Match Funding (Hansard, 25 May 2000)

§ 10. Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam)
What is the total amount of unclaimed match funding relating to agricultural support available to the UK since 1997. [122410]

§ The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Nick Brown)
A total of £2,155 million in agrimonetary compensation has become available from January 1997 to date, in several three-year packages. Of that total, £595 million has been or will be paid, of which £584 million is EU funded and £11 million UK funded. However, because of the Fontainebleau abatement, the UK Exchequer contributes about 71 per cent. of the cost—and the total cost to the UK taxpayer is therefore about £426 million.

§ Mr. Burstow
Can the Minister confirm that, last year, about £224 million was available through the agrimonetary compensation scheme but only of that £66 million was allocated and drawn down to provide compensation for hard-pressed farmers? Why was the Ministry unable to guarantee that 100 per cent. went to the farmers who needed it, so that they received support when they needed it and were not put out of business because they had not received it?

§ Mr. Brown
The regime is permissive; we have the option of drawing down those sums. As I have just said, an overwhelming part of the cost of doing so falls on the UK taxpayer, so any use of that instrument must take its place among competing claims for public expenditure. I have to fight hard in Government the case for making use of that instrument. For the longer term, because agrimonetary compensation is being phased out, the industry—all sections of agriculture—must become more oriented towards the marketplace. There is no future for the industry in continuing to call for supply-side measures to help it from one crisis to the next.

§ Mr. Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby)
Returning to the real purpose of Question 6, which was about subsidies for arable farming—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. We do not go back to other questions. If the hon. Gentleman is prepared to ask a supplementary on this question, I shall listen to him.

§ Mr. Quinn
It is a supplementary question, Madam Speaker.
On Friday evening, I attended a meeting of the National Farmers Union in Scarborough, where there was much concern about the effect of agrimonetary compensation and the impact of the weak euro. Can my right hon. Friend find time to come with me to meet members of the NFU in Scarborough to talk about that subject?

§ Mr. Brown
I am more than willing to meet members of the NFU; indeed, I think I have met most of them personally over the past few years. If I have not done so, it certainly feels like that. The Government have made use of agrimonetary compensation to try to provide some short-term support for the industry, but that is not the long-term answer to the industry's problems. I am more than willing to join my hon. Friend to discuss the way forward with local farmers in Scarborough.

§ Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire)
At the recent No. 10 summit, the Minister made great play of the fact that he was giving £66 million in agrimonetary compensation to farmers. However, he should surely have also said in the same statement that he was taking away £110 million of exactly the same agrimonetary compensation. Is it not a classic case of taking away rather more with one hand than he is giving with the other? The agriculture summit was a classic public relations con.

§ Mr. Brown
That is completely unfair. The agriculture summit, which pulled together from right across government a wide range of issues that affect farmers, was broadly welcomed by the industry and received a positive response—the more so when people have had the chance to consider the details. The fact that we do not make use of a permissive instrument to spend British public money does not mean that we have taken it away from people who might have been the beneficiaries. One could take that argument to an absurd degree if one wanted, and I suspect that the hon. Gentleman might want to.