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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I am not sure that I can answer that in practical terms, but it seemed to me that the system was sometimes fifth dimensional, as there were so many errors. It was particularly galling that when it got things right, it subsequently returned to them and got them wrong. There was no consistency in the information; it was a case of garbage in, garbage out. Sadly, even when the information was initially right, it was subsequently screwed up, which was completely unacceptable and led to people having no confidence in what was done. I could go into considerable detail on that matter; in fact, we did so, and the people who briefed us explained what the problems were—but, sadly, the solutions were more difficult to identify. There was not much vision in the other document even though it was called ““Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy””. We swiftly identified that it appeared to have been produced not by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but by the Treasury. Therefore, it was strong on economics but weak on societal and cultural aspirations, which should be central in moving from a common agricultural system to, we hope, a common rural policy. It was, at best, a fudge. It was interesting that the Government again said that they had listened to, and reflected on, the views of many in the farming community. We attended the Royal show last year. It must have been better than this year’s Royal show as we had sunshine; I am thankful that we did not visit it this year as we would have had to have worn our Wellington boots. We took evidence from ordinary farmers, and that was interesting as they expressed thoughtful opinions on what should be our future agricultural policy. We addressed in the report whether it was possible to have a common agricultural policy. I have doubts about whether a common policy can exist, and certainly about whether it can do so in a European Union of its current size—although I cannot complain about that as I supported enlargement. We addressed points of analysis and dissection, rather than of underlying philosophy. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) has trenchant criticisms to make of the whole concept of the common agricultural policy, and I share them. However, the Committee looked at how we might move to a different system—how we might move from pillar one to pillar two. A key problem was that we led that charge alone. Although other nations might speak the language of wanting to move away from production subsidies, when push comes to shove and their politicians are faced with the question of whether to defend the important franchise of the farming community—it is less important in our country than in some others—many of them fall back on defending the production subsidy system. Sadly, too many other nations take that position, and until they change their underlying opinions the common agricultural policy will be a dead duck, and the sooner we fry it the better. The document was short on vision and did not say where the Government wanted to go, even though—to be fair to them—they had gone much further than other countries, as I have already said. The document did not make us feel as if we knew where we were going. As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) said, it would have been good to have looked in much more detail at food security issues. As it is a historic document, things have moved on and we now have to face up to non-food crops and the implications they have for the rural economy. There were various issues that needed to be embraced and the weakness of the document was that it did not look to the future. It looked to the immediate problems that British farming faces, but we wanted to stretch out from that so that we could provide leadership to the rest of the EU. That was lacking, and therefore we missed a real opportunity.