| about | | | countries | | | foi news | | | features | | | ifti | | | links |
Join freedominfo.org's
email update list
|
Join freedominfo.org's email update list |
home > features > foia law discloses british farm subsidies |
|
7
APRIL 2005 Royals Received More Than £1,000,000 in EU Agricultural Support Farm Subsidy Figures Revealed for First Time After FOIA Request from the Guardian, Excel Spreadsheets Now Searchable on freedominfo.org
The British royal family received more than £1,000,000 in European Union (EU) agricultural support over the last two years, according to figures recently revealed under the new British Freedom of Information Act and now available on the World Wide Web. For the first time the United Kingdom disclosed information on the amounts and recipients of EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies on March 22, thanks to a request filed with the UK's Rural Payments Agency (RPA) by the Guardian newspaper. The freedominfo.org Web site today published the released data in the form received from the agency -- a pair of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets -- along with an explanatory note issued by RPA on how to interpret the data. Also posted today were two tables listing the top 20 recipients of UK farm subsidies for the last two years. The figures show that the Queen received more than £769,000 in EU farm subsidies in fiscal years 2003-04, while Prince Charles benefited from around £300,000 in agricultural payments to his personal estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, and the Duchy's Home Farm. "The Queen is a landowner and a farmer," a spokesman for the monarch told the Guardian. "She receives a subsidy, just as any other farmer would do." Tate and Lyle, a prominent sugar refiner, received the largest payment by far: more than £233,000,000 in export subsidies over the two-year period. Critics of the subsidies complain that they primarily benefit multinational corporations and the wealthiest landowners. "For too long people have been misled to believe that farm subsidies are about protecting small and family farms," Jack Thurston of the Foreign Policy Centre -- which also requested the CAP figures -- told BBC News. "This data shows conclusively that most of the EU's CAP payments goes to large agribusiness and wealthy landowners."
European Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann told the BBC, "There is no doubt that the CAP does protect small family farms becuase small family farms continue to exist and thrive in the EU." The system has changed since the period covered by these figures, he added, noting that payments are no longer based on the amount of land and animals farmed, and that farmers can now produce what the market needs and are rewarded for preserving the countryside. While the European Commission has considered putting limits on payments to individual farmers, the idea was rejected by European ministers, including those from Great Britain. Similar and far more detailed information on United States farm subsidies has been available since a lawsuit brought by the Washington Post forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reveal the data in 1996. The ruling, which found the release of the information a matter of "significant public interest," empowered advocacy organizations like the Environmental Working Group -- which had also been working to obtain the figures -- to create a massive online database of farm subsidy payments from raw data obtained using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Now the most current and reliable source of its kind, EWG's Farm Subsidy Database has been searched more than 25 million times in the last four months alone. Explanatory Note The Rural Payments Agency issued the following explanatory note on how to interpret the CAP subsidy data.
This note summarises the general background to the information on CAP subsidy payments being released on 22 March 2005 and, in particular, the reasons for interpreting this material with care. 1. The Common Agricultural Policy has a range of economic, social and environmental objectives. It comprises a wide range of measures covering the production of, and trade in, agricultural products. Some of these measures are financial, others not. The payment data alone will not give a full picture of the support which individuals or businesses may receive from the CAP. 2. Market price support, which historically formed a large part of the CAP support system, has been partially replaced by a system of direct payments to farmers. Such payments were until 2005 largely based on what and how much a farmer produced under a range of different schemes for crops, livestock or other activities. In England, major changes are taking place this year which will decouple direct payments from production. 3. In certain circumstances, intervention purchases or private storage aid may operate to remove surplus production from the market. 4. The CAP leads certain commodity prices to be higher in the EU than in the rest of the world. In these circumstances, exporters of commodities or processed products may be entitled to apply for export refunds to compensate. Producers of certain secondary products (starch, casein, sugar for use in the chemical sector) are entitled to production refunds for the same reason. 5. The information here is drawn from the financial records of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA). It represents an annual aggregate figure for payments to each recipient under the schemes listed in the Appendix to this note. It should be interpreted with care (more detailed comment is in paragraph 13 below.) 6. It should not be assumed that there is only one entry per business. For some recipients, there will be several entries reflecting the structure or nature of the business; for others a single entry will cover a number of discrete businesses variously located in the UK, or even in the UK and elsewhere in the EU; and some international businesses that are active in the UK may nonetheless have no entry at all because they choose to make all their claims in another member state. 7. For farmers, most payments are made at a fixed rate determined in EU law and farmers have a legal entitlement to those payments. In the case of food manufacturers or traders, export refunds are generally determined by a tender process and the level of payment may fluctuate over time. In some cases, entitlement to aid will be conditional on the recipient having paid a prescribed minimum price for the raw material. In any case, the extent to which an individual farmer or business benefits from the full range of CAP measures will not be apparent from payment data alone. 8. Direct comparisons between entries for businesses in the same sector or sectors may accordingly be misleading. Furthermore, CAP payments form only a part of the revenue of a business and are not indicative of net income levels or profitability, which depend on a much wider range of factors. 9. It may also not be possible to make direct comparisons with other published figures about CAP payments due to the precise basis on which the figures have been compiled. 10. The information covers those payments for which RPA is responsible and includes payments made under Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) schemes in England and under non IACS schemes throughout the UK. It does not include information about payments made under IACS schemes by the EU Paying Agencies in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. 11. In some cases, payments need to be subsequently adjusted for a variety of reasons such as new information coming to light or errors in original applications. The data in these lists will not include most of these adjustments except where they applied to a subsequent payment in the same payment year. 12. The information contained in the spreadsheets was derived from RPA's automated payments database (Oracle Financials Accounts Payable). It is an extraction of all CAP payment activity undertaken in the EU financial year which runs from 16 October to 15 October the following year (This being the most complete set of audited annual figures available). No distinction has been made in the spreadsheets regarding the funding route (i.e. the figures include all payments whether they have been funded by EAGGF or the UK Exchequer.) 13. To interpret the information contained in the spreadsheets, and particularly when viewing non farm based (non IACS) customer information, the recipient needs to bear in mind the following:
APPENDIX - SCHEMES ADMINISTERED BY RPA IACS and other farm based schemes dealt with by RPA for England: Arable Schemes:
Bovine Schemes:
Sheep Schemes:
Structural Funds: The Structural Funds are a multi-funded EU programme. Defra is the Managing Authority, RPA is the Paying Authority (responsible for financial and accounting controls) and the Government Offices act as the Intermediate Bodies (responsible for administration and implementation). RPA only pays under the Guidance element for schemes in Objective 1 regions and for Leader + schemes. Non-IACS (i.e. CAP) schemes dealt with by RPA for the UK: GENERAL INTERVENTION
PURCHASING SCHEMES PRIVATE
STORAGE AID SCHEMES SUGAR,
OILS and STARCH EXTERNAL
TRADE SCHEMES (including export refunds): Top 20 Recipients of UK Farm Subsidies 2002-03 (October 16, 2002 - October 15, 2003)
2003-04 (October 16, 2003 - October 15, 2004)
|
 |
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
Suite
701, Gelman Library, 2130 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 20037 - email@freedominfo.org Copyright © 2006-2008 freedominfo.org |
