Mr. John Sheridan:

The farming community where I come from, and in the region, would have no belief in it at all. Before the referendum was held we were told that those moneys would maybe even be enhanced over and above what we already get in direct payments and through rural development. That has not happened and now, after the referendum, the rhetoric is that the guarantee by the British Government will be until 2020. We know that the EU is paying until 2019 so, in other words, that guarantee lasts for only one year and even that guarantee is suspect about the rural development end of it.

What is worse is that it is already happening in the North currently and we are seeing the erosion of EU moneys to farmers. I speak in particular about the areas of natural constraint, ANC, scheme which has had a business case for the last 40 years through what we remember as the old hill cow and sheep subsidies. That changed into the less favoured areas compensatory allowance, LFACA and then to the ANC scheme which gave some £25 million per year. Last year the disadvantaged area scheme was taken out of that and it ended up with an area of around 380,000 hectares, claimed by some 15,000 claimants for £20 million. This year in spring, around March, will see the end of ANC and in 2018 a payment of 40% of that will be paid. That is it. That scheme will be over.

The environmental schemes, which have not been paid, are all off now. At one time 50% of the land area in the North was under the environmental scheme with up to £48 million in funds going in to it. In recent years that would surely have averaged around £30 million or £35 million. That is not available now. There is new scheme to be announced in February but for part of it - for the larger and wider groupings who will apply - even though one can apply in February, the contracts will not be signed until January 2018 and then a full year will need to pass before a farmer can even apply for payment. We are going to be at least into mid-2019 before any environmental payments come in. Those environmental payments were specifically in Natura 2000 sites - designated areas such as areas of special scientific interest, ASSIs and special areas of conservation, SACs. That rural development money was there as compensation for what a farmer had to do to stand his or her land up to environmental farming standards, and now it is not there. Those standards are EU designations and some of them are local government or Westminster Government designations.

Some £50 million is currently being taken out from the disadvantaged areas of the North. I can provide details on the figures involved. Let alone Westminster, it is also happening in Stormont at the present time. Many of these areas are on the hinterlands of Border areas in more remote and extensive farming areas. It is terrible and it is not only happening in this community. At the Oxford farming conference, Andrea Leadsom, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said she was going to have a bonfire of red-tape. The farmers attending in the audience were asked if they believed it. Almost nobody put up their hands, or 99%. No-one believed it. We all know that the EU legislation is going to be cut and pasted. Clearly no-one believes it here either.