United Kingdom-Meeting the Minister.

UNITED KINGDOM-MEETING THE MINISTER..

MY FIRST encounter with the Defra minister responsible for farming and food, Jane Kennedy, did not get off to the happiest of starts.

It was at the Rest and Be Thankful Inn, at Wheddon Cross, on Exmoor, last Thursday. Together with other farming journalists I had been invited there to meet the minister, in the context of a discussion on the situation for hill farmers, set up by the South West Uplands Task Force.

I was chatting away merrily with my Farming Editor, waiting for the minister to appear, when we were approached by a lady wearing a leather jacket, sweatshirt and rather scruffy cord jeans. Peter obviously knew her, and introduced me as former NFU regional director, and so on. "And who exactly are you?" I inquired of the woman, having marked her down as probably one of the Defra press officers. "Oh, I’m Jane Kennedy," she replied, with just the slightest hint of surprise in her voice. "I’m the Minister for Farming and Food."

Collapse of stout columnist.

After that, I felt that I really ought not to be too hard on Miss Kennedy, and resolved merely to listen to the discussion about how to safeguard the future of farming in the hills, and to resist the temptation to intervene. But the longer the debate went on, the more it seemed to me that all concerned were somehow tiptoeing about "the elephant in the room", which is Article 68, in the latest reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy.

This, as regular readers will I’m sure recall, is the measure that allows member states to skim off up to 10 per cent of Single Farm Payments to all of their farmers, and use the money to address particular issues or concerns – like keeping farmers in the hills. Yet, despite its obvious centrality to the matter in hand – the fact that, on the face of it, it provides a ready-made solution to the problem of how to direct more public funding to the hills, without Government or taxpayers having to foot the bill – it hadn’t been mentioned specifically, either by Nigel Stone, from Exmoor National Park, who had given the presentation on behalf of the Uplands Task Force, or by the minister.

In the end, I could restrain myself no longer, and asked her the obvious question.

"What is the Government’s policy on Article 68? Do you intend to use it, as the French are doing, to put more money into the hills?"

Mrs Kennedy looked blank. There was a long pause, before she finally said "pass", having clearly not a clue what I was talking about.

Now, it seems to me that there are two things to be said about this. The first is that our Defra ministers seem to have an alarmingly low level of knowledge on the finer points of the policy that underpins the industry for which they are responsible. Bear in mind that Miss Kennedy’s boss, Hilary Benn, had been asked precisely the same question at the Oxford Farming Conference 15 months ago and had similarly been forced to profess his total ignorance on the subject.

She came up to me afterwards, full of apologies, and suggested that this was part of Huw Irranca-Davies’ brief, as Minister for the Environment. But that really won’t wash. Article 68 is central to the future development of the CAP. It has, as the Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel has warned, the potential to become "a blank sheet of paper on which member states can re-write the CAP in 27 different versions". Every Defra minister, and most certainly the Minister for Farming and Food, ought firstly to be familiar with it, and secondly to have a view on it.

The second question is: why hadn’t the minister been briefed, and why did none of the several civil servants present come to her rescue? I suspect the answer is because, when it comes to the finer points of farming policy, they know as little as their ministers do.

If evidence were needed of the alarming decline in competence and ability among the civil servants who staff Defra, then this exchange provided it.

In asking the question about Article 68, I was not seeking to imply that the measure is indeed the answer to the hill farmer’s prayer. But I certainly do believe that we ought to have the debate. There is, after all, up to £140 million available for redistribution, at a time when there is zero prospect of new Government money. Why not use it to help victims of bovine TB, for example, or to offset some of the cost of electronic ID for sheep?

However, what the money most certainly should not be used for – and here I’m afraid I part company with the SW Uplands Support Group – is re-introducing headage payments on hill cattle and sheep. If the experience of the last five years has taught us anything, it is that de-coupling works.

Why are beef and lamb prices at record levels, at least 50 per cent higher than they were two years ago? Because since the abolition of headage payments, farmers have learned to keep the numbers of livestock justified by the market, not the numbers dictated by the desire to maximise their subsidy cheque. The result has been the biggest lift in livestock farmers’ incomes for at least 25 years.

I haven’t done the sums, but I would guess that, for every £1 lost in subsidy, £10 has been gained in market values. To chuck all of that out of the window by re-coupling livestock payments in the hills would be madness.

Of course, what goes up, must eventually come down – that is in the nature of markets. For the moment, I suggest we just enjoy it, which not every farmer seems to be capable of doing.

I had dinner with an auctioneer friend on Saturday evening, and he told me of the encounter he had with one regular customer, immediately after what my friend had described as the best market he had known in 30 years in the business.

"Tis terrible," the farmer had said, with a sad shake of his head.

"What’s terrible?" inquired the auctioneer, somewhat baffled.

"Prices an’ that. They’m too ’igh. ’Twill all end in tears, you mark my words."

And with that, he shuffled off, miserable in his good fortune, in search of some bad news in which to wallow.

Anthony Gibson is a freelance writer and may be contacted at anthony.gbsn@googlemail.com