LORD Haskins’s Rural Delivery Review looks set to ring the changes in agriculture and change the way billions of pounds of public money is spent in the countryside.

The Labour Peer, appointed by Tony Blair, has become a favourite advisor to Number 10 on rural issues and his latest report promises to shake up the government’s main rural ministry, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, to such an extent that the ministry as it has been known could disappear altogether.

Haskins’s plan for rural areas such as South Lakeland is to take powers and resources from DEFRA and put them in the hands of local bodies who understand the lie of the land in their areas.

“I want to see rural delivery in England becoming much more decentralised with key decisions being taken at regional and local levels,” said Lord Haskins.

DEFRA, meanwhile, is to be relegated to a hands-off government department responsible for setting policy.

Lord Haskins report is a scathing critique of DEFRA as an empire of “bureaucratic complexity and customer confusion” in desperate need reform to prepare for a “new agricultural and environment agenda” in the wake of CAP reform.

Many of his criticisms of the ministry which replaced MAFF in 2001 are reminiscent of charges made against it during the Cumbrian Foot-and-Mouth Inquiry and other investigations into the epidemic.

For instance, his report says that DEFRA’s desire to administer schemes centrally means that local expertise is too often ignored and as a result schemes and funding frequently achieve poor “outcomes” and bad value for money.

Restricting DEFRA to a policy remit, he says, should improve the situation.

On the ground, this will mean that the North West Regional Development Agency and its counterparts in other regions would take responsibility for delivering the £1.6 billion England Rural Development Programme with schemes such as Countryside Stewardship, Environmentally Sensitive Area scheme, farm woodland schemes, energy crops, and the Hill Farm Allowance.

Lord Haskins also stipulates that policy must be made flexible enough to take account of local variations in conditions.

Within the projected £107 million costs for implementing his plan from 2004 to 2007, Lord Haskins has set aside £18.1 million for early retirements within DEFRA.

Farming organisations have generally welcomed his approach. NFU president Ben Gill said: “We like the idea of an integration of agencies so a more unified view is taken of delivery. But, as always, it cannot be over-stated that the devil will be in the detail.

“For example, farmers will wish to ensure that there is a co-ordinated and consistent delivery across administrative boundaries.” According Doug Chalmers, Country Land and Business Association director for the North West, Haskins’s recommendations, along with those of the Curry Report on sustainable farming and reform of the CAP, represent nothing less than: “The biggest shake up of rural Britain since the Industrial Revolution.” “It is not just the Haskins report, there are a lot of thing all coming together at once. There is this report, the Curry report and we are in the middle of CAP reform.

“While we believe farming should continue to be the focus of rural life, it will be a different kind farming as primary food production gives way to other industries in farm buildings and leisure and tourism enterprises for visitors.”