DCB’s Britain

Facing the European Parliament for the first time since her appointment as the EU’s “High Representative”, Baroness Ashton faced questioning from David Campbell Bannerman MEP over donations to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s during her tenure as treasurer. The BBC reports…

Baroness Ashton was asked about her role in fundraising for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament when she was its treasurer in the early 1980s.UKIP MEP David Campbell Bannerman said an audit of CND’s accounts in 1983 had found nearly 40% of its funds could not be traced to their original donors and it declined to say where the money came from.He asked Baroness Ashton to confirm she had never accepted money from client states of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of Great Britain or other communist sympathisers, saying EU states who had suffered under communist rule deserved a “clear answer”.Baroness Ashton said she had ordered the first-ever audit of CND’s accounts during her time there.”I did not take any direct money from any communist country,” she said.

The Earth Times also reports on the questioning…

Finally, she denied taking payments from Communist regimes when she was CND’s treasurer in the early 1980s, following a question from British eurosceptic MEP David Campbell Bannerman.”I did not take any direct money from any Communist country,” she said.

The Financial Times also picked up on David’s questioning…

Her riskiest moment came when David Campbell-Bannerman of Britain’s anti-European UK Independence party asked her if, as treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament movement in the early 1980s, she had ever accepted funds directly or indirectly from Soviet bloc countries and entities or the British Communist party.Lady Ashton replied: “I did not take any direct money from any communist country … CND was an organisation that democratically marched for what it believed in … Money was collected in buckets. If I can’t tell you where all the money in buckets came from, I hope you won’t be surprised.”Lady Ashton’s involvement with CND has attracted criticism from politicians in central and eastern European countries once under Soviet domination. But José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, is adamant that her political opinions of more than 25 years ago should not disbar her from running EU foreign policy.

More in the Telegraph.

UKIP has launched its “Food, Farming & the Countryside” policy paper, outlining our approach to these important aspects of society outside of the European Union.

The full policy paper can be downloaded from the UKIP website here.

Farm Weekly magazine gives a positive write-up…

Withdrawing from the EU will allow British farmers to prosper, free from unnecessary red tape and with domestic policies better designed for their specific circumstances.

“The EU is a regulatory straight jacket in virtually every aspect of the rural economy, from controls on pesticides and food labelling, to veterinary and animal transportation rules,” it said. This costs the UK rural economy “billions of pounds per annum”, on top of the net contribution the UK Treasury makes to the EU budget.

The UKIP document, which has been released as one of a series of policy papers in the run-up to next year’s general election, singles out the EU Nitrates Directive, EID in sheep and restrictions on animal transport as examples of overregulation in the farming sector.

If elected to power, UKIP says it would implement a thorough review of all EU regulation, keeping the bits that made sense, but removing the bits that just added cost and complexity.

UKIP says its vision is of a Britain “outside of the political structures of the EU, yet retaining our trading and economic links through Swiss-style free trade agreements”. As the sixth biggest economy in the world, it has no doubts the EU would want to maintain active trading links with the UK. But it insists there must be far better labelling of imported food, to make clear where it does not live up to British standards.

Speaking to Farmers Weekly in London earlier this week, UKIP agriculture spokesman Stuart Agnew said it was significant that countries such as Switzerland and Norway were outside the EU, but still had the highest per capita incomes in Europe.

While UKIP advocated free trade, with reduced tariffs for other Commonwealth countries, it still favoured retaining some support for farming through the single farm payment.