The Daily Telegraph - 19.08.2019

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1

B

oris Johnson’s unequivocal

message that the Withdrawal

Agreement is “dead” is good

news for the UK’s farmers. Its dire

ramifications would have all but ceded

control of UK agriculture to the EU.

We would not even have been free to

decide the levels of financial support

for landowners; the terms of the

Agreement would have forced the

UK to keep support for British

producers pegged at the 2019 level

while allowing EU competitors to

increase theirs, handing them an

enormous advantage.

Abandoning this punitive

Agreement, the UK can now build

a bespoke system of agricultural

support tailored to the needs of British

farmers at or above the level which

they receive under the EU’s Common

Agricultural Policy (CAP). To expand

into new markets, we need to move

away from production subsidies, but

these can be more than replaced by

a system of financial rewards for

environmental and public goods –

maintaining the cultural landscape,

promoting soil quality, improving

biodiversity, and providing effective

water management.

In parallel with a new support

system, farmers can boost their

productivity outside the precautionary

constraints of the CAP. The benign

British climate, the length of its days

and its soil quality provide some of the

most productive land in the world.

We can have every confidence that

food-producing areas of the country

will continue to prosper once released

from the CAP and encouraged to

embrace the latest technologies – from

gene editing to robotics. France, for

example, is missing out on over 4.

tonnes per hectare in its maize yield

compared to the US. That crop could

be worth hundreds of millions of euros

to the French economy, or free up

500,000 hectares for wildlife,

recreation, or forestry.

Likewise, harnessing genetics

in New Zealand has produced

spectacular increases in productivity

with easier lambing and sheep who

grow faster, yield more meat and are

less prone to disease. British sheep and

livestock farmers can replicate the

successes, which have seen the

average number of sheep managed by

one person in New Zealand rise from

850 to over 4,000 since the Eighties.

There is a palpable demand for

British products abroad, and our

Government will need to be proactive

in opening new markets around the

world as well as prioritising a UK/US

trade deal. In Oklahoma, for instance, I

learnt of exciting potential plans to

distribute Welsh lamb across the US,

flying it directly from Cardiff airport.

Meanwhile, crab producers in the

South West, previously heavily

dependent on EU markets, have

opened up new opportunities on WTO

terms for high-quality crab in Asia.

The market for Scotch whisky in

India has enormous potential. The

import tariff alone is currently over

150 per cent, and there are numerous

extra taxes and regulations across

different Indian states, but some

estimates show that the whole of

Scotland could not fully meet demand

if the duties were abolished.

UK exports to the EU will remain

important, which is why returning to

From robotics to gene

editing, EU rules have

stopped our farmers from

exploring new methods

Owen patersOnrsOn

T

ake a moment and

contemplate the bravery

of the demonstrators in

Hong Kong. Yesterday,

confronted by mounting

Chinese intimidation,

100,000 people took once more to

the streets. Ominously, video footage

has emerged of a Chinese military

buildup in nearby Shenzhen, and

Beijing has begun to refer to the

demonstrators as terrorists. This week,

a senior Chinese diplomat said, “if

Hong Kong’s situation deteriorates...

the central government will not sit by

and watch.” The central government,

of course, is not queasy about

oppressing civilians. It has imprisoned

around one million Uighur Muslims

in detention camps.

Helpless minorities are not the only

people in Beijing’s sights. Across the

whole of China, the state is using mass

surveillance, big data and internet

technologies to build a social credit

system to judge people’s civic worth.

This Orwellian horror will allow the

authorities to monitor and then

either punish or reward individuals

and businesses as they see fit. Even

hardy British spooks – no strangers

to surveillance – return from

China shocked by the penetration

of the state into everyday private life.

The demonstrations in Hong Kong

• and the deployment of military assets
  nearby – have caused comparisons
  with the last major protests that
  rocked the Chinese state, in 1989.
  Some critics predict with confidence
  that Hong Kong will not turn into
  another Tiananmen Square. Beijing
  certainly has no interest in provoking
  a global reaction.
  But consider President Xi’s
  uncompromising attitude towards
  those who stand in the way of
  Communist rule. “Why did the Soviet
  Union disintegrate?” he once asked in
  a speech to the party. “An important
  reason was that their ideals and beliefs
  had been shaken... Nobody was man
  enough to stand up and resist.” Xi is
  not a man to compromise with
  dissenters and, with the stakes rising
  higher every day, it is difficult to see
  how he can back down.
  He is, however, in a bind. Hong
  Kong’s status is guaranteed in
  international law by the 1984 Joint
  Declaration, the treaty that led to
  Britain handing over its colony to
  China in 1997. He cannot legally
  interfere with Hong Kong’s
  government, legal system and
  individual rights and freedoms.
  And in the age of the internet and
  social media, it would be impossible
  to use violence to overcome
  the demonstrators without
  global condemnation.
  Yet China’s actions suggest they
  are seeking a casus belli to end the
  demonstrations forcibly. State
  propaganda says protestors are being
  stirred up by “black hands” from
  American intelligence agencies.
  State media outlets report that the
  protestors are violent criminals. It
  would be very surprising if the
  Chinese had not sent provocateurs

into Hong Kong – a favoured trick by

authoritarian regimes through the

ages – to entrap protestors and make

the case for a violent intervention.

Recent reports suggest that the

Tiananmen Square massacre was even

bloodier than we knew at the time.

According to British diplomatic cables

declassified last year, the death toll

was not 1,000 but 10,000. And the

cables tell us more about the appalling,

indiscriminate and deliberate killing

that took place that day.

“Students understood they were

given one hour to leave [the] Square”,

reads one message, “but after five

minutes [armoured personnel

carriers] attacked. Students linked

arms but were mown down.” The

personnel carriers then “ran over

bodies time and time again to make

‘cake’ and remains [were] collected by

bulldozer.” The remains of the

protestors, the cable reports, were

incinerated and hosed down drains.

Wounded female students begged

for their lives but were bayonetted by

Chinese soldiers. Survivors were told

they could escape by specific routes

only to be mown down by machine

gun fire. Army ambulances trying to

give aid to the wounded were “shot

up” by their fellow soldiers.

This is a serious warning, not from

ancient history but the relatively

recent past. China might be more

exposed to world trade, it might invest

in western infrastructure, its nationals

might own English football teams, and

its leaders might seem more suave and

urbane. But it remains the direct

descendent of the brutal, one-party,

authoritarian state of 1989.

Undoubtedly, some will say there is

little Britain – or the wider West – can

do. China is, after all, the world’s

largest trading nation already, and is

expected to have a larger economy

Excessive engagement has

blunted our ability to

respond to abuses carried

out by the brutal regime

nick timOthymOthyy

jane shilling

Brexit can bring farming into the future

An audiobook

will never be as

good as seeing

words on a page

I

t was while I was being

read to that I first realised

I could read. As a child

I looked forward to the

moment before bedtime

when I would look at the

pictures in a storybook

while my father read the

words. One day I found that

I was ahead of him. I had got

to the bottom of the page

while he was still intoning

the list of things that Phyllis

Krasilovsky’s The Very Little

Girl was smaller than.

From that moment,

I was launched as an

independent reader – a

transition as dramatic and

liberating as that from

crawling to walking.

Being read to as a child is

wonderful. In many ways:

you are introduced to

storytelling – that most

beguiling of human survival

stratagems – and you

experience the deep

satisfaction of being safe

and warm indoors while

Mole and Badger are lost in

the snowy Wild Wood.

But how to explain the

newfound appetite among

adults for listening to

stories? Following the

success of Radio 4’s 10-hour

adaptation of War and

Peace, broadcast in its

entirety on New Year’s

day, 2015 (an experience

described by one critic as

“like soaking in an ever-

replenishing warm bath”),

it is Proust’s turn to take

over the airwaves.

In Search of Lost Time

will be broadcast on Radio 4

over the Bank Holiday

weekend. “There is an

appetite for the epic that

has simply surpassed our

expectations,” says Celia

de Wolff, director of

both adaptations.

Later this month, 20

unabridged classics will be

available on the BBC Sounds

app. Meanwhile Laurence

Howell, director of content

at Audible UK, detects

“a real boom” in sales

of  audio books, while

those of physical and

eBooks remain flat.

Evidently convenience

is a factor: what better

distraction from some

dreary chore than to listen

a zero-tariff, zero-quota Free Trade

Agreement, as Donald Tusk offered, is

the best way forward for all parties.

However, a responsible government

must have WTO-compliant measures

in place, should the EU insist on tariffs.

It is absurd to think, as Project Fear

has implied, that the Government

would simply do nothing in those

circumstances. Potential EU tariffs

are estimated at £5.2 billion, but, for

example, measures like expanded

support for research and development

schemes (£2.1 billion), regional aid

programmes (£3.1 billion) and

transitional assistance programmes

for businesses adjusting to Brexit and

new markets (£695 million) could

more than mitigate such a scenario.

There is also enormous scope for

import substitution.

The central message of all this is

that the demise of the Withdrawal

Agreement represents a huge

opportunity for the UK’s farmers.

We are leaving an EU that is rapidly

turning into the “museum of world

farming”. By contrast, we have a great

chance to make technologically-aware

policy fit for the future and embrace

free trade across the world.

Owen Paterson is Conservative MP for

North Shropshire

The West has become too reliant

on its economic links with China

than the US by 2030. But as a first step,

we can do what Tom Tugendhat, the

Chairman of the Commons Foreign

Affairs Committee, has recommended,

and guarantee British citizenship to

Hong Kong’s citizens. This would give

these brave people a route to safety,

make China think again before

resorting to violence, and – by

granting Hongkongers a guaranteed

escape – give them the confidence to

stay while life remains tolerable.

But we must think again about our

economic engagement with China.

The West is wilfully facilitating the

rise of a brutal and authoritarian state.

Britain has become so dependent on

Chinese investment, its response to

China’s human rights abuses,

industrial espionage, cyber attacks,

geopolitical expansionism and military

development has been pitifully weak.

But it is not only Britain. As the

European Union refuses to make fiscal

transfers from richer to poorer

member states, a policy required by

the logic of its single currency, China

is investing heavily in Eastern Europe

and gaining diplomatic leverage. Even

in America, which under President

Trump has stood up to Beijing, China

owns more than $1 trillion of public

debt. Meanwhile, China’s Belt and

Road Initiative, building trading

routes between 65 countries, covering

more than 60 per cent of the world

population, and investing $900 billion,

marches on. The further it gets, the

greater will be China’s diplomatic,

economy and military power all

around the globe.

Hong Kong might seem a great

distance away. Our connections to

our former colony might feel like

something from history. But we

cannot turn away. And we cannot

continue to treat China like it is just

another country.

To order prints or signed copies of any Telegraph cartoon, go to telegraph.co.uk/prints-cartoons or call 0191 603 0178  [email protected]

to a chewy epic at the same

time? An audio version of

a text offers a way into a

book that might otherwise

seem inaccessible. And,

even as grown-ups, we are

susceptible to the childhood

comfort of being told

a story.

Still, there is something

revealing about de Wolff ’s

remark that “listeners

who follow a book from

beginning to end ... will

experience the sense of a

big read”. In a similar way,

I suppose, you might

experience the sense of a

glass of wine when you sip

the non-alcoholic version,

or the sense of flying a

fighter jet by doing it on

a simulator.

To immerse yourself in a

warm audio bath of Tolstoy

or Proust while you do the

washing-up is undoubtedly

pleasant, but it is not to

be compared with the

exhilarating intimacy of

reading when it is just you

and an author alone

together on the page.



The violinist Nicola

Benedetti tells

Gramophone magazine

that she supports diversity

in music, but doesn’t feel

the fact that great classical

composers of the past were

mostly white and male

lessens the power of

their music.

If the search for an

equilibrium between

musical diversity and the

titans of the classical

repertoire sometimes feels

painfully worthy and

adversarial, Jess Gillam’s

This Classical Life on

Radio 3 is the antidote.

Gillam, a 20-year-old

former BBC Young Musician

of the Year, and her equally

young interviewees,

slip effortlessly and

knowledgeably between

Beethoven and Bowie,

ignoring boundaries as

though they don’t exist.

Which, of course,

they shouldn’t.

read mOre at

telegraph.co.uk/

opinion

fOllOw Owen

Paterson on

Twitter @

OwenPaterson;

read mOre at

telegraph.co.uk/

opinion

read mOre at

telegraph.co.uk/opinion

Comment

14 ***^ Monday 19 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

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