We welcome this opportunity to scrutinise progress towards reform of the common agricultural policy. I was going to say to the Minister that it seems like we debated the CAP only yesterday, but then I recalled that we did so in Committee.
The Secretary of State and the Minister may regard it as a measure of success that they have not faced criticism from one side in their negotiations, but they have in fact faced criticism from all sides, including farmers, farmers unions, Ministers in devolved Governments—particularly, but not exclusively, the Scottish Government—and environmental groups. Perhaps the Secretary of State is attempting a divide and conquer strategy—splitting the competing interests in order to diminish their effectiveness and leaving him free to argue his own way in European Union negotiations—but such a strategy has real dangers that can only diminish the outcomes for the UK. Being surrounded by attacks on their negotiating stance leaves Ministers looking weak and vulnerable. I am sure that the Commission, the President and the European parliamentarians involved in decision making will have noticed that isolation at home and will continue to utilise that weakness in negotiations.
That is just on the home front. Likewise, in Brussels and Strasbourg, the days of the UK being at the vanguard of progressive, like-minded nations on CAP reform are, as in so many other areas of policy, a fond but distant memory. The Government are trying to lead and to build on the collaborative approach to previous negotiations, but they have alienated far too many former friends.
No one can have failed to notice the intervention today in The Daily Telegraph—my daily reading—of the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who draws an analogy between the Government’s approach to Europe and the heroic but doomed charge of the Light Brigade. The Secretary of State, like his Prime Minister, is boldly and valiantly galloping into the field of diplomatic battle: he and the Prime Minister are the Lord Raglan and Lord Cardigan of CAP reform and European relations, charging headlong into the cannons of Brussels and being scythed down, but nevertheless riding heroically into Eurosceptic mythology, mayhem and madness.
The Government have done their best to alienate potential diplomatic partners with their swivel-eyed lunacy—not my words, Mr Speaker—on the EU. That cannot but affect the negotiations on CAP reform and, as important, lessen the outcomes for UK farmers and consumers and for sustainable production here, in other nations and in the developing world.