§ 11.1 p.m.
§ Mr. LEONARDI beg to move, in page 13, line 29, to leave out the word "may," and to insert instead thereof the word "shall."
With this Amendment, I propose to deal with the next Amendment on the Paper—in line 31, to leave out from the word "composed," to the end of the Clause, and to insert instead thereof the words:
of an equal number of representatives of producers of the primary or secondary product concerned and representatives of associations of distributors of those products with an independent chairman.My desire will be easily recognised if the Clause is read as proposed by my Amendments.
§ Mr. D. GRENFELLI beg to second the Amendment.
§ 11.2 p.m.
§ Mr. SKELTONIt is indeed an astonishing proposition that Members of the party opposite, who were responsible, as we most willingly concede, for the first Marketing Act, with its structure of schemes and marketing boards, and with their desire, constantly and sometimes passionately expressed, that British agriculture should be organised, should at this stage propose a composition of marketing boards which would be fatal to their object. I do not think the House, would suppose that any branch of the farming industry, with a long individualist position behind it, would readily put itself under the control of marketing boards with half their members composed of distributors. That proposition seems to me to be so alien to the whole idea of producers organising themselves that I need hardly quote the very strong words used by Dr. Addison when a similar proposal was made in the original Act, to show how impossible the suggestion is. If this proposal were incorporated in the Bill, so as to make marketing boards composed half of distributors, any anxiety as to whether or not the great bulk of farmers would support a marketing scheme would be reduced to an absolute certainty of knowing that they would not, because nobody could advise them to do so.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.