Examination of Witness (Questions 20 -
39)
TUESDAY 29 FEBRUARY 2000 (Afternoon Sitting)
RT HON
NICHOLAS BROWN
20. My question is let me take the hypothesis
that the Government decide to maintain payments at their current
level, do you think by the time we then get to next year that
after three years of increment in a row one would be entitled
to regard that as having been consolidated into the base line
or would there always be this distinction between, if you like,
the base amount and the increment? You see what I am getting at?
It is a question of budgetary transparency.
(Mr Brown) Yes. I want to be absolutely straight with
the Committee we have not got the money now so your assumption
is not a safe working assumption.
21. It is a hypothesis.
(Mr Brown) All right. I do not think that it would
be the right way forward to look to another single emergency aid
payment for hill farmers nor do I think it would be easily accommodated
in the Rural Development Regulation, which is where it must now
go, which after all is over a seven year period, which is why
as you can see there is quite a tricky set of negotiations coming
up.
Mr Jack
22. To continue the line of questioning of the
Chairman: at the end of this financial year, you come to the end
of the HLCAs? Are you certain whether they come to an end or not?
(Mr Brown) Sorry, what? You come to an end of?
23. The HLCAs?
(Mr Brown) Yes, I see. There is a successor scheme.
24. The £60 million comes to an end.
(Mr Brown) It is more than that, the method of paying
the money comes to an end.
25. Can I just ask the question because you
are being a bit like Mr What's-His-Name on the Today programme
and I would just like to ask the question.
(Mr Brown) I take that as a compliment.
26. Good. The question is that the HLCA money
you have in your base line that comes to an end at the end of
this financial year?
(Mr Brown) No.
27. The next one?
(Mr Brown) There are two separate issues. One is the
scheme itself which comes to an end. The sums provided prior to
the £60 million do not come to an end.
28. No.
(Mr Brown) They continue through our England Rural
Development Plan and they are shown in the plan at the rate which
it would have been prior to the two year increase and the same
is true, as it happens, for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
who, as you know, have a disproportionately high share of what
is now the area covered by the Hill Farm Allowance. The reason
that this scheme has closed and a new one has opened is that we
are moving from a headage basis of calculating the payments to
an area based payment and that separate adjustment is frankly
not without its complications as well.
29. Part of that money passes through into the
new arrangements.
(Mr Brown) Yes.
30. Which part of it?
(Mr Brown) The base line as it would have been, prior
to the increase, is continued through for the whole seven year
period but it is now paid on an area basis rather than a headage
basis.
31. I did not want to ask about the basis of
this payment but which category does it come under, the Less Favoured
Areas category?
(Mr Brown) It comes under the accompanying measures.
It is shown as a less favoured areas category.
32. It may well be, Minister, that you have
already published this information but I would certainly find
it very useful if we could have some kind of table from you which
showed the existing programmes.
(Mr Brown) There is a paper.
33. How they fed into the new arrangements.
(Mr Brown) I think we have published a table.
34. A sort of flow chart, before and after effect.
(Mr Brown) I think all this is set out. Yes, this
is all set out in the full document, the Rural Development Plan.
35. Which page are you looking at?
(Mr Brown) I am looking at page 82. Yes, even in the
summary document it is set out right at the end on page seven
with the little graphs, the little diagrams.
36. It does not seem to me to give you quite
before and after effects one is looking for. I can see there,
even with my glasses on, it would help us to go through that.
(Mr Brown) What figures are you looking for?
37. I am still not clear about this net extra
money, this so-called matched funding from the Treasury. I have
a deep suspicion in my mind that roughly speaking the extra between
the continuing PES line for the HLCAs and what you paid this year
has sort of dropped out of the budget and gone back to the Treasury
and you have rather neatly renegotiated the continuance of that
but you have called it new money?
(Mr Brown) No. Because modulation has a rising profile,
the new money does not come on stream at the front of the measure.
There is a real new sum over the seven year period of about £300
million. That is new money. Now within that most of the expenditure
lines are on a rising profile. The exception, as you rightly point
out, is the Hill Farm Area Scheme money, which goes back to where
it would have been, and it is shown here, in the England plan,
without the £60 million that the Government has provided
for the past two years. In other words, there are two separate
things. They are separate.
38. Without boring my fellow colleagues, I would
like us to have something that helps us to track in rather greater
clarity than perhaps we are able to do in these verbal exchanges,
the before and after effects of existing programmes, which are
wrapped up in here, and a clear illustration of where this so-called
new money comes from.
(Mr Brown) Not only is there a graph which sets it
out very well but there is also a table which does it, which I
am sure is in the public domain, and which is published in one
of these reports.
Chairman
39. You have some more questions, Mr Jack, which
you might move on to. Perhaps The Minister's officials might do
a bit of fishing around.
(Mr Brown) I think it is set out quite well in section
8 of the full document.
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