ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

SKY NEWS – MURNAGHAN – 10.00 – 6.03.16 – INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE EUSTICE MP, FARMING MINISTER

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, leaving the European Union would be a risk Britain’s farmers cannot afford to take – those are the words yesterday of some of the country’s most prominent farm leaders launching the Farmers For In campaign.  Well I am joined now by the Farming Minister, George Eustice, he’s announced he will be backing Brexit.  A very good morning to you Minister, nice to see you here, well people, not just farmers – another issue during this debate on which they are going to be terribly confused.  They’ll read this letter yesterday laying out the joys of the EU, perhaps not laying on that strong for farmers, but you are saying better off out. How so?  

GEORGE EUSTICE: Well I strongly disagree with them, those farmers who said this, and the reality is I’ve been two and a half years as Farming Minister, I’ve wrestled with all sorts of European regulation, all of the problems – virtually all of the problems – that farmers come to me with ultimately stem from dysfunctional European regulations over which we have very little power to change and it’s stifling.  We have so much regulation, 80% of the laws that we have in DEFRA come from the European Union, our ability to change those and shape those are very limited because we are just one of 28 member states.  I’ve concluded that it will be far better if we were to take back control, make our own laws and craft a national agriculture policy that is right for our own country.

DM: But you know what’s coming next, you hear not just me but farmers cry, well okay there’s that but what about the subsidies?  Farmers get a lot of money from the European Union.

GEORGE EUSTICE: That is right and we’ll continue to support our farming and our environment.  

DM: Well would we?  That would be up to a sovereign parliament, how do you know?

GEORGE EUSTICE: Well if you have got a sovereign parliament, I’ve got lots of MPs that have come to me in the last two weeks who are on the Brexit side and who say if we leave we must definitely still support farming and the countryside and the environment, I think it’s vitally important.  It would carry on …

DM: That’s a leap in the dark though, you can’t guarantee that can you?

GEORGE EUSTICE: Look, nobody can guarantee anything in the European Union, that’s a leap in the dark.  Just this year …

DM: I don't think the Common Agricultural Policy is going is it?  

GEORGE EUSTICE: Just this year the devaluation of the euro against the pound has affected subsidy payments, we take our money at the moment, send it to Brussels, convert it into the euro creating a foreign exchange rate risk and then have our own money come back with lots of strings attached, lots of regulations, an army of EU auditors telling us we’re not doing things the right way.  It would be so much better if we stopped sending £350 million a week to the European Union, kept the money here, funded our own policies which had been properly thought through.  

DM: Can we do some calculations, you know it better than I do, what is the current subsidy from the European Union to the farming industry, 2.3, 2.4 billion?  

GEORGE EUSTICE: It varies from year to year because exchange rates vary but the total sum of money over a seven year period is 26.6 billion euros.  
DM: So where does a sovereign and independent British parliament find that kind of money?   

GEORGE EUSTICE: We would find it because we would stop spending £18 billion a year on the European Union.  That money would come back.  At the moment we only get back from the European Union around half the money that we send into it, we would have the funds to fund a national policy and we would be able to do so properly.  

DM: 18 billion though, that one jumped out at me there, I’ve been looking – and again these are important as people make up their minds, you’ve gone for a very, very high figure in terms of what we get back from leaving the European Union, Conservatives for Britain say 10 billion, even UKIP in their manifesto in the last election say 10 billion, how do you come up with 18?

GEORGE EUSTICE: 10 billion is a net figure and as I said we get back roughly half of what we put in.  

DM: But UKIP were netting it up and they got ten.  

GEORGE EUSTICE: We get back roughly half of what we put in and so the net figure is around 10 billion but it doesn’t matter because at the moment 18 billion is the correct figure because that’s the amount of money we send out there.  Yes, the fact that we get some back, with lots of strings attached, with foreign exchange rate risk attached, is a valid point so 18 billion is the right one to use but the truth is we have the ability to make our own policy, we could remove a lot of the regulations, make sure we’ve got a regulatory system that’s fit for purpose.  We would have enough money to fund the great countryside stewardship schemes that we have where we have a great track record but we could do so without interference from European bureaucrats.

DM: Okay, let me ask you this question, and I’m sure farmers and others will be thinking about this, saying when this all put back together again – the government, I mean, you are free to campaign as we know depending on your consciences but your boss thinks the opposite, she thinks we should stay in the European Union.  Win or lose you are both going to be singing from the same hymn sheet again when it is put back together again, one of you we can’t believe.  

GEORGE EUSTICE: I don’t believe that actually because …  

DM: Well if we stay in the European Union you’re going to have to be saying, well it’s pretty good, blah-blah-blah, I’m doing the best we can.   

GEORGE EUSTICE: I’ve always been pretty clear that we’ve got a referendum debate that has split the country right down the middle, it’s split the government down the middle, it’s split the governing party, the Conservatives, down the middle but once this referendum is over I will reconcile myself to the decision if the decision is to stay in and I will get on and unite behind the Prime Minister and make this work.  If the decision is to leave, the government is going to need people like me who have argued strongly that we would be better off outside, to put together a programme for government outside the European Union, I’ll do that as well.  There’s no problem whatsoever with the party reuniting after this, this is what referendums are like.  People have different views on different sides of the political spectrum and within the same party, you settle those views in a referendum and you respect the decision of the country and you get back to government.

DM: Does that depend, the party getting back together again, on how the rest of the campaign is fought?  There is still an awful long way to go and from your side and from none other than Boris Johnson, there are huge concerns about what the remain camp are saying and how they are saying it, the agents of Project Fear.

GEORGE EUSTICE: Well I think that in the next few months people will see this contrast between a campaign that is based on fear and trying to scare the living daylights out of everyone so that they are too scared to make what ultimately is a big decision but too scared to make it so they duck that big decision and people like us on the leave side who say you know, there’s a chance of doing things differently, doing things better, the European Union is out of date and actually float some ideas and some new thinking, fresh thinking about how we could do things differently as a country.  I think we will be offering people hope and the chance of a better future versus a campaign based on fear and I think that will play well for those of us who want to leave.

DM: But you are taking some low blows from some of your colleagues.  

GEORGE EUSTICE: Look, I think in the first couple of weeks of this campaign it’s a novelty to actually have the government split on a really big issue like this and to be engaged on both sides in a referendum campaign but I am actually confident that things will settle down, things will get back to some sense of normality.

DM: So they will clean up their campaign?  

GEORGE EUSTICE: I think they will realise eventually that having a campaign based only on trying to scare the living daylights out of everyone with all sorts of dubious claims isn’t the way to go.  We need to get back to arguing the real issues here and that’s what the leave campaign will be pushing for.  

DM: Mr Eustice, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed.  George Eustice there.