Cash cows

THERE is hardly any shortage of lobbyists beseeching Ministers and prospective Ministers to protect their own particular interests from the cuts in public spending which are now a political certainty. In pleading the case for agriculture, however, the National Farmers' Union surely has more of a point than most.

Such has been the waste, profligacy and sheer inefficiency of the Government's implementation of its agricultural policies that it makes no sense at all to make wholesale budget cuts when formidable savings could be made simply from making the present system work more effectively.

It is, of course, asking too much to expect any meaningful reform of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. However, considering that 1,740 is spent in England processing each application under the CAP's Single Farm Payment scheme – compared with 285 in Scotland – the scope for savings should be apparent to even the most short-sighted of Ministers.

Nor is it excusable to use farmers simply as a way of raising cash, as envisaged in the proposed "livestock tax" to finance animal-disease control which is surely the responsibility of government rather than one particular industry.

The present administration may well have treated farming with disdain during its 13 years in office but this is nothing compared with the prospect of its using agriculture as a scapegoat for its own inefficiencies and as a means of raising revenue to pay off a debt created largely by the Government's own ineptitude.