Alyn Smith calls for limit on ‘unproductive’ farm support pay-outs

THE release at the weekend of details showing the top farm subsidy recipients in Scotland, with three individuals or companies each taking more than £1 million in taxpayers’ money, has highlighted the failings of the current support system, according to one of Scotland’s MEPs.

Alyn Smith said that, while those receiving the large amounts of cash had done nothing irregular or wrong, the fact was the payments that were made were not linked to active farming or producing food and that was “difficult to take”.

He said that one of the key ingredients in the reform package currently being discussed was that only those actually working in the industry should be supported.

The top recipient of single farm payments last year is the Aberdeenshire farm business of Frank Smart, of Easter Tolmauds, Torphins, who received £2,448,426.16 for this small livestock farm.

The company is understood to have invested heavily over the years in buying the entitlements which trigger the single farm payment. The only qualification for payment is that the cash is linked to land which may not even have to be owned.

The second-highest subsidy payment, of £1,302,237.02, went to Strathdee Properties, which farms various parcels of land in Morayshire. Last year, Simon Strathdee, the owner of the company, which also has major development interests in the North-east, came out publicly against the top limiting of subsidies when the proposals first emerged in the current Common Agricultural Policy reforms

Smith, who has just completed an on-line survey of attitudes to putting a limit on the amount of cash any individual should receive from subsidies, said the response showed heavily in favour of this top limiting proposal, with more than two-thirds favouring the move.

He himself took a pragmatic view and said a top limit should not be introduced if the money was going to someone who was actively farming.

Following a decision in Europe a number of years ago, the list of subsidy recipients does not publish names of individuals, only companies. Thus half the top 50 names, who all received sums ranging from just over £1m to £280,000, are withheld showing only the amount of cash the individual received.

Smith said he did not believe this secrecy did any good as it made people believe there was something to hide. “In the forthcoming reform I will be endeavouring to ensure that all those who receive public money are named. The impression given with withholding names infers something shady which it isn’t.”