David Davies, the Conservative MP for Monmouth, today voiced his concerns over the Wales Office’s Annual Report which shows that the amount of money spent per head of the population on agriculture in Wales by the Welsh Assembly has been drastically cut.
In the 2005 Annual Report it was claimed that £106 was spent by the Welsh Assembly per head on agriculture. The 2006 Report identifies that this amount has fallen to only £64 per head, a drop of almost 40% in the space of a single year.
Speaking from Monmouth today, David said, “As soon as I spotted this I questioned the Secretary of State, who suggested that it was all down to the new payment scheme. When I pointed out that the new scheme should not have led to a cut in spending on agriculture in the first few years I was then told by a Civil Servant that: “when the Government issues resource accounts as opposed to statements of cashflow, it recognises liabilities, future liabilities when they occur. The effect of that is that when you get a change in the scheme, there appeared an item which was the recognition of future years more than one year ahead and that, therefore, gave an artificial increase in the year in which that was recognised, not affecting the cash payments, but affecting the recognition of the future liability looking more than one year ahead. This is the difference between accruals accounts and cash accounts.”
“I’m forced to confess that this made little sense to me, and would be grateful for a translation, but the gist of the situation is that either the figure quoted in the 2005 reports is inaccurate, and £106 was not spent per head on agriculture, or else there has been a phenomenal drop off in the amount of public spending on farming in Wales.
“Whichever of these turns out to be the case, I believe it is absolutely vital that we get to the bottom of this situation as soon as possible and reassure farmers that they still have the support of the Wales Office and the National Assembly.”