ha ha so much for ids being a euro sceptic he wont want to upset his outlaws
Over the years, the farm business operating off the country estate part-owned by Duncan Smith's son – with the minister's wife as a trustee – has received well over a million pounds in taxpayer subsidies.
Swanbourne Home Farms, run in partnership between the minister's in-laws, Baron and Baroness Cottesloe, brother-in-law Thomas, and cousin Richard Brooks, has been given €1,517,535 over a 10-year period in funding from the EU. It has also been the recipient of grants understood to be worth tens of thousands of pounds from Natural England.
Described by the EU as "income support" for farmers, these common agricultural policy payments were established by the 1957 treaty of Rome to ensure "fair standard of living for the agricultural community". None of it goes to the Duncan Smiths.
"Neither Iain Duncan Smith or his wife receive any income whatsoever from the Swanbourne Estate," his spokesman says. And few would quibble with the payments themselves. Still, it shows that the best of us need a hand from time to time.