ABSTRACT
All four nations have made progress to varying extents in developing their own agricultural policies post-Brexit, with some considerable parallels. The policies across the four nations are largely based on a two-pronged approach of public money for public (environmental) goods and productivity (or economic resilience), which broadly replicates the two pillars of the CAP (with caveats). Despite a great impetus initially with public money for public goods, they revert partway back to old approaches, for example, by frequently paying for actions rather than outcomes or keeping some direct payments. Concerns are raised about whether the goals of public goods (or environmental outcomes) will be achieved when the implementation of the approach relies mostly on actions rather than outcomes. The public goods approach has been eroded in the development of the policies and schemes – indicating the lack of a clear overarching objective.
A range of other central elements can also be identified, including the role of co-design in the initial policy and the financial schemes; the absence of integration within the agricultural policies of other policy areas; the variations in governance of the schemes, including eligibility criteria, monitoring and enforcement; the lack of integration of regulatory baselines and seeming shift away from cross-compliance; and a degree of path dependency by the devolved administrations in mirroring the two-pronged English approach.
Whilst the Agriculture Act 2020 indicates a recentralisation of powers, especially via its provisions on the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and financing, this is legally possible even if politically sensitive. Overall, the four policies to-date fall within the parameters delineated in Chapter 2 – indeed, there remains considerable scope for developing agricultural policies further.
