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Mr. Jack: Did my right hon. Friend find anything in the mission statement about the competitiveness of the beef industry?
Mr. Curry: The mission statement seemed to show the Department's desire to be seen as a Department that supports the consumer. I have no quarrel with that: I believe that it is right. If there are no consumers, there is no point having any producers. However, I would have liked to see that view balanced by remarks about the need to produce competitively for the marketplace, and to secure the social and environment fabric to which the document refers. As in all things political, there is a balance to be struck, and the Government should find out where it lies.
We should look to the future rather than to the past. It is now common wisdom that there will shortly be no intellectual or security justification for the continued existence of the 30-months scheme, because none of the animals coming into the food chain will have consumed contaminated produce. It is important to find a way of introducing that beef into the marketplace so that the consumer no longer believes that it is tainted beef. The danger is psychological. If we are to get people to eat beef--it is actually the better, slow, grass-reared beef: the older animal--we must ensure that we can sell it.
I see that Labour Members have been paged. Perhaps it is to tell them that they are now on a one-line Whip, or to give them some really useful information as opposed to the information that they are usually given via their pagers.
The ban on beef on the bone is important, because it also has a psychological effect. We are reaching the point at which it will be difficult to maintain that the ban is justified in terms of actuarial risk. The Government will probably be delighted to get rid of the ban, partly because they have dug themselves into a hole and partly because they will inevitably have no choice but to ban green-top milk. After all, the actuarial risk of green-top milk is a great deal higher than eating beef on the bone. It would be bizarre if one were to be banned and not the other, especially given that there is such a difference between England and Scotland. It will be interesting to see how No. 10 adjudicates on that problem.
We all want the export ban lifted, but we should not fool ourselves into believing that the act of removal of the ban, when it eventually comes, will represent a golden dawn for the agricultural industry. Those markets will be very hard to win back.
The continental consumer in the most important, high-value market is now conditioned to think of British beef as having a problem associated with it. There is real paranoia in some continental markets. No one on the continent will go out of his way to market British beef to the consumer. The new European labelling regulations, which will be in force compulsorily by 2000, will enable people to display a large notice saying, "Don't eat this beef, it's British", if that is how they want to play it.
There will not be a golden new dawn when the export markets are opened up. There will have to be tremendous political good will to enable that to happen, and British beef will have to be promoted so that people believe that they are getting a good deal.
The fundamental problem we face is the high value of sterling. The problem is not an accident of God: it is a matter of policy. Until the Government define Britain's relationship with the single currency and declare our intention to join it, the pound will remain a volatile currency at a rate that is too high.
Just six weeks ago, people were talking about the fact that the pound was declining, and that it was down to DM2.80 or DM2.70. We had marvellous visions of the pound declining, but it is now back up to the rates that everyone was complaining about before it started to decline. Sterling is set for a volatile career until the Government set out a pathway for Britain's relationship with the emerging single currency. That will affect all industries. Even if the export markets return, the price problem of getting into those markets will remain serious.
This problem does not affect only agriculture, but it does so in particular ways, because of the price determinations in agriculture. That is why the arrangements for the new agrimoney conditions will be important once we get past January 1999 and the single currency is, to all intents and purposes, in existence.
The Government are right to say that everything depends on the outcome of the negotiations on Agenda 2000. Agenda 2000 will not happen in a day. It will be subsumed in the World Trade Organisation talks, which is a more powerful, inescapable instrument of reform than enlargement of the European Union. We want a move away from production-related aid. The Government's position is that there should be compensation for the removal of that aid, which would become degressive. I do not think that that will do the trick.
I want a coherent menu of environmental aids--what the Government refer to as aids to support the social fabric--into which farmers can buy. We talk about the merits of environmentally sensitive areas and countryside stewardship schemes. It would be interesting to know what the costs would be of the generalisation of those schemes to start with, and to what extent those and the equivalent Welsh programmes represent a blueprint into which farmers can opt.
Hill farmers in my constituency and in the constituencies of those Labour Members who have a long-standing reputation for defending the legitimate interests of farmers in disadvantaged areas would be maintained. The consumer would get something that they would be willing to pay for, and we would get away from the confrontational perception of agriculture as a forced tax on everyone else. We need to spell that out soon, or we shall all blather about the conventional wisdom of moving towards environmental aid and no one will set out the mechanics of how this can become a practical, rather than an aspirational, objective.
It is crucial to begin this work, so that we know where we stand. This problem does not affect only upland farmers. I continue to believe that lowland livestock farmers are in the most serious difficulty of anyone
in agriculture. Aid available to hill farmers is not available to them. They depend to some extent on what is happening in the hills, because of the traditional patterns of agriculture in the United Kingdom. They cannot compete with larger lowland farmers, which is the link in the chain that is closest to breaking point. We must face pressing new realities, and whether we like it or not the World Trade Organisation discussions are part and parcel of enlargement. They are inextricably linked.
Farmers will have to come to terms with environmental demands. The reaction against intensification underlies the argument about genetically modified food, which has become the lightning conductor for the wider concern of intensified agriculture. We must be careful that the legitimate concerns about the broader ecological impact of galloping technology do not render farmers unable to take advantage of cost-reducing technology that will help them to become more effective.
Another reality is consumer preference. Whatever our views on supermarkets and on whether they are profitable, those super-powers are in place, and the Orwellian world of competition between them will remain. Most citizens benefit from that, because it guarantees cheap food. Supermarkets are rather like global super-powers, in that we cannot pretend that they do not exist. The President of Mexico said, "Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States." The farmer might say, "Poor me. So far from the market, so close to Tesco."
Mr. Martyn Jones:
The right hon. Gentleman speaks about competition between supermarkets. Is he unaware that their profits are about 7 per cent., whereas in other European countries supermarket profits are about 3.5 per cent.? They may not be delivering what he says they are delivering to our consumers.
Mr. Curry:
That is true, but I do not think that continental supermarkets are more efficient than British ones. The hon. Gentleman may go to Calais more often than I do to collect beer, but in my experience British supermarkets are extremely efficient. That is shown by their expansion overseas. There is severe competition between them in the United Kingdom, and, if the margins were lower, the competition would become even more severe.
It will intensify, because Government planning policies, with which I agree because they were started by their predecessors, will make it more difficult to develop out of towns. That will result in more intensive competition for city centre sites, and an increase in pressure to sell more goods in city centres. Farmers do not have to love supermarkets, but they will have to live and work with them. Those are the new realities.
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