Hansard

I will start by looking at the Scottish Government’s objectives in the CAP process. As the cabinet secretary has already alluded to, those are to continue to support active and productive agriculture so that we can continue to produce food, which I think we would all sign up for, and to meet our environmental obligations, which I think we would also regard as the absolute minimum. The more we can do to improve our environment, surely the better things will be for all of us who live here and, in particular, for those who live in rural environments and those involved in tourism and the other industries that depend on it.

As the cabinet secretary has already alluded to, the negotiating stance has been to get flexibility, so that Scotland can provide a fairer distribution of the money that comes here, to end slipper farming, to allow new entrants to get money earlier and, as far as possible, to protect coupled support for livestock, for the reasons already given.

What would also have been nice would have been to negotiate a fair share of the European pot for Scotland. I want to tackle this head on, hopefully in terms that will not raise too many hackles. Early in the debate, Alex Fergusson rightly pointed out that we really should be talking about what we can do with flexibility and how we can use it wisely. I have no doubt that the cabinet secretary and his staff will endeavour to do so and I have no doubt that the consultation that they will be going through will enable them to get the view of those who are involved and that they will implement things as best they can.

What I would like to reflect on is the process that we have just been through and on what might have been slightly different. Of course the distribution of what we now have matters, but so does the total. The total amount of money that comes into the Scottish economy is, one way or another, money in the Scottish economy.

Let me go back to the political environment in which we are operating. As a region of the UK we have six MEPs. Were we an independent member state, such as Denmark, which is of comparable size, we might have 13 MEPs. Does that matter? Yes it does, because they would be on committees and they would be able to talk to people; they would actually exercise some influence, as MEPs do. We would be in a better place. As members are very well aware, we would of course have a seat at the council table and we would periodically have the opportunity to have the presidency, which means that we would be setting the agenda. It seems to me that that is very important.

Let me compare that with the United Kingdom’s stated objectives. When the Rt Hon Owen Paterson MP came to talk to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee he said, as well as the other things that have already been quoted, that his objectives were

“to grow the rural economy and to improve the environment”.

That is exactly the same kind of idea that the Scottish Government has. We do not fall out at that point. As Graeme Dey and perhaps others have said, Owen Paterson is not so keen on pillar 1 direct payments.

On pillar 2 payments, Owen Paterson said:

“I am an enthusiast for the benefits that our pillar 2 schemes bring. I think that we can look the British taxpayer in the eye and say that we are bringing them environmental benefits that would not normally be provided through a market mechanism and which have real value.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, 12 June 2013; c 2639 and 2386.]

All of us—Tory or otherwise—can say aye to that. Even in Owen Paterson’s economy, pillar 2 payments have a clear benefit. There is a clear benefit from money going into the rural economy.

Given that, why did Owen Paterson not join 16 other countries in getting an uplift of the pillar 2 payment? I do not know. In paragraph 72 of EUCO 37/13, which was produced in Brussels on 8 February, I find big nations among the 16 countries—the cabinet secretary referred to some of them and I will not name them all, although that is tempting. I find France negotiating €1 billion, Italy €1.5 billion and Spain €500 million. There is certainly no difficulty in being a big country when negotiating, but the UK appears not to have thought that it was a good idea to bring more money into the UK, never mind Scotland. That is astonishing. To echo Angus MacDonald, all I can say is that if that is the UK’s approach, the faster we are independent, the better.

The point has been made that, as a member state, Scotland would—like any other member state—get an uplift to €196 per hectare in direct payments by 2020. We have heard that that would be worth about £1 billion over the period between 2015 and 2020. If we assume that my mathematics is half decent, that would be about £140 million per year.

I leave members with a statistic. Current figures suggest that about 68,000 people work in the Scottish agricultural sector—that is not the number of farms but the number of people. If I round that up to 70,000, and if the other figure is rounded to £140 million, elementary arithmetic tells me that that would be worth £2,000 for every person in the industry in Scotland every year. We do not seem to have got that money, but we should have had it.

Claire Baker and Jayne Baxter talked about uncertainties in relation to the European Union. I make the point to them that they and I are European citizens. That European citizenship will not go away because of constitutional change in the UK. It is clear that negotiation will have to go on, but we will not be new entrants to the European Union. That is a complete myth and the sooner people stop peddling it, the better.

15:47