Anyone who thinks subsidies go into my pocket to buy another bot tle of champagne is living in cloud cuckoo land; One year after the outbreak of the disease the Duke of Westminster talks to Rural Affairs Editor Andrew Forgrave about his foot-and-mouth nightmare, the Government's response and his big money reputation.

Byline: Andrew Forgrave

WHEN, last March, the Duke of Westminster's herd of prized Holstein bulls were sealed in an air-tight barn to protect them from foot-and-mouth, wags drew parallels with the aristocrat's own cocooned world of privilege and wealth.

Surely this billionaire landowner could not be in tune with the problems of the real world? How could he possibly empathise with the pain of disenfranchised rural communities?

The Duke bridles at the suggestion. When we meet at Eaton Hall's estate offices, Chester, he speaks with passion and authority on rural issues, impatient for the Friday afternoon session he's booked with his farm manager: it is a rare opportunity, he says, to leave behind the travails of business life and inhale some genuine country air.

Cheerfully he agrees to pose outdoors in his suit for our photographer, even though others huddle inside against the rain. One day, he confides, he would like to spend more time pursuing simple country pleasures, but for now he has the responsibility of heading a business and property empire estimated at pounds 3.7bn.

In 1995 the Duke was voted Worst Landowner of the Year by a single-issue group with an axe to grind. In the last couple of years, however, he couldn't have done more to support rural communities.

Not only has he promoted groups like the Shropshire Rural Stress Support Network and rural crime initiative Parish Challenge, he put his hand in his pocket too: pounds 500,000 for farmers affected by foot-and-mouth; a six-month rent holiday for his 22 tenants in Lancashire; funds for research at Liverpool University's veterinary faculty at Leahurst; and, more recently, a pounds 10,000 donation to pump-prime a pounds 1m trust fund to help struggling rural businesses in Cheshire.

Foot-and-mouth was the touchstone. The Duke was at his 5,000-acre Eaton Estate when, on February 20 last year, news of the first suspect case came through. Like many veterans of the 1967 outbreak, when Grosvenor Farms lost the world's oldest herd of shorthorn cattle, he didn't wait for government to act: within hours the estate and its 6,200-acre farm had been sealed off with strict biosecurity barriers.

LATER, as the disease advanced north and west, 140 Holstein bulls were confined to an oxygen-filtered barn for three-and-ahalf months - with vets and studmen - in the hope they would be exempt from slaughter if an outbreak occurred nearby.

The animals' value ran into millions: last Friday one of the Duke's US-born bulls, a five-year-old Holstein Friesian-cross called Machoman, who sleeps on a sprung mattress and relaxes to classical music, was named the world's number one.

The Duke said: "I remember the 1967 outbreak very well. It was the year my uncle, the fourth duke, died, and we moved from Ireland that summer.

"We had it three times, restocking each time we lost our animals. We've still got the legacy of mass graves on the estate.

"Things were done quicker in those days. If you were diagnosed at 9am they were shot that afternoon, under supervision. We planted trees on the graves as a memorial, so now we've got small copses all over the place.

For those of us who had been through the 1967 outbreak, we knew only too well the potential for the virus to spread, so we didn't take any chances. We literally closed everything.

We stopped all movement. There were no unnecessary visits to houses and milk and fodder lorries were restricted."

INFAMOUSLY, the Grosvenor livestock survived foot-and-mouth during the 1922-1924 outbreak. Afflicted animals were simply isolated, kept as clean as possible, and treated with both Stockholm tar and salt. The following year they were winning prizes again at the Royal Show.

The estate applied for similar dispensation in 1967, but was turned down. So how does the Duke feel about contemporary containment theories?

He said: "There's a very interesting book called The Great Plague, written in 1968, which describes how, between 1900 and 1968, there were only two years when there wasn't a case of foot-and-mouth in the UK.

"I blew hot and cold all the way through the vaccination debate. It became embroiled in politics and the issues became confused. In Holland, for example, a vaccination regime was imposed but pro rata they killed more animals than we did.

"I'm no scientist, but I was given to understand that vaccination was very expensive, you had to repeat dose every six months and it only put the disease at bay rather than curing it.

"Vaccination became a distraction from the real problems, like the logistics of getting animals killed and disposed of. So the debate took the eye off the ball. A lot of other countries, especially in South America, have used vaccination and yet we still seem to get foot-and-mouth. It's a debate which still hasn't reached any conclusion."

In common with many livestock owners, he still struggles to understand why the Northumberland Report, published after the 1967 outbreak, was discarded so quickly last year.

One of the report's key recommendations was to involve the military as soon as possible.

Given the Duke's involvement in the Territorial Army, it's no surprise he feels soldiers were brought in far too late last year.

He said: "Every mistake that was made in this outbreak was identified in the Northumberland Report, the key one being the use of the military as a logistics element.

This was quite clearly shown when Brigadier Alex Birtwhistle went into Cumbria - the Army brought organisational ability. I would have been perfectly happy to have helped out myself, although my job as a brigadier would have been to find the people on the ground who could actually do it. We were working on that.

"One lesson that must now be learned is to read the reports which are now coming out. It is a pointless, wasted exercise just merely writing a report only to shelve it."

When we spoke, he had yet to examine in depth the Curry Report, commissioned by the Government in the wake of foot-and-mouth, which proposed a blueprint for farming's future in England (and, apropos, in Wales too).

Besides recommendations like green licences for farms, support for environmental work and organic production, it also mirrored the Government's determination to create a subsidy-free world for agriculture.

Last May The Observer estimated the Duke received pounds 300,000-a-year EU subsidies for his arable unit and a further pounds 350,000 annual aid for his dairy herd. It prompted inevitable howls of derision from the Left Wing.

The Duke says the figures are confidential.

It's clear he resents both the intrusion and the ignorance of those who condemn the so-called fat cats of farming.

He fumes: "If anyone thinks that subsidies are going into my pocket to go and buy another bottle of champagne they're living in cloud cuckoo land.

UBSIDIES go straight back into the farm enterprise. They are nothing compared with the level of investment we've put in over the last six or seven years. At our bull-breeding programme at Cogent, for example, we've put in millions.

"My farming organisation is just a tenant of the estate. It is run like any business anywhere else, whether you're making widgets or milk.

"The whole argument is nonsensical. If you're going to start up in business on Deeside, you do it on the Welsh side of the border because you get more subsidies there than you do in England.

"The subsidies are made available to create an employment structure. The argument is fired purely by politics and envy. I mean, I don't get a cheque in my back pocket."

Nevertheless Grosvenor Farms has planned for change into a world free of subsidies. Their loss is inevitable, he says, as the EU expands into Eastern Europe and support mechanisms become less palatable to the public.

But he insists: "The subsidy system will always be crucial to the uplands areas of Britain.

"There's no way you could sustain either the environment or a way of life there without a subsidy system. The British government and people have got to realise that fact. On the more productive grounds, on the lowlands, there is a case to re-examine subsidies."

"The Common Agricultural Policy does need reform and I'm a great believer that, rather than en bloc subsidies, you have targeted subsidies.

"Lancashire, for example, receives Objective 5b money from Europe, unlike Cheshire. That is targeted subsidy. So we've almost got a structure in place now. We need to plan for change. There's no point bureaucrats just saying, 'all farmers are far too rich, let's take away their supports and go and have another junket to Barbados'."

In December the Duke turned 50. Despite a hacking cough, the consequences of a heavy smoking habit, he says he feels fine - the same as he did 10 or 20 years ago.

His son Hugh, has just celebrated his 11th birthday. The Duchess gave him a badge which said, "Liverpool, Number 1 fan". And it's true:

He's got Liverpool pyjamas, Liverpool bed clothes - duvet, pillow, the works. He recently completed a football course at Crewe Alexandra and one day wants to play for the Reds.

His father, who had trials for Fulham in the late 1960s, says: "If he wanted to play for Liverpool, I would never stop him, " adding, with a guffaw, "he wouldn't play for anyone else. He is very good."

In 1999 the Duke, who is patron of 150 charities, was forced to cut back his workload after suffering from depression. Around the same time the Duchess had an operation for breast cancer, followed by chemotherapy.

These days he has cut back on late-night engagements but he still works almost insanely hard. His attitude contrasts vividly with that of a predecessor, the second Duke of Westminster, who, in the 1920s, lived a life of genteel ease.

One night, for example, during a stay at the Hotel Lotti, Paris, the Duke had an urge for a peach. The hotel management, catering to the Duke's every whim, sent the waiter to find a peach. Although it was late at night and all the shops were closed, the waiter was told he would be instantly dismissed if he failed.

Desperate to avoid losing his job, the waiter threw a rock through the window of a closed grocery store, grabbed the peach, and ran back to the hotel. (The waiter was a young man George Orwell).

This spring the current Duke says he will consider whether to extend his tenants' rent holiday still further. Times have certainly changed.

CAPTION(S):

LESSONS LEARNED: The Duke of Westminster moved to protect his stock within hours of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. His family's business was one of the ones affected by the 1967 outbreak Picture: CLIFF BRETT