How might Brexit effect UK farming and fishing?
Agriculture and the environment
In the farming sector, everyone has been so conditioned to rely on the payments under the Common Agricultural Policy that many see Brexit as a risk. However, at the launch of Farmers for Britain, farmers in the audience felt that opinion was split roughly 50/50 in their particular counties, a ratio that seems so extraordinarily persistent when it comes to any vote about anything! Since then, some opinion polls within the farming sector have put the Outers at as many as 60%.
However, under the EU, red tape has grown inexorably, with 80% of current regulation coming from the Brussels. Compliance is achieved through a complex penalty scheme, with regulations being made to codify absolutely everything in the agricultural arena. The UK is subject to fines of around £100 million per annum by the EU, for what are largely trivial breaches of these regulations, such as late submission of bureaucratic forms. This stifling structure results in everyone becoming risk-averse, leaving ministers spending all their time arguing with lawyers before they can do anything.
Farmers for Britain claim that it is unfair to blame UK civil servants for “gold-plating” all the regulations, as these are enforced by the European Court of Auditors. To maintain a coherent and up-to-date CAP is an impossibility with 28 member countries and, even if they agreed, everything is still then subject to agreement by the European Parliament – and yet we have a pan-European legal system still trying to codify every aspect of agriculture, in a way that is fundamentally flawed.
Government financial support
The UK pays around £4.5 billion per annum into the CAP, and British farmers only receive £2.9 billion back, including the significant costs of the related CAP administration. If we stopped paying £350 million per week to the EU – and yes, we get a rebate, but on an ever-reducing scale and with conditions as to how it is spent - we could afford to fund our own policies for agriculture and the environment. Exchange rate risks and the deadweight costs of a centralised EU fund would be avoided. David Cameron has made clear that the Government would continue to support farming financially, and why ever not?
If we took back control, Parliament would reassert itself and ensure that our countryside and environment was given as much support, and perhaps more, than it gets now. Furthermore, rather than so much of our money going to support farmers in other EU countries, it could direct subsidies with a focus that would be far more beneficial to UK farmers, for instance giving more support to British milk producers.
Market access and trade agreements
There is a free trade area from Iceland to the Russian border and, if we left the EU, we would replace our membership with a new EU-UK partnership which would include a free trade agreement. In 2015, the UK exported food to the EU worth £7.5 billion, but our food imports from the EU were worth over £18 billion. With a £10 billion trade deficit in food products with the rest of the EU, it is clearly in their interests to quickly agree a free trade deal with the UK.
Negotiations on free trade in agriculture with other countries can take time, where there are fundamental barriers such as different approaches to food safety and labelling which take time to work through. Our starting point is that we are already in the single market, and the necessary compatibility between our approaches already exists. Given the mutual interests of the UK and the EU in arriving at an early solution, a free trade deal should be straightforward. Again, should Brexit be the outcome, the Government is under no obligation to enact Article 50 immediately, thus being able to allow significantly longer time than the 2 years’ notice under Article 50, and there should be plenty of time to strike the necessary agreements.
What about things like pesticide regulation and GM?
The UK has a strong track record in adopting an evidence-based approach to pesticide authorisations and GM crops. However, all too often, science and evidence is placed to one side in the EU, with political considerations getting in the way of evidence-based policy. If we were to leave the EU, there is no obstacle to Parliament putting in place a consistent regulatory framework.
So, how would the future look?
George Eustice, the current Farming Minister and a farmer himself, believes that Brexit would allow us to take back control and to be free to think again, and that we could achieve so much more for farmers and our environment.
He has set out a post-Brexit farming policy based on 4 main planks:
- To invest more in science and technology, to allow a far more efficient way forward than is currently the case.
- To explore government-backed insurance schemes (such as in Canada) and commodity futures schemes (such as in the USA), in order to offer British farmers a much more stable platform to plan and run their businesses.
- A new simplified farm area payment system, covering environmentally positive farming, that will remunerate farmers at least as well as the current CAP, or perhaps more.
- Measures to maintain and improve animal welfare, and area where the UK is already rather further ahead than most other EU member states.
So, through my eyes, I feel that those who support the Remain camp are doing so in the hope of maintaining the status quo. However, there is no status quo – there are no signs that the pace of regulation is abating, and it is the case that British farmers’ net benefit of subsidy under the CAP is reducing year after year. Imagine how this trend may accelerate if countries like Turkey and the Ukraine are admitted as members of the EU club? Instead, rather than hoping in vain to simply maintain the status quo, I believe that life after Brexit could allow British farming to really get back on its feet again.
Fisheries
Britain signed up to the Common Fisheries Policy in 1973, in a move that has proved disastrous to the UK fishing industry, to fish stocks and to the maritime environment. Back then, the CFP was specifically designed to give the French and the Dutch (already existing EEC members) much more access to fishing, especially in waters around Britain, Ireland, Norway and Denmark. Relinquishing these fishing rights was presented as a price of entry into the EEC, and Edward Heath conceded this. Interestingly, Norway saw this as a price too high, and as a result agreed by referendum not to join the EEC.
British fisherman were allowed to have exclusive fishing rights within 6 miles of the UK Coast, and that was only for a limited time until a new fishing quota system was introduced. This system allowed any ship to register to be allocated any quota belonging to any member state. This then led to Spanish fishing, with much larger factory fishing boats, subsidised by both the state and by the EEC, to move into British waters at the expense of the British fishing industry. Indeed, today French fishermen receive double the subsidy going to UK fishermen, whilst the Spanish fishing industry receives 5 times more in EU subsidies.
This new regime, with regulation about the Total Allowable Catch, led to huge natural wastage at environmental expenses, as fishermen were forced to discard millions of tons of fish that were either ‘the wrong type’ or above the allowed quota.
Outside the EU and the CFP, Britain could protect its own fish stocks whilst rapidly re-growing its fishing industry. We could restore our exclusive territorial fishing rights to 200 miles off our coasts, where lack of neighbouring countries allows, with other areas being divided down the middle. The prospect of a resurgence of Britain’s fishing industry should also regenerate our shipbuilding industry, at least with regard to smaller vessels, both areas being natural practice and resource for an island nation.
I believe that life after Brexit could allow British fishing to really get back on its feet again – better for our fishermen, better for our fish and better for our marine environment.
Moment to reflect on all of this
Why not reflect on all of this in some soothing contemplation, by clicking the arrow to play, maximise the screen, and enjoy the 'murmurations'?
In my next posting, I shall consider defence and security issues.