MEPs lodged 2292 amendments to Direct Payments legislative proposals, 2127 amendments to Rural Development proposals, 2094 amendments to Single Market proposals and 769 amendments to Finance and Cross Compliance proposals. These totals do not include the 719 amendments already on the table from the Committee Rappateurs Luis Capoulas Santos, Michael Dantin and Giovanni La Via.

Commenting, UK MEP George Lyon said: “It is unbelievable that over 7000 amendments have been lodged to the CAP legislative proposals by MEPS. Large numbers of them are from members who are not even on the Agriculture Committee.

“That is the equivalent of a complete rewrite of the proposals many times over and demonstrates the huge interest there is in the reform from Members right across the Parliament.

“On both the Lyon and Dess reports we had to work extremely hard to cope with around 12-1300 amendments but the task of sorting this number out is of a whole different scale and magnitude.

“The deadline the Committee has set for the Compromise Amendments to be negotiated and voted on by the end of November which only gives us 12 weeks to turn the 7000 into a sensible set of compromises that will deliver for farmers.

“There must be a huge danger in that we could end up with an incomprehensible muddle if we are not careful.

“It will therefore be essential that the key negotiators from each of the main political groups work closely together to separate out the wheat from the chaff and agree on sensible compromise that will work for farmers across the UK."