Call for central criterion to divide up UK payouts
The proportion of the UK’S Less Favoured Areas found in each of the four regions should be a “central criterion” for establishing the share-out of the UK’S overall domestic farm support budget, a major report into the future of Scottish agriculture in the post-brexit period has recommended.
The move – which would see Scotland’s share of the UK’S farm budget almost treble from around 16 per cent of the total to close to 45 per cent – would help address shortfalls in the “outdated” method of allocating funding which had failed to reflect Scotland’s unique agricultural conditions and practices, according to the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee.
Launching the report at the SRUC’S Oatridge College yesterday, chair of the cross-party committee, SNP MP Pete Wishart, said he hoped the recommendations would be factored into the findings of the independent review group, chaired by Lord Bew of Donegore, which has been set up deliver a fair funding for farmers in all four parts of the UK – and which is due to reveal its own findings imminently.
“It is nonsensical that funding through the CAP has not recognised the challenging conditions for farming in Scotland,” Wishart told industry stakeholders, “So my committee is calling on the UK government to take Brexit as an opportunity to rewrite the rules of agricultural funding.”
The report also recommended that the government should do more to resolve the workforce crisis with a quadrupling of the size of the pilot seasonal agricultural workers (Saws) scheme; commit to continued protection for geographical indicators for specialist foods; rethink the UK’S current no-deal tariff schedule which fails to protect some sectors; and urgently provide a clearer picture of future policy and support along with a seven-year funding cycle to ensure continuity and business planning.
The recommendations met with a general welcome from Scottish farming organisations.
NFU Scotland’s policy director, Jonnie Hall said that while allocations of funding from the EU farm budget had been based on historic production levels, basing a region’s share on their proportion of UK’S total LFA area would give fuller recognition to the wider range of services provided by farmers – rather than being based solely on the amount they produced.
But he stressed that once the allocation had been made, it should be up to the devolved governments to decide exactly how support would be delivered within their own regions – and this wouldn’t necessarily mean support moving “up the hill”.