| Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy
|
|
Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield): My right hon. Friend has drawn attention to the Minister's condemnation of British farmers adopting what has hitherto been a French activity--demonstrating. Whenever French farmers have demonstrated, they have usually won what they want. British farmers are reluctantly adopting a European technique--demonstration--to draw attention to their severe plight. Every sector of British farming is currently in depression. That has never been the case in my lifetime. Mr. Jack: My hon. Friend is right. I should like to make my party's position absolutely clear for the Minister, who has a nasty habit of giving partial quotations of what I said. I made it clear in every media interview that I gave on the subject that my party does not condone or support illegality. My party understands, however, why farmers who are not being listened to by the Government will want tangibly to show how strongly they feel. There are tens of thousands of farmers who are sitting fearfully in the hills and in their farms. It is not they who the Minister says are giving the Government duress. It is they who are frightened about whether they will wake up to a letter from the bank manager tomorrow, pointing out how borrowings and interest rates have increased, and that so far the bank has not heard any hint from the Government that they will be giving some help. What do farmers do? The Minister says that the Government are not going to be able to do anything under duress. He does not define duress. What does he expect? Will he tell us that the farmers must now withdraw from the ports for a specified period, and then something will happen? That could become a cyclical operation, in which the Government say, ``No duress; we are listening'', and absolutely nothing happens. Inactivity is not a solution to the problem. Unless the Government act to help the beef industry emerge from under the tidal wave of imports, there will not be a beef industry to discuss in the context of agenda 2000. The Minister asks from where the money is to come to help the beef industry. I should like to supply the Minister with some detail with which he clearly does not want to engage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently found £400 million in his Budget. He announced to the House of Commons that it came from underspends on Community expenditure. Some of that money must have come from underspending on farm-based activity. I do not want to take one penny from pensioners, but I am worried that in 1998 the situation will recur. The National Farmers Union confirmed that there are underspends on cereals, on livestock and on dairy produce. If that is so, our Fontainebleau rebate in 1998 will increase. The Treasury has confirmed that it will increase by 50p every pound that we do not spend. Will the Minister engage intellectually with me on that point? Am I right or wrong? What are his estimates for expenditure in the three areas that I have mentioned? What has been budgeted for those areas? If he wants to win the argument, he must come clean by engaging on those points. The Minister could, at little cost, do away with the cut in hill livestock compensatory allowances. He could remove from farmers the £44 million extra on meat hygiene. He could take away the weight limit on the over-30-months scheme, which would give farmers £29 million. He could prevent his proposed cattle passport scheme from making a profit. Mr. Rooker: There is no profit. Mr. Jack: Oh yes there is. I read a parliamentary answer last night that makes it clear that the running costs of the scheme are £15 million a year and that three million cattle will be involved. According to my elementary division, that makes £5 each, not the £5 to £10 range that the Minister has talked about. The Conservative Government said that they would not bill farmers with the £13 million cost of establishing the scheme. If the Minister had anything to him, he would say that the Government would relieve hard pressed beef farmers from the cost of establishing a system designed to help them to stay in business. Those are the facts, as confirmed by the Minister's boss, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Minister tells us that from 1 January animals coming into the UK will have to adhere to the requirements of beef sold here. Will he clarify how an over-30-months scheme can be imposed on every non-UK source of beef? That is what he has said. What international deals have been done to secure that breakthrough? Beef farmers might be very interested in the idea that animals over 30 months old will not come into the UK. Mr. Rooker: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that his Government introduced that scheme? Mr. Jack: With respect, we introduced the over-30-months scheme, but the Minister said--and I will be the first to apologise if I have made an error--that animals coming into this country would have to adhere to the over-30-months scheme. That is different from animals from the United Kingdom sources being restricted to such a scheme. Will the Minister clarify the point? Mr. Rooker: I am happy to. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and I have been asked about this before. The previous Government introduced this system. Mr. Jack: The Minister says that the previous Government introduced it, but can he tell us what it is? Mr. Rooker: The restriction on beef that is over 30 months old coming into the UK. Mr. Jack: The Minister has created a doubt that I shall pursue through parliamentary questions. The Minister has been fond of outlining why there will still be a beef industry for agenda 2000 to deal with. Is he saying that the £1.5 billion spent on dealing with a public health issue arising from the findings of Professor Pattison, chairman of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, should not have been spent? Is he saying that farmers should not have received that money because they were part of the public health solution? Does he agree that dealing with a public health issue is different from dealing with a tidal wave of imports that is destroying our beef industry? Will the Minister come clean and stop giving the impression that £1.5 billion spent on public health is a solution to the beef industry's current problems? I am fed up with hearing the Minister tell us that the Conservatives did not act competently, thoroughly, efficaciously and quickly to deal with BSE. I refer him to comments made in 1989 by Professor Southwood after his in-depth report on BSE was published. He said:
That was the approach of Conservatives when we had responsibility for dealing with the matter. We did not put public health at risk. The Minister knows that science on BSE has been evolving and it is inevitable that there have been changes of policy over that time. We never put public health at risk by not heeding scientific advice; my quote from Professor Southwood's letter is solid evidence of what he did. Agenda 2000 is a fundamental contribution to the debate on reform of the common agricultural policy. We support its general lines, but I invite my right hon. and hon. Friends and any Opposition Members who are concerned about the interests of their farming communities to support our amendment. If we do not take action now to protect our beef industry, there will be no beef industry for agenda 2000 to deal with. Dr. Rudi Vis (Finchley and Golders Green): Professor Southwood's committee warned in 1989 of a possible link between BSE and CJD and said that the response was inadequate. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Opposition had been very active when in Government, but I remember that the then Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), appeared in the newspapers week in, week out as the most bungling man in the western hemisphere. Mr. Jack: I do not have to deal with the second matter because my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal was not a bungling man and I have never heard anyone say anything so stupid about my right hon. Friend. On CJD, with respect to the hon. Gentleman, he should read what Professor Pattison said. He was chairman of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee when a link was made between new form CJD and BSE. The science has been evolving and no one could say that when the BSE agent was first identified there was a complete solution. That is why the previous Government spent so much money trying to salvage the beef industry. I respectfully point out to the hon. Gentleman that until Professor Pattison's finding, the previous Government kept the beef market in Europe open for our farmers. There is a difference between the present Government's rhetoric and their failure to lift the beef ban, and their performance has been lamentable. My task was to move the amendment, and I hope that I have illustrated why we should not take note of the document until the Government come clean, stop playing fast and loose with the anxieties and distress of beef farmers and state bluntly what they will do to help.
12.3 pmMr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): I shall resist the temptation to range far and wide from the strict agenda of our debate and concentrate my comments on the proposition before us--agenda 2000 and the way in which it affects the common agriculture policy. Let me say at the outset that I do not subscribe to the mantra that the common agriculture policy can be reformed. Politicians who talk of reform delude themselves and those whom they represent. The reality is that under qualified majority voting, this country has only 10 votes out of 87 and it is highly unlikely that we shall be able to assemble the requisite number of votes for some of the major changes that this country wants and needs. Any fundamental reform of the common agriculture policy requires unanimity, which is almost out of the question, given that certain countries have an almost pathological objection to what is proposed in the agenda 2000 programme. To illustrate that point, the annexe attached to the explanatory memorandum mentions significant premium increases for suckler cows, young bulls and steers. That enormous source of British beef has been left out of the equation. The Minister and members of the Committee will know that young heifers have provided a huge amount of excellent British beef. There was support for beef heifers before the introduction of the current subsidy regime for beef cattle. The suggestion was that we could persuade our partners in Europe that our way of supporting agriculture was the best. Inevitably, we lost the argument. We are discussing the reinforcement of a regime that suits the majority of continental agricultural industries and which, in this regard, is the antithesis of our understanding of those industries. The question must be asked: why have the Government failed once again to include in the proposals emanating from Brussels a mention of that important sector of the beef industry? It has been disadvantaged for several years and looks set to be further disadvantaged with the increase in premium on young bulls and steers. A fortnight ago in this Committee I asked who determines quality. Why should the Commission decide that the only animals worthy of support or encouragement are young bulls and steers? The Commission does not support young heifers, which have been a source of excellent beef in this country for a long time. Expansion of the EU seems to be accepted by all parties. I shall confine my remarks to the effect of the CAP on central and east European countries. I want to know whether it is right to inflict on emerging countries the inefficiencies, disturbance and opportunities for fraud and corruption of a policy which is economically, morally and practically--I speak as a practical man--bankrupt. The extension of the CAP to the countries of central and eastern Europe will encourage the emergence of agri-business people to the detriment of traditional family farms. We saw that happen in this country. The small family farm--the traditional farmer--is under the greatest threat, which was an inevitable consequence of the policies inflicted on our agriculture by the CAP. If the CAP is extended to the east it will accelerate the inevitable loss of jobs in agriculture. The documents before us make it clear that a huge number of people are employed in agriculture in eastern European countries. That is in complete contrast to this country, where the CAP has resulted in there being scarcely any employed labour on British farms. Most of the work on our farms is done by the farmer, the farmer's wife and family, with the use of contractors or part-time workers. It is rare to find employed labour on our farms. We shall inflict job losses on all those eastern bloc countries, where many people work on farms. What will people in the central and eastern European countries do when they lose their jobs in agriculture? Such developments will precipitate a crisis in the countryside, which will cause rural depopulation. Such depopulation will not be replaced--as it is in this country--by people choosing to move out of the towns and into the country and choosing to commute to their place of employment in urban areas, because the distances are much greater. There will be rural depopulation in, for example, Poland and Hungary. Those developments will put enormous pressure on the environment and they will cause ecological problems, as they have done in this country. As a Conservative Member, I have a fundamental difficulty with the fact that we shall, in effect, substitute a managed market for a market that is more responsive to supply and demand. As we saw with the CAP--and as the Court of Auditors reminds us each year--there will be massive opportunities for corruption and fraud--
|
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 1997 | Prepared 10 December 1997 |
