The Freedom of Information Act is beginning to shine light on areas of public life which some would have preferred to keep in darkness. It has long been known that the Common Agricultural Policy is an obscene arrangement by which the European Union inflates the incomes of certain farmers through direct payments or financial support for “environmental improvements” and “rural services”. The overall sum of this grotesque subsidy, currently about £3 billion in Britain and about ten times that figure across the EU, has been in the public realm for decades. What was not appreciated, until now, was how much went to which individuals and institutions.

The figures that we report today are truly shocking. They dispel any lingering sentiment that the CAP might have its faults but that it at least keeps those who till the soil in Emmerdale in business. The real beneficiaries are instead large agribusinesses, companies such as Tate & Lyle and a small collection of extremely wealthy landowners. In crude terms, this is a structure by which Europe’s poor transfer money to Europe’s rich at the expense of both themselves and Africa’s impoverished.

It would be a mistake, however, to be unduly critical of those who have availed themselves of this treasure trove. All of the companies and characters concerned can protest that if they refused to take the direct payments, other donations and export refunds on offer, their competitors elsewhere certainly would. If the EU is ready to send £127,324,713 in the direction of Tate & Lyle, then the chairman of that company would be either a saint or a madman not to submit the necessary paperwork to obtain it. The result is that the food bill for the typical British family of four is some £600 higher per year than it would be otherwise. It is the system that is rotten, not those who, perfectly rationally, exploit it.

It is also a system where reform is promised yet progress is slow. Apologists would argue that although the CAP was responsible for the better part of two thirds of the EU budget some 20 years ago, that proportion has been reduced to just under half.

This is no triumph. The shift is more the consequence of increased expenditure in other policy realms than a sustained drive to cut agricultural subsidies. And there is not much hope of the current 50 per cent share being significantly eroded until 2013 at the earliest. Even then, though the total spent could start to become smaller in real terms, it is doubtful whether the nature of who receives this bounty will alter. The same winners will win. The same losers will lose. The same excuses will be made in an effort to render politically plausible that which is morally and economically incredible.

No one denies that British governments have been committed in principle to CAP reform, that ministers have sought to advance that cause, or that the task, although noble, is desperately difficult. No French president is going to agree to dismantle overnight a CAP that greases the palms of an otherwise hopelessly inefficient sector. Another EU summit will pass this week with the CAP left intact.

The best device for securing what change can occur remains global trade negotiations. Britain will, nonetheless, have a pulpit from which to preach in the last six months of this year when the Government has the EU presidency. Whoever is Prime Minister then must resolve to highlight the monstrosities of the CAP on every occasion.