House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Nov 1996 (pt 3)

Mr. Viggers: The interventions in my speech have again made clear how widely the feeling of anger is shared by hon. Members. Clearly, it goes across the United Kingdom and affects every part of the UK. It is shared by all parties in the House. We have been stirred to anger on behalf of our constituents and we expect something to be done about it.

Mr. Batiste: May I ask my hon. Friend to draw a specific distinction between compensating companies for the equipment that they have had to buy to meet their trade, as opposed to a more theoretical argument about future loss of earnings? There is an exact parallel with guns. On the day after the Government's announcement on guns, an ammunition factory in my constituency closed because no business was left for it. Overnight, all the specialist equipment, which is just as specialist as deboners' equipment, became worthless.

Mr. Viggers: I understand that the Government did not start negotiating, but were prepared to receive information from the industry to calibrate the amount of compensation that would be required. I understand that the trade responded by putting together a compilation--I have a copy here--showing that the gross overall value of the trade was about £11 million. The amount of money spent to comply with regulations in the past three or four years was calculated at about £2.25 million. I am told that the trade was optimistic that negotiations would take place, leading to compensation, and that those negotiations, or preliminary discussions, were broken off. The Government are not now prepared to receive information about the value of the trade. Those are the figures should the Government decide to compensate. I support the claims of those who enjoy the sport of shooting, but the claims of the head deboners are absolutely justified, and they have an overwhelming case.

The Minister will have had his speech prepared for him by civil servants who put together what are known as building blocks. The essential building block will be the argument that has been put to me in reply to many letters and parliamentary questions about compensation, so the Minister will read to us:

"The reason is that we are not able"--

Mr. Baldry: Let me help my hon. Friend because, so far, he has failed totally to address the main point of the debate, and I fear that he has been misled by the House of Commons Library on the Skoal case. Lord Justice Taylor said about that case that is would be wrong for the Government to pay compensation where Parliament, with proper and due diligence, has caused a business to suffer. He said that there was no right to compensation if a business was lost as a consequence of that. That was the judgment of the High Court as recently as 1990.

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No compensation was offered as a result of the statutory instruments to which my hon. Friend referred, and I fear that he has been misled by the Library.

The point that my hon. Friend has not so far addressed in his speech, and which mine will deal with because I did draft it, is the concept of settled public policy. No Government at any time have ever paid any compensation for the loss of business--[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I would prefer to see the Minister's face rather than his back.

Mr. Baldry: No Government at any time have paid compensation for the loss of business, consequent upon a decision of Parliament. My hon. Friend must deal with that fact, but he has yet to do so.

Mr. Viggers: Let me range a little more widely. If my following comments sound irrelevant, I hope to prove their relevance.

I came to the House in 1974 and I was told about a group of widows called the pre-1950s widows. They were the widows of men below the rank of W1, who retired before 1 August 1950 and who did not receive a service pension. For five years I campaigned on behalf of those widows. I did everything: I introduced 10-minute Bills, tabled early-day motions and initiated late-night debates on the subject. I remember that at one Conservative charity ball I waltzed the then Mrs. Thatcher around the floor and I told her about the case, and she took an interest in it.

I am extremely proud of that five-year campaign on behalf of the pre-1950s widows. Every time I raised the issue in the House, a Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that there was no precedent and that it was absolutely impossible to do anything for those women. I was told that the Government could not make ex gratia payments to service widows. Eventually, however, Sir Keith Joseph stood at the Dispatch Box and said that although the rules said we could not do it, the broad view revealed that it was not fair and that we had to compensate them. We did it--we gave service pensions to those widows. It took five years of campaigning and I had five years of Ministers telling me that it was impossible, but then we did it.

I retract my earlier comment to my hon. Friend the Minister about his speech being drafted for him by civil servants. Of course he wrote his own; I always wrote my own speeches when I was a Minister. Other Ministers, however, have explained the refusal to pay compensation to deboners as follows:

"The reason is that we are not able to make exceptions to the policy of targeting aid at the essential links in the beef supply chain. If we did, we would need to extend the exceptions to cover claims from other groups. We have looked very hard at whether head de-boners could be defined as a unique group but we have concluded this is unfortunately not possible."

I do not accept that the problem is insoluble. In 1534 this House agreed that King Henry VIII was head of the Church. If it can do that, it can do anything. If this House said that tomorrow is Wednesday or Saturday, subject to European regulations of course, it would be because this House is virtually omnipotent. Where there is a will, a way can be found. I ask my hon. Friend and his colleagues to look again at the issue and find a way to compensate that small industry.

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10.4 am

Mr. Michael J. Martin (Glasgow, Springburn): I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) on obtaining this Adjournment debate. I also congratulate him on making such an excellent case for such hard-working people. He has covered every problem that they face.

The Glasgow meat market is based in my constituency. I was contacted by Mrs. Fyfe who worked in the meat trade and I was horrified to hear that on a Thursday evening she received a fax from civil servants at the Scottish Office instructing her to stop trading. I challenge the Minister's argument about the decision of Parliament, because Mrs. Fyfe's business was closed down on the instructions of civil servants. From the Friday, Mrs. Fyfe and others had to cease work.

As the hon. Member for Gosport said, it was not so long before that that the same civil servants instructed Mrs. Fyfe and others who work at the Glasgow meat market that, to comply with European Community standards, they had to buy the necessary equipment for their particular trade. Mrs. Fyfe had to go to her bank and say that she had been instructed to buy certain equipment because of EC regulations. She said that she needed a loan to keep herself, her husband, her daughter and her four employees in a job. The bank said that that was fine and agreed to give her a loan, but she had to put up not only her business as security, but her home.

I have been a Member of the House for 17 years. I have heard Ministers say how we must encourage small businesses, which are the answer. We have been told that we cannot bring great big factories into cities like Glasgow but we can encourage people to show initiative. I remember when Mrs. Thatcher said the Government would encourage people to show initiative, get on their bikes and create small businesses. The argument was that a small business may employ four or five people, and other businesses with similar numbers of employees may develop, so before long a group of people are in work and have the dignity of employment.

Mrs. Fyfe's husband was a black cab driver in the city of Glasgow. He was out in all weathers and at all hours to raise the money to start their business off. The Fyfes did not make a fantastic living from it, but they earned enough probably to enjoy a decent holiday every year. It was hard work for them, but now they have been left with no livelihood.

The Fyfes have not said to me that they are looking for big money, but, as the hon. Member for Gosport has already said, they want compensation to claw back the money they had to spend to meet EC regulations. They want something to enable them to start up another business. It must be appalling to have to say to four or five people, "I am sorry, but I have to let you go." We are not talking about a big organisation, where the employer may pay off people he does not know. Mrs. Fyfe may have employed just four people, but those men and women have worked for her for 20 years. She knows them and their families. She knows the consequences of telling them that she must lay them off. In a city like Glasgow if a person is over the age of 40 the chances of re-employment are slim, especially when the industry that formerly employed him has been closed down.

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I went to see Lord Lindsay, and he said, "No, I am not compensating farmers." I could only scratch my head, because all that I had been hearing from the Agriculture Minister was that he would look after farmers. Lord Lindsay said, "No, we are not compensating farmers. We are intervening and buying their cattle." It is a rose by another name. I do not mind if we call it "intervention" for the beef industry, but let us provide compensation.

I was a trade union official. Sometimes bosses would say, "I'm not going to pay overtime, but I'll give good expenses." No one complained if expenses were equivalent to the amount of overtime that people deserved. They could call overtime whatever they liked. If Ministers wish to call compensation "intervention", I shall be happy to go to Mrs. Fyfe and other people who work in the industry in Scotland and tell them, "I'm sorry; they're not going to give you compensation, but they will give you intervention." I would be as happy as Larry with that--as I am sure the hon. Member for Gosport and other hon. Members would be.

I think back to the most recent debate we had on the problems in agriculture and to the words of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross), who said that the BSE problem does not start and stop at the farm gate, but that it goes beyond and into meat markets and into industries such as head deboning. The Government must face up to that fact. In a few months, as culled cattle enter slaughterhouses, there will be serious problems. The effect of any decision made by Parliament is that some people--such as Mrs. Fyfe--will lose their livelihood, but, as in this case, within the year, other people will become millionaires.

The Government are prepared to pay about £40 per head of cattle that goes to a slaughterhouse. People conducting the slaughter will be able to sell the cattle hides for approximately £20. I am not very good at mathematics and failed my mathematics exam, which is probably why I am a Member of Parliament, but even I can understand that, with 5,000 cattle per week in Scotland--I do not know the overall number for the UK--we are talking about a very large number.

The cattle that will be slaughtered are not suffering from the disease. They are healthy beasts--but the situation must make farmers sick. I do not know much about the farming industry, but I know that a farmer will sit up all night with an ill beast, and that he will spend more on vet's bills for his cattle than he probably would spend on doctors' bills for his family. He knows his responsibility. Farmers will have to take healthy cattle to slaughterhouses because of the Government's actions. But that is another matter.

Mark my words: many millionaires will be created because of this. It is a crying shame that people such as Mrs. Fyfe and those mentioned by the hon. Member for Gosport have to suffer. Those men and women have made great sacrifices. They did not clock in at 8 am and clock out at 5 pm. They worked long hours, and, after working those hours, they sent in reports to civil servants at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and then did their bookkeeping. We are talking about small family businesses.