TITLE. (Hansard, 9 May 1929)

§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood)
I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is really the principal Amendment which has come down from the other place. There are a number of Amendments following this one, but, except in two other instances, they are not of any substance. The other place has said that instead of the word "re constituted" for this particular substance it would be more correct to use the word "artificial." They think, in the first 2419 place, that it would describe more accurately the particular substance, and, secondly, they consider it would give better notice of the particular article to those who desire to purchase it. Those are the reasons why their Lordships desired this Amendment. I do not know if any hon. Members think it of substance whether it is called "artificial" or "reconstituted." I am sure no one wants to impede the progress of this Bill, and, in view of the strong opinion expressed in the other place, I think we would do well to agree with the Amendment.

§ Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER
I am sorry to delay the House, but this matter is much more important than appears from what the Parliamentary Secretary has said. As this first Amendment raises the whole principle I would direct the attention of the House to this point. The origin of this Bill was in a private Member's Bill last Session, the title of which covered both reconstituted and synthetic cream. The attitude then of the Ministry of Health was that they did not want the Bill, although they did not actively oppose it. Obviously, they were very concerned as to what the possibilities would be if they dealt with both reconstituted and synthetic cream in the one Amendment. Then, that Bill having dropped, a further Bill was introduced by a private Member to deal with reconstituted cream only, cream which is made, according to the definition at the end of the Bill, entirely from butter and dried milk. When Amendments were moved in the Committee stage in this House and questions were raised about that substance, the promoters of the Bill, doubtless with the consent or advice of the Ministry of Health, said there was no reason to have any other substance provided for, because you could not sell anything as cream which was not actually reconstituted from the same ingredients as cream because of the operations of the Food and Drugs Act. This House took that view, and, accordingly, the Bill went through. Now you have the whole principle raised once again at the very last moment of this Session by an alteration in the Title in another place. I submit, first of all, that this alteration in the title widens completely the scope of the Bill beyond where it left this House. 2420 When we come to consider this first Amendment it will be seen that the real reason for amending the Title of the Bill is to prevent another substance quite apart from reconstituted cream being sold. Therefore, it is quite clear that they had designed to extend the scope of the Bill.
It is also clear from the Debate on Tuesday in another place that the policy desired in another place is to create an absolutely unfair bias in the mind of the public against the article known as reconstituted cream. I said when the Bill was passing through this House, and I repeat it now, that I am very anxious that the public should know exactly what is the commodity they are buying, but to describe this particular commodity as artificial is to mislead the public as to what it really is. It misleads the public just as seriously as to leave the legislation in its present position so that they might be defrauded with regard to the sale of actual natural cream. It is quite unfair from the facts which are known to the Ministry of Health for the Government to accept these Amendments without any reasonable opportunity of the trade being consulted on this very important change, which has been made in this Bill at the last moment of the Session, especially as the Ministry has been kept informed of the actual position with regard to this commodity. Information, I am quite sure, has been communicated to the Ministry about the inquiries and experiments which have been carried out by the London Hospital and at a research laboratory in regard to this commodity which another place now desires to be described as artificial.
In view of the results of those experiments, it is clear that this is a commodity which is very often more healthy for the public to consume than the actual natural cream. I have papers here showing that a test which was made in a laboratory gave a bacterial count in natural cream of 2,800,000 in a cubic centimetre compared with a very small count indeed in a sample of what this Amendment calls artificial cream. These tests show also by proper research that there was no destruction of essential by-products. The hospitals are using it, and, indeed, the Ministry of Health is using it in its own buffet for the meals provided for its own staff, because it is 2421 quite clear from conversations I have had with medical officers at the Ministry that they believe it to be a thoroughly sound, wholesome article, and that they would not prevent it being used in their own culinary department at the Ministry. In circumstances like that is it reasonable or fair that we should be asked at the very last moment to agree to such an Amendment as this which seriously impairs the business prospects of those people who have begun to develop a very large and important business in the sale of this new and important commodity?
It is, perhaps, to be expected that some kind of action like this should come from another place. It is a place where you have two interests very widely and very efficiently represented, the land interest and the dairy farming interest. Indeed, from the Report of the proceedings there. I find that certain noble Lords were very anxious to speak in the Debate from the points of view of the Landowners' Association and of the Dairy Farmers' Association. We have now whole ranges of business, which were formerly using very large quantities of natural cream, lactic cream, which have been forced by the attitude of the Ministry of Health from another point of view to resort to the use of a sound and wholesome commodity instead of the natural commodity which now cannot be kept for commercial purposes. The Dairy Farmers' Association which has been one of the sponsors of this Amendment in another place, were also very largely responsible for the regulations which led to the decline in the sale of the natural commodity. Having helped to make those regulations and having now seen the decline in the sale of the natural commodity, they want to crab the sale of something which is used in its place. The landowners, of course, naturally stand by them.
I do not understand the right hon. Gentleman's Department accepting this Amendment after the statements which were made in the Debate in another place, and I wish he would explain this point. When the Amendment was first moved, the Noble Lord in charge of the Bill for the Government, Earl Onslow, stated that, in the view of the Ministry of Health, although it would be difficult to find another term, "reconstituted" was the best term that could be used. Nor can 2422 I find in any of the subsequent statements made on behalf of the Ministry in another place that that view was ever changed. I find that the Lord Privy Seal said that this was not a Government Bill. He must have been very ill-informed. He could not have been in recent conversation with the Parliamentary Secretary, or he would have known that the Bill left this House with the Title of "Reconstituted," which was adopted by the Government. Proceeding upon the line that this Bill was not a Government Bill, he gave his blessing to this Amendment, at the eleventh hour, in face of the opinion expressed by the Noble Lord who spoke for the Ministry of Health. Is the House being asked to agree with the Lords' Amendment simply because the Parliamentary Secretary and his chief want to save the face of the Lord Privy Seal, who gave expression to an opinion contrary to the opinion stated by the official representative of the Department? If that is not so, perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us.
As far as the trade which has been built up in the last two or three years is concerned, the Parliamentary Secretary knows as well as I do that it is dealing that trade a very severe blow to place this new term on their commodity without their having had an opportunity of consulting the Ministry in the meantime. It is a very severe blow to their invested capital. They were prepared to accept the term "Reconstituted," which had been accepted by the Ministry and was defended by the representative of the Ministry in another place. In spite of these facts, the Parliamentary Secretary now says that we ought to accept this Amendment, at the last moment. It is most inadvisable that at such a stage of the Parliamentary Session the House should accept an Amendment which will have such far-reaching effect upon the trade of many important citizens in this country. I do urge the Parliamentary Secretary to adhere to the view which his Department has always taken, and which was expressed by the Noble Lord the Paymaster-General in another place, and in doing so he will be doing justice to the trade concerned.

§ Major COLFOX
The hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) divides his objection to this proposal under two main heads. He appears to think that it is 2423 wrong that Noble Lords in another place should represent the industry of agriculture. If that argument is to have any weight, how does he stand, because he quite frankly acknowledges that he represents the biggest concern, or one of the biggest concerns, of retail grocers in the country. If his argument that Noble Lords, because they are interested in agriculture should not be heard, is to carry weight, then his own argument, since he represents another interest, equally carries no weight. He tells us that this commodity is recognised by the scientific men of various hospitals as a valuable food, and that this legislation should not be carried because it will prejudice the sale of what these scientific men have discovered to be a valuable food. I suggest that if scientific men have arrived at the conclusion that a certain commodity is valuable, they are not likely to alter their opinion in the smallest degree merely because the name of the commodity is changed. They are much more likely to be guided by the intrinsic merits of the article than by the name by which it is sold. I welcome the proposed alteration because I think it is much more likely to achieve one of the main objects of the Bill, and that is to enable the purchasers of this article to know what they are buying and not be deceived into buying something which they do not know is an artificial article. Therefore I strongly urge the Parliamentary Secretary to stick to his position and to support the Amendment made by the Lords.

§ Sir WILLIAM WAYLAND
I want to say a few words in reply to the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander). He speaks on behalf of the sellers and not, I contend, on behalf of the consumers, and certainly not on behalf of the producers of real cream. The laws of this country prohibit the use of the name "butter" on any article that is not butter, or the use of any name approaching butter, and yet in this country for some months there has been sold an article which has been called cream, and which the people who consume it think, quite naturally, is ordinary cream which has been separated from the milk, either in a machine or in a pan. They are being deceived by the sale to them of an article which, analytically, is exactly the 2424 same as cream and yet is not the true article. We might just as well say, in answer to the argument adduced in regard to the analysis by London hospital chemists, that milk made from the soya bean which, analytically, is exactly the same as ordinary cow's milk and cannot be detected from cow's milk, should be sold as ordinary milk. We can produce synthetically practically any food, and yet the hon. Member for Hills-borough contends that we should be able to sell it as the true article when, in reality, it is an artificial one.

§ Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER
I never argued that. I certainly argued that there should be the right to sell reconstituted cream as reconstituted cream, and I say that we should not use the term "artificial" for something which the hon. Member admits is analytically the same as natural cream.

§ Sir W. WAYLAND
I contend there is not one person in 50 who buys cream in a shop, whether it be in a store or in a restaurant, who would know the meaning of "reconstituted" cream. By the word "reconstituted" they would imagine it to be some super-cream, some cream direct from the cow that was even better than ordinary cream. It is a gross deception upon the public to use the word "reconstituted." By the use of the word "artificial" everybody will know-that it is not the real cream, separated directly from the milk given by the cow, but that it is something else which may be analytically the same but is not real cream. That is the contention of the farmers. We want the article bought by the public to be real cream, separated in the dairy, and not something called cream which is made from butter, dried milk and water, beaten up in a machine which, analytically, is the same as cream but in reality is not the cream which the public demand.