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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Never has farming in
Britain faced such an uncertain future. The problems thrown up by foot-and-mouth
have made everyone think about what should happen to agriculture and the
countryside. And what makes this crisis different from others is that
the Minister of Agriculture himself is freely acknowledging that things
must change radically, that the future of his own ministry might be at
stake, that the whole system of subsidising food production and concentrating
on quantity over quality must end. Well Nick Brown is with me.
Before we get into those
sorts of broad areas Mr Brown, can we look at the latest foot-and-mouth
stories, of which there is still a great many. Sunday Times this morning,
the Sunday Telegraph this morning says, foot-and-mouth was caused by the
Army selling meat bought cheaply from South America to the piggery where
the outbreak began and that was the cause of it, is that right?
NICK BROWN MP: I don't think there's anything
in that at all. I mean apart from anything else, the virus strain that
is present in regions of South America as I understand it, is a different
strain. But in any event, the idea that somehow the armed forces caused
the disease, I think is just completely wrong.
HUMPHRYS: But they do buy meat
from areas from South America, some countries in South America, where foot-and-mouth
is endemic.
BROWN: The armed forces' beef contract
is a specialist contract for large amounts of frozen meat and so they do
buy on the world market. We've tried several times to see if we could
get the British industry to win the contract and have had some success,
but not..but mostly you're right, it is sourced overseas.
HUMPHRYS: Isn't that a bit daft?
I mean joined up government and all that, shouldn't we be able to say
for all sorts of reasons, shouldn't we be able to say, buy your....British
Army, buy your meat from Britain.
BROWN: No, it's a specialist contract
and it's got to be won...
HUMPHRYS: ...yeah but we choose
that...
BROWN: ...in competitive tender
and we've had several looks at this and have had some success as I say,
but I do not think that the Army's procurement arrangements are the cause
of this disease outbreak.
HUMPHRYS: But you're prepared to
take another look at those. I mean, you, you can't obviously, your ministry
doesn't have the power to do that, but government ought to take another
look at that whole arrangement, shouldn't it?
BROWN: There's no advice to me
that we should do so on disease control grounds.
HUMPHRYS: When, if that isn't the
cause, when are we going to know the cause of this disease? It's been
a couple of months now, it's been a long time.
BROWN: That's right and there is
work under way within government to make sure that we find out as much
as we possibly can. Not just about the foot-and-mouth disease virus and
how that got into this country, but how the classical swine fever virus
got into this country and caused the outbreak in pigs in East Anglia in
the Summer. These are very important questions. Has something made our
country more vulnerable to viral infections that clearly weren't present
in the country, or indeed in the European Union, before the outbreak started
and if something has made us more vulnerable, what is it, and how do we
bear down on it?
HUMPHRYS: When are we going to
get the answers to those questions?
BROWN: There is work under way,
but there are legal reasons why I can't put it in the public domain now.
HUMPHRYS: How do you mean, I don't
follow you? Why, if this is already in the public domain, I mean nothing
could be more clearly in the public domain than...
BROWN: ...no, the debate is in
the public domain, of course, but the work that is going on within government
can't be put there for the minute.
HUMPHRYS: But because the implication
of that is that you've got a pretty good idea who's behind it, who's responsible
for it, one way or the other, but you can't say because there might be
a prosecution taken out against those people. I mean, that's the only
reason I can think of that why you might be so reticent.
BROWN: You're right.
HUMPHRYS: So you do know, you just
can't tell us.
BROWN: No, I'm not saying that
I do know, I'm saying that work is under way within government, it is pretty
focused, but there are legal reasons why I can't put it in the public domain
now. You have, let me give you this assurance, as soon as I can, I will.
HUMPHRYS: But the implication of
what you're saying is that it isn't going to be very long because if what's
holding you back from saying anything at the moment is the possibility
of a prosecution, clearly you'd want to get on with that very very quickly.
BROWN: That's right. I mean I
cannot discuss individual cases, or matters that might come before the
courts and clearly that's a constraint on me, as it would be on any minister.
HUMPHRYS: But you can say that
you've got a pretty good idea where the disease originated, I mean we all
think that this particular farm in Cumbria is the source of it. You think
you know where it originated and your lawyers are looking into whether
there is a case against that particular or a particular farmer. That's
the situation.
BROWN: We certainly believe that
the first case was the Heddon-on-the-Wall farm and we've said so and that's
still the government's view. What I cannot do is to go on and discuss
the...how the disease got into the country in the first place because there
are number of enquiries that are continuing and I mustn't jeopardise anything
and you're quite right, I mustn't jeopardise anything that might come before
the courts.
HUMPHRYS: But as the police sometimes
say in cases like this, we are not looking for another suspect.
BROWN: No, I'm not saying that.
There are a range of things that are being investigated and we need to
get it right and of course once it is possible to put all this information
in the public domain, you have my promise that I will do so.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's look at
the broader picture that I introduced you with, you are quite clear, everything
you've said over the last few days suggests that you see a real revolution
taking place in British farming. You've already said that you don't want
us to continue to subside the so-called barley barons, the great agri-businesses,
East Anglia, and all the rest of it, in the way that we have been doing
at the moment because most of the three-point-two billion pounds in subsidy
goes to them. Are you saying though, are you going further than that and
are you saying there is an argument for no subsiding of food production
which is what a lot of people believe?
BROWN: Any payment that is made
to a farm-based business is either directly or indirectly a support payment
for the business. It's a subsidy but I do not think that the support systems
should be directly production related as they are now. It is a long journey
that we have to travel. We won't be able to get change over night but we
must embark on it and there are two reasons why I have renewed cause for
optimism. The first is, it is absolutely clear once this terrible disease
outbreak is over, we shouldn't try to go back to where we were before.
HUMPHRYS: This has given you the
opportunity in other words, this disease has given you the opportunity
to do something that you've wanted to do for a long time in effect.
BROWN: If good is to come out of
evil, we should take this opportunity to make absolutely certain that the
support mechanisms we put in place for farmers, certainly those in the
infected areas, for the future, help them get closer to the market place
and have a decent income for the work they're putting in, rather than lock
them into the desperate set of circumstances that they were locked into
even before the disease struck. And the second cause for optimism is that
the attitude of the German government towards the Common Agricultural Policy
has changed and this is a very exciting opportunity for real reform.
HUMPHRYS: But you'd still be spending..we
would still be spending a similar amount of money or would not - three
point two billion I think it was last year. Would we still be spending
that same sort of money?
BROWN: In the short term certainly
yes.
HUMPHRYS: Short term being?
BROWN: Well as we go through a
transitional period.
HUMPHRYS: Who knows obviously...
BROWN: Well yes, most certainly,
when it is for the European Union to set the rules for the Common Agricultural
Policy. That is an over arching framework which conditions this debate
about Agricultural reform in the United Kingdom just as it does everywhere
else in the European Union. We need to carry other member states with us
on the reform agenda and we are doing very well on that I have to say.
We have Sweden, Denmark, Italy in our Capri group as it's called, the reform
group, with both Germany and Holland taking a very close interest in what
we are discussing.
HUMPHRYS: So if in the short term
you say we'd have to spend a similar amount of money, the implication is
that in the longer term, some years from now, three, four, five years from
now, less money would go to farmers.
BROWN: I'm actually not sure about
that and I wouldn't want to assert a final outcome from the debate now.
It may well be the case that we will want to make sustained support payments
for things that the public values, to keep the countryside shaped the way
it is, to be able to enjoy it in the way we want as visitors. To make sure
that farm based businesses have a decent income and it's the income that
I want to support rather than the production, so that all the things that
we want from the countryside can be provided to us.
HUMPHRYS: So to be quite clear
about that then, in the longer term, although in quite the short term for
this first example that I'm going to give you, we would not pay big agri-businesses
to grow wheat and barley and all the rest of it per tonne, they wouldn't
get x amount per tonne, all of that would stop.
BROWN: Yes I am very keen on us
reducing the support payments that we make for production, that is why
the British government is making use of what is called modulation to take
some of the support payments into environmentally based schemes and....
HUMPHRYS: ..but you can only take
a fifth of the money to do that...
BROWN: ..we are actually taking
less than that and providing match funding for every pound that we take.
But it is a clear move in the right direction. Twenty per cent of the farmers
get eighty per cent of the subsidies. I do not believe that that is right
and clearly the amount of money going to those farmers would reduce over
time.
HUMPHRYS: Do you also want to get
to the stage where a farmer who farms sheep let us say, on a hillside,
isn't terribly well off obviously, would not be paid for the sheep in this
particular case but would be paid for as it were managing in an environmental
way, that bit of hillside.
BROWN: Yes, there are two main
support payments, one is the Sheep Premium and that is a European Union
regime which is still based on numbers of animals and the other is the
less favoured Area Scheme and most hill farms are in the LFAs and we have
moved that already from a headage payment basis, that's payment per animal
to an area based scheme and I think that is the direction in which the
other support payments are going to have to go. More than that I am attracted
to an idea whereby we make payments explicitly to the farmer, the person
who is managing the land for meeting certain series of test, but they would
be environmental tests, public interest tests and not to do with the production
of livestock.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so all the money,
all the subsidy would go in that direction. In other words, farmers would
become paid custodians of the countryside, except obviously those who get
the subsidy that is.
BROWN: John, I cannot say immediately
that all the money would go in that direction because..
HUMPHRYS: But that's your long-term
objective...
BROWN: ..that is certainly the
direction in which I want to move and I want to move as quickly as I can.
But I have to carry the Council of Ministers with me, the Common Agriculture
Policy is a Common Policy and if other member states would prefer a headage
based arrangement and I have to say the debate is moving away from that,
then clearly we have got to take their views into account and can't just
assert that what is best for us is best for everyone.
HUMPHRYS: But if you had your way,
the British Government had its way, we would ultimately see fewer farmers
as well wouldn't we because we'd see those farms that at the moment survive
because the food they grow is subsidised, we would see those go by the
wayside effectively, those farms where there isn't a great tourism value
or whatever it happens to be, so that we'd see bigger agri-businesses developing,
fewer of those farms therefore, but we would still see a large number of
the smaller hill farms in particular, in which case the farmers would be
treated, I use the expression caretakers, custodians, whatever you call
it, of the countryside. That's the picture that you have of farming in
Britain in years to come?
BROWN: On your employment
question I don't know the answer but I suspect it might be no. If you are
supporting the farmers' income for undertaking certain tasks that we wish
to purchase in as a society, as the government, then it gives him a better
chance to survive, he isn't having to earn his living from the over stocking
the hills for example, from the total number of sheep. I actually think
that is a good thing and might be quite an attractive lifestyle for somebody
who enjoys farming. So they may not go out of it, they may want to stay
in because the income support is more preferable. But you are right, the
general trend in agriculture worldwide is to a decline in the total numbers
employed in it...trend in our country.
HUMPHRYS: And in a word, we are
not going to go back to where we were before foot-and-mouth?
BROWN: We mustn't go back to where
we were before and we are not going to do so.
HUMPHRYS: Nick Brown, thank you
very much indeed.
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