Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 105)
WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE 2006
DR MARK
AVERY, DR
SUE ARMSTRONG-BROWN,
MR TOM
OLIVER AND
MR IAN
WOODHURST
Q100 Mr Williams: In terms of modulation,
there is compulsory modulation but there is also an opportunity
for countries to use voluntary modulation and the UK negotiated
an increase, so it could be up to 20%, but I do not think any
other nations actually make use of any facilities for voluntary
modulation. In your view, you say that the Government ought to,
as I understand it, take up the 20% modulation to be used for
environmental schemes. Do you think that modulation should be
match-funded by the UK Government?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: Yes, this
is a very interesting area. We do support modulation in principle
because it moves money from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2, which, as has
been said, is the direction of travel for the wider CAP policy.
The current debate is in a sense forced by the cut in rural development
funds, which has been mentioned, and it is unfortunate that it
is having to be taken forward like this because of all the associated
trauma and stress which is accompanying it. It is becoming a much
more emotive issue than a sensible policy evolution. That is one
comment. On match funding, in fact in the longer term if you insist
on match funding Pillar 2 subsidies you disincentivise many Member
States from moving money into Pillar 2. So in the longer term
there is now less justification for insisting on match funding.
Now it is an optional measure anyway, so we see in the short-term
that there is a crucial need to match fund it simply because of
the shock to farm businesses as they adjust. We do support modulation
to the maximum extent needed to fund the schemes because they
are existing commitments and, as we have already said, the budgets
for Pillar 2 are too small to meet the objectives they already
have. So there is no way around it, modulation is going to have
to happen, but to minimise the impact on farmers and to keep the
farming community with the programme, to enable them to support
it, a signal of investment from Government in the form of match
funding is important as a message. It is also important economically
to reduce the impact in the short-term on farm businesses.
Mr Oliver: Our view is fairly
similar. The issue really is that only by meeting existing commitments
for environmental stewardship that is not really addressing the
targeting issues for high-level stewardship, for example the national
priorities are National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural
Beauty, and of course the wider countryside is equally as important.
So I think by standing still we are not really going to move forwards
either in terms of farming policy or supporting that through agri-environment
schemes. You would be right in detecting there is a bit of a tension
for us between the sort of pan-European view which says the sooner
this is all coming out into Pillar 2 the better and the view which
is, if you like, a more English view, which is that the more modulation
the better because again the more money there is looking after
landscapes outside AONBs and National Parks the better it is for
the population as a whole, because many people do not live near
AONBs and National Parks. I have a letter here from Jim Knight,
which expresses an aspiration for the health agenda to be more
directly met by agri-environment schemes on the edges of towns
and cities, where farming is difficult but where open space is
very valuable and where one does not want to have to commit local
authorities to expensive management of country parks. The obvious
solution is to make it easier for farmers to farm extensively
in an interesting way, encouraging access close to where people
live. That is an area where modulation will be enormously valuable,
but there is not even a whisper that that is actually going to
happen, and in the meantime the public benefit of landscape which
is within walking distance of suburbs and urban expansions is
just lost. You only have to look at any town where the last house
on the edge of the town is left and there is a boundary and a
fence and then there is an intensive field right up to the fence,
so there are all the issues of access and sprays and a lack of
connectivity between the people who live there and the landscape
next to them. All that could be a thing of the past if we were
to modulate more with greater aspiration for change that was not
simply to do with the best land going into schemes.
Q101 Mr Williams: Encouragingly,
you both talk about keeping up the morale of the farming community
and the enthusiasm as being vital to achieving your objectives,
but if you have a 20% modulation in this country and just the
compulsory level of modulation in the other European countries,
will that put British farming at a disadvantage and affect the
morale and enthusiasm which you value so much?
Dr Avery: I think it will certainly
do the latter. I think there are two perspectives which are worth
bearing in mind on this. One is that across Europe farmers receiving
support get that support in varying proportions from Pillar 1
and Pillar 2, depending on which European country they are farming
in, and in the UK the preponderance is for that support still
to come from Pillar 1, so our farms are differently positioned
than other farmers. The other perspective which I think we would
have to advance is that that graph of declines of bird numbers
in the UK, which I think would be a good indication of a decline
of biodiversity on farm land in the UK, if one had the data for
plants and insects. You can produce that graph for every European
country and when you do the loss of birds, farm land birds in
the UK is greater than it is in any other European country because
we have clobbered our farm land, not because farmers have done
it but because the way we have enacted the Common Agricultural
Policy over decades has taken the wildlife out of our countryside.
So as a result of that there is an urgent need for us to move
money into the good bits of CAP as much as we can, but that is
going to be more difficult and more morale-sapping for UK farmers
than it would be in other parts of Europe and we need a plan to
do that in a way which is most sensible and sensitive while still
getting the job done, because in this discussion we have kind
of said, "Well, this is okay, this vision." Let us remember
how awful the effects of the CAP have been on the environment,
the landscape, and it has not been great on consumers and farmers
either. So we have to change and the direction of change I think
is right, it is just that it is going to be very uncomfortable.
It is going to be uncomfortable for politicians, who are going
to have to make some difficult decisions and for farmers. It is
the job of politicians to make it a bit easier for farmers, I
would say, and we absolutely do want farmers to stay on the land.
Q102 Chairman: Let me just ask you,
because some of this involves some quite complex dynamics. Ultimately,
if we start from the point of view of the money, this discussion
has been about moving out of Pillar 1 amounts of money into Pillar
2 and you made a very interesting point, Dr Avery, that in those
areas where, if you like, there is the biggest deficit of environmental
goods—and you chose bird numbers as your proxy for that—you
might argue that, say, the intensive arable areas of the United
Kingdom might be the potential biggest beneficiaries of income
in a Pillar 2 situation not necessarily to see that money flow
to areas where you might, if you like, intuitively think, "Oh,
they will go to the Lake District or to the Welsh hills. But hang
on a minute, they've had lots of special schemes already to achieve
these objectives. The clobbered areas are the ones which have
got the biggest deficit." So the question I was groping towards
was whether in fact if you were going to restructure Pillar 2
you have got to have some method almost where you say to farmers,
"You guys have got to have first refusal at bidding for the
cash, because if you're going to have it taken out of Pillar 1
that's off the bottom line of the farm, so there is some money
moving around." But if the farmer said, "Well, okay,
I think I can put together an environmental package for my farm
because these nice people from the RSPB have identified where
the clobbering and the deficit is. I'd like to have first chance
to re-deliver these environmental goods," then at least some
of that resource goes back into the farm's accounts, but I do
not see anybody having thought about that kind of dynamic situation.
Dr Armstrong-Brown: Actually,
we have done a bit of thinking about that. In fact, I think an
earlier question to the CLA was also the future model for financing
the CAP, and we do have one. It is not one that we can allocate
all the cost to all the landowners who would participate in it
yet, but it is basically a model for support through Pillar 2.
It is a little bit like the environmental stewardship scheme now,
if you are familiar with its structure, which is support for everybody
at the lowest level, so every single hectare can deliver for the
environment and should be able to receive support for doing that
if the budgets were sufficiently large. Then where people can
deliver more, where there is the potential to do specialist recreation
or enhancement work, that landowner should also be assisted to
do that. That will be patchy. Not every single landowner or every
single hectare has the capacity to do more than just something.
Every hectare can be good for the environment, but not every hectare
can have an SSSI on it or be part of a designated landscape, or
a wonderful wildlife-rich walk, so that will then limit the number
of people as you go up this pyramid idea. That is our model for
support through Pillar 2, which would not necessarily smooth out
the distribution. We are not talking about either the people who
get the money now getting exactly the same amount as they used
to get via a different route or a completely flat rate distribution
rate for everybody, but it would be distribution on merit rather
than on any kind of historic allocation.
Mr Oliver: Can I just contribute
to that answer? I think one crucially important point is that
whatever the system is, it is clearly to the greatest public benefit.
One of the most damaging things about farming policy for the last
six years has been the drift away from recognising the public
benefit involved in the taxpayer funding it. The other point is
the one which has been very well made by the Woodland Trust in
particular, which is that if you are going to most effectively
accumulate new habitat which is resilient to climate change it
is actually very important to target critical areas. The work
of Peterken on woodlands, for example, is very useful on this,
but also other people, which suggests that it is very good to
target new, higher tier scheme activity as well as entry level
scheme activity to places which give critical mass to areas of
habitat. In landscape terms the story is a bit different, but
it is an area where I think CPRE is content to recognise that
climate change is so pressing that there may be some areas of
habitat which are so precious that they require, if you like,
special recognition. Without that, maybe SSSIs and local nature
reserves will be of increasingly little value because of their
lack of resilience. So I think that is an added element in any
new scheme and if we criticise the Government for not taking account
of climate change, we also must make sure we do.
Q103 Lynne Jones: I was surprised
to hear you say that in other countries there is a higher proportion
of funding going under Pillar 2. Could you tell me where those
are and how that occurs?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: Yes. It is
the new Member States which joined after the UK did, so Austria,
Portugal, Sweden. They were not allowed under WTO rules to receive
large Pillar 1 payments, so the money was diverted via Pillar
2.
Q104 Lynne Jones: So it is just the
new Member States?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: Yes.
Q105 Mr Williams: One thing which
worries me is that if we go down the transfer from Pillar 1 to
Pillar 2 we put in jeopardy food security, to give it a shorthand
expression, and at the same time we go into schemes to promote
biodiversity and landscape quality and those schemes actually
do not succeed. What evidence have we got that the sorts of schemes
which are being proposed, Ty Goral in Wales and a lower entry
and higher entry in England, actually will succeed in doing what
they set out to do?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: That is an
extremely good question because there is quite a live debate in
Europe over whether agri-environment schemes actually work and
a researcher called Kline has recently published a second study
which goes through some of the weaknesses. We think there is a
lot to be learned from this and the bad examples are in places
where the scheme has been used as an alternative to Pillar 1 subsidies,
in fact just to deliver money to farmers via a route which is
legally okay under WTO rules. There is a scheme in Germany which
pays farmers €100 a hectare not to use growth regulators
on their cereals, which to my knowledge has very little environmental
benefit. So there are certainly bad agri-environment schemes out
there, but we know of a set of principles which will make them
work well. And because of the very, very good development process
which has happened in this country and the extensive use of a
whole suite of environmental expertise in designing environmental
stewardship we believe this scheme is fit for use, and subject
to sufficient funding it will deliver its objectives. We have
already got some extremely good examples. One is the Cirl Bunting
special project, one element of the agri-environment schemes in
Devon, which has more than met its targets, in fact it has tripled
the number of Cirl Buntings. It has gone up by 300% actually.
So if the schemes are well-designed, well-targeted and delivered
according to the things which Tom has outlined about having sufficient
advisory support, then they will work, certainly.
Mr Oliver: I would draw the attention
of the Committee to the Land Management Initiative, which was
reported on by the Countryside Agency quite recently, with a series
of projects which were to do with cultural inheritance, historic
landscape, biodiversity and landscape quality in a whole series
of projects using the mechanisms available and they are fully
reported on and very positive.
Dr Avery: I think the UK can be
proud of its track record in agri-environment schemes. They are
not all that perfect, but they have not been around for all that
long. Many of them have absolutely met or exceeded the targets
they have set. Elsewhere in Europe, the schemes have been badly
designed and it is not surprising that they have not met their
targets and they have actually been a complete waste of money.
But that is not the case in this country and it should not be
the case going forward.
Mr Oliver: It would also be helpful
if there were PSA targets for an increasingly sophisticated and
ambitious range of issues. One of the things, for example, we
are very, very keen on introducing is a PSA target for landscape
quality, which would be entirely possible to achieve in an era
of an RSPB-style mechanism for funding. Another one would be a
more sophisticated view of biodiversity measurement. It has been
critical that the Birds Directive has been at the forefront of
everybody's mind, but I would draw the Committee's attention to
Butterfly Conservation's report, The State of Britain's Larger
Moths, which shows how very worrying the condition is of large
numbers of invertebrates, which often have rather different dynamics
to birds. This is in no sense undermining the importance of the
Birds Directive, but it is making the point that actually we are
pretty crude at the moment in looking at the value of our inheritance
and we have a vast number of skilled farmers and skilled conservationists
who have spent a lot of time working out how to do this well and,
unlike the rest of Continental Europe, we are raring to go.
Chairman: I think, as I draw this to
a conclusion, the exchanges of in particular the last few minutes
perhaps illustrate the environmental deficit in the "Vision"
document, in other words there is a lot about change but changing
into what? Your comments about the fact that we have well quantified
results for agri-environment schemes perhaps should encourage
the Government to take some leadership for being able to demonstrate
what a more environmentally sustainable, friendly Pillar 2 might
look like with some good arguments, but sadly those are not arguments
which are deployed with the degree of sophistication and knowledge
which you have done in the "Vision" document. Thank
you very much for opening up that further and interesting perspective
to our inquiries, and again thank you for your written evidence.
We much appreciate it.
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