Forget the dodgy bankers. The people who have consistently received the most generous handouts from the public purse over the last 30 years are the big landowners. Teachers, the police and the others are preparing for savage job cuts, tax rises and an age of economic austerity, but a very few people who do nothing more than own land are being handsomely rewarded.

Last month, the watchdog group Farmsubsidy.org collated the EU figures which identify where the €55bn common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidies went in 2009. No big surprises there, with five giant European sugar companies netting €500m between them, a few dairy companies making tens of millions each and the top 1,200 landowners and companies on the continent receiving more than €5bn between them.

Last year, the number of farmers and food companies who received individual payments of more than €1m increased by more than 20%. In Britain we had 32 organisations and individuals each getting more than €1m.

Perhaps because one in five Tory MPs is believed to receive farm subsidies, the government refused to divulge the British figures in advance of the election, and we won't have the exact names of the UK's biggest subsidy-reapers for a few weeks. But we now have the spreadsheet of the 65,000 people who received the farm subsidies, and it's not that different from other years.

The biggest handout will probably not go to a full-blooded capitalist, but to the Co-op group, which manages 16 large farming estates and is now Britain's largest farmer. Up near the top of the list, though, are the Dukes of Westminster and Marlborough, the former Lord Vestey's family, the Queen, and very many hereditary landowners.

The vast majority of farmers get under €5,000 and bust a gut to survive, but in a time of recession and belt-tightening these subsidies to the richest look grotesque. That €55bn represents more than 40% of European Union's entire annual budget, yet the top 10% of big landowners are the people in least need. We are each paying around €100 a year for them to do little more than own land.

What's more, the level of payments is cast in stone and cannot be revised for at least three more years, thanks to an agreement between France and Germany, who have more subsidy billionaires than any other country. Even if Britain goes belly-up, their cash is safe. And because British farmers are paid in euros, rather than pounds, they have all enjoyed windfall profits in the last four years as the pound has tumbled in value.

Few people on either side of the political spectrum have anything good to say about the CAP. Critics point out that it was set up 50 years ago when food supplies were uncertain and nearly 20% of the population worked on the land. Today, just 5.4% of EU's population works on farms, and the sector is responsible for just 1.6% of the economy. Moreover, the subsidy system distorts markets, encourages farms to get bigger, does little for the environment and forces small farmers off the land. The result is that the subsidies are grabbed by fewer and fewer richer and richer people.

Aid agencies say these subsidies make it impossible for poorer countries to compete, and health groups argue that they make industrial fats and sugars artificially cheap for junk food production.

Britain has long called for a cut in EU farm spending to free up funds for other areas such as efforts to boost economic competitiveness. But however dire the economic times, there no chance of a radical overhaul before 2013, when France and Germany are expected to veto change again. It looks like we are stuck with a rotten system that we can do nothing about.