HC Deb 23 July 1937 vol 326 cc2590-608

11.9 a.m.

The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. W. S. Morrison)

I beg to move: That the Amendments of the Milk Marketing Scheme, 1933, which were presented to this House on the 16th day of July, 1937, be approved. This is, if I may so term it, a piece of domestic legislation by the Milk Marketing Board. There have to be certain adjustments in the scheme to provide for its easier running and more efficient administration. The House will be aware of the procedure which is necessary before these Amendments can have effect, and I will briefly detail what has happened with regard to the matter. Before Amendments of this character can become effective, they have a number of fences to jump, and these particular Amendments started on their career in May, 1936, when a copy of the draft Amendments was sent to each registered producer. There was a poll on the question whether or not the Amendments proposed by the Board should be submitted to the Minister, and the poll resulted in the following figures: There were 44,000 producers voting, and 87 per cent. of them were in favour of the submission of the Amendments. Accordingly, in July, 1936, the Board submitted the Amendments to the Minister, and then the appropriate period of six weeks was left for the lodging of objections. Some 16 persons or associations objected, and a public inquiry was in consequence ordered, which was held by Mr. N. L. Macaskie, K.C. The proceedings lasted 20 days, and the Commissioner's report was finally received and considered. As a result of that consideration, certain modifications were made by me in the Amendments as originally proposed, but these Amendments have been assented to by the Milk Board, and what the House has in front of it to-day is an expression of the Milk Board's desire for certain Amendments in its scheme so as to ensure more efficient and better operation.

There is a great number of these Amendments, but I think that if I draw attention to one or two of the important ones that affect a larger number of producers than do the others, the House may take it from me that the rest of them are mere machinery improvements, on which, with the permission of the House, I will answer questions later if required. The first is Amendment 1, which deals with the position of the four-cow wholesaler. A producer-retailer who owns four cows or less has always been within this scheme. The wholesaler with four cows has not. It was anticipated in the original scheme that these persons would not make any substantial contribution to the supply of milk and might with safety be ignored, but experience has shown that that hope was not justified. There are one or two things that have happened which make this Amendment, in my view, a good one. There has been a good deal of administrative difficulty in determining who has four cows and who has not; in other words, it has been found possible by some producers who own perhaps 20 or 12 cows to split up the nominal ownership of these animals into sections of four, held in the names of members of the family or friends, and consequently quite large herds have been used from time to time in this way to supply milk enjoying exemption from this scheme. There was only one objection to this Amendment by an individual during the hearing, and I do not think he was very persevering with it. The next matter of importance is Amendment 9, dealing with tuberculin-tested milk.

Mr. A. V. Alexander

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will deal first with Amendment 2.

Mr. Morrison

This merely gives power to the Board to regulate the manner in which milk may be graded and so on by or on behalf of traders and producers, and if the right hon. Gentleman has any question to raise on it, I shall be glad to reply to his observations later, with the permission of the House. I am well aware of the deep knowledge of the right hon. Gentleman on the subject, but I prefer, before going into what is a matter of machinery of this complexity, to hear the particular points of criticism which he has to raise. In proceeding to deal with the matter of tuberculin-tested milk, I would say that the producers of this commodity are now brought into the scheme for the first time, and the object is to secure that this high quality milk shall be marketed through the national organisation, under conditions which, I think, should encourage the continued production of this valuable article. The conditions are set out in the Amendment, and I think they are generally of such a character as to provide encouragement to producers of tuberculin-tested milk to go on with their production and to increase it.

The third Amendment to which I would draw attention deals with the matter of the producer-retailers. The Board has come to the conclusion that under the present arrangement these constituents of theirs, who are mostly small men, are being asked to make a contribution to the general fund of the scheme which is excessive, and they therefore propose this Amendment, which will result in smaller contributions being paid by producer-retailers.

Mr. Macquisten

How much?

Mr. Morrison

This applies to England and Wales. The contributions of producer-retailers in England and Wales now vary from month to month and from region to region, the average being between 2d. and 3d. per gallon. It will be fixed for producers of ordinary milk at 1½d. to be paid in 14 days, and if it is not paid in 14 days, it will be 1¾d. For accredited producers the contribution will be reduced to ¾d., and for tuberculintested milk producers to ½d. I think that this Amendment has the general support of the industry in common with the other Amendments.

11.16 a.m.

Mr. Alexander

The occasion of moving a long series of Amendments to perhaps the largest and most important marketing scheme in operation seems rather to call for a somewhat longer and more explanatory statement than we have received from the Minister. At least, that is how it appeals to those of us who have been concerned with all the details of the matter, and have had to spend a long time in much detailed representation and examination before the public inquiry and in other directions. While I think that the Amendments as they are presented to the House for approval are less objectionable than some of the Amendments as they were originally put to the Minister before he ordered a public inquriy, I do not think that we can approve them, as we have to do under this procedure, without saying a word about them.

The first Amendment to which the Minister drew attention was Amendment 1. I do not think that calls for much comment. It is just as essential a piece of legislation as it would be to have an Amendment to the Finance Bill to avoid tax evasion. There is no doubt that in the Milk Marketing Scheme there has been a fair amount of evasion which has been difficult for the officers of the board to check. If you are to have a central pooling system in which the general position of the industry is improved by carrying the losses collectively, there ought to be no loophole for escape by devices of the kind to which the Minister referred and which, I think, were fairly clearly proved before the public inquiry. I regret that the Minister did not say a good deal more about the second Amendment. He appeared from his explanation to think that this Amendment was concerned only with the grading of the commodity. We ask him to look at the Amendment in detail. It

gives the board power to regulate the manner in which milk may be graded by or on behalf of registered producers and the manner in which milk is to be marked, packed, stored, adapted for sale, insured, advertised, or transported by or on behalf of registered producers. There is a significant change in the intention of the board with regard to the exercise of their powers because of this Amendment, and I should be surprised if the Minister has not had the effect of the change put before him by his advisers. In the past, in dealing with the trans- portation problems in connection with other schemes, he may be aware of the grave difficulties which arise in, for example, the case of the bacon and pig industry, where a sudden arrangement was made, under powers which were not really there, for a flat rate transport scale. Under this arrangement the railway companies were able to collect money from owners of road transport who collected or delivered their own pigs but had to pay the railway company a varying charge per pig for the right to use their own vehicles in order to convey the animals.

If the Minister has been properly advised as to the result of the Amendment which is now before the House, I think he will have to agree that that is the intention of the change in the scheme with regard to the actual transportation of milk. If he wants an incident brought to his notice as to how this will operate in the case of milk, he will have no difficulty in finding from his colleague the Secretary of State for Scotland one which happened in connection with the Scottish Milk Marketing Scheme in 1934. There a large dealer of milk in a large milk area, the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society, was under regular contract for supplying its own shareholding members with milk, having a long and well-known connection between the milk producers of South West Scotland and the distributive agencies controlled by co-operative consuming members. There were two of the largest distributive societies—St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, and Kinning Park, Glasgow—which were regularly supplied with a balance of accommodation milk from that quarter. Suddenly, the Scottish Milk Board instructed the Wholesale Society to stop its supply to the retail societies on the ground that they considered that some small fraction of transport charge could be saved by drawing on other sources of supply. This left this body, which had its contract running with large numbers of Scottish producers in South-West Scotland, with no other alternative but to turn this milk into manufacture, and thus to put a contributory loss upon the pool which, in our judgment, far out-weighed any practical saving that might have occurred in transport charges.

That interference between two parties to a contract is a grave fact, and we feel that, unless the administration of this Amendment is very carefully handled and properly watched, we may have the same kind of difficulties arise here as we had afterwards in the case of the pig and bacon scheme. I feel that one of the difficulties with which we have to contend under the marketing schemes, all set up with the finest objectives, is that caused when you get a scheme which is controlled only by producers, and the powers in the scheme are arranged almost entirely from that angle. If they are not properly drawn at the beginning, you almost certainly get friction, and that friction does not end merely in a verbal row. It usually ends in expensive public inquiries, if not in actual litigation costs. The costs in connection with these schemes up to the moment run into fairly big figures, if you take the total applying not only to milk but to all the other schemes that are in operation. There is a real danger to be watched in that connection. While, unfortunately, we are not permitted under the procedure of the Act of 1931 to move Amendments to this document, I think we are entitled to have certain assurances on this transport question.

There is another point to which the Minister did not refer in his statement, and that is the difficulties which will arise in regard to insurance. Here, again, I must draw upon my experience of the use of insurance powers under a marketing scheme for another commodity. Some two or three years ago there was much difficulty regarding the insurance of pigs which were being transported to bacon-curing factories. The Marketing Board, without any consultation or previous notice, suddenly prescribed that the insurance of all pigs under the scheme was to be done through one insurance company, who were thereby given a complete monopoly, although many of the traders connected with the scheme who were doing all they could to make it work satisfactorily had their own arrangements and, in certain cases, had their own insurance organisation. I know there was a committee of investigation in that case, but although there has been no real advantage in imposing heavy insurance charges for insurance of milk in transport it is most significant that for some reason or another the same powers are being taken with regard to milk as were operated for a time by the Pig Marketing Board. We might have had a little explanation from the Minister in his cryptic utterance this morning as to what the position would be.

Perhaps I may be permitted to say a word about Amendment 6, to which the Minister made no reference at all. Broadly speaking, we should not have any objection to this Amendment, which deals with the conditions under which the Board are required to accept milk from a registered producer who cannot find a buyer, except that I feel that it ought to go much further than it does. Regard ought to be had to the difficulties which have arisen in the past in connection with the cancellation of contracts where producers have been found guilty by the courts of adulterating milk. I know of a case in which two farmers were found guilty by a court of wilful adulteration, and when the retail buyer, who, of course, must buy through the Board, applied to the Board to terminate the contracts with those farmers, difficulties were raised and the buyer was compelled to continue to accept supplies from those two farmers. While the Board may be justified in refusing to accept unsatisfactory milk, in practice it is likely, apparently, to do its utmost to prevent a purchaser cancelling a contract. It would be preferable that adulterated or unsatisfactory milk should be regarded as milk not fit for sale. If we want to increase the consumption of milk it is a sine quâ non that it should be fit at all times for human consumption, and a producer who has been found guilty of producing unsatisfactory milk should be prevented from selling milk until he can provide evidence that it is once again suitable.

Regarding Amendment No. 9 I would only say that if the powers-that-be had had a little more wisdom in 1933, we might have been saved the considerable loss to the pool which has accrued in the meantime, because producers of graded and tested milk were relieved of making the contribution which every other producer was forced to pay. I make no complaint about the inclusion of this class of producers among those who are to pay contributions, although I have grave doubts whether they a re being mulcted of a sufficient contribution in comparison with other producers who have to contribute to the pool.

In view of the other business before the House, which I do not wish to stop, I shall not comment on any of the other multitudinous Amendments, except Amendment No. 11, which presents almost the most controversial feature, and is of very great importance to the industry. It changes entirely the basis of contributions from producer-retailers. As the Minister said, those contributions fluctuate from month to month. They are based on the inter-regional compensation levy, the guaranteed quality premium levy and three-fourths of the difference between the prescribed price and the pool price of the producer's region. Details of the levies have been quoted by the Minister, but I hope that any Member who is interested in the problem of the producer retailer will find time to read the record of producer-retailer contributions in the monthly official journal of the Milk Board. The board propose that the producer-retailer levy shall be reduced to 1½d. per gallon, but while that is to be the figure if they pay cash, as I understood the Minister—I was not clear about that before—the real charge for ordinary credit purposes to be collected at stated periods is 1¾d. In the past the average of this fluctuating levy has been much nearer 3d. than 1½d. so that there is a substantial reduction in the contribution to be made by producer-retailers.

I feel that there are matters of policy in relation to milk behind this Amendment of which the House ought not to be unmindful. One important consideration is the health of the community. For some time past bodies like the Food Council, the Consumers' Committee and the Cutforth Commission have made references not always favourable to the possibility of having milk delivered without the process services of pasteurisation and bottling to be sold at differential prices, the general argument being that you could best reduce the price of milk if we asked the consumer to pay only for the type of service rendered. I feel that behind that lies the much more important consideration of the public health. The sister Department, the Ministry of Health, are actively considering what their attitude should be regarding pasteurised milk. I would remind hon. Members of the epidemic last year at Bournemouth, where over 50 deaths and over 500 cases of malignant fever were directly traced to the supply of milk from one producer selling milk loose and raw.

Mr. Macquisten

You mean fresh milk, not raw.

Mr. Alexander

I am prepared to take the hon. and learned Member's correction. I do not wish to cavil about that. What I wish to impress upon the House is that 50 people died.

People who come here and argue as between pasteurisation and fresh milk must have regard to the actual health of the community. At this moment two important municipal corporations, Poole and Glasgow, have Bills before the House with a clause in them taking compulsory pasteurisation powers. The Ministry of Health have deferred the matter and are looking into it. The Government have also asked all local authorities who supply milk to school children that, as far as possible, they should supply pasteurised milk. By the reduction of his contribution, the producer-retailer will be placed in a very favourable position in relation to the vast majority of the trade, who have for years laid down expensive capital plants for the pasteurisation and bottling of milk, in the interests of public health. He will be much more favourably treated than are the rest of the producers of milk for wholesale sale. It is true to say that, to the extent to which you reduce this contribution, you will lessen the central fund upon which to draw for the settling of the pool price. When it is found that, with losses from manufacture, there is a less price to pay to the wholesale producer, the wholesale producer will say, "We cannot possibly manage, and we must have an increase." The next stage is the raising of the retail price to all the consumers. So, instead of assisting the consumption of fresh milk so vital to the health of the nation, you are actually getting the possibility of a reduction in the amount supplied for human consumption. That is a point which has not been fully considered and taken into account.

I want to remind the Minister that in the last fortnight we have had definite proof of how this matter works, and I would draw the attention of the hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) to it, because this is a Scottish example. A few days ago, com- paratively speaking, we passed through the House a similar document to this, amending the Scottish scheme and reducing the levy upon the producer-retailer. What is the result? The Scottish Milk Marketing Board have just prescribed the retail price in Scotland to operate for the next milk year, and, for the first time in the history of the scheme, Scotland is to have a period of three months in the year which it has not had before, and in which the consumers will be required to pay 7d. per quart for milk. That is a direct illustration of the case which I am putting to the Minister that, if this reduction in the contribution of the retailer-producer is made, he will be put in much too favourable a position in regard to the general pool, and I am certain that it will lead to a general rise in the average price which is charged to the consumer.

I, personally, regret very much that, while one is able to agree with so many of the undoubted improvements in the scheme set forth in the Amendment, we cannot, under the procedure, move improving Amendments to the remainder. I hope, therefore, that the Minister, before we come to a decision upon this Amendment will be able to make such explanation as would enable me not to ask my hon. Friends to divide against it. If we are to be asked to approve en bloc Amendments which include points of this character, so detrimental to the future of the industry, I shall have to consider consulting my hon. Friends whether we are to divide against the Amendment as a whole.

11.40 a.m.

Mr. Macquisten

I should not have attempted to take part in this Debate if it had not been for the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander), whose statements cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. I corrected him during his speech in his use of the term "raw milk." It is not raw milk that is sold by the producer-retailer, but fresh milk. That is the only milk which is worth drinking. It is the milk on which we are all raised in the first year of our lives. What is pasteurised milk? It is half-boiled milk, milk raised to a certain temperature, kept at that temperature for a definite time and then chilled. There is nothing in that pro- cess; everybody could do it for himself, and if people accepted the advice of their medical officers it would be much better that they should do so. These facts are concealed by the modern practice of calling half-boiled milk pasteurised milk. People believe that it is milk from the pastures, and, therefore the name deceives them. The motive behind the proposal for compulsory pasteurising milk is to get all the milk into the hands of the monopolies, including the co-operative societies. They want all the milk to pass through their hands so that they can get a rake-off out of the food supplies of the people; that is what they are after.

The producer-retailer, who supplies fresh milk—which is the only milk worth drinking—is anathema to the monopolists, who do not want people in the country to get the taste of what real milk is. They know that people who once begin to drink fresh milk will not want the other stuff at all. It is true that in pasteurised milk all the bad microbes are half boiled, but so are the good microbes, and the benefit is gone. It is a cemetery of dead germs. If you feed calves upon pasteurised milk they die, and if you feed rats on it they fail to reproduce their species. I often wonder whether the birth control people are behind this pasteurising of milk. The producer-retailer takes his little farm near the town, and takes the milk round in his own barrow and sells it cheap to the people, without overhead costs. What a crime it is to give poor people milk at moderate prices. How it does offend the co-operative conscience. They feel bitter about it.

Mr. Alexander

If the hon. and learned Member would investigate this matter with his usual forensic skill, he would know that, on balance, co-operative prices to their consumers are lower than those of anybody else in the country.

Mr. Macquisten

They may be, but they supply pasteurised milk, which is offensive to the people. The right hon. Gentleman seizes hold of the epidemic in Bournemouth, but would it not have happened just as easily if the milk had been half boiled and got infected the more easily? Surely it is better that people should boil their milk when they want it, rather than it should be boiled 48 hours before in a factory. It would not have time to get new germs if that were done. The whole purpose of pasteurising is to get milk cheap from distant farms and to get it into the hands of the monopolists. There are enormous vested interests bound up in this pasteurising idea, such as the people who make the pasteurising machinery, for which they get great sums, and there are, also the big combines. If this milk were sold as "half-boiled milk"—I am introducing a Bill for this purpose next Tuesday—it would not be nearly so popular, but people would know what they were getting. People can boil or half boil milk for themselves. After all, there is nothing in Pasteur's discovery. Everybody knew it. People boiled their water in Africa for over a century, and everybody in a foreign country boils the water, although it loses its taste so much by boiling that people in Rhodesia and South Africa make it into tea. That is why people in Africa drink such a lot of tea continuously; they do not like to drink boiled water. Now this proposal is a part of one of those monstrosities—a marketing scheme.

I know the history of these things in Canada. These schemes are generally got up by lawyers out of work. A lawyer out of work is as dangerous as a shark in a bathing pool. The lawyers in Canada went out and addressed the farmers, persuading them that they were to get an absolute monopoly and increased prices, and that everything in the garden was going to be lovely. Time and again since 1896 they have originated the same sort of marketing scheme in Canada and disaster has always followed. The first lot of people were prosecuted for criminal conspiracy and fined 200,000 dollars, and they call it there "Farming the Farmers." Now we have exactly the same sort of thing in this country, people going about and deluding the farmers, although they call it "organising the farmers" here. In Canada they had all the practices here, including huge advertisement bills, but the Supreme Court there annulled all their schemes and so it was in Australia quite recently. The Privy Council confirmed the Australian Court and set aside their scheme. It is an easy way for a great many people, generally the throw-outs of the commercial community, to make a living by starting these schemes among the producers who have no cunning, but are real workers. They are doing it everywhere in the British Empire where they can get away with it. But they are all impostures.

I cannot imagine how it could ever enter the mind of any Minister or of any intelligent people that to load any industry with a number of officials with what for men of their stamp are huge salaries which they could never earn in the open market even if they got a job at all could make such industry prosperous. The only Scottish people who voted for the scheme were the big firms who are going to get money out of it, and they voted for it in the confident belief that they would not have to pay for the expenses of the scheme, more than ½d. a gallon and that would be the limit of their liability. That was carefully circulated as if by share pushers all round the countryside. But the levies were as much as 10 times that amount and were held to be illegal by the highest Court in the land. So the other night, the Secretary of State for Scotland introduced a scheme imposing a levy of 1½d. a gallon in order to get money with which to compensate the people from whom the money had been illegally taken. They were to provide the funds for their own compensation, but he hid from the House that an action had just been raised for the whole of the money which was a most unconstitutional suppression of a matter which the House ought to have been informed of. Now I may warn the Minister that there is not one Clause in the Act of 1931 or in the Act of 1933 that gives power to the Milk Board to take the earnings of one set of producers and give them to another set of people. Neither Act gives any power of that kind; Parliament would never have passed it if it had. If it was intended by the framers it could hardly have been, said Lord MacMillan in the Ferrier case, "stated it in a less straightforward manner." "It is," Lord MacMillan said "a tax." To give such power the Act really ought to have begun somewhat in this way: "Notwithstanding anything in the Larceny Acts or the laws against theft, it shall nevertheless be competent for the Milk Board to take the money of A, and, after deducting what they require for themselves, to hand over the remainder to B." The same thing happens with all these marketing boards. As a result of the Bacon Board, for instance, bacon is inferior indeed and very difficult to get nowadays. None of these schemes can ever come to successful fruition except for the bandits who led the Governments up the garden and got the jobs for themselves, and I hope that some Minister of Agriculture—and I wish it would be the present one whose brilliant mind must soon detect the hollowness of his inheritance—will one day, and soon, have the courage to cut down the whole of these new vested interests which thrive by living on the producers, and abolish the lot.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough said that the producer-retailer would be placed in a more favourable position. Why should he not be? He works hard; he takes his place close to the town where he can sell his milk; he has not overheads and transport to pay for. He selects his place of business for that very reason, and is the friend and supplier of the wage earner. You might as well ask the country cobbler to pay a contribution to Freeman, Hardy and Willis or the wholesale co-operative boot producers as ask him to contribute to a milk pool. The suggestion is monstrous. Moreover, his rent is governed by the fact that he is close to the town; that is taken into consideration in fixing his rent.

What has been the result in Scotland? The value of the land in distant counties like Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshire has gone up by six to seven years' purchase, because the farmers there have been endowed with the earnings of the producer-retailers near the big towns. This levy of 1½d. per gallon represents, on the basis of a yield of 800 gallons, a tax of £5 a cow per annum on each one of these little producer-retailers. Why should he have to pay £5 a cow? It is far more than his rent, and there ought to have been a provision that any obligation as to rent should be cancelled if he has to pay the Milk Board more than his rent. As a result of all this, he is being eliminated, and there is very little milk in the country. People are all taking to tinned milk—something with sugar in it. Some have bought goats and if the practice becomes general we shall have the Milk Board pursuing the goats over the hills of Scotland.

The one really bright spot in what the Minister said was the statement that he is going to reduce the levy on the T.T. producer to ½d. gallon. There will be some benefit from that, because it will go some distance towards purifying the herds, and that is what I should like to see. Why do the doctors not clamour for that instead of bringing all this pressure to bear in favour of pasteurised milk? I have no faith in the medical profession. They are not a profession any longer; the National Health Insurance Act secured that. Now they have all joined the great brotherhood of Zaccheus—the tax-collectors. It would be far better to take steps to keep down the rabbit pest, which has a lot to do with the spread of bovine tuberculosis.

I notice that in one of the paragraphs of Amendment No 9 there is a provision for approval of the amount of the quality premium by the certificate of a "consulted person," who, I understand, is to be appointed by the Minister. I have no faith in the Ministers' "consulted persons". I recently attended the Selby bridge inquiry where the "consulted person" was the man who prepared the scheme and was going to be the engineer on the job. He was the man who was going to advise the Commissioner on his Report as to whether the scheme was feasible. I protested, and asked how the tribunal could possibly produce an independent report with the Devil's advocate sitting beside them, that no man should be judge or advise the judge in his own cause, that no man can serve two masters which is why bigamy is illegal. Yet I observe that the Transport Minister is quite unabashed. So much for Minister's "consulted persons". Whenever the Milk Board gets hard up, the levy will be raised.

As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough has said, the result in Scotland has been that the retail price of milk is now 2s. 4d. a gallon. It is no use talking about "nutrition" and "malnutrition" as long as that is the Milk Board's price, and as long as a man who sells his milk cheaper because he can produce it cheaper is treated as a felon. That is a shocking state of affairs. If he is satisfied with the price he receives, and if his customers are satisfied, it is very wrong that he should be treated as a criminal, that his licence should be taken from him, and that he should even, perhaps, be fined £100. When I was a boy milk was one penny a pint or twopence a quart, and it was good, fresh milk, not the boiled-out stuff which the Milk Board are endeavouring to inflict upon us, with the assistance of the Minister of Health. The Minister of Health tolerates dyed kippers and all sorts of stuff of that kind. I do not believe in the Minister of Health; he is not doing the country any good if he tolerates a scheme like this, which is going to make the people's milk supplies immensely dearer by placing permanently on the backs of the suppliers a huge body of officials. That is a thing which makes one almost despair of any improvement in the general condition and nutrition of the people.

11.55 a.m.

Mr. W. S. Morrison

I understand that this is my hon. and learned Friend's birthday. We wish him "Many happy returns" and hope that on many other occasions he will deliver speeches with as much entertainment in them as the one with which he has just delighted the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "And sense."] There is always a good deal of sense in what my hon. and learned Friend says. I hope he will not expect me to traverse the very wide ground that he has covered ranging from bridge inquiries to dyed kippers. On the general point we well understand his view about the Board. He objects to control by the producers, but there are many people anxious to control the producers. For example one can imagine circumstances in which organisations of the distributive trade might be very anxious to control producers in the interest, not of the producers, but of the distributive organisation. If one regards the situation that existed before the Milk Board came into existence, there was a danger of that sort of control being established in certain sections of the distributive industry, and the producers had to be given a chance to organise for their own protection and control. Quite recently a poll was taken as to whether the producers desired the continuance of the scheme, and 81 per cent. of the producers voting, representing 86½ per cent. of the cows—so that there was not a great disparity between the number of cows and the number of producers—voted in favour of the continuance of the scheme. The hon. and learned Gentleman thinks he knows what is good for the producer better than the producer himself, but his view of the matter is not entirely shared.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) dealt in particular with certain Amendments which he thought deserved consideration. The first was Amendment No. 2. The origin of this Amendment and of the section of the Scheme which it amends is to be found in the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, Section 5, paragraph (f), which says in terms that the scheme may provide for regulating the manner in which the regulated product, or any description or quantity thereof, is to be graded by or on behalf of registered producers, or the manner in which the regulated product or any description or quantity thereof is to be marked, packed, stored, adapted for sale, insured, advertised, or transported by or on behalf of registered producers. The section of the Scheme to which the Amendment refers merely carries into effect the provisions of this part of that Act, and the Amendments are merely developments of that. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider very carefully the concluding work of the Section: By or on behalf of registered producers. That is to say, the provision can affect milk only as long as it is the property of the producers. As soon as it passes from the producer into the hands of the buyer or the distributor, it ceases to be a matter over which they can exercise effective control. There is no objection at all to the Board acting for the producer in the matter to see that conditions of transport, grading, packing, and so on, are regulated with regard to the interest of the producers. The history of the matter before the inquiry was that there was objection taken to it and then, as a compromise, the words were agreed that appear in paragraph 60 (A) in the scheme on page 4 of the printed Amendments, which read:— The Board shall not, without previously consulting such persons as they think best qualified to express the views of purchasers of milk otherwise than by retail, make any prescription or determination … I am instructed that, when this offer of prior consultation between interests representing the purchasers was incorporated, as it is now in the Amendment, the objection was withdrawn. Take a matter like insurance, surely a matter that the Board may well exercise surveillance over in the interest of the producers: if they can make a collective bargain, or arrange a certain rate, it is a very reasonable thing.

Mr. Alexander

I have no record that I withdrew the objection. I agree that the Amendment which the right hon. Gentleman amended, lessens the evil of it, but it does not remove the central objection.

Mr. Morrison

I am just acting on what I am told, but I think it is a reasonable Amendment and, with the addition of paragraph 60 (A), it goes a long way to meet the apprehensions that may be felt, while leaving the Board with the power provided in the Agricultural Marketing Act. The other Amendment dealt with adulteration. All these cases of adulteration are matters of fact. I should hesitate to pronounce any general formula on such a question. The crime of adulteration carries its own penalty, and I do not think the cases of it are sufficiently numerous to warrant any real objection to Amendment No. 6.

Mr. Alexander

I am trying to meet the right hon. Gentleman. I hope he will not let it go like that. He is not really dealing with the point. The point is that there is a contract with the Milk Board for the supply of certain producers' milk, and difficulties are placed in the way of the buyer breaking the contract although the producer has been found guilty of adulteration.

Mr. Morrison

That is more a matter of the actual day-to-day administration of the Scheme than of the Scheme itself.

Mr. Macquisten

If a man supplies adulterated milk, has he not himself broken his contract?

Mr. Morrison

As I said, each case of adulteration must depend upon the facts. There is often a great deal of doubt whether milk has been adulterated or not. Obviously, if a man breaks his contract he has broken it, but there are so many border-line cases in all these matters that I should prefer to leave the penalty for adulteration in the competent hands of the Bench. My answer to the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, in brief is that this question is one of the day-to-day problems of administration. The Amendment No. 6, which is linked up with No. 15, is merely an attempt to define the obligation of the Board to accept milk for which the producer cannot find a purchaser. It is a closer definition of the conditions. The question is an important one of administration. If the right hon. Gentleman brings cases that come to his notice I will consult the Board and see if anything can be done, but the Amendment to the scheme is reasonable.

As regards the producer-retailer, both points of view have been forcibly and eloquently put; but the matter is one for the producers to express their views upon, as they have done in asking for this Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman objected on the grounds of public health to this reduction in the contribution of producer-retailers. Why should they sell milk which had not been subjected to processing? There was a sweeping generalisation implied in the right hon. Gentleman's argument that the milk supplied by producer-retailers is of inferior quality. On this point, I think that there are many producer-retailers in the country who do their best, and with success, to supply decent milk, and if producers as a whole are willing to carry out their obligations in the manner suggested, we can rest assured that it will be in the interests of justice. I would point out also to the right hon. Gentleman that we are not departing in the least from our endeavour to get the quality of the milk supplied by producer-retailers up to a higher standard. Therefore, there is ample inducement to go forward along the line of progress in supplying clean and wholesome milk. These are the suggestions of the producers themselves for a more efficient working of the Scheme, and I hope that the House will now accept the Motion.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved, That the Amendments of the Milk Marketing Scheme, 1933, which were presented to this House Oil the 16th day of July, 1937, be approved.