Don’t spend your energies trying to cut the CAP

Liberal Democrat spokesperson Lord Greaves has advised the UK Government to accept that the Common Agricultural Policy budget needs to remain at the expected 2013 level of 39% of the European Union budget – "more or less" – for the next financing period up to 2020.

Leading a Lords debate on "proposals for reform of the CAP" Lord Greaves said that "if we are serious about food security in Europe, climate change, fairness to Eastern Europe and all the other issues", remaining at the projected level in 2013 is "probably inevitable".

He added: "My advice to the government is to accept that, more or less. They should not spend their energies arguing about it; they should argue about the important thing, which is what the CAP has to do."

Speaking on the very morning that the Ciolos proposals were published by the European Commission, Lord Greaves put seven "propositions" to the Government for discussion. The first is the urgency for the UK government to agree a negotiating position with the devolved administrations in Wales and Scotland.

The second is to work on phasing out the remaining export subsidies and on agreeing strictly limited remaining market intervention measures. The third is to move towards a fully area-based system of payments to farmers throughout the EU by 2020. The fourth is the redistribution of payments – a "rebalancing" of area payments to new member states and more support for less favoured areas or "areas with specific natural constraints" throughout Europe.

His fifth proposition is a "significant further greening of the system". He said that the purpose of farm support – "the reason why it exists" – is to support the producers of food, but that "green outcomes need to be embedded throughout the system".

Lord Greaves "last two fundamental propositions" were "the absolutely vital need to maintain a common European agricultural policy and to resist nationalisation of the CAP" by "patriation of further parts of it" or "further moves towards co-funding" – and maintenance of the budget.