IF EVER there prizes for an unlikely alliance, Labour's Gordon Prentice and Tory Nigel Evans would certainly be in the running for a mention.

The MPs for Pendle and Ribble Valley for once agree on something - that Britain is reaping a bitter harvest from Europe's Common Agricultural Policy.

It appears many of Europe's farmers are no longer surviving soley on the fruits of their own labours. More the fruits of everyone else's.

Pendle's Mr Prentice says fraud accounted for £6 million of the CAP's £33 billion budget this year.

He claims spending on the policy has shot up by 42 per cent in the last 16 years, costing the average British family £20 a week.

And he is accusing the government of doing "far too little, far too late."

In a similar vein, Mr Evans claims the EU's milk quota system is depriving Lancashire farmers of earnings and forcing us to import milk.

CAP has never been an all-round success, and as its policies wilt under repeated criticism, it obviously needs a fertilizer of sound commonsense in order to recover and thrive.

But nothing is going to change unless the British government gets stuck in and digs right down into the EC's root system to eliminate rot and parasites.

Yes, there are anomalies and mistakes, but it should be borne in mind that nothing is going to change unless our government gets in there and makes sure we play a key role in policy-making.

Sitting around the edge of the field bleating about fair play is simply not good enough.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.