Examination of witnesses (Questions 40
- 53)
WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2000
MR REG
HAYDON and MR
GEORGE DUNN
40. That is true of a lot of other sections
of society. Why should farmers have this facility when it is not
available, for instance, to fishermen, for whom the Ministry officials
act as a kind of police force? It is not available to small businessmen,
it is not available to manufacturing. Why should farming have
this facility provided for it at public expense, and the contact
with officials and this kind of thing when other sections do not?
(Mr Haydon) Do other sections have the complexity
of subsidy applications, various schemes, environmental schemes
that we have to face? We are going to face even more in the future.
41. They all have complexities. They are all
being showered with recommendations and changes in policy. They
are all a bit baffled by what is going on, and I am particularly
thinking of small businessmen in any field. Why should you have
it when they do not?
(Mr Dunn) Part of the problem is that the farming
community takes up around about 75 per cent of the land area of
the country we farm. The factory floor is open for everyone to
see. The public in the form of government is requiring the farmer
to be competitive, to be forward thinking, to be aggressive, to
be market-seeking, and also to provide high animal welfare, environmental
and social outputs. It is impossible for the farmer to be all
things to all men. Quite clearly, there are public benefits that
the Government would like to see farmers produce. They are providing
schemes under the Rural Development Programme to do that, but
they need advice, help and support to be able to access that.
There is a large amount of complexity for a guy on a farm tenancy—let
us start with him, the guy that we represent—faced with
the Rural Development regulation and the number of schemes there.
The first thing he has to do is look at his tenancy agreement
to see whether he can do anything, then he probably has to go
to his landlord to see whether he can convince his landlord to
do it without a comeback on the money that comes under the scheme,
then he has to go to MAFF or to whoever to get advice on the scheme,
and then he will find he has a five- or ten-year commitment and
his tenancy only has two or three years to go.
42. You are saying that farming needs all this
because it is more bureaucratised, more subsidised, more pampered
than other competing industries.
(Mr Dunn) More regulated, more required to provide
public benefit than some other competing industries.
43. All industries are required to be competitive
to survive, to provide employment, to produce good products that
are going to be marketable.
(Mr Dunn) Farmers are required to provide public benefit
beyond the product which they are producing.
44. You need more help from the bureaucracy
to do this?
(Mr Dunn) The marketplace currently does not adequately
reflect the cost of production, given the high animal welfare,
environmental and social output that farmers are required to produce.
Take milk, for example. The price of milk in the shops does not
begin to reflect the cost of producing that to the standards the
farming community is required to do. There are three things you
can say to the farming community: "Here is some subsidy to
make up the difference, a subsidy which does not actually increase
your costs"; secondly, "We will guarantee a fair price
for your product in the marketplace"; or thirdly, "We
will relieve you of your environmental, social and animal welfare
requirements so that you can produce that milk competitively".
One of those three answers has to be found, and hopefully it will
not be the last one. That is the reason. The costs of production
are not reflected in the price of the products.
Chairman: We are not going to get into the philosophical
underpinning of the CAP.
Mr Mitchell
45. You could survive in the same way as New
Zealand farmers have had to survive.
(Mr Dunn) At seven pence per litre for milk? Let us
strip out the regulation and we can do that.
46. They have had to face the full pressure
of the market without the help of the bureaucracy. Let me ask
you one final question, because you advocate links with Regional
Development areas and Government Offices in the region. Why should
this service not be run on that basis, on a regional development
basis, where you can plug into the Regional Development authority
and the Government Offices in the regions like any other industry?
(Mr Haydon) What we are suggesting is that Regional
Development offices should combine with the Ministry regional
offices so that you could cut down on the amount of buildings
and bureaucracy you need. There are going to be two lots of bureaucracy
going forward as things are at the moment.
Mr Mitchell: So amalgamate the Regional Service
Centres with the new regional structures? Would you be happy with
that?
Chairman
47. Which structures? Let us just be clear.
Which offices are going into one place?
(Mr Dunn) What we have said in our statement is that
we value the Regional Service Centres. We also believe that the
Regional Service Centres, through the policy of the Ministry,
have exempted themselves from the normal operation of the Government
Office of the regions, for whatever reason. We believe that there
is scope to look at how Government Offices in the regions, the
RDAs and the MAFF Regional Service Centres, could work better
together. There may be circumstances where they can share facilities,
share office space, etc and that will be good. There may be other
areas where they cannot do that but they can work together in
other ways to provide benefits in relation to cost savings to
Government and commitments to service for the constituency of
interest that they are important to. We would not wish to have
a blanket policy that all RDAs should be brought in with MAFF.
48. Any more than you would argue that you would
defend the existing Regional Service Centres where they are to
the death?
(Mr Dunn) Clearly, there is scope to review everything,
but the blanket proposals are not, we believe, acceptable for
the problems we have.
49. So it is regional coherence you are looking
for.
(Mr Dunn) Correct.
Mr Todd
50. Do you think there is a distinction between
the advice that needs to be given to farmers on the complexity
of the forms that they need to fill in and other aspects of their
relationship with MAFF, and the bulk processing of those forms
towards validation and eventual payment? From my observation,
having visited one Regional Service Centre, there are a large
number of people who have no contact with farmers whatever who
are simply moving one piece of paper from one side of their desk
to an out-tray on the other side of the desk for someone else
to check some other aspect of it. One can see no logical reason
why that has to be in a particular place in the region as opposed
to more centrally organised and more efficiently managed. Would
you agree that there is a distinction between that function and
the well informed advice to farmers on how to complete a form
accurately?
(Mr Dunn) Clearly there is a distinction. It is not
a black and white distinction. There is a blur. As I said earlier,
some of the expertise you gain from actually running the system
is inferential in the advice that you give to producers about
how forms should be filled in or where to go for information and
support.
51. That would indicate that you have to select
the individuals who are going to be the advisers very carefully.
I agree.
(Mr Dunn) Potentially, yes. Clearly, there would be
a benefit in having greater efficiency in the processing of data,
and there would be cost savings involved if that could be more
centralised. The question then is, if you look downstream, how
you actually get that information to that better structure in
an efficient manner. The Government has chosen to consider the
issue of electronic transfer as the route to do that, and we have
said that we do not particularly accept that that is the most
valid route. I am not saying that there should not be a greater
emphasis on bulk processing, but let us consult, let us look at
the issues. What are the drivers? What are the pressure points
in the system? How can we get a system which works better than
the present one, but not necessarily the Rolls Royce system that
the consultants' report asked for in the first place?
Mr Jack
52. Have you looked at a Business Link type
model as a possible basis for providing greater access to farmers
with business-related and/or technical questions as a sort of
substitute network for the occasional visit to the Regional Service
Centre?
(Mr Dunn) We have looked at Business Link type organisations.
The problem we have is that they themselves are under pressure,
and they do not have the expertise about agricultural law which
is necessary in providing information to tenant farmers. For example,
I quite often find that I am providing advice to Business Link
people to pass on to an individual because they are unsure about
what an FBT is, what the difference is between a 1954 Act tenancy
and a 1986 Act tenancy and those sorts of questions. It is a route
that can be used, but I do not think it is the absolute answer.
(Mr Haydon) I think you are suggesting, are you, that
there should perhaps be smaller offices out in the regions to
deal with advice, or something like that?
53. It is just that there was some suggestion
that the Government was recognising farming enterprise as part
and parcel of the small and medium sized business grouping, saying,
"We do not differentiate farms as a business from any other
kind of business, notwithstanding the special nature of agriculture
given that you could bolster business links with additional farming
expertise." You have made the point that farmers need to
seek personal advice occasionally about solving complex technical
issues, like, for example, the probate one that you mentioned.
I was just exploring whether you have looked at other ways in
the separation of the function of information and advice from
the processing of documents.
(Mr Haydon) For example, ten or fifteen years ago
the Ministry had a series of local county offices—there
was a MAFF office in my county—but over the years they have
all gone and they have been amalgamated as a programme of rationalisation,
I am sure, into the Regional Service Centres. So the number of
MAFF offices there were out in the sticks 20 years ago have all
gone, and they are now linked in the nine Regional Service Centres
and the two Intervention Board offices. That process has taken
place, but what you are saying about whether business advice can
be divorced from administration and paper moving, of course, that
could take place.
(Mr Dunn) This is part of what the Prime Minister
announced following the Farm Summit and the increase in the amount
of funding to the business element of farms, and quite clearly
we need to look constructively at where farmers get their advice
and how they can get that advice better and more cost-effectively.
But from the proposal that we have seen to date, none of those
issues have been properly thought about.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed
for coming to give evidence. Thank you for speaking with your
characteristic robustness, which is what we anticipated, but always
very helpful because we like to get a clear idea of what people's
views are, which is why we exist. Thank you very much indeed,
and no doubt we will be seeing you in the course of our peregrinations.
|
