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11.35 am
Mr. David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds): I speak as a Member of Parliament in the county of Suffolk. That county relies to some extent on the pig industry for agricultural production.
The crisis in the livestock industry is manifest. The depression facing my county is the worst it has seen since the 1930s. There has been a great deal of constructive dialogue with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and I pay particular tribute to those bodies that have advised me and other local Members of Parliament--the National Farmers Union branches in Bury St. Edmunds, Stowmarket, Eye and Stanton, and the British pig industry support group, eastern region, which has been trying to find a way to influence the Government and to brief hon. Members in an effective way.
The small amount of progress that has been made on behalf of the pig industry has, to a large extent, been the result of initiatives taken by bodies outside Government. Although the Ministry has been making warm noises and saying that it wants to listen and consult, in reality the little progress that has been achieved has been the result of direct action by Members of Parliament who have been lobbying the supermarket chains on behalf of the National Farmers Union and other industry groups to try to get some practical measures under way.
One example of those practical measures is the "buy British" campaign. Many hon. Members, including myself, have written to all the supermarkets in their constituencies. I have written to the chairmen and chief executives of all the supermarket chains in my constituency asking them to go out of their way to publicise the benefits of British pigmeat and to organise the labelling on their own-brand products to identify pigmeat as being British reared and produced, not just British packaged.
In a debate in the House in July, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), there was a suggestion that Ministers should do what they could to ensure that, as far as possible, the source of pigmeat used by local authorities for school meals and by the armed forces should be the United Kingdom. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) that we cannot have a socialist-style diktat to ensure that local authorities and the armed forces' procurers demand British pigmeat. That cannot be achieved overnight.
Nevertheless, under the terms of best value, Ministers should be able, on welfare grounds alone, to flag up the fact that we produce the highest standard of pigmeat. On quality, we are better than foreign pigmeat producers, and price does not come into it. I hope that the Minister will be able to give a detailed explanation of how local education authorities and the armed forces are trying to use British-produced pigmeat.
The aid package announced by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food did not do anything for the pig industry, and my local NFU representatives will be intrigued to hear claims that there has been no demand for state help or some public spending assistance for the pig industry. However, I wish to discuss not what the Government have not done, but what they can do in the future and I have two specific issues to raise.
My first concern is the level at which supermarkets set retail prices for pigmeat. My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) produced figures that I believe understate the fall in United Kingdom producer prices in the pig industry. He mentioned 55 per cent., and that figure was true in August this year. The Library advises me that 55 per cent. may be the fall in producer prices, but the average fall in retail prices over the same time is 13 per cent. That differential is troubling to pig producers in my county. It is bad enough that producer prices have fallen through the floor, but it is even more galling to discover that the supermarkets' policy is not encouraging British consumers to buy British-produced pigmeat.
What can the Government do about that problem? They may say, "We do not live in a socialist dictatorship: it is a matter for the private sector to determine retail price levels." That is largely true, but Ministers could hold serious discussions with the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the policy under which the price of pigmeat seems to be stuck at a high level when producer prices are so much lower. The British consumer is suffering and so is the British pig producer. My constituents and those who write to me regularly on the subject want to know what Ministers have said to the OFT, and what steps they are taking within the regulatory regime to ensure that falls in producer prices are sensibly passed on to the British consumer.
My second question needs a direct response from the Minister. Our regime for pig welfare is, without doubt, the best in Europe, and probably the best in the world. It was initiated by the previous Government and has been--in my view, sensibly--continued by the Ministry. However, producers in the pig industry are disturbed when they face a regime that prosecutes them for using meat and bonemeal in their pig units or for using sow stalls and tethering, but supermarkets can import pigmeat reared and produced using those production techniques.
If it is illegal for British meat produced in such a manner to be placed on supermarket counters, how can it be legal, just, right and fair for those same supermarkets to sell imported meat produced by the very techniques that are banned in this country? What legal advice has the Ministry received on that point? British pig producers do not have a level playing field, but worse still, potentially dangerous meat products are allowed on our shelves. If meat and bonemeal cause problems when fed to pigs in this country, they must also cause problems in imports from Holland and elsewhere on the continent. I hope that the Minister will answer that question in legal terms, and tell us what advice he has received.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley raised a question about the official veterinary inspection service. The number of hours that are imposed on small producers and the cost per hour are increasing. I am indebted to a long briefing by Mr. Arthur Diaper, who is a poultry producer in Horley in my constituency. He gives a toe-curling analysis of the additional costs that he, as a small family business man, faces from the increased
inspection charges. He makes a point about inspection levels on the continent, to which I would like a response from the Minister.
The Minister of State wrote to me and said that, if the rules were not observed in, for example, Greece, the Commission could take infraction proceedings. That is the legal position, but, to give confidence to poultry producers such as Mr. Diaper, will the Minister confirm that he will ask the Commission to give examples of infraction proceedings that it has brought against producers outside the United Kingdom, but within the European Union, for breaches of inspection rules and regulations relating to the official veterinary service?
We are told that the issue is a matter for the Commission, but the Minister needs to give confidence to producers in this country that they operate under the same rules and regulations as other parts of the European Union. Nothing less than an assurance that the Minister will talk to the Commission will do for producers in my constituency.
The Minister does his best to be an amiable and genial defender of Government policy, and he and his colleagues do their best to listen. They are good at warm words and the soft, fluffy-edged skills that are so characteristic of the new Labour party. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It makes for good soundbites, and it looks good.
The Minister has been good enough to notify me that he will address a meeting in Bury St. Edmunds next week. That will be the first sighting in my constituency of any shadow Minister or Minister of any description from the Labour party during the three years in which I have been there. It is such a first that we all wonder why he is turning up. If he wants to listen to us, that is fine, but the people who attend the meeting will not want to hear just warm words. They want to know what practical and effective steps the Government will take to help farming in general and livestock in particular.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud):
I welcome the opportunity to discuss farming, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on gaining a debate on both the pig industry and the wider livestock situation. We went along the same path some weeks ago when the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) raised a related issue.
I want to respond to several of the points made by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley, and to make some general points of my own. While he and I can agree that there is a crisis, the House has heard some rewriting of the history of how we got into it, and of how the Government are trying to deal with it. I did not hear the letters BSE emanate from the hon. Gentleman's mouth, but we cannot forget that many of the problems facing British agriculture stem from that crisis. I was intrigued to hear the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) say how unfair was the ban on feeding meat and bonemeal to pigs. I challenge them to say whether they suggest that we should end that ban.
Mr. Ruffley:
Our speeches made it clear that we welcomed the ban because it contributes to our high
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