One of the few potential benefits of Brexit, in my view, is leaving the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. It's an unmitigated disaster. Its perverse incentives have destroyed, across the EU, hundreds of thousands of hectares of wildlife habitat.
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On paper, the Westminster government's proposed Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) looks like a major improvement on CAP. But ...
What we've seen over the past few years in the UK is a complete collapse of effective regulation, monitoring and enforcement in the countryside. Soil is stripped from the land, rivers are poisoned, raptors slaughtered, and seldom does anyone even turn up, let alone take action.
The regulatory bodies - the Environment Agency, Natural England, Rural Payments Agency and their equivalents in Wales, Scotland and NI - have had their funding and staff slashed, are demoralised and caged, and instructed by their governments to take a "voluntary approach".
They are completely incapable of enforcing existing regulations, or monitoring the "cross compliance" obligations on farmers receiving EU subsidies. So how can they be expected to monitor and enforce a system of payments made for public goods delivered?
This is a far greater task than anything the current regulators are expected to do. If the scheme is not to descend into farce, every field and building and tank on every farm will need to be checked every few years. And properly checked, not just scanning a satellite image.
To discharge this function in any sensible way, the government would have to lay down billions for new environmental regulation. But while it's happy to spend billions bailing out destructive industries, it is everywhere cutting regulators to the bone.
So in practice, what is likely to happen is a continuation in all but name of the Common Agricultural Policy. Do you own or lease this land? Is it being farmed? Are you the named recipient? OK, here's the money.
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