It is wrong to say there has been no CAP reform. There has. Reform needs to go further, but much has already been done:

• The beef mountain, butter mountain, wine lake and so on of a few years ago have disappeared as a result of a first round of reform in the 1990s.


• CAP funding has fallen from some 70% of the budget 20 years ago to just 40% now and is scheduled to fall still further.


• The most recent CAP reforms have been characterised as “the biggest revolution in farming since the war” by the NFU. It involves bringing to an end the intervention into agricultural markets to maintain high prices, thereby benefiting the consumer, and instead helping farmers by direct payment to farms in exchange for them respecting environmental, health and food quality criteria. It is more market-based and environmentally friendly.


• Even the 2002 agreement, now under review, to freeze agricultural spending at it current level until 2013 is in fact a significant reduction in real terms as the freeze is not fully indexed to inflation and 12 new member states all have to be squeezed in under this ceiling. This amounts to a reduction of nearly a fifth of agricultural spending for the 15 old EU member states.

On top of that, the government secured a reform of the sugar regime last month. This itself will save €4 billion to consumers. Although there is still an argument about how much we should help Caribbean sugar producers affected by this agreement, it does mean that our internal CAP subsidies will fall now in this field too.