries and other businesses
in the rural areas, the small and medium-size businesses about
which we have not spoken very much today at all, these are rural
employers of rural people, and a lot of the infrastructure costs
that we have been talking about are needed as much for those types
of industry as they are for agriculture itself, which, as you
rightly said, is employing fewer and fewer people as time goes
on.
Chairman
391. It has been a frustratingly superficial
session in many ways, there are many issues we have touched on
very briefly and I am sorry we have not been able to go into them
in detail, but we have got the benefit of your memorandum and
also the supplementary memorandum from your European Organisation,
for which we are very grateful. I think you have got across your
main messages though today, I think you would encourage us to
toughen up the sinews of the Commission and say "Go further
and faster"?
(Mr Bailey) Absolutely.
(Mr Hudson) Can I say just one thing, Chairman, just
very briefly.
392. Please?
(Mr Hudson) The one thing we have not touched on very
much, and Tony Bailey mentioned it a few minutes ago, is the agri-environment
measures, which are seen here as part of the rural development
measures. We very much believe that they should stand on their
own, this is our third pillar, if you like, I introduced, and
we are working on that, and it may be of interest for you to perhaps
have a paper from us at some stage in the future.
393. I would welcome that, but we would welcome
it sooner rather than later because we are intending to wrap up
this inquiry quite soon. Our next session, of course, will concentrate
on the agri-environmental measures.
(Mr Hudson) Right.
(Mr Bailey) We will write to you.
394. And if you are intending to stay and listen
to that session then, of course, you might like to comment on
that, in writing afterwards, as well, but we were hoping to get
this all wrapped up certainly in a few weeks' time, so time is
running out—as it has for us. I am sorry we have overrun
as well. But thank you very much, Mr Hudson, and your colleagues;
as always, a very useful session. We are very grateful.
(Mr Hudson) Chairman, thank you for giving us the
opportunity to give you oral evidence.
Chairman: Thank you.
|
