How has UK agricultural policy changed since Brexit?

Some thoughts here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2023/05/24/how-has-uk-agricultural-policy-changed-since-brexit/

Farm policies a Brexit success?

Responding to Nigel Farage, Downing Street yesterday said that Brexit has been a success, citing the ability of the UK to shape its own farm policies as a benefit.

Really?  A hollowed out Defra has found this a challenging task.   The new policies have been rolled out slowly.  The ELMS scheme is complicated and the relationship between policy instruments and desired outcomes is uncertain, albeit that is not an unfamiliar problem.  Measures to tackle the farm productivity problem are limited in scope and funding.

Downing Street also held its much vaunted food summit yesterday.   The farming press dismissed it as a 'talking shop' and admittedly my heart sinks when I hear the phrase 'breakout groups'.  All too often this means poorly focused discussions and brief feedbacks lacking clarity.   However, one needs to talk to identify feasible policies, although acting on ideas is another matter.

Rishi Sunak did offer an extra 10,000 visas for seasonal workers next year on top of the 45,000 already available.  It is estimated that £60m of produce remained unpicked last year.

The National Farmers' Union would like a minimum five year rolling scheme.   This would allow greater certainty to plan forward production.

Meat processors have struggled to recruit butchers because of the language requirements posed by immigration rules.  The sector has become reliant on butchers from the Philippines (also a source of labour for the dairy sector) but each work costs £12,000 to bring to the UK.

Defra's digital failures reveal wider problems

A critical House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report on how Defra is struggling to upgrade its ageing IT systems highlights broader problems in the department: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/39847/documents/194104/default/.

The report notes: 'At the same time as addressing the challenges posed by legacy IT, Defra is undertaking a business transformation process which includes potentially major structural changes to Defra and its arm’s-length bodies. Defra does not currently have a vision of how the transformed Department and its organisations will operate.'

Defra has a reputation as one of Whitehall's weakest departments, in part because of ministerial turnover.  Ambitious ministers use it as a way station while others are put there as a parking spot for those out of favour.   Officials and lobby groups recently told the Financial Times that the department was becoming 'increasingly dysfunctional'.

A National Audit Office report in December found that  'Across government, risks to public services posed by ageing technology have been allowed to build up over many years and Defra has been affected more than most departments. Its systems and services are out of date, creating high risks of operational failure and cyber-attack, inconvenience for service users and additional staff and maintenance costs.' 

The NAO found that Defra did not have a plan for the wider digital transformation that was needed: https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/modernising-ageing-digital-services-defra/

Divergence and Continuity after Brexit

My article with Alan Greer on 'Divergence and Continuity after Brexit in agriculture' in the Journal of European Public Policy is now available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2023.2204118

Throughout British membership of the European Union (EU), agricultural policy was largely determined by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This was viewed by the UK as a dysfunctional policy and while periodic reforms meant that the EU moved slowly in the direction advocated by the UK, many of the main policy elements remained in place. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have always enjoyed a measure of policy freedom in agriculture and have diverged from England in some areas. This article explores the extent of de-Europeanisation in the agricultural sectors in the UK and the patterns of divergence between them, focusing primarily on the development of policies for agricultural support that will replace those in place under the CAP. Overall, there has been substantial divergence in policy, but also areas of continuity, which means that processes of de-Europeanisation in the UK agricultural sectors has been uneven.