§ Mr. HoyleTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will make a statement on the benefit to small farms in Lancashire of the revised Common Agricultural Policy. [153888]
§ Alun MichaelThe link between the subsidy paid to farmers and the level of production has been broken. This is known as "decoupling". This means that activities of farmers in the UK will no longer be dictated by subsidy regimes and frees them to farm for what the market wants.
By removing incentives for intensification and over-production, and by linking compliance to a range of environmental standards, decoupling will help to reduce damaging environmental impacts.
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, outlined in her statement to the House, on 12 February, that in England we have now set out a fair basis for calculating the single payment that will be sustainable in the longer term.
§ Mr. EvansTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much money from the Common Agricultural Policy has gone into the North-West Region in each of the last five years. [156504]
§ Alun MichaelThe figures in the following table represent the amount of money that has gone into the North-West Region from the Common Agricultural Policy in each of the last five years.
These are based on the European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) year which runs from 16 October to 15 October.
EAGGF year Amount 19991 114,947,199.98 2000 190,337,294.44 2001 221,572,202.49 2002 178,075,721.05 2003 214,156,549.44 Total 919,088,967.40 1 Figures available from August 1999 only, due to implementation of current data management system. Data prior to that time could be accessed only at disproportionate cost in time and resources.