27 May 2009
I am happy to support Liam McArthur’s motion and to add my voice on this important issue.
I am especially pleased that our expert, David Whitton, is with us tonight.
Members may mock, but his expertise on particular aspects of the sheep flock will be exposed fully in a few moments’ time, when he makes his contribution to the debate.
It is easy to understand that at one point some well-intentioned EU official was clear about the origins and intention of the proposals.
Of itself, traceability is not a bad thing—the NFUS brief makes it clear that it is important.
Disease control is also important.
It supports the guarantees that people get for stock that comes from markets that have traceability, which can improve the price in the marketplace.
I am sure that someone thought that electronic identification was the way in which to ensure traceability in the modern world, to save paperwork and to ease administration.
I can see how the proposal originated but, as Liam McArthur set out, it is utterly impractical in the Scottish context and adds cost to an already fragile industry that is suffering badly at present.
That is cost to the producer, which cannot easily be passed down the rest of the chain.
The proposals are impractical because of the terrain in which most of our people operate, especially in the Highlands and Islands.
Gatherings can never be complete in such terrain—when people lose stock there, they may never understand how they have lost it.
The technology is not yet fully proven.
Naturally, people are worried that, if they infringe, there will be cross-compliance issues that will affect their potential income.
For the reasons that I have set out, the UK Government has opposed the proposals for many years. Clearly, it believed—and still believes—that the costs outweigh the benefits.
It has questioned the proposals from the outset, with the support of the Scottish Government, and the issue has been raised in the Council of Ministers.
The responsible UK minister has met the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development and urged a rethink; I am sure that Scottish ministers have done the same.
At recent council meetings, the UK Government has supported others in urging a rethink and has secured a delay in the proposals’ implementation, the phasing-in of certain recording requirements and agreement that sheep under one year of age will not be tagged for slaughter.
As Liam McArthur indicated, at the most recent council meeting, the Commission began to show signs of keeping open the door to greater flexibility on how the proposals would be implemented, if not on whether implementation would take place.
I understand that the UK Government is happy to keep raising the issue for as long as it takes to get a resolution.
As Liam McArthur indicated, the NFUS has developed the strategy that it will contribute to the debate. Rightly, it is trying to get the support of other farming unions across the EU, so that those unions can put pressure on their state Governments.
As long as the UK, with the support of the Scottish Government, has raised the issue in the European Union, it has done so with little support from other member states.
That is a key point.
Until we get support from other member states, the hard reality is that we will be stuck with the current situation. However, flexibility is now opening up—we need to walk through that door.
I know that the Scottish Government has been working closely with the UK Government on the issue.
I urge it to continue to do so until we find solutions.
I know that the UK Government has been active in trying to recruit more support from other member states, but some states have already implemented the proposals.
Others, as I am sure Jamie McGrigor will tell us, do not really worry about the issue, because they are below the thresholds at which the proposals apply.
The most worrying aspect is that, unless practical solutions are found, it will be yet another reason for people to leave sheep farming in the areas that we represent, on grounds of cost, practicality, worries about cross-compliance and the like.
That would impact on the many other services—including transport, veterinary services and feed supplies—that support the industry and rural communities, and would be another reason for the industry’s decline.
That is why we need to find an answer; I trust that the minister will indicate what further measures will be taken to secure one.
