Why am I not surprised?

Guido Fawkes reports a quote from the recently dismissed former Secretary for the Environment, Owen Paterson:

I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

Not only I can well believe it, Mr Paterson having to contend with DEFRA as well as the Greenie mafia, who are completely unhinged (this does not apply to all people who are concerned with the environment just the soi-disant Green activists), I am not even surprised.

It reminded me of a comment made by one of Mr Paterson's predecessors, though he had a junior role at DEFRA, being at that time already in the House of Lords, made when I was working on a Committee that was looking into the meat industry and how it had been affected by EU and domestic regulations (badly).

The ex-Minister (by this stage) said that, despite his long career in politics, he had not really believed any conspiracy theories until he took on DEFRA, who, in his opinion, was a conspiracy all by itself.

What is the point of any of it?

MPs are, apparently, querying the high salary paid to an interim (or two interim, it is hard to tell) finance director of the much criticized and highly inefficient Rural Payments Agency. What is the purpose of the RPA?

The RPA administers an EU subsidy for farmers for maintaining their land which was introduced in 2005 - but delays to payments in England, blamed on computer failures at the agency, cost millions of pounds and were described by MPs as a "fiasco".

In other words, it is really an executive arm of the European Union and of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Caroline Spelman, the relevant Secretary of State, tried to explain that things would be different from now on:

Bronwyn Hill, the department's permanent secretary, said bonuses paid out to RPA staff had fallen - from 100% of staff getting "small bonuses" to 11.8% of staff this year, who were paid a median amount of £893.

But Mr Parish, himself a former farmer, queried the figure of £425,000 - £430,000, apparently paid to a job-share post in the RPA.

"We have had all this mess with the Rural Payments Agency. If I say to my farmers the highest paid person in Defra is an accountant in the RPA, albeit two of them sharing the same job, I think they might be slightly concerned, to say the least." He added: "It's just not going down well, is it?"

Mrs Spelman agreed it was a "very high salary". But the department's permanent secretary, Bronwyn Hill, said it was a legacy of interim appointments - made from the private sector - to fill roles at the RPA. She said the department had been focusing on replacing interim posts with full time, permanent staff to reduce costs.

"This is probably a historic legacy of having to pay people from the private sector to fill jobs which were quite difficult to fill," she said.

"The good news is we have since appointed, in July, the ex-finance director of Defra has moved across to the agency on a much lower salary than that."

That's nice. It does not, however, deal with the problem of why DEFRA exists at all and why it has grown exponentially (together with the various outreach organizations like the RPA) over the last twenty years.

After all, everything DEFRA deals with is now EU competence. It's role is to send people along to the various negotiations to do with environment, farming, food production and rural affairs and then to implement the various rules laid down by the relevant EU bodies either in the form of a directive or, more likely, of a regulation that does not need to go through Parliament at all. Even there, some of that role had been hived off to quangos like the Food Standards Agency (oh yes, it still exists and will go on existing for the foreseeable future).

Food labelling is EU competence

A casual look at my erstwhile blogging home showed me that the Boss had picked up those idiotic comments about the Cleggeron Coalition doing away with certain food labelling regulations, in particular the one to do with "best before".

We have a thoroughly ignorant story by Patrick Hennessy, which fails to mention a crucial fact: food labelling is EU competence and the "best before" labels cannot be dropped or seriously altered by HMG or Parliament or, even, that mighty organization the Food Standards Agency, which is not being abolished. (Though, to be fair, food labelling rules will now be implemented by DEFRA rather than the FSA.)

The legislation for food labelling, however, comes from that fountain of modern British legislation, the European Union, specifically,

DIRECTIVE 2000/13/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL

of 20 March 2000, on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the labelling, presentation and advertising of foodstuffs.

1. In accordance with Articles 4 to 17 and subject to the exceptions contained therein, indication of the following particulars alone shall be compulsory on the labelling of foodstuffs: ... (5) the date of minimum durability or, in the case of foodstuffs which, from the microbiological point of view, are highly perishable, the ‘use by’ date;

So far as anyone knows that has not been changed, altered or abolished. This paper by DEFRA gives an efficient summary of the subject, emphasises the fact that food labelling is controlled and regulated by the EU and talks of the ongoing negotiations (ongoing for some years) for reform of the system at the European level, there not being any other alternative.

As a matter of fact, we have been here before. Periodically, the subject of food labelling comes up, hacks and politicians get excited and make promises, then everything dies down as everybody realizes that this is not something our own Parliament can legislate on.

What do we see here? The same ridiculous story, this time by Louise Gray, on June 10, 2009. It looks like the Telegraph believes in recycling stories as well as everything else. That time Lord Willoughby de Broke asked a Written Question about it in the House of Lords:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether their proposals to clarify the "best before", "sell by" and "use by" recommendations on food products in retail outlets require the permission of the European Commission.

The answer was short and to the point:

Permission of the European Commission is not required as we are working within existing European Union law.

So, that's that. Can we now leave this subject alone or start saying something sensible about it? UPDATE: There is more on the subject over on EURef.