If the CAP fits

Its sorry history is one of butter mountains and wine lakes, of farmers being forced to let land lie idle while food prices r ise inexorably, of a protectionist barricade around Europe which is designed to keep producers in the developing world in poverty, of ever-mounting bureaucracy and shocking, senseless waste.

It is precisely because of this appalling reputation that the CAP has, in recent years, been given a makeover. No longer a byword for inefficiency, an out-of-control vehicle for red tape and subsidy, there is now – supposedly – method behind the policy’s madness. The spending of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money now has a noble aim, namely the preservation of the environment.

In an attempt to show that CAP spending is of general benefit to taxpayers, land is to be set aside not as a means of hiking up prices, but as a way of ensuring crop diversity and promoting wildlife.

Any idea that this might be a long overdue step in the right direction, however, is undermined today by UK officials who say that the new proposals will not do anything to protect the environment and are nothing more than a “greenwashing” of an already discredited system, a charge echoed by conservation campaigners.

As Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman says, at a time of soaring food prices, increasing environmental concern and global financial uncertainty, the need for meaningful CAP reform is greater than ever. The question is how far Britain is prepared to go in taking a lead on this.