The Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee questioned Defra Secretary Owen Paterson about key policy issues on Tuesday, including the badger cull, genetically modified (GM) foods, rural broadband the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and climate change.

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The grilling was part of the EFRA Committee's review of the Department's Annual Report for 2012-13, and comprised an inquiry into the implementation of the CAP.

MPs on the Committee levelled heavy criticism at the embattled Secretary of State on a range of subjects. Dealing with the deeply controversial badger cull, Labour MP for South Shields Emma Lewell-Buck said Defra had misled the public and ignored scientific evidence in its manipulation of the culling strategy. It was revealed earlier this month that two trial pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset failed to reach their targets - killing 70 percent of the local badger population within six weeks. Mr Paterson denied this; he said targets were not met at three of the ten Randomised Badger Culling Trial sites (RBCT was a decade-long trial commissioned under the last Labour government) and added that six weeks was and "arbitrary" timescale, which "obviously" needs to be extended in some cases.

Even so, the controversial badger culling policy has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks, after wildlife experts warned that the extensions may risk spreading bovine TB further (incidence of the disease is not being measured in badgers or cattle as part of the trial) due to increased perturbation of sick badgers, and the Badger Trust pointed out that Defra Chief Vet Nigel Gibbens stated six weeks would be the maximum culling period in the Court of Appeal when defending a challenge brought by the Trust in 2012.

Rural Broadband roll-out

EFRA Committee chair Anne McIntosh also criticised the government's progress on superfast rural broadband. The roll-out of broadband into more isolated areas has been subject to severe delays. BT – the sole bidder for government contracts – has also come under fire over claims it has overcharged and suppressed information on areas where it will not be providing coverage as part of the roll-out, meaning other companies have been preventing from stepping in to address this.

Last month, following an inquiry by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, the PAC's chair Margaret Hodge said, "We now have a situation where local authorities are contributing over £230 million more to the programme than forecast in the Department's business case, while BT is committing over £200 million less… and BT will end up owning assets created from £1.2 billion of public money."

Defending the government's performance on Tuesday, Paterson said farmers and other rural businesses could still access satellite broadband, but would have to cover the cost themselves (which he estimated at £15 per month, with a £99 set up fee). There is currently no support available to manage these costs despite the delays to the rural broadband scheme.

Ms McIntosh said that, in light of the delays and the fact that not everyone will have superfast broadband by 2016 – 90 percent coverage is not now expected until 2017, two years after the initial roll-out deadline – support should be made available for people who rely on the internet.

She also echoed the PAC recommendations that BT publish roll-out plans to enable communities that will not be covered by the scheme to find alternative means of securing broadband coverage. Despite the shortcomings of the government scheme, a number of community groups have come together in rural regions to establish broadband access for themselves and met with success. Such cooperative groups include the Bay Broadband network in Robin Hood's Bay, North Yorkshire, a 'not for profit' Social Enterprise Cooperative set up to bring broadband to the remote coastal village and its surrounding farms. 

CAP reform

During the second part of the meeting, the Defra secretary was quizzed about his department's plans for CAP implementation, after a deal on the Common Agricultural Policy was struck in June and finalised in September.

Paterson said the RPA will introduce a new computer system to deliver payments under the new CAP regime. The new map-based system is already undergoing testing, according to Paterson's adviser Ian Trenholm. Despite assurances from the advisory team that extensive testing is being conducted, which began much earlier and has a wider scope than in previous scheme years, EFRA Committee members still expressed concerns that the concurrence of a new computer system and 'digital by default' account management could result in a repeat of 2005, when the Rural Payments Agency struggled to effectively process payments to farmers.

RPA was ruled to have "underestimated the effort involved in processing claims" by the National Audit Office, in its 2006 report on the fiasco. This meant that many farmers suffered "unacceptable" delays before receiving their payments and many payments were made for incorrect amounts.

Ian Trenholm acknowledged that Committee members' "Cynical" view of the system upgrade is understandable, but said it is desperately needed.

McIntosh, conservative MP for Thirsk, asked the environment secretary whether he was satisfied with the CAP deal that was struck at the end of the Irish presidency and finalised late last month. Paterson admitted he wanted to push for reforms that aligned better with his ideological stance. 

He said, "the reestablishment of coupling isn't ideal [but] we've stopped some really band things from happening." He used examples of a 2017 end date for sugar quotas (industry groups were seeking an end to quotas in 2020) and moves on weakening 'active farmers' considerations as examples of 'bad things' that have been avoided.  Coupled payments are those linked to the production of a particular crop or keeping a particular type of livestock; decoupling is supported by market fundamentalists, but also by policy groups who believe changes to agricultural policy could support more nutritious diets.

Modulation

The environment secretary said he was confident that the reforms are largely positive, though he admitted, "I don't get rung up by my farmers to say 'thank you Mr Paterson'." He expressed particular satisfaction with the amount of money that will be available for rural development funding under Pillar Two.

The government's intention to modulate the UK's CAP allocation, taking 15 percent of funds from the direct payments pillar and applying them to rural development, has caused a rift in the farming community.

The NFU claims that modulation will make UK farmers uncompetitive if other countries move 15 percent from pillar 2 to pillar 1. NFU president Peter Kendall pushed for a maximum of 9 percent modulation at agricultural shows over the summer.

However, on Tuesday Paterson stated that the NFU does not speak for the entire farming community. He claimed he had been approached by farmers in Entry Level and Higher Level Stewardship who support his goal of full 15 percent modulation. In response to NFU's concerns he added, "A few euros difference per hectare will not make any difference; there is no level playing field, there never has been."

The Defra secretary said he would pursue full modulation "as long as there is a clear benefit from projects proposed… if we come up with good projects that will benefit farming, we will do it." He continued, "Schemes should help the rural economy, agriculture and the environment" and must appeal to the public, who will foot the CAP bill. The environment secretary, who has come under fire for his department's handling of the neonicotinoid debate earlier this year, said he is keen to use Pillar two funding for a programme to support insect pollinators ("without gold plating").

Greening the CAP

On the subject of greening measures, he said EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos had been unwavering in his insistence on greening measures; the NFU wants to avoid the crop diversification condition in particular, but Paterson said substitution of crop diversification would be unlikely. He was ambivalent in his support of this, stating that, although he thought greening would deliver benefits, "the arbitrary nature of the crop rotation will cause problems," potentially including farmers formulating complicated ways of bending rules.

Moving to other areas of CAP reform where the UK government has been criticised, Labour MP Neil Parish asked the Secretary of State, "If the government is philosophically opposed to direct payments, why did you oppose the capping of payments [to those receiving] the largest payments?" Paterson responded "I want our most successful farmers to concentrate on producing food, I don't want them huddled up with expensive lawyers because of some arbitrary diktat."

However, reacting to the final position reached in September, Green MEP José Bové denounced the CAP package as "a missed opportunity". The green party spokesperson accused negotiators of removing the 'common' from the Common Agricultural Policy and said, "The outcome of this legislation will fail to provide for a fairer distribution of agricultural funds and will not deliver for the environment. Huge farming businesses which do not need the funding will continue to get big pay-cheques, whilst depriving other sustainable areas of the CAP from funding. This flies in the face of small farmers' and citizens' interests."

EU Greens also lamented that greening measures are "riddled with exemptions" and as such will fail to make Europe's agriculture sector more environmentally benign.  They said that modulation is likely to lead to a net transference of Pillar two funds to direct payments across Europe, which will have further consequences for the environment and conservation efforts.

Reporting in the prestigious journal Science in July, a team of 'environmental economists', suggested that the current subsidy system has burdened the public with "considerable financial and environmental costs." They said that "allowing land use to be determined purely by an agricultural market, which is distorted by multi-billion pound subsidies," and externalising the cost of agriculture's excesses on to the public represents a "poor value for society".