Cunningham: wants to end subsidies

Agriculture Minister attacks CAP

UK Campaigns to End Farming Subsidies

Junior agriculture minister Jeff Rooker told MPs that Britain would be taking up this issue and that of production subsidies at a European Union meeting next week.

During agriculture questions, Mr Rooker revealed that the largest payment made to a single landowner under the Arable Areas Payment Scheme in 1996 was over £2 million, of which £230,000 was for setting land aside.

Labour's Gordon Prentice argued that this showed how "grotesque and indefensible" the system was. "Farmers and grain barons can get thousands and thousands of pounds for not growing crops while hill farmers...struggle by, trying to eke out a living," he protested.

Mr Prentice asked whether there was "not a compelling case for getting rid of set-aside and production subsidies and putting the money where it is needed - into environmental schemes, into rural communities and rebuilding our countryside?"

Mr Rooker responded with a pledge that Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham would be pressing for precisely that change next week.

Earlier, Dr Cunningham had launched a scathing attack on the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. In an interview on the BBC's Today programme, he described the CAP as "inefficient, open to fraud and abuse, and damaging to the environment." He said it was costing European taxpayers £30 billion every year.