Butter before guns
NOW, for my next trick — how to start making the Common Agricultural Policy pay for itself, or at least to stop our taxpayers having to pay quite so much for it. Milk quotas, established in accordance with the policy, effectively govern the British farmer's right to produce milk. This has made farm land a two-tier market. For a farm with a quota, a premium of /400 an acre is now being asked, against the price of a comparable farm without. That is as close as can be to a secondary market in quotas. Why, instead, should not the Gov- ernment, in whose gift the quotas are, set up a primary market? Year by year the Min. of Ag. should invite tenders for the right to produce and sell milk. If the 1400-an-acre premium is a guide, the ten- ders should be high enough, and bring in enough, to keep the roof on the Ministry for quite a while. All that worries me about this notion is why it has not already emerged from the Institute of Economic Affairs, in a trenchant pamphlet by Arthur Seldon with a preface by Lord (Ralph) Harris of High Cross. It seems just their cup of cream tea, and, for that matter, the Treasury's too. Perhaps the Government, introducing it, should wait until after the by-elections in the Yorkshire and Der- byshire dairylands. It must, though, be a better idea than helping the Libyans to spend less money on butter and more on guns.
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