My Lords, whenever I talk to farmers, read the farming press or otherwise see them in the media, they are worried that they do not know how this will work, and that it will simply result in a cut in their income and will be a danger to the future of their business. I have listened to what has so far been an extraordinary seminar on all this business—it will go on rather longer; I did warn people about that —but we still do not get answers from the Government. Those of us who will again be asked by farmers, “What will happen?”, will have to say that we do not know, but we can tell them what might. It is not satisfactory.
The CAP changed several times. Fifteen years ago, it changed very substantially. It was decoupled—that is always the word used on these occasions—from a production-based subsidy system to the area-based schemes: the single farm payment with cross-compliance, which morphed into the basic payment plus greening, which was a bit different but not a lot. It was a major change that inevitably had a seven-year transition period in this country, which resulted in complete chaos with the payments.
I remember that when I was responsible for Defra issues for our party I asked questions time and again in this Chamber about the fact that the Rural Payments Agency was not able to perform its functions properly. People were not being paid on time and some were not being paid at all. The Government will say that it has settled down substantially now. That is true, but that is because the transition has finished, the changes have taken place and people now know what they are doing.
What will happen now? The answer is that everyone will be plunged into a new transition period and another fundamental change where, the Government say, direct subsidies to farms and farmers will be abolished and people will be paid under the new environmental land management scheme. The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, said that it will definitely start in 2024. Without wanting to be too cynical, my answer to that is, “Pull the other one.” It might start, but it will not be completed at all. I wonder whether it will even start then.
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We are going to have a new transition scheme. During that scheme there are going to be temporary environmental schemes which people will be able to sign up to until 2024, so there will be people on the old scheme, people on the temporary scheme, people planning for the new scheme and people on the new scheme if they are in the pilots and the national pilot. It is going to be very complicated and risks being a shambles. None of us wants it to be a shambles—we wish the Government well—but.
There are going to be three tiers. The first tier, effectively, as I understand it and the Minister can tell me if I am wrong, is going to be a bespoke plan for each farm. Each farm that wants to take part—it will be voluntary—has to have a bespoke plan, far more bespoke than the cross-compliance which has taken place so far and has been relatively simple. I do not know who is going to put forward the bespoke plan or work it out for each farm but, unlike the old system, where farmers simply had to measure the size of the farm and send it in—think of all the chaos and difficulty that caused—it is going to be in the hands of consultants. There is no doubt about that. I am worried that the profit, in the early years at least, will be going to consultants not to farmers.
Thinking about the practicalities, I can see that you can have a standard price for a wooden stile, 100 metres of a path suitable for wheelchairs or tree planting. But for a lot of the things laid out in Clause 1(1) and (2), such as soil improvement projects, livestock welfare projects and productivity improvement schemes—who decides what new machinery people want and so on—it is going to be very complicated. Who is going to be there to say that this is okay and that is not, and that
more negotiation is needed? Quite frankly, if it is not done really well, it is going to be a complete nightmare. This is direct payment for specific things. It is not like the basic single farm payment, whereby people got the payment and had to take some environmental steps as a result. It is direct payment for environmental measures, or whatever. Let us be clear: farms are businesses. The profit to the farmer will have to be written into the contract for building a new stile, for example. Can the Minister tell us how that is going to work? What will be their mark-up, as it were?
On tier 2 and tier 3, a farm is going be asked to take part in a wider scheme with local farms under tier 2, or one of the tier 3 schemes—whatever it turns out to be. I am still not getting very sensible answers from the Minister; he is not telling me what I want to know. I want to know what tier 3 schemes are going to be beyond peat, moors and forestry; the last time, I think he also mentioned catchment area schemes. Let us have some more information about tier 3. If a farm takes part in a tier 3 scheme, who carries it out? Who makes the money out of it? What is in it for the farmer? Will farmers just be paid a rent, for example, for allowing their farm to be part of it? How will that work? It is not very clear. It is complicated, and I can see that it is going to be an absolute disaster unless it is organised very well indeed.