The speech by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) is tremendously important and gets to the heart of one of the issues we have with the common agricultural policy, although, not surprisingly, I look at it in a different way from the question of socialism and land holdings that the SNP is going for.
The issue, as has been discussed in the European Scrutiny Committee, is that over the years our farmers have increasingly become so efficient and large that
there has been a good deal of consolidation. That applies very much in my constituency among dairy farmers. The number of dairy farms has reduced significantly and they are bigger farms proportionately, but European subsidies tend to go to smaller farms disproportionately. Therefore, we find that British farmers are disadvantaged. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that if, under a system of farming subsidies and a competitive framework, that means that people are getting handouts from the European Union, British farmers—farmers in the United Kingdom—do not get the equivalent subsidies to farmers on the continent, they are disadvantaged because their cost base is automatically higher and their profitability is reduced. Therefore, when we are arguing for careful consideration, overview and oversight of expenditure in the European Union, and reductions in the common agricultural policy, we have to ensure that the cuts are made in a way that is fair to the UK farmer. Even if our end objective is the entire elimination of agricultural subsidies, it must be done in a way—