[Diggers350] Who Owns Britain? EU welfare for Zac & other land hoarders continued...

Tue Mar 29 08:45:56 BST 2011

Shocking 'though  the £200,000 cheque to Minister  Richard Benyon, M.P.is , his is not the worst case in parliament. 
The estate of Richard Drax M.P., bordering the main A31 Road in North Dorset,  received £417,000 CAP cheque in 2010.

This and such  uncut benefit payments would be  shocking news to the millions who unknowingly subsidise one privileged sector of the population. The largest single CAP cheque for £83,000,000 goes to British Sugar Corporation for their  bio fuels plant in Norfolk which consumes 10 per cent of the wheat crop and accounts for the present rush to grow wheat and the wheat price hike last year.
Kraft Foods, Jonjo O'Neill Racing get cheqwues . RSPB get two cheques of over £1,000,000 , one polo club and one donkey sanctuary get annual CAP benfit cheques. 

A Rusbridger is amongst the receivers of CAP cheques in 2010 , also the Ed at Private Eye, which might explain things. 
Good posting. Revealing the subsidy is a way of highlighting the theft of the land - also unknown to the population at large.

As an old Highgate resident said, "The task is not to  explain the world but to change it."  

James    

To: diggers350 at yahoogroups.com
From: tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:45:49 +0100
Subject: [Diggers350] Who Owns Britain? EU welfare for Zac & other land hoarders  continued...

Okay this is not QUITE as perverse as the city fraud & extortion
culture - see

http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/whats-wrong-fractional-reserve-banking/

but I've just been folowing some of those MoS links

Why does the *expletive deleted* Grauniad not cover this?

I feel a spring weekend occupation is in order... what do Brendan, Simon
and 'new tlio' think?

Turns out a lot of this damning info info has been dug out by heroic
stalwarts

www.farmsubsidy.org and

www.EUtransparency.org

For general reference on big old landowners see the brilliant

http://www.who-owns-britain.com/ and get a copy of Kevin's essential
reference book. I bet you're kicking yourself if you didn't get it at £15
as it's now a collectors item at £80 second hand! 

Much more reasonable is Kevin's latest title Who Owns The World, The
The Hidden Facts Behind Landownership for a mere £20.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Owns-World-Hidden-Landownership/dp/1845961587/

Get the best internet prices on all these through 

www.bookfinder.com 

Tony

Wealthy minister earns £2m in EU farm subsidies which his
department tried to cover upBy

Robert Verkaik - Mail On Sunday - 27th February 2011

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360998/Wealthy-minister-earns-2m-EU-farm-subsidies-department-tried-cover-up.html

The family of a Government Minister whose department has covered up
details of who receives EU farm subsidies has earned £2 million from the
same payouts.

Richard Benyon is one of the richest MPs in Parliament. The
great-great-grandson of three-times Tory Prime Minister Lord Salisbury,
he can trace his ancestry back to William Cecil, the chief political
adviser to Elizabeth I.

Tory MP Mr Benyon, the Environment and Fisheries Minister, has received
income from a family trust which owns a 20,000-acre estate worth £125
million.

Rich heritage: MP Richard Benyon, with wife Zoe and son Louis, has
earned £2m in EU farm subsidies

The Englefield Trust, which owns the land on the Berkshire-Hampshire
border, was paid more than £2 million through the controversial Common
Agricultural Policy farming grants from 1999 to 2009.

In 2009 alone the family farms were paid nearly £200,000, placing them in
the top one per cent of beneficiaries of the EU scheme.

Farming Minister Jim Paice has also received several thousands of pounds
in EU subsidies for his farm in Cambridgeshire over the same ten-year
period.

Mr Benyon was appointed a Minister at the Department for the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) last May. Some time after November the
department decided to block all information about how much farmers had
earned from subsidies. More than 100,000 British farmers were paid the
majority of the £3 billion available in EU farming subsidies for last
year.

Ministers argue that they are following advice from Brussels, but freedom
of information campaigners claim they have deliberately taken draconian
steps to protect rich farmers from public scrutiny. 

Labour MP Paul Flynn said that Mr Benyon’s position was unjustifiable.
‘This is wrong in so many ways. How can Ministers benefit from EU
payments while at the same time introduce an information-denial
policy?’

Private land: Englefield House is part of a 20,000-acre estate worth
£125m 

Mr Benyon, 50, a former officer with the Royal Green Jackets, is the
son of Sir William Benyon, himself a former Tory MP. Mr Benyon shares the
family seat, Englefield House, with his father and his own wife, Zoe, 40,
their two sons and three more sons from a previous marriage.

Englefield House is in a private walled estate of 20,000 acres that
includes thriving farmland, woodland and a model village. It was built
during the reign of Elizabeth I, who granted the manor of Englefield

to her ‘spymaster’, Sir Francis Walsingham. The house came into the
Benyon family’s possession in the early 19th Century. The gardens are
open all year but the house is open only to pre-booked group tours.

The Benyons also have land and property interests in London and Scotland.
Mr Benyon, MP for Newbury since 2005, owns a £1.5 million house near
Westminster.

According to

www.farmsubsidy.org, a freedom of information campaign group which
continues to publish the list of EU subsidy recipients in the face of the
Government blackout, the Benyon estates received more than £2 million in
aid between 1999 and 2009.

Mr Benyon has declared his family business in the Commons register of
interests. But under the information blackout, it is not possible to know
how much his family estates received last year from the EU.

Mr Benyon resigned his chairmanship of the family business, Englefield
Estate Trust Corporation Limited, when he became a Minister last year. In
the members’ register he says he remains ‘the trustee of various family
trusts in all of which either I or members of my wider family have
beneficial interests’.

After the department for which he is a Minister decided to grant
anonymity to all farmers who receive EU farming subsidies, a Defra
spokesman said that it was not possible to reveal details of any
individual farmers because this would breach their privacy. All details
identifying large industrial farming concerns and individual farmers have
been removed from Government websites. Ministers say this follows a
directive from Brussels which requires all EU member states to comply
with a judgment from the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Plans for the publication of a list of the individuals who have benefited
from the EU subsidy last year, which was due to be released at the end of
April, have now been halted.

Ancestors: Richard Benyon is descended from William Cecil (left) and
Lord Salisbury (right) [two dodgy so-and-sos if ever there were]

This would have included millions of pounds paid to scores of wealthy
landowners including the Queen, Prince Charles and the Benyons.

Freedom of information cam-paigners argue that the Government has
over-reacted to the ruling because the judgment bans the identification
of private individuals but not the naming of industrial farming
enterprises, which include large agricultural concerns such as the
Englefield Estate.

www.EUtransparency.org said that there were dozens of public figures
who are in receipt of public funds who should be identified in the public
interest. 

One of its directors, Jack Thurston, said: ‘The Common Agricultural
Policy is a system of state subsidies to farm businesses  . .
.  there is no relationship between the eligibility for a farm
subsidy and the recipient’s personal or private life.

‘Unlike some means-tested social welfare payments, there is no shame or
social stigma associated with receiving a farm subsidy.’

The decision represents a reversal of an important freedom of information
victory in 2005 when the Government was ordered to release the names and
payouts of all those benefiting from the subsidies.

Two German farmers took their case to the European Court of Justice last
year, arguing that their personal rights had been infringed by the
publication of their names on a German government website.

But the EU Commission has confirmed that not all member states followed
the same approach to identification as the UK. 

At the end of November 2010, member states were asked to stop publication
of data concerning private individuals but crucially to keep on
publishing data related to companies.

A Defra spokesman said: ‘Richard Benyon does not receive any single-farm
payments. He ceased to be a partner in the family farming business,
Englefield Home Farms, prior to becoming a Minister.

‘On his appointment, the Minister made the Permanent Secretary aware of
all his interests and the Permanent Secretary is happy there is no
conflict of interest in the present circumstances and that the
requirements of the Ministerial Code are being met.

‘All Defra Ministers’ interests, including any CAP-related payments, are
declared appropriately to the Permanent Secretary and reported in the
usual way.

‘Jim Paice, as the Minister responsible for administering the Single
Payment Scheme, has decided not to activate any of his entitlements under
this scheme for the duration of his appointment. 

He received a payment of £652 from a claim submitted prior to taking up
his Ministerial appointment.’