It is a great pleasure to follow what must be the briefest speech I have ever heard from the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on this subject—it is wonderful to see him able once again to stand in his place today.
Let me turn to the question of EU finance and agriculture. I know that agriculture is not a subject that much concerns the Conservative party; the Tory party these days is much more likely to be concerned with asset stripping, rather than agricultural production, and with financial derivatives, rather than agricultural crops—that is what gets its pulse moving.
I was concerned when the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said that far too much of the European Union budget was consumed by the common agricultural policy. The fundamental reason for that—we did not hear this simple point from the Government Benches—is that the common agricultural policy is one of the few policies that financially is effectively under the competence of the European Union. If the European Union had competence over health, for example—I doubt that there is much support for that,
from me or anyone else in the House—its agricultural budget would be totally dwarfed by what it spent on health. The dominance of the agricultural budget is a factor of its being one of the European Union’s relatively few common policies.
Of course, it is possible to argue that there should not be direct farm payments. Indeed, that was the argument that the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) took into the CAP negotiations. He started from the position that the UK Government, without much opposition from Members from rural constituencies in the Conservative interest, thought that there should not be direct farm payments, and he found himself in a minority of one in the negotiations; his position was not supported by any other member state. It was therefore decided that we were to continue with farm payments. Therefore, if we have a common agricultural policy, and it is a substantial part of the European Union’s budget, it is reasonably important to ensure that our share of the agricultural budget as component nations in these islands is fair and competitive, because our agricultural production has to compete in that common market with that in other member states.
Does the Minister really think that the share allocated to UK agriculture, and to Scottish agriculture in particular, can be counted as a considerable achievement, as he claimed in his opening remarks? Let us remind ourselves of some of the facts. Under pillar one of the CAP budget, it was agreed that the lowest that any member state should receive in support was €196 per hectare. It was agreed in negotiations that each country in the original 15 would work to that minimum. Scotland receives substantially less than that—just over half of that payment per hectare. That is going to cost Scottish agriculture about £1 billion in the period to 2019.