Michael Gove plans farm payments overhaul for ‘green’ Brexit

Michael Gove is planning to limit payments to wealthy farmers and redistribute them to environmental projects for a ‘green’ Brexit.

Farming subsidies will be replaced by payments for “public goods”, from boosting access to the countryside to recreating wildflower meadows.

The Environment Secretary has set out his plan for replacing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which supports farmers in EU member states.

In a speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, he criticised the “fundamentally flawed” system that was designed – “like so many aspects of the EU” – for “another world” in the post-war period.

Mr Gove argued the CAP produced a “perverse” outcome, rewarding rich farms and “mathematically-precise field margins” – rather than “ecologically healthy landscapes”.

“I want to develop a new method of providing financial support for farmers which moves away from subsidies for inefficiency to public money for public goods,” he said.

The new scheme will be designed for landowners who want to create new spaces for wildlife, improve water quality and turn crop fields into meadows “or other more natural states”.

And it will see the current £3bn sum paid to landowners continue until 2022 – longer than the Government had previously pledged.

After that, payments will be based on public goods, with investment focused on enhancing the environment.

“Enhancing our natural environment is a vital mission for this Government,” he said.

“We are committed to ensuring we leave the environment in a better condition than we found it. And leaving the European Union allows us to deliver the policies required to achieve that – to deliver a green Brexit.”

Responding, Green MEP Dr Molly Scott Cato said: “This is sleight-of-hand politics from Gove. He is giving the appearance of taking from wealthy landowners with one hand while giving it back to them with the other in the form of unjust tax advantages.

“But taxes and subsidies must be treated as a package; in economic terms they are two sides of the same coin.

“If Gove is serious about the injustices associated with land ownership in this country he would call time on the use of agricultural land to hide and shelter wealth.”

John O’Connell, chief executive at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Huge amounts of taxpayers’ money currently go to subsidies for farmers, so it is right that there is as much scrutiny of how it is spent as possible.

“We cautiously welcome steps that will help tie cash to outcomes, rather than just giving it over with no strings attached.

“But eventually, commercial ventures should be able to stand on their own, and any money given out should be for specific purposes that have wide popular support, not perpetual subsidies for nothing.”

Wednesday’s speech came on the back of a raft of policy announcements by Mr Gove, a leading Brexiteer who re-joined the Cabinet after the Conservatives’ election gamble backfired.

He has announced plans for longer jail terms for animal cruelty and a deposit return scheme of drink bottles in England.

(c) Sky News 2018: Michael Gove plans farm payments overhaul for ‘green’ Brexit