Press and Photo Gallery
BRITAIN TO LOSE OVER 700 MILLION
Thursday 16th October 2003
The European Commission is refusing to pay a claim for compensation from the British Government over the Foot and Mouth crisis.
The government is able to claim for 60% of the cost of the Foot and Mouth outbreak from Brussels. Its current compensation claim stands at nearly one billion pounds. However, the Commission is concerned over the way the government handled the crisis by slaughtering millions of healthy animals in the contiguous cull.
Two years after the end of the crisis, only 217m has been paid, and it appears that the Commission will cap these payments at 250m, leaving almost 700m unpaid.
Timothy Kirkhope, Conservative MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, said:
"The government must explain to British farmers why they are being short changed. The Commission doesn't believe the UK Government's figures or trust the way it handled the outbreak.
This shows how badly managed the crisis was by the UK Government. It allowed costs to run completely out of control, and the European Commission is not impressed.
It is a shocking indictment of the government that the EU has decided not to pay such a large proportion of the compensation claim."
