Friday, April 07, 2017

The benefits of stability

The round of talks on Brexit and agriculture, at which one often meets the usual suspects, continues. Next stop Dublin, yesterday it was the Public Interest and Environmental Law (PIEL) conference at Cass Business School, ably organised by students.

My central focus was on the need for well-designed policy instruments in a domestic agricultural policy that would meet their objectives without imposing undue transaction costs.

Our chairman from the RSPB made an interesting observation. He said that the CAP was slow to reform, but the other side of the coin was that it offered stability through the legislative framework. Moreover, it offered a multi-year budget but in future we would be facing an annual budget with competing demands on resources.

Incidentally, I never knew that red diesel was used at Heathrow and for the refrigeration compartments of food lorries.

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