The Conservative Party has committed to fund farm support payments in the UK at the same level as the current CAP for the next five years if they win next month’s general election.

With the UK expected to leave the EU in March 2019, the previous commitment from the Government was to honour current CAP payments until 2020 (last payment claimed in May 2019). However, the new commitment until 2022 was announced last week in the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto. “We will continue to commit the same cash total in funds for farm support until the end of the parliament,” the manifesto reads.

Although it does not specify how funds will be distributed until 2022, a broadly similar system to the current CAP could possibly be expected, with the Tories not planning “to devise a new agri-environment system” until after the next parliament if they remain in power.

Also noteworthy is the fact that there was a pledge in the Conservative manifesto two years ago to reduce imports of food from countries that produce below UK standards. However, there was no such commitment in the document published last week.

Instead, the Tories will seek to deliver “free trade deals with markets around the world”, which is something that should cause concern among farm lobby organisations.

Red line

“It is a red line for the farming unions that we cannot accept that there would be food coming into the UK that is produced to lower standards,” Ulster Farmers’ Union president Barclay Bell said in Dublin last week at a Seanad Select Committee meeting.

In the Labour Party’s general election manifesto, high standards of food production, environmental regulation and animal welfare are promised post-Brexit. “We will not allow Brexit to be used as an excuse to undercut our farmers and flood Britain’s food chain with cheap and inferior produce,” the manifesto reads.

However, there are no details given by Labour on the level of farm support or make-up of a post-Brexit agricultural policy, except that funds will be redistributed to support smaller farmers.