Despite repeated promises by current and former Secretaries of State such as George Eustice, Michael Gove and Alun Cairns that Wales’ budget for agriculture and rural development would not be cut after Brexit - and a promise in the 2019 Conservative Manifesto that “...we will guarantee the current annual CAP budget to farmers in every year of the next Parliament” - on 25th November the UK Government announced that Wales would be allocated £242 million for the 2021-22 financial year - £95 million less than the £337 million received from the EU through the Common Agricultural Policy in 2019.
The UK Government insists it has not broken its promise as the sum of the £242 million and the EU money put to one side by the Welsh Government from the 2014-2020 CAP budget comes to £337.
However, the FUW has described the allocation as a ‘Brexit betrayal’ since the Welsh Government has every right under the EU’s ‘N+3’ rule to carry money over into the next budgetary period - and under normal circumstances this would not undermine subsequent budgets.
In addition to the £95 million deficit, the Welsh Government has yet to be allocated the £42 million which would normally have resulted from the 2020 15% ‘Pillar Transfer’.
the Welsh Conservatives’ claim that the Welsh Government has pulled the wool “...over the Farming Unions [sic] eyes”.
FUW disagrees with this. In order to explain what is a complex matter, we have compared the cut with an employer deciding to reduce the salary of an employee in 2021 by the amount that employee paid into a savings account in the period 2014-2020, whilst claiming the employees funding has not been cut.
In responses to key conservative politicians, the FUW has maintained that using unspent EU funding from the 2014-2020 CAP budget (circa £95 million) to off-set an effective reduction in CAP replacement funds in a subsequent budgetary period does not equate to providing the same level of funding.
A briefing on the cuts containing more figures can be found here.