Common Agricultural Policy Single Payment and Support Schemes (Cross-compliance) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2006

My Lords, we owe a debt of gratitude to my noble friend Lady Byford for giving us the chance of having a word on this matter. I declare my interest as a farmer. I am particularly glad that we have this Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee. I was a member of the old statutory instruments scrutiny committee, which was extremely boring because all we looked at were vires, so it is a great improvement. With the avalanche of secondary legislation produced by Governments—particularly this one, I am afraid—it is crucial that there should be proper parliamentary scrutiny of its merits as well as its vires. I congratulate the committee on producing this short report highlighting these important points. There are two patterns to the backdrop of this debate. First, the much-repeated mantra from Her Majesty’s Government about deregulation no longer excites the soul when we hear it. To that must be coupled the commitment of the Barroso commission, appointed in November 2004 with a mandate to deregulate and simplify, to try to make the EU a little less unpopular among member states in the hope, vain as it turned out, that the new EU constitution, agreed at the Brussels IGC in June 2004, would be ratified. We should note in passing that one reason both Holland and France voted down the constitution was the discontent of farmers there. The second part of the backdrop is the serious cash flow problem facing our own Chancellor of the Exchequer as he strives to find resources for the many demands that matter: better services in education, the NHS, law and order—as we heard in the last debate—and the fight against terrorism. The need to see that our Armed Forces are adequately equipped and paid to fight the wars on several fronts to which our Prime Minister sends them is as important as any. However, let me say something about the home front. One of the few Ministers who I would trust to be effective on deregulation is the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. We are sorry that he cannot be here today, but quite understand why. I know that he will read, mark, learn and inwardly digest every word that has been said. All I would ask the noble Baroness, who is so kindly standing in for him today, is to undertake to ensure that the Secretary of State, Mr Miliband—for whom I also have quite a lot of time—and, more important in this instance, his part-time Permanent Secretary, Helen Ghosh, take the time to read the debate. It is clear that the RPA, which has made such a mess of administering the payments, is now gearing itself up to administer the RPA cross-compliance with a heavy hand. The RPA employs more than 3,000 people, of whom 200 are inspectors who undertake the cross-compliance inspections. The RPA deals only with England, but there are about 200,000 farms, of which more than half are smallholdings; that is, they are smaller than 50 acres. I am not a member of the NFU, and I have not always praised it, but in the excellent evidence it submitted to the EU in November 2006 it stated: "““‘Cross-compliance’ has taken on the dimensions of a huge spectre that hangs over every SPS claimant and bedevils even the simplest agricultural operation or land transaction. In short, it has grown from an instrument that seeks to assure good agricultural practice to one that increasingly prescribes agricultural activities and precludes flexible land use””." That is a serious thing for such a body to have to say, and it is a terrific condemnation. Helen Ghosh should be very ashamed that it should be written because it is the bureaucrats who, despite the excellent efforts that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is making, must be asked to do something about it. I had an interesting letter from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which he did not sign himself. If he had read it, I think he might not have signed it. I raised a point, which does not affect me at all, about blackthorn and the worry that farmers have when it encroaches into field margins that they are not allowed to cut by mechanical means in certain months to keep them in good condition. The letter was an example of the bureaucracy that we want to avoid. I am sure it was very carefully written and that somebody took a lot of trouble, but it illustrates the problem. I shall not read great chunks of it, because it is quite long. Instead of giving the sensible answer—which would be to let farmers cut the blackthorn down when it encroaches and, provided they do not do something silly, support them—the letter states that a derogation has to be applied for in every instance and photographs have to be supplied. Think of the cost, not just to the farmer who has to do it all, but to the civil servants, who could be doing something for someone who needs a new kidney machine. That is the opportunity cost and is what the Government must get a grip on. They must recognise that this sort of thing is unacceptable and intolerable and makes people very angry. It played its part in causing a revolution against the EU constitution. I warn the Government that they must take this matter seriously and do something about it because it makes people angry. The final conclusion that this letter comes to is, ““Well, you could always allow the two metres to become a bigger hedge””. What an incredible idea. Of course that sort of thing does not only apply here, it is a big problem in Brussels. Gold-plating has been referred to. Whether the gold is made in Brussels or in Whitehall I am not sure—probably some in both. I went with the EU Select Committee to Brussels in July 2005. We had a very interesting conversation with Vice-President Gunter Verheugen, whose job it was to try to reduce the bureaucracy. He made the most interesting comment. He said that when he was trying he found that senior officials in his Commission saw theirmain role in life as—and I quote his words—to keep the ““chauffage going””; in other words, to keep themselves in their jobs. That is the danger of bureaucracy. That is what the Government have to get a grip on, and that is what I ask the noble Baroness to take back to her department as a message, at least from me.