Brown’s outrageous U-turn on foot-mouth cash

Nov 13 2007 by Gareth Vaughan, Western Mail

I AM disappointed, but not surprised, that so little mention has been made in Westminster of the Government’s U-turn on its original plans to commit more than £14m of extra Treasury money to additional support for Welsh and Scottish farmers affected by foot-and-mouth.

You may remember the sums were approved ahead of a planned General Election and secretly withdrawn following Gordon Brown’s decision not to go to the country.

An early draft of a statement to MPs by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn stated the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had agreed £8.1m of extra funding to Scotland and £6.5m to Wales to help farmers deal with the disease.

But the final version of the statement delivered by Mr Benn – after Gordon Brown decided not to hold a General Election – made no mention of the extra cash.

The Conservative Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond has written to his counterpart, Andy Burnham, requesting a full explanation – as well as details of any other funding that was secretly axed when the election was called off.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Hammond’s statement that it is outrageous for Gordon Brown to hand out cash when he thinks it will improve his electoral prospects – then go back on his pledge when he bottles out of the election.

Last week I also wrote to Mr Brown demanding proportional FMD compensation from the Treasury for Welsh farmers after the Scottish Executive announced they intended to provide £25m compensation to their farmers.

I await Mr Brown’s reply with little confidence that he will accede to my request. How can the public be expected now to trust a Prime Minister who treats funding for a serious issue like foot-and- mouth as just another opportunity for some crude electioneering?

I firmly believe that he has a moral obligation to mitigate the horrendous consequences that this avoidable outbreak has had, and is still having, on Welsh rural communities. He must accept that it is high time for the polluter to pay up.

Meanwhile, the Competition Commission’s provisional report on its enquiry into the ever-increasing power of the supermarkets was published last week. It left me disappointed that it did not call for more urgent action to curtail the far-reaching problems.

While the report is nowhere near as hard hitting as we believe it should be, it is still a damning document which acknowledges that the buyer power of grocery retailers and intermediaries is a factor in influencing farm profitability, and draws attention to the possible risks that this could pose for the future of the UK agriculture industry.

We therefore believe that urgent action is needed to prevent a further fall in farm incomes. For many years we have expressed concerns regarding excessive supermarket power, and have repeatedly called for an independent regulator or Ombudsman to police the relationship between the large retailers and suppliers and we believe that these findings strengthen those calls.

Gareth Vaughan is president of the Farmers’ Union of Wales