FORMER MEP and leading organic farmer Heather Anderson has issued a strong warning that the UK Government legislation on the internal market could soon start to seriously affect Scotland.
Anderson was taking part in a consultation exercise jointly run by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis). The consultation, which ends next Wednesday, was on a new subsidy control regime for the whole of the UK – the Tory Government has promised swift legislation on the new post-Brexit arrangements.
Subsidy control is a reserved matter, says the UK Government, which means only the Westminster Parliament can legislate on it. The UK Government’s position for some time now has been that having different rules on providing subsidies in different parts of the UK could undermine fair and open competition in the UK internal market.
Anderson said: “The consultation was on whether fisheries and agricultural subsidy should be within the scope of the new Future of Domestic Subsidy Control legislation that follows the Internal Market Act.
“The UK Internal Market Act already prohibits any of the individual devolved nations procuring local food and giving preferential treatment to local suppliers.
“One of the working examples that they gave in the Internal Market Bill was the Welsh Government giving preferential treatment to Welsh lamb producers and they basically said the Welsh Government won’t be allowed to do that.
“With the act having been passed, I can foresee an English farmer going to whichever body superintends the internal market and protesting that Scotland should not be allowed subsidies which English farmers cannot get. They would argue that the Scottish subsidy is distorting trade and needs to be stopped.
“This new bill is quite clearly suggesting that control of farming subsidies will lie with the UK Government and this consultation was all about ramping up that control.
“They were saying that control is all about protecting the UK internal market and facilitating the UK Government’s intervention when there is a strategic interest in doing so.”
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Defra is committed to fading out all agricultural subsidies within seven years, a policy which the Scottish Government vehemently opposes. By controlling the internal market, the UK Government would be able to effectively stop any subsidy which is determined as distorting trade. Anderson said: “After Brexit, the UK Government is no longer bound by the old state aid rules, and they want to dampen down any ‘subsidy races’ between the four nations. “To me that undermines the Scotland Act and is a shocking attack on the devolution settlement itself.
“This consultation has shown what was intended all along, that the UK Government will take control back from Scotland.
“They were saying that it was all about telling the devolved nations they cannot do anything to protect their lot, that there is to be no subsidy races between devolved nations and they want to avoid any damaging subsidy wars.
“They said ‘we want a legal framework to ensure that administrations choose to use their subsidies in a less damaging way.’ It was a very sobering meeting, not least because they said they would be consulting until March 31 and then would be legislating quickly.”
Anderson added: “We have seen all the smokescreens coming from the Internal Market Act about breaking international law and damaging Northern Ireland, but all the while this stuff that’s deadly to Scotland’s farming, fisheries and industries has been simmering away and hardly anyone has noticed.”
The loss of EU standards will also be devastating, said Anderson: “Suddenly our market will be open to counterfeit and sub-standard goods, even GM crops. Scotland needs to wake up to the fact that our devolved systems are under attack.”
A UK Government spokesperson said: “The UK Internal Market Act protects businesses, jobs and livelihoods by ensuring there are no harmful new barriers to trade between all parts of the UK.
“The devolved administrations are, and will remain, responsible for their own spending decisions on subsidies within any subsidy control system, allowing them to reflect local circumstances or industrial concerns.”
The UK Government has also promised to provide a draft of the proposed response to the devolved administrations for their comment.
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