EU threatens to slash huge annual payments to Britain's wealthiest landowners [View All]

Source: The Independent

EU threatens to slash huge annual payments to Britain's wealthiest landowners
By Jerome Taylor

Off with their subsidies! Off with their subsidies!

Some of Britain's wealthiest landowners, including the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Westminster, would see their farm subsidies drastically reduced under plans by Brussels to impose, for the first time, a cap on the amount of money that individual farmers can claim.

The proposal, being drawn up by the European Commission, is the first attempt in years to tackle the scandal of giant agri-businesses and millionaire barley barons – as opposed to smallholders and family farmers – being the chief beneficiaries of the Common Agricultural Policy. The plans, due to be submitted for consultation with EU member states on 20 November, will suggest that some of the largest payments to super-rich landowners and industrial farms could be reduced by as much as 45 per cent.

Disclosures over the past two years have shown that Britain's elite landowners harvest the lion's share of farming subsidies – a consistent source of embarrassment for the EU's farm policy which is supposed to provide a reasonable standard of living for poor farmers struggling to compete in the global market, not redistribute taxpayers' money into the hands of a few millionaires.

Estimates published earlier this year showed that the Queen, one of the wealthiest women in the world, receives approximately £404,000 a year in European subsidies for her Sandringham estate and at least £140,000 for Windsor Castle. Some of the richest British aristocrats, such as the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Leicester, are also known to receive hundreds of thousands of pounds each year.

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Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3143253.ece