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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There seemed to be a lack of accountability and clarity about who was responsible for carrying the project forward. This has been a tragic event for the farming community. The farming business has lost about £20 million but, more importantly, it has lost what little confidence it had in DEFRA. If agriculture is to be successful in future, the Department responsible for it and the business itself must find a better way to combine and work together. I want to ask the Minister a question along the same lines as that posed by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire. Does he have any plans to bring forward the payments during the payment window? If not, English farmers will simply look at other countries and the other devolved nations in the United Kingdom and see themselves as second best, because they do not get the same service as others do. I would also like to ask the Minister a question about inspections. In the implementation of the single payment scheme, inspections are important in ensuring that cross-compliance is observed by the applicants, but they are often not well planned. There is frequent duplication, and they place huge regulatory burdens on farming businesses. Will the Minister impress upon DEFRA, the Rural Payments Agency and the Environment Agency the need to co-ordinate their inspection plans more closely, to ensure that, when two inspections can be carried out at the same time, that happens, so that duplication does not occur and farmers feel that the inspections are being carried out with a light but sound touch? The Government’s report, ““Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy””, was brought out in what seemed to be rather a rush during the UK’s presidency of the European Union. In order to achieve a budget agreement, people were talking in fairly strong terms about reform of the CAP, but when the Prime Minister went to look in the cupboard, there was no work on the shelf and there was no report. This document has the hallmark of work that has been done fairly rapidly and without the necessary research. The common agricultural policy has evolved over the years from the time of the treaty of Rome, when it was built on intervention, through the MacSharry reforms that brought in quotas for breeding animals and for payments for particular crops. I am sure that most right hon. and hon. Members here today will agree that in 2003, under the cloak of a mid-term review, we saw the fundamental implementation of the single farm payment, along with the decoupling. During that period, there have also been reductions in the export subsidies that do so much to distort world trade and such great harm to third-world countries. Export subsidies should be eliminated by 2013. It was the agreement between France and Germany that the common agricultural budget should be maintained to 2013 that led to the agreement on the single farm payment. The document produced by DEFRA and the Treasury lacks the political nous that should have been present for it to be taken through the European Union. As the right hon. Member for Fylde said, it seems extremely difficult to get this kind of reform through the agriculture Ministries in France and Germany. Perhaps President Sarkozy will have a different frame of mind from that of President Chirac. I think President Chirac was the only one who understood the European agricultural policy, and that was probably because he wrote it. The movement of funds from pillar one to pillar two is broadly agreed by all hon. Members.