BREXIT THREATENS SUBSIDIES FOR BRITAIN’S LANDED GENTRY AND QUEEN
Rising clamour to stop, or at least curb, the handouts to the wealthy after leaving EU
It is a club that includes some of the world’s richest people. There are dukes, sheikhs, flamboyant entrepreneurs — even Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family. What they have in common besides ownership of some of Britain’s finest estates — adorned with stately homes, manicured gardens and, sometimes, racing stables — is their legal status as farmers, which means they are on the dole for European Union farm subsidies.
The queen’s idyllic 20,000-acre estate at Sandringham is among the huge holdings supported by the annual payouts, receiving more than $675,000 (29 million baht) in European farm subsidies last year (down from $975,000 the year before). But that could be about to change because of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, known as Brexit.
The idea that public subsidies help the rich get richer may be unpopular, but while payments can be tracked on an official website, the decisions on them have been sheltered from view by the European Union’s much criticised Common Agricultural Policy. Once Britain is out of the bloc, however, the British Parliament will inherit the politically explosive issue of underwriting some of the cost of maintaining the estates of wealthy landowners.
At a time when even the Conservatives under Prime Minister Theresa May have declared war on the growing wealth inequality and the inequities of capitalism, there is a rising clamour to stop, or at least curb, the handouts to the titled, and entitled.
“It’s completely indefensible,” said Chris Bryant, an opposition Labour Party lawmaker, former minister and author of the coming Entitled, a Critical History of the British Aristocracy.
“The only way we have been able to defend it in the past is that it is a European Union system,” he said. The British government has, Mr Bryant added, “for years argued that we spend too much on agriculture, and the logical consequence of that would be not to have such high subsidies.”
Recipients include a cast of the rich and famous, with money finding its way to another prominent member of the royal family via the Duchy of Cornwall, an estate established by Edward III in 1337. Its revenues go to Prince Charles, the Duke of Cornwall, an heir to the throne. In 2016, the duchy received more than $130,000 in European Union subsidies.
Other wealthy beneficiaries have included the Duke of Westminster, who died last year; the Duke of Northumberland; Khalid Abdullah al-Saud, owner of the Juddmonte racing stables; Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai, who owns the Godolphin stables; and James Dyson, the pro-Brexit businessman and inventor known for his vacuums, who also owns a farming business.
The government has promised to retain current subsidies until 2022, but dropped strong hints that thereafter, the rich might have to pay more of their own way.
In July, Michael Gove, the secretary of state for food, the environment and rural affairs, criticised a European farm subsidy system that “rewards size of landholding ahead of good environmental practice, and all too often puts resources in the hands of the already wealthy rather than into the common good of our shared natural environment”.
Decisions have yet to be made, but ministers are studying ways to shift cash from farmers with large estates to those struggling with smaller holdings.
Buckingham Palace said the subsidies for Sandringham also include payments for a separate estate, Balmoral, in Scotland, but it would not comment on what might happen after Brexit. In a statement, it said that “subsidies are open to all farmers; and like others with agricultural interests, some subsidies are received on the queen’s private estates. Figures are in the public domain as a matter of record.”
But at Sandringham recently, where the public can walk through the queen’s house, view prized portraits and heirlooms — including shotguns and other antique weaponry — visitors seemed less than convinced that the cash was needed.
Linda Thorpe, a health administrator, argued that while the Sandringham farm supports livelihoods, farmers generally get too much subsidy. Her husband, Colin Thorpe, was more blunt, saying: “Money always goes to money. That will never change.”
Kevin Kilkenny, who trains apprentices in Hull, in northeast England, added: “It’s the old boys’ club. It is all the rich boys in the rich club looking after each other.”
Brussels has tried several times to limit the maximum amount that farmers can claim, and individual governments are already entitled to impose curbs on big payments.
But such initiatives have often clashed with Britain’s national interest. As a big net contributor to the European Union, it believed it got a raw deal from Europe’s agricultural policy because Britain has less farmland than, for example, neighbouring France. Yet, of the subsidy that does flow to Britain, a significant proportion goes to owners of bigger parcels of land, who form a relatively large part of the nation’s farmers.
The European Union has been scaling back its agricultural policy and trying to reward better environmental practices. Its defenders argue that farm subsidies help provide food security while sustaining the economies of remote rural communities that have few alternative sources of income.
But Dieter Helm, an economist at Oxford University who specialises in energy, utilities and the environment, argues that rewarding people for owning land is “a terrible policy”. Though he opposes Brexit, he argues that “when we leave the European Union, the one shining opportunity is that we don’t have to be involved in this”.
Mr Helm says that the British government will either devote less money to farm subsidies overall or distribute the funds differently, and that there will be a ceiling on subsidy grants to individual claimants.
“There is enormous pressure, rightly, to stop subsidising the large intensive farms of the lowlands,” he said. “There is a natural evolution away from paying people who have several thousand acres and toward the smaller farms, which tend to be in the uplands. It’s a no-brainer.”
Some critics counter that cutting subsidies would put British farmers at a disadvantage with their continental competitors, and that large landowners may break up their holdings into smaller plots of land to get around curbs on big beneficiaries.
Mr Helm argues that tariffs could be applied to food imports if British farmers cannot compete, and that splitting up holdings to keep subsidies could be treated like tax evasion.
As for Queen Elizabeth, David McClure, the author of Royal Legacy, a book on the monarchy’s finances, argues that even though Sandringham has historically struggled to make a profit, the queen’s finances are solid enough to survive a loss of the subsidies.
“She’s not going to be pawning the family silver,” McClure said.