Fury over call to cut ALL subsidies to UK farmers
FARMERS reacted with fury last night to a proposal to axe their £3billion in taxpayer handouts after the UK leaves the EU.
Former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson told a secret ‘Brexit seminar’ of former Cabinet Ministers at an Oxford college that Theresa May should follow the example of New Zealand, which ended government help for farmers virtually overnight in the 1980s.
The shock forced a radical shake-up in the country, with sheep farms replaced by deer parks and vineyards. But critics claim it led to widespread economic distress and a sharp rise in suicide.
During the session at All Souls College in January, Mr Paterson argued that there were ‘clear lessons to be learnt from the policy adopted by New Zealand which demonstrated that food production can increase when farmers are given the freedom to react to the market’. The £3 billion British farmers receive each year from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy accounts for half their income. The Government has only guaranteed the subsidies will continue at their current level – covered by UK taxpayers – until 2020, the year after Brexit. A source close to Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom said Ministers were unlikely to follow the New Zealand precedent directly, although the way in which subsidies are applied would be looked at closely.
National Farmers Union deputy president Minette Batters said: ‘There is a lot of hype spoken about New Zealand. It is an entirely different natural environment, and after all the changes the country has the highest rate of farmer suicides in the world.’
Labour MP Mary Creagh said: ‘Britain is not New Zealand and evidence suggests that huge numbers of UK farms would be forced to shut if Paterson’s potty plan was put into action.’