CLAUSE 9.—(Provisions as to applications for subsidy payments, extent of farms, etc.) (Hansard, 8 July 1937)

§ Mr. Turton

I beg to move in page 8, line 28, to leave out Sub-section (3).

This is a point of some substance and it specially concerns certain areas of the country. As the Committee knows, a man who is growing wheat on one farm and oats or barley or another, if the farms are farmed as a single unit, is to be prevented by this Sub-section from getting both subsidies. In other words, if I may give the Committee an illustration, if there is an upland farm growing oats under one occupier and a lowland farm growing wheat under another, both the upland man and the lowland man will get the respective subsidies. If the lowland man, growing wheat, buys the upland farm where oats are grown and runs both farms as one, then, under this Subsection, he will not be allowed more than one subsidy. This is a matter of importance to Yorkshire and to other parts of the country where there is sheep-raising and where the upland farm is used for breeding the sheep and the lowland farm for finishing them and both are farmed as one unit. I agree that it is necessary to have a definition of a farm in connection with the purpose of the Bill, but I submit that where two farms are worked as a unit, it is inequitable that the farmer should be penalised as he will be under this Sub-section. Even if the Minister cannot meet my point now, I hope he will look into the question and try to make some concession in this respect before the Report stage.

Mr. Morrison

I have looked into this matter and listened with great care to what my hon. Friend has said. As he appreciates, it is essential in administering a subsidy of this character to have some definition of the unit of cultivation to which the subsidy applies. Especially is that necessary when, as in the Bill, the principle is that if a man is entitled to draw the oats subsidy in respect of a farm, he is not entitled to draw the wheat subsidy in respect of the same farm. That being the principle on which we are proceeding, though there may be difference of opinion on whether it is a 713 good principle or not, this definition of the unit of cultivation follows as a matter of course. I feel that another difficulty will arise if we do not include these words in the Bill. There may be a risk—I do not say a great risk—of some manipulation whereby parts of the same farm would be held under different tenancies, so as to enable one man to claim the wheat subsidy and another tenant perhaps in the same farm to claim the oats subsidy. Thus you would have the same unit drawing both, contrary to the intention of the Measure. There is another objection of a more general character, but worthy of attention. Without this definition and the policy enshrined in it, the Measure might work inequitably to assist the larger farmers. They would be able to split up their holdings into convenient parcels for the purposes of the subsidy, whereas that course would not be open to the smaller farmers who might be in more need of the assistance provided under the Bill. For those reasons I hope my hon. Friend will not persevere with his Amendment.