CAP reform plans ‘will turn clock back’ says minister

Although it is still a week before they are officially made public, the European Commission’s proposals for reforming the Common Agricultural Policy came under strong attack at this week’s Conservative Party conference.

First, UK farming minister Jim Paice claimed that if the leaked version of the proposals proved correct, then “we are turning the clocks back rather than forward”. Then MEP Richard Ashworth said he was “extremely worried” by the proposals, as they seemed to concentrate on social and environmental issues, with food production and security given a low priority.

Highlighting proposals that will reward organic farming and pay small-scale farmers but set limits on large-scale farming and impose “green” measures, Ashworth wondered whether the support for the “social and environmental elements of the package are at the expense of competitiveness and efficiency when the big issue is food security”.

Paice said he wanted a simpler CAP that was easier to implement and helped the industry become more competitive and innovative as it faced the challenge of producing more food with a smaller environmental footprint.

Earlier, NFU president Peter Kendall said English farmers had been handicapped by a “uniquely complex, uniquely discriminatory and uniquely badly delivered model of single payments under the current CAP system”.