Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – in the House of Commons am 10:30 am ar 21 Mai 2009.
Like many hon. Members here, I recently signed an early-day motion that celebrated the 10th anniversary of the national minimum wage, but 15,000 farmers in this country earn less than £10,000 a year—less than the national minimum wage. Yet we have a farm payments system underneath the common agricultural policy that rewards many wealthy estates that do not need the money and wastes £7 million a year on making small payments of sometimes as little as 70p to people who, with all due respect, are not farmers. Does the Secretary of State agree that the CAP needs to be reformed to ensure that farm payments go to the farmers who need it and are often critically underpaid?