Tag Archives: DEFRA

The Common Agricultural Policy and the UK general election

EU Member States are obliged by the European Union to make available the data on recipients of Common Agricultural Policy money by 30th April each year, with data from the preceding year. Today is 1st May and Defra has put this message on its CAP payments website:

Due to the General Election campaign, this website will not be updated with the 2009 figures until after the election.

What the hell is going on?

OK, civil servants during the election period are restricted in what they can do due to the purdah rules. But the main gist of the Cabinet Office guidance for the period is this (from here):

During an Election campaign, the Government retains its responsibility to govern, and Ministers remain in charge of their Departments. Essential business must be carried on. However, it is customary for Ministers to observe discretion in initiating any new action of a continuing or long-term character. Decisions on matters of policy on which a new Government might be expected to want the opportunity to take a different view from the present Government should be postponed until after the Election, provided that such postponement would not be detrimental to the national interest or wasteful of public money.

There is absolutely nothing new about publishing CAP data. It is a long standing obligation under EU law that the UK government has to respect. So why are they not doing it? Which minister fears the release of this data now? Or is it just pure risk aversion somewhere?

In the meantime if you want to see who got what in 2008, constituency by constituency, then see Farmsubsidy’s excellent election website.

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The TaxPayers’ Alliance on CAP versus… well, no-one really

Oh, you can just imagine them chortling away in the TaxPayers’ Alliance producing the above video about the Common Agricultural Policy. It contains a heady mix of fact and prejudice and there’s even a report to go with it. The ‘stats’ in the TaxPayers’ Alliance report are correct in as far as they go in terms of the costs of CAP, but of course their tables forget the money that is paid to UK farmers from the CAP. But stating that the UK gets money from the EU budget doesn’t assist with the sensationalist line that it’s Brussels stealing all our money.

Let me be frank about it – I think the CAP is absolute rubbish. But I have 2 problems with all of this. First of all there is no-one putting the other side of the debate about CAP in the UK. Secondly, having a go at the EU as a whole as a result of this is quite cheap.
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Wipe out the carrot

Carrots - Creative Commons / Flickr

Carrots - Creative Commons / Flickr

So the UK carrot crop is going to be wiped out, according to Martin Evans, Chairman of the British Carrot Growers’ Association quoted in The Observer today. The EU wants to tighten rules on what pesticides can be used on crops, the UK government doesn’t agree, can be outvoted under QMV, and the UK might end up producing no carrots.

But hold on a moment… First of all, why is the UK carrot crop going to be wiped out when – I assume – no other carrot crops in other European countries are going to be hit in the same way as other EU governments are not crying foul? Does the UK have a climate or soil or bugs that are especially inappropriate for carrots, and hence UK farmers have to apply more pesticides than anyone else?

Secondly – as I suspect – carrot growing conditions are probably not that different in Ireland, northern France, Germany, Belgium, the southern parts of Scandinavia, and perhaps Poland and Czech Republic. So if the UK carrot growers had been on the phone to their counterparts, and had lobbied effectively, and – indeed – DEFRA had got its act together, the UK growers would probably not be in this pickle.

But of course the whole thing could be complete rubbish as The Observer did not try to get the other side of the argument, with a bland sentence mentioning that anti-pesticide protestors were content with the proposed new rules.

So when you hear some rubbish about the mendacious EU trying to wipe out the British carrot chew on it with a healthy pinch of salt.

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