Farmers promised cash for animal welfare

Opening up land to public will also be rewarded in Government’s plans for a ‘green Brexit’, says Gove

Farmers will be given bigger public subsidies for taking better care of their livestock under plans for a “green Brexit”, Michael Gove will say today. The Environment Secretary will say that improved animal welfare standards will be one of the “public goods” which will attract more government funding. Mr Gove is drawing up post-brexit plans on how to replace the £3billion in subsidies that farmers currently receive from the EU.

FARMERS will be given bigger public subsidies for taking better care of their livestock under plans for a “green Brexit”, Michael Gove will say today.

The Environment Secretary will say that improved animal welfare standards will be one of the “public goods” that will attract more government funding. Landowners who encouraged people to be more “connected” to the countryside and increased understanding of farming would also benefit from more funds.

Mr Gove’s department has been waging a policy war with Labour over areas of environmental policy such as foxhunting and animal sentience for several months.

Last week Labour published a wideranging strategy for boosting animal welfare in the UK, including enshrining animal sentience in law, reviewing animal testing and banning foie gras.

Mr Gove is now drawing up plans to set out how the Government will replace the £3 billion in subsidies that farmers currently receive annually from the EU after Brexit. A command paper on agriculture will be published by the end of next month.

In his speech today to the National Farming Union’s annual conference in Birmingham, Mr Gove will say: “I believe investing in higher animal welfare standards and investing in improved training and education for those in agriculture and food production are clear public goods.

“We have a high baseline for animal health standards, which we will continue to enforce. However, we could also support industry-led initiatives to improve these standards, especially in cases where animal welfare remains at the legislative minimum.”

Farmers who open up their land to encourage members of the public to feel more “connected” to the countryside will receive more cash, he will say.

Mr Gove will tell the NFU conference that the voice of farmers and food producers is now more central to Government thinking than at any time for 50 years because ministers are able to draw up a farming policy free of EU involvement.

Central to policy will be recognising that farmers play a key role in creating the most beautiful parts of the country.

He will say: “We have to ensure future methods of agricultural support recognise how critical it is to value the culture in agriculture.

“Devon and Somerset would not be as they are – with the countryside as beautiful as it is and communities as resilient as they are – without dairy farmers. Cumbria and Northumberland, Yorkshire’s Dales and Pennine Lancashire would not be as they are – both as breathtakingly beautiful and as resilient – without upland farmers.

“Men and women are hefted in those hills just as much as the sheep they care for. And preserving profitable farm businesses in those communities is just as much a public good as investment in anything I know.”

When senior ministers meet later this week at Chequers to discuss the Brexit negotiations they will take part in one of the most important deliberations of their political lives. If they can come up with a plan for our future trading with the EU that is workable, acceptable to the Conservative Party, can command a majority in Parliament and be negotiated with Brussels, the prize is huge: the delivery of a successful exit from the European Union and the confounding of critics across the continent.

If they fail to do so, the consequences are unknowable but might include the collapse of their administration; unnecessary loss of economic confidence, jobs and growth; constitutional chaos over Brexit; and the election of the most Left-wing and extremist government Britain would ever have known. They will be treading a narrow path, leading to safer pastures but spanning an abyss. Doing so will require some agility, a fresh look at the terrain, and no one wandering off on their own.

In the last week at least, the signs as to whether they are able to do this have tended to the positive. Boris Johnson’s speech last Wednesday set a conciliatory tone while being free of policy ideas unacceptable to his colleagues. Theresa May’s own speech in Munich at the weekend, proposing a new security treaty with the EU, was well-judged, combining a clear declaration that we are definitely leaving with practical proposals on co-operation over crucial matters such as arrest warrants and policing – and all without hardliners jumping up and down about blurring red lines by accepting some degree of working with the European Court of Justice. It will have increased her credibility in Europe for the next round of talks.

But now the Cabinet has to grapple with what has become the pivotal question of the whole Brexit process: what do they want the future customs arrangements with the EU to be? They are collectively committed to leaving the customs union, for the understandable reason they that they wish to be free to strike trade deals with the rest of the world. Yet they are also committed, by the provisional deal made in December, to an open border with the Irish Republic. Leaving the customs union with nothing to replace it would also mean that all the manufacturers in Britain, with components streaming back and forth across the channel, would need to apply complex “rules of origin” on every item they used and face a considerable disincentive to future investment in this country.

This is difficult enough as a policy question, but as a political issue it is utterly perilous. MPS vary greatly in their mastery of detailed issues, but they have a universal awareness of the political vulnerability of others, and they know this is the issue that can bring the house down. The Labour leadership is moving steadily towards a position of saying the UK must stay in the current customs union, although Jeremy Corbyn is evidently proving difficult to persuade of this. But there has scarcely been a leader of the opposition in history who would not seize a chance to bring down the government of the day on a fundamental issue, and opportunism will overcome any principle in his mind if the moment presents itself.

For Labour tacticians, the desired scenario goes like this. The Cabinet can’t square the circle and a month from now the prospect of a two-year transition out of the EU is in jeopardy. The business world starts to panic, and the EU Commission says there will have to be checks at the border with Northern Ireland. With less than a year to go to “exit day”, Labour attacks this chaotic situation, tables a motion in the Commons to remain in the customs union and manages to carry it with the support of a small number of pro-eu Tories. Theresa May would have been defeated on a “red line” and her ministers and party would be unable to agree to implement a deal on the basis the Commons had voted for. The Government collapses, and the consequent convulsions in the Conservative Party lead to a general election and victory, against this disastrous background, for a true hardleft ministry.

Could that happen? Yes, it could. Astonishing things have happened in British politics for three years in a row and there’s no reason there can’t be a fourth. So what’s the answer? Is there a narrow path at all?

There might be. To find it and agree on walking it requires a recognition, from ministers at Chequers and from the MPS on their benches, that if they are all going to hold on to things that are dear to them none of them can have everything they want. For keen Brexiteers like Boris, Michael Gove or Jacob Rees-mogg on the back benches, it means accepting that if they are insistent on having no form of customs union with the EU they might well have a full-blooded such union forced on them by Parliament. And for Philip Hammond or Amber Rudd perhaps, it means accepting that there will have to be steadily more freedom to diverge from EU regulations in many areas. Otherwise a Conservative government will become unsustainable.

The proposal nearest to a solution to all this was set out at the end of last week in a paper published by the Institute of Directors. It advocated leaving the customs union but seeking to negotiate a “bespoke, partial customs union” with the EU. This would cover industrial goods, obviating the need for the expense of a mass of certificates of origin, as well as processed agricultural goods. Combined with a free trade agreement, this would allow trade in goods to be as frictionless as possible, including with Ireland.

Our ability to strike new trade deals would be constrained but would still be considerable in all the areas not covered by the partial customs union. Since nearly all manufacturers will want to produce to EU standards anyway, this is not a huge sacrifice. The result, the paper argues, would be the right balance of continuity with autonomy. If I was going to the meeting with my old colleagues I would be arguing for something very close to the IOD proposal and asking civil servants to write a detailed plan based on it. It could just be the right thing for the country, and the path away from the abyss.