Examination of Witness (Questions 60 -
79)
TUESDAY 23 MAY 2000
RT HON
NICHOLAS BROWN,
MP
Mr Jack
60. Let me ask a question about where you feel
happy as a Minister of Agriculture providing help for hill farmers.
(Mr Brown) Yes.
61. What are the things that they do that you
think they ought to receive some financial assistance with?
(Mr Brown) I am very pleased that you link the concept
of happiness and being the Minister of Agriculture. It is very
pleasant of you to appreciate it that way.
Chairman
62. You are not in charge of the Dome at any
rate.
(Mr Brown) As to our objectives for hill farmers,
the purpose of the Hill Farm Allowance as it is now consolidated
in the Rural Development Regulation is to provide compensation
to farmers for the difficulties of farming less favoured areas.
That is the underpinning principle of the regime. Should we rethink
the basis on which we make the payments? I believe the answer
to that is clearly yes. We need to be more explicit about the
public interest that underpins making the payment. I think there
are perfectly good arguments for supporting hill farm businesses,
including the environmental and landscape arguments that I made
earlier. There are also regional employment aspects to this. Some
of the hill farms are in very remote parts of the countryside
and it would be difficult to see what other businesses could be
sustained in the area.
63. For hill farmers, in spite of your earlier
strictures, they can look forward to some forms of continuing
help from the Ministry of Agriculture?
(Mr Brown) Yes, there is quite a lot of continuing
help already factored in for them in the Rural Development Regulation.
More than that, I would have thought they were uniquely advantaged
to make use of the economic development schemes that are contained
within the Rural Development Regulation and on which they can
be advised by the business advice that we have just announced.
64. Given that many hill farmers who have survived
current difficulties have done so because they have already involved
themselves in business diversification, tourism for example, what
potential have you identified for development of further economic
activity in the hills? I appreciate you may not be able to want
to go and say what is the rate of return on the £10 million
but you must have got some idea of what kind of further potential
for income generation lies in the exploitation of the assets in
hill farms?
(Mr Brown) These are individual private sector business
decisions. The Government is not being prescriptive about this.
It really is a liberal regime. What we do want to do is to get
the businesses closer to the market place. Clearly the lead in
this has to be taken by the farmer himself.
65. When your Permanent Secretary comes before
the Public Accounts Committee at some point in the future, and
they have to adjudicate as to whether this expenditure is good
or bad value for money, he is going to have to be able to point
to some kind of quantifiable output. Yet we do not seem to be
getting any feel as to what you think the potential is. Even if
it is a percentage increase, is it going to be five, ten, 15,
20 per cent more income than hill farmers by virtue of their business
activities, even if we leave those undefined? What is the potential?
(Mr Brown) I do not think it can be quantified in
that crude way. The objective is clear: to prepare these businesses
for a more liberalised market place, to prepare them for less
reliance on direct subsidies.
66. You cannot give us any hint of how that
slope downwards is going to go for less subsidy?
(Mr Brown) It depends on the reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy.
67. Some of these measures are domestic and
they are in your gift.
(Mr Brown) Yes, well it is true that the Hill Farm
Allowance is a domestic measure.
68. Would you like to tell us about what is
in your gift?
(Mr Brown) Other Member States have similar measures,
so the competitive effect throughout the European Union rather
evens up. A main source of support for hill farm business is just
as it is for lowland businesses, the Common Agricultural Support
Regimes, both the sheep and the beef regimes.
Mr Paterson
69. You quite rightly mentioned the market again.
Why are Britain's sheep farmers disadvantaged by the Government's
insistence on removing the spines from 12 month old sheep? We
are the only country that does this.
(Mr Brown) This is on the advice of SEAC and advice
to Government now is a matter for the Food Standards Agency. The
advice has been clearly given and the Government accepts it.
70. Are you pushing the cause to the hill farmers?
(Mr Brown) As I said earlier, I have asked the FSA
to look—and they will use the SEAC as their professional
advisers—at a whole range of measures we have in place and
whether they are still justified.
Dr Turner
71. A very quick follow up, Minister. Diversification,
of course, is important to many farmers other than hill farmers.
(Mr Brown) Yes, absolutely right.
72. A key paragraph it seemed to me was the
acknowledgement that there was going to be a conference hosted
by Nick Raynsford on revision to planning guidance.
(Mr Brown) That is this Friday.
73. I may be slightly premature then. Clearly
there are other departments whose decisions are going to be very
key to the success of this particular part of the programme. Are
you happy with the progress and co-operation you are getting in
the joined up government we are supposed to enjoy?
(Mr Brown) Yes, I am, both officials and Ministers
have worked very hard to make a success of the summit and are
working very hard to make sure we follow up on each of the different
action points.
74. You are confident the Rural White Paper
is going to be able to herald or we are going to be seeing signs
of progress in the plan? Frankly it is not what gets reported
on the ground at the moment in terms of how farmers see the planning
guidance.
(Mr Brown) I am very well aware of it. I see farmers
on a regular basis to make sure I am in touch with what is going
on on the ground. The Department of the Environment has the lead
on this issue, of course. It has responsibility for the planning
of the regime. There is a seminar to address all of these issues
arranged within Government. It is taking place this Friday and
I am attending, along with Elliot Morley. I am going personally
because I take this issue very seriously.
75. My fear is there is not enough sense of
urgency elsewhere in Government of the need to make progress.
You are more confident than I that we are going to see something
done soon.
(Mr Brown) I have a sense of urgency about this issue.
I do think it is important. It does not make sense for the Government
on the one hand to say that we are putting money behind business
advice and farm diversification projects to get the farm businesses
closer to the market place, even if that means non agricultural
income streams through the farm business, and then to find that
the Government's objective is thwarted by an over-restrictive
planning system. Clearly these planning issues have to be addressed
at the same time. It is the purpose of this seminar to identify
the problems and to try to find a way forward. I think the lead
on this is of course the Department of the Environment, not me,
but I have overall stewardship of progressing the Action Plan.
This is a part of the Action Plan. I have to tell you that I take
it very seriously indeed because I regard it as an integral component
of our farm diversification plans.
Chairman: We are moving on to pigs. Mr Mark
Todd.
Mr Todd
76. Restructuring, has that been okayed by the
Commission yet?
(Mr Brown) We are in discussions with the Commission.
The underpinning principles have been agreed but there are points
of detail to discuss.
77. With the design of the package itself?
(Mr Brown) The design of the package itself, as I
think you will be aware from your own discussions with the Commission,
is the only package that they will feel able to approve.
78. Have we managed to design the package so
that it can be launched now and it is clear?
(Mr Brown) No, I think there is still some fine tuning
to be done. I do not think there is a problem in principle. We
are almost there. It has two elements. There is the outgoers scheme
and the ongoers scheme. As I have said before, if I can, I want
to backdate the outgoers scheme, in other words to permanently
take out capacity back to June 1998 is the date.
79. I have to say it is not an argument I have
presented to a pig farmer myself but is there a possible argument
that we have to be careful that we do not compensate for those
who entered speculative markets at the time, just after BSE was
at its height and when the purchase of pork rose rapidly, that
we should not be directing state aid towards those who took the
risk and then found themselves with their fingers burnt? As I
said, I have not been brave enough to suggest that to a farmer.
(Mr Brown) No. I understand the point but it is very
difficult to separate degrees of virtue in this. The purpose of
the outgoers scheme is to permanently remove capacity and thereby,
at least in part, stabilise the market.
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