A MAMMOTH voting session at the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee produced not one, but two “good results” for Scottish farming this week, writes Gordon Davidson.

The agri-MEPs – whose power to influence EU policy has been vastly boosted since the Lisbon Treaty was agreed – were gathered to vote on two reports that will now go before the full European Parliament with the full backing of their influential committee.

Foremost, Scottish calls for an ‘amnesty’ on SFP penalties incurred by farmers struggling with the introduction of sheep EID were given official backing in the Ashworth report on CAP simplification.

Scots MEP Alyn Smith had drafted an amendment calling for the penalty amnesty for the first three years of EID, which was then lodged on a cross party basis with fellow MEPs Richard Ashworth from England, Jim Nicholson from Northern Ireland and fellow Scottish MEP George Lyon.

The only problem this vital amendment encountered was a temporary breakdown in the electronic voting system: “Despite the technical difficulties, we got there in the end, and the irony of our electronic voting system breaking down while voting on EID will not be lost on Scotland’s farmers,” said Mr Smith.

“I am delighted to see the EID amnesty on cross-compliance penalties passed. This goes hand in hand with the amendment calling for cross-compliance fines to be proportionate to the infringement, and not applied in the case of mistakes. The NFU campaign now has the support of the Agriculture Committee as a whole.”

The other document under consideration was the Dorfmann report on agriculture in areas with natural handicaps, dealing with the complex issue of LFA reform – but again, a number of Scots amendments made it into the approved version