The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Holyrood policy ‘being held back by obscurity’
Lack of clarity from Westminster ahead of European exit attacked Politics:
While rural businesses were yesterday being urged to ignore the current uncertainties, “take the wheel” and push ahead with their post-Brexit plans, there was political disagreement over just how well placed the Scottish Government was to do the same with its plans for future rural policy.
Speaking at Scottish Land and Estates annual conference in Edinburgh yesterday, Scotland’s Rural Economy Cabinet Secretary, Fergus Ewing, said the lack of clarity from the UK Government on the three key areas of policy funding, labour availability and trade agreements made formulating any meaningful future strategy impossible.
“For who could draw up a business plan when the funding and the rules of the game remained unknown?” asked Ewing.
He said that despite the UK Government’s assurance that farm support funding would be “at least the same” as current levels up until the end of parliament, no assurance had yet been given by the Treasury over the funding of key rural development schemes such as the Less Favoured Area payments made to Scotland’s hill farmers and funding for agrienvironment support, a proportion of which came from EU coffers.
However parliamentary under-secretary of state for Scotland, former MEP, Lord
“Talks aimed at making the other side lose more are no help”
Ian Duncan of Springburn, argued that UK farmers – and the Scottish Government – currently had more certainty over funding than their European counterparts. Speaking at the same conference he said: “While the UK Government has promised to sustain similar levels of payment to the current spending all the way through to 2022, the rest of Europe is beginning yet another reform of the Common Agricultural Policy – which is likely to see major changes introduced to schemes and spending levels by 2020.”
Turning to trade agreements, Duncan said that EU negotiators were specialists in the “lastminute” approach to such talks – but said that in the current circumstances such a strategy was counter productive :“For at the moment everyone feels they are losers – and talks which are aimed solely at making the other side lose more than your own are no help to anyone.”
On labour availability he said that it was wrong to think that the UK was set to pull up the drawbridge on immigration. He also said that the availability of migrant labour was an issue which went well beyond Brexit, with the growth in the economies of many other Eastern European countries taking the “push” factor away from such movements.
Earlier in the conference SLE chairman, David Johnstone had urged rural businesses to take control of their own destiny and to meet the challenges of Brexit “head-on”, rather than using them as an excuse for holding fire. He said the failure to adapt to the uncertainties and the post-Brexit landscape could have far-reaching consequences.