CAP reforms 'complex and bureaucratic'

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European reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy will tie up farmers in more "green tape" and do little to incentivise production, a group of MPs has warned.

The European Commission is currently working on a new CAP that will come in to force from 2014.

It has been reviewing the proposals to replace direct payments to farmers with a new "single-tiered" payment which will need a new computer system.

In a report released today, the environment, food and rural affairs committee found that the current proposals make the system "even more complex and bureaucratic".

The cross-party group of MPs said the changes will see new fines for farmers who fail to meet the stringent criteria for "active" farmers, farm size and number of employees.

And the EU also had high standards of both animal welfare and environmental protection, but the European farmers are being undermined as the same standards are not met globally.

Launching the report, Tory committee chair Anne McIntosh said: "Farmers are seeing their incomes fall while hard-pressed families have to swallow rising food prices. Neither the EU nor Defra have faces up to these twin challenges."

She said: "A future CAP should place greater emphasis on sustainable farming, but it should do so through a system of incentives and not through additional regulation.

"The EU proposal for more mandatory environmental measures will make the CAP more complex without delivering tangible benefits."

She added: "When consumers buy cheap food imports produced to lower standards, the EU is effectively exporting the adverse environmental impacts,

"The CAP pays for the more exacting standards of welfare and environmental protection that consumers demand. This is not sustainable in the long term."

Ian Woodhurst, senior farming campaigner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England(CPRE), said that while not supporting all of the reports recommendations, it agrees that the current reform proposals don’t go far enough.

He said: "It is essential that CAP reforms focus on improving the quality of our countryside. We need to restore Europe's habitats and landscapes and improve the condition of our soil and water resources. This will be an enormous task made even more difficult by the challenges of climate change.

"Securing these reforms will be vital to the success of the government's broader environment policy ambitions, to be set out in the White Paper on the natural environment expected soon.

"It we fail to seize this opportunity we risk further depleting our natural resources, and this in turn will seriously diminish our ability to produce food sustainably."

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, welcomed the recommendations and called on the government not to take a position on talks that undermines British farming.

He said: "It is really important that we have a government which is shaping negotiations in Brussels; one that is forming strong alliances with key member states and is taking a pragmatic approach to reform.

"The committee has clearly identified objectives for the future of the CAP, endorsing the views of the NFU. Its primary role must be to maintain and enhance the productive capacity of European agriculture and we need measures which will take the industry forward and enhance its competitiveness."

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