I agree that we must learn the lessons of the common agricultural policy. Having dealt with it for some seven years in total, I know that it is something of a bureaucratic quagmire. It is very difficult to navigate, and we tend to find that the more rules we invent, the more rules we need in order to make sense of the ones that we already have. That is why we end up with all sorts of complexity, as set out in the 127-page document containing guidance and rules for farmers.
The real lesson to be learnt is that whatever we do in future should be less rules-based and more based on delivering outcomes, and should also be tailored to the needs of an individual farm. When farms have poor profitability, we should try to tackle the causes of that
poor profitability by helping farmers to invest and improve fairness in the supply chain, rather than by means of an arbitrary area-based payment. That is the direction of travel that we have set out.