I thank Members for reappointing me as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. As I said in my spiel on seeking re-election, my door will always be open to Members on both sides of the House. That was not just a ploy to be re-elected; it is very much my philosophy. I encourage Members to stand for membership of the Committee.
I direct Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I welcome this Bill, as it is essential that farmers have certainty for the coming year. Fifty-eight per cent. of farm profitability comes from the basic payment scheme, and we need to make sure that we not only retain those payments. As we look to our trade deals and our future agricultural production, it would be great to see more of our farming income coming from what farmers are paid for their produce, rather than just from support payments, much as we welcome them.
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I thank the Minister for his frank, open and detailed breakdown of the Bill, and I will take this opportunity to consider all the clauses together. I also thank him because, over the years, he has fought hard on various cases of hardship due to farm payments. Of course, he has often been stymied by the rules of the common agricultural policy. I think I correctly interpret what he said, which was that, even in this coming year, he will have a little more flexibility on dealing with this, which is essential.
The Minister’s speech was interesting, because I made a claim back in the 1990s under the integrated administration and control system—I queued up at Exeter to get the Ordnance Survey maps—and I saw the complete disaster of that system, which was quickly corrected the following year. We built on that system to get it almost right, and then the next Labour Government came in and changes were made to the common agricultural policy. It went from direct payments for sheep, cattle and crops to area payments and, again, there was another huge problem with the system: delays, delays and more delays. Lessons probably need to be learned from that. We have had our own problems with the system when we were in government, so I am not saying it is all down to the Labour Government. We all have to plead a certain amount of guilt in this process.
I welcome this Bill, but we need to make sure we get the new system right before we implement it. Previously we implemented systems and then tried to get them right. As I have said before, the trouble with the present system is that farmers are always guilty until they can prove their innocence. In a court of law in this country, we are professed to be innocent until proven guilty.
The Minister talked about speaking to the head of the Rural Payments Agency, and a real cultural change is needed. For all the rights and wrongs of the CAP—Europe’s system of fines and draconian rules—we now have a chance to make it more flexible. The Rural Payments Agency will need to give farmers more advice, because it is the policeman—perhaps it should now be “policeperson”—and it has previously found it difficult to advise farmers when making those payments. I would like to see that culture change completely, because it is necessary.