A government adviser has called for a review of tax breaks for farmers, saying there must be an end to “subsidy addiction”.
The senior adviser to Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Dieter Helm, called for a review of the current taxation rules for farmers.
Mr Helm said the farming industry's subsidies are "extremely wasteful" and suffered from "subsidy addiction".
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday (29 July): “If you’re producing 0.7% of output, receiving £3bn of subsidies for that output of about £9bn and being exempted on rates, and being exempted on diesel and being exempted on inheritance tax, this is quite a list. And we’ve got there by accident almost – one after another of these concessions has been made; it’s kind of a subsidy addiction in the end.”
He added: “Farmers receive not just the £3bn of subsidy, they receive a whole range of other benefits that nobody else in the economy gets.”
NFU's vice president Guy Smith told the BBC that government assistance helped British agriculture stay competitive.
“What we are rightly weary of is having to compete against farmers in other parts of the world who get greater levels of support, or who have different costs of production because of different policy.”
However, Defra has said Mr Helm's ideas were not under consideration.
Michael Gove has insisted that farmers will, in future, be paid subsidies assessed on environmental and public benefits the land brings rather than simply how much land is owned.
A farming union has labelled his vision for farming under a 'Green Brexit' guise as a cause for concern.
