Meeting of the Parliament 09 March 2016 [Draft]
Well, we are awaiting that with great interest.
In the meantime, because our farmers have less support and are getting lower commodity prices, they failed to get the £180 million that Scotland was due from the CAP. It might have helped our producers a little bit if they had got from the CAP settlement what was their due right.
We also see, over our heads, that the agriculture department of the UK Government is split between those who want to be in Europe and those who want to be out: Liz Truss wants to be in, George Eustice wants to be out. There is no certain sound from there to back us up. Indeed, the cabinet secretary has already talked about Westminster’s experience of trying to make CAP payments and the mess that they got into in 2005. The difference now is that we cannot go back to paper calculations; we have to use a computerised system. That is what the European Union said.
NFUS representatives wrote to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee about our legacy paper. They said that:
“Food sufficiency in Scotland and the UK”
was a high aim, including:
“how to promote local food and better procurement; developing supply chains and collaborative projects with UK and EU partners designed specifically for exports, with tools to review successful food exports.”
How do we deal with that situation and make sure that our agriculture can meet those goals, if we do not have a system in place in London that backs us up?
People may tell us that we have a difficult land in which to grow crops and to raise cattle and sheep, but the point is that if the London Government had been in any way interested in making sure that that happened, it would not have allowed us to be underfunded for a start, and it would have offered extra means to help us to provide the payments.