Farming waits for details
Farming waits for details
of MAFF6% budget rise
By Isabel Davies
FARMERS are waiting for the full details of how MAFF intends to spend the 6% increase in its annual budget announced as part of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Browns cash give-away this week.
Addressing the House of Commons on Tuesday (July 18), Mr Brown said the aggregate agricultural budget would increase from £1bn each year to £1.35bn by 2004.
He said the increase, which averages out at about 6% each year, was to help the industry "as farming restructures, deals with BSE and the challenging target to move from the old farm production subsidies to new environmental improvement payments".
Farm minister Nick Brown, who will reveal full details of the deal on Monday, described the increase as "an excellent settlement for the department and hard fought for".
Speaking to farmers weekly, he said the deal would allow him to see through the action plan agreed at the Prime Ministers summit in March.
It would also give him the scope to continue some of the measures already in place for longer, he said. For example, the government will continue to pay for cattle passports until 2004, which is two years longer than previously agreed.
Other measures already announced as part of the review are funding for a long-term GB-wide scrapie eradication programme and an increase in testing for TB in cattle with more money for compensation (see page 10).
MAFF has also gained agreement to proceed with creating a single payments agency fand move towards electronic transfer of data (see page 7).
But Nick Way, chief political adviser for the Country Landowners Association, warned that although the government had announced an increase in budget it probably wont mean extra cash for farmers.
"Increases in the current budget will not be delivered to farmers pockets… The new money includes the Rural Development Regulation funding [already agreed with the Treasury] and makes allowances for the inevitable costs of restructuring in MAFFs regions."
NFU president Ben Gill said he wanted to study the full details before making an assessment but was pleased to see that the government was making a commitment to put more money into research on both scrapie and bovine TB.
Opposition politicians attacked the spending plans.
Lib-Dem farm spokesman Colin Breed said: "It is sad that the Chancellors eyes are so firmly fixed on the next General Election as to blind him to the need for proper support for farmers throughout the country."
Gordon Brown will reveal more details of his spending plan next week.