Memorandum submitted by Jamie Blackett
(RAS 02)
CAP REFORM
1. I agree that CAP needs further reform
but the Government should acknowledge that:
2. UK farming does matter. Without it our
rural economy would be in crisis: tourism, food processing and
agricultural service industries and indeed civil servants' jobs
would disappear. The balance of payments would suffer and our
economy would shrink.
3. Subsidies will be necessary for as long
as the rest of the world has them and as long as our industry
bears the cost of national regulation and givens like the minimum
wage. By all means get rid of subsidies world wide and let food
prices rise to their true level, or if not just accept that they
are necessary and stop blaming UK farmers for needing them.
4. Farmers are highly entrepreneurial in
the classic definition of risk taking with capital. The current
bureaucracy stifles that entrepreneurial spirit. The industry
has tried to diversify into the bio-fuels market and the chancellor
has stubbornly refused to create the necessary fuel duty regime—unlike
the rest of the world.
5. Government lecturing to farmers on the
environment lacks any credibility while the playing field is tilted
towards fossil fuels and away from bio-fuels.
6. CAP reform was supposed to make life
simple and cut the huge waste of money in administering subsidies.
Since CAP reform there has been an increase in bureaucracy. They
should pay the single farm payment for the rest of its life, now
that it is fixed, and remove the obligation for annual returns.
7. It is daft for six large supermarket
chains to be allowed to control over 80% of food retailing. Economists
such as Michael Porter would tell you that there would never be
a balance of purchasing power until there are only six large farmers
left in the UK—does the Government seriously want that?
Either the oligopoly needs breaking or entities such as the Milk
Marketing Board will be needed again.
8. The weight of regulation is now so great
that even large farms simply do not have the resources to learn
about them let alone implement them. Red tape must be cut.
9. Stringent production rules are sensible
for the health of the nation, for the global environment and for
animal welfare but they are a nonsense unless they are applied
to products at the point of sale in this country as well as at
the point of production as is the case, for example, with forestry
products.
June 2006
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