Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I respect the hon. Gentleman's knowledge of agriculture, but he knows that a strong body of opinion in the farming community supported the system DEFRA put in place. How would he justify, for example, putting people who had always grown vegetables and crops that were unsupported, who never had subsidies, into a system that would lock them out of that for ever, while ensuring that people who always had such subsidies—in some cases, people who did not compete in the marketplace as other farmers did—had that advantage built in for ever? Would he have justified that?