| Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy
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Mr. Rooker: Over 12 months. Mr. Paterson: Fine. Over 12 months, but the cost is huge. I have talked to people who sell to abattoirs near the Welsh border and they do not see how they can get through the next 12 months. I would like a reply from the Minister this morning on his prediction of how many abattoirs will close during the next 12 months, following the Government's absurd over-reaction which resulted from a media panic. Nothing could be more ludicrous than last week's measure to ban beef on the bone. I went to Oswestry on Friday and to Ellesmere on Saturday. With one exception--only one customer of one butcher has turned down Christmas orders--there has been a rush and deep-freezes will be stuffed full of ribs and T-bone steaks. I bought two large ones and they were excellent. The risk is minimal. One newspaper reported that the risk of contracting CJD--there is no proven scientific link between BSE and CJD--is one in 600 million. Can you believe it, Mr. O'Hara. One is more likely to drown in the bath--the risk is one in 800,000. Let us consider something really hairy and dangerous such as flying in an aeroplane. The risk of dying in an aeroplane is one in 20,000. Will the Government go to Heathrow and incinerate aeroplanes? What about road accidents? Driving is a rough activity that kills one in 8,000. Flu kills one in 5,000. The Government are panicking: clever manipulation by a few professors has created a health scare completely out of proportion to the real risk. That is fundamental to the issue under discussion. Farmers in my constituency believe in free and fair trade in healthy, safe products. Mr. Borrow: The right hon. Member for Fylde mentioned earlier how, under the previous Conservative Government, scientific evidence continually changed on BSE and CJD, which meant that Government policy continually changed on what was available for consumption. The hon. Gentleman seems to be taking the line that because we only know so much now, we should take the side of risk rather than the side of caution. Has what happened under the previous Government not taught him anything? The Chairman: Order. Before the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) proceeds, I should like to remind him that the debate is about the common agricultural policy. The current state of the British beef industry is of course relevant, and I must allow much reference to it, but the debate is not about BSE. Mr. Paterson: Very well taken, Mr. O'Hara. The decision was made in Europe; it was not the Government's decision to ban beef. The debate is about healthy food. What drives my farmers to participate in major demonstrations--1,000 went to Bridgnorth on Sunday, and many went to Holyhead, peacefully--is the fact that food, specifically pork and chicken products, is coming into the country from mainland Europe, where-- Mr. Rooker: Via Holyhead. Mr. Paterson: Perhaps it is via Holyhead, perhaps Felixstowe, I do not know where. Those products are coming in with no guarantee that the pigs and chickens have been fed with materials that are safe. It is commonly acknowledged that throughout Europe, meat and bonemeal are still being fed in countries where it is known anecdotally that BSE exists. Statistically it must exist in those countries. That is not free and fair trade. That is why farmers in my constituency are so furious. They are furious that the Government are doing nothing about it. What will the Government do about potentially risky food coming into the country? That is a fundamental question. The beef industry in in crisis. That is clear from the figures. A farmer told me this morning that he receives about 87p a pound deadweight for top class beef. To break even, he needs to receive about 100p a pound. Beef producers cannot continue at that rate. I should like a prediction from the Minister of how many beef farmers will remain unless he takes action against unfair trade in unhealthy meat products. It is no good talking merely about beef products from which spines and specified bovine offal have been removed by countries whose regimes are, I suspect, nothing like as rigid as ours. Mr. Jack: In Sennybridge market in February 1996, beef prices ranged from £1.01 to £1.42 per kilogram. They have not dropped to the range 58p to 90p, which emphasises my hon. Friend's point. Mr. Paterson: My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that was a most helpful intervention. There are some areas of the country--we have seen it in Wales--in which beef farming is the only option. The Minister cannot leave without giving the Committee a clear answer about how he will handle imports that are not competitive, from places where abattoirs are not as rigidly maintained, and where dodgy foodstuffs are fed to pigs and chickens. It is no good harping on about beef. Different types of meat are in competition with each other. We have hardly touched on the subject of milk. Again, we are back in the Kafkesque world in which there is a huge market. The world market for milk products is increasing in a dead straight line at a rate of about 10 per cent. a year. I used to travel widely in the far east, where many Chinese people regarded products such as cheese and yoghurt as disgusting. That has changed, and demand has increased substantially. In my constituency, a company called --uller--which used to be a tiny family business based in Bavaria--created yoghurts that looked good and that people wanted to eat. Surprisingly, the company has been successful, and has invested £50 million in my constituency. Muller has bought the biggest creamery in eastern Europe, in Leppersdorf, near Dresden. That creamery processes milk from the south-east German milk field, and suspect that it will go on to process milk from the Czech Republic and other areas. Muller has proved that it is possible to create a market for dairy products: Gosplan does not prevail, the market is elastic and it is expanding. The proposal is hopeless because it takes such a pessimistic view of the future. I will quote one of my constituents, to whom I spoke even earlier this morning at about 6.30 am, and who has invested about £1 million in a large dairy unit: about 950 cows, producing three million litres a year. I hope, Mr. O'Hara, you will excuse my constituent's blunt Shropshire language. He said,
Later in the conversation, he said,
It is not acceptable for highly enterprising and skilful people such as my constituent to be restricted to producing 85 per cent. of the UK's needs alone, and to be unable to export. The market must work because--the suppliers in my area are too canny to let me know the exact figure--the Muller factory pays over the odds. Milk prices have decreased dramatically: last year they were probably 23p or 24p a litre, now they are at 19p or 20p a litre. Much is made of the world price, but Europe is overwhelmingly the largest milk producer. Europe produces approximately 120 million tonnes of milk, compared with 68 million tonnes in the United States, 9 million tonnes in New Zealand and 8 million tonnes in Japan. The Soviet Union produces about 80 million tonnes. Although everyone harps on about the New Zealand price, which is 11p, 12p or 13p a litre, depending on the quality, I suggest that the world price, which currently prevails in eastern Europe, is about 17p. That is approximately the price in the United States. Cheese produced in the United States has a cut-off price of about 17p if an exchange rate of between $1.65 and $1.68 to the pound sterling--which has prevailed during the past month--is applied. It is clear that the quota regime will be redundant in a few years' time: the price in eastern Europe and the price in the UK will merge. In the interests of the big, successful Shropshire farmers, I want the Government to assure me of what they will do about the quota regime when it becomes redundant and that its complexities and costs will not extend eastwards. As each farm already has its own established quota, the additional quota probably has a value of about 3p to 4p a litre. Successful Shropshire farmers are therefore already producing milk at world prices, but will they be allowed to do so after agenda 2000 without a quota regime? The document's proposals are weak. I am fully aware that other hon. Members would like to speak. I would like to finish by saying that I concur completely with my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow. The demonstrations of the past week are most regrettable, but they occurred only because no democratic mechanism remains for people to make a sensible protest. It is hopeless for farmers in my constituency to consult me about serious agricultural matters. It is hopeless for me to write to the Minister as he has no power--he only has 10 votes out of 87. A progressive breakdown in law and order will occur as a result. There is already extreme frustration. By a complete coincidence, I received a letter from one of my constituents last night who wrote:
That raises two issues: the feeling that the Government are against the countryside and do not understand its problems, and the dramatic crisis regarding beef. That was shown this morning by the turnout of Conservatives and the pathetic turnout of the Labour party, which professes to have won the hearts of the countryside. [Hon. Members: ``Where were they?''] They were not here. The Minister must realise that unless the Government take decisive action on healthy food imports, there will be more demonstrations. I take no pleasure in predicting that, but I have lived all my life in Shropshire and I know how badly people are doing, how right their cause is, and how feeble the Government's reaction has been.
12.40 pm
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 1997 | Prepared 10 December 1997 |
