Payment proposal is a 'cop-out,' says Pack

Pack Inquiry chairman Brian Pack told the union's annual meeting at Carnoustie that McLaren's suggestion that the present Single Farm Payment (SFP) should be continued after 2013 using a more up-to-date base year for calculating payments failed to meet the need for reform.

"My job is to reach a consensus with the industry and I'm not ruling out rebasing," said Pack. "But I think it would take our eye off the ball of necessary transition. Rebasing would add to the complexity and would be seen as a cop-out."

The Pack Inquiry's interim report has suggested a move to an area-based system, with a minimum of a third of the SFP being top sliced and used as a top-up to support sectors of the industry facing particular difficulties.

The report suggests the change to an area-based system should be completed in one fell swoop when the current support regime ends in 2014.

Farmers are alarmed that the proposal could see support levels for individual farms slashed, with many more losers than winners. One farmer, Derek Roan, from Stewartry, Dumfries and Galloway, told the meeting that he had calculated that the Pack proposals would leave him with only 10 per cent of his existing SFP on his mixed beef and sheep farm.

Pack agreed that the historic system was right when it was introduced but said it was no longer defendable.

"It is broke now and with every year that passes, it becomes more broke (sic]," he insisted.

However, McLaren has suggested that the continuation of the SFP on the basis of an updated reference period might be acceptable in Europe and would overcome two of the main criticisms of the present regime – the ineligibility of new entrants to the industry and the payment of large amounts of SFP to so-called "slipper" farmers who have retired or are no longer farming.