Truss-favoured thinktank attacks ‘massive transfer of wealth’ to landowners
One of Liz Truss’s favourite rightwing thinktanks has criticised the government for considering ditching a much-vaunted new funding structure for farmers, calling the existing subsidy system “a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to landowners”.
Truss has announced plans to review the environmental land management scheme (Elms), where farmers would be paid for environmental protection, in order, potentially, to go back to largely area-based payments. The plans were criticised as being “deeply economically inefficient” and for encouraging “laziness” by the Institute of Economic Affairs.
The IEA is a libertarian thinktank credited with coming up with many of the free-market policies pursued by Truss and the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng. Some of Truss’s staff have worked at the IEA, and she founded its political wing, Freer. Truss, according to the head of the IEA, has spoken at more of its events than “any other politician over the past 12 years”.
The IEA has been criticised for its policy of refusing to identify its donors, saying to do so would breach their privacy and expose them to harassment.
Matthew Lesh, head of public policy at the IEA, said the body would advise the government that if farmers were to be paid taxpayer money, it should be for public goods, such as environmental protections. He said the current scheme, which pays farmers for each acre of land they use, “is a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to landowners. In the end it also hurts agricultural productivity, as it encourages laziness if you give people money without them having to invest in modern techniques and just for having the land.”
Lesh added that the idea of subsidising landowners with no public benefit was “inconsistent with the rest
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