HC Deb 13 December 1938 vol 342 cc1949-58

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Hope.]

10.59 p.m.

Mr. Quibell

I wish to draw attention to the Order of the Potato Marketing Board prohibiting the sale of all potatoes exceeding 1 lb. in weight. I would not have done this had I received some assurance from the Minister that consideration would be given to the points put in my question to him on this subject yesterday. Some little time ago this House passed a Bill giving aid and encouragement to the farmers of the country to use basic slag and lime in order to increase the fertility of the soil. The farmers having complied with the Minister's express desire that they should increase the fertility of the land, the Potato Board then issued this Order, on 3rd November, compelling a farmer who had succeeded beyond his expectations to throw out all potatoes over 1 lb. in weight. They may be given to the pigs or left on the land to rot, but if the farmer sells them he will be prosecuted—in the words of the Potato Board, "Sell them if you dare, and we will prosecute you." Potatoes of this quality are produced as a result of considerable expenditure of money and labour.

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Furness.]

Mr. Quibell

And also a new and intensified system of agriculture. The system adopted is that the farmer in the great potato growing districts particularly in Lincolnshire—where the Minister has recently been making himself familiar with the kind of farmer who operates there—is to purchase the finest seed that money can buy and then to build a shed, or greenhouse as it might be described, where the potatoes are put sprouted. They are then put in boxes and carefully carted to the field where they are planted so as to produce a good crop. It is a highly desirable proceeding and one that ought to receive the encouragement of the Minister and the Potato Marketing Board. This system employs a considerable amount of labour and produces food that at the present price of 4d. for 14 lbs, is one of the cheapest foods in the country.

The system that the Potato Marketing Board requires the farmer to carry out can be described in this way. While the potatoes are passing over the riddle the farmer has to stand at the side and, relying entirely upon his judgment, pick out all the potatoes over 1 lb. in weight. I defy any Member of the House to judge a potato that is 1 lb. in weight. If the farmer fails to take the potato out he is liable to prosecution. Indeed, a case appeared in to-day's papers of a prosecution that is actually taking place for this offence. The farmer must rely on the judgment of the person standing by the riddle if the order is to be complied with. A more ridiculous or irritating order was never conceived by man. I would ask the Minister whether an order issued by the board can be stated to be good in law if it is impossible strictly to observe its terms.

So far as the smallest potatoes are concerned, the operation is automatic because they pass through a riddle of a certain size, but here is an order which can only be carried out by a person using only his judgment. He has to take out potatoes of a certain size that go over the top of the riddle and it is imposing upon the farmer a liability that nobody can do correctly. The cost of attempting to carry out this order is by no means a small matter. It is striking a hard blow at a large number of my constituents, particularly in the Trent Valley, where they have developed this intensive system of cultivation. There is one grower in my division, or just over the border, who has 10,000 tons of potatoes, and 2,500 tons of these big ones among them. He is getting 52s. 6d. a ton for his potatoes, which is 4d. for 14 lb.

Captain Ramsay

Was the hon. Member right just now in saying that instructions had been received to destroy the potatoes? I understood that they were only to be held up?

Mr. Quibell

Not instructions to destroy them, but to throw them out. They can use them for the pigs or do what they like with them. They can re-earth them, but there is no assurance that they can afterwards be used. I remember what happened in 1930 when there was again a great surplus of potatoes. My society gave about 90 or 100 tons to the miners in Yorkshire. This time we are told that the growers must sell them to no one.

Captain Ramsay

For the present.

Mr. Quibell

That means they must earth them down again, go to all that expense when they are getting only 4d. for 14 lb. As I have said, these producers have built houses for the sprouting of the potatoes, then taken them carefully in boxes to the fields, and after such operations as ploughing, hoeing, scuffling, sorting, earthing down, picking, riddling and taking them to market they get the magnificent sum of 4d. per stone. After the grower has produced a fine crop of potatoes he is told by the board "Sell them if you dare and we will prosecute you." We ask the kindly earth to produce its fruits and then we calmly destroy them. This Order came into operation on 3rd November. I have here a quotation from the "Fruit Grower" stating that in the week ending 5th November—that is the week prior to the Order coming into operation—the importation of potatoes into this country was 49¼ tons. The importation of potatoes in the week ending 12th November was 1,075 tons. That was in the first week after we had compelled the farmers to throw out the big potatoes.

We are compelling our farmers to throw out the potatoes which we have encouraged them to grow by granting them basic slag and lime, by "putting heart into the soil," as the Minister says, and building up its fertility. They had been asked to grow large crops because they might be wanted in case of emergency, and they were proud of the fact that their efforts might be of some assistance to the country. Then the board, over which, I understand, the Minister will say that he has no power, puts out a regulation to penalise the growers of the finest of the potatoes. I think no Member will say that such action can be justified. I have here one of these large potatoes. I have had it weighed, and it is I lb. heavier than the weight of the potatoes which are permitted to be sold. If that potato was passing over a riddle and we had to use our judgment as to the weight of it, I say there is not a Member of the House who would be able to tell the weight of it. Yet that is the obligation which is imposed upon the agricultural community. I have another potato which weighs 2 lb.

I do not wonder at the farmer's attitude. One of the greatest tests is for a man to put himself in the place of another, and if I had been the man whose quality was rejected, although I might not have expressed myself as did this man when he met the Minister, I should nevertheless have protested in as strong a way as possible against an Order which I believe is tending to discourage a good standard of agriculture. We shall want it some day. These irritating regulations are destroying not only confidence in the Ministry of Agriculture but in the Government of this country and in the power of this House to protect the producers and to give them what the railways are demanding, a square deal. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some assurance that he will draw the attention of the authorities to this matter, and to the dissatisfaction that is being generally expressed by the farmers of the country at the imposition of this Order, which is destroying good food like this.

Sir Ernest Shepperson

If there was a surplus over the requirements in any year, how would the hon. Member take it off the market?

Mr. Quibell

I do not happen to be the Minister responsible, but I will answer the question. I would increase the size of the riddle at the bottom and then impose the additional cost of labour. The regulations of the Marketing Board do not apply to imported potatoes. If you increase the size of your riddle you increase the size of your potatoes.

Sir Joseph Lamb

The hon. Member would increase the size of the riddle; that means that he would let through the riddle a greater number of potatoes for which there is a market and which the housewife demands. The larger potatoes are of no use except for those who make chipped potatoes. The ordinary man who is buying potatoes for the housewife wants a potato of less size than that.

Mr. Quibell

The answer to the hon. Member is that one of these bags comes from a man who has 10,000 tons of potatoes to sell this year. If he does not know something about the subject nobody does. I have lived in this district as a boy, picking and planting potatoes. This man suggested that a practical way would be to increase the size of the riddle at the bottom and to keep the others out. It is no use the hon. Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb) shaking his head. This man's name is a household word and is known to almost everybody. He has 10,000 tons of these potatoes, and that quantity includes 2,500 tons that he is not going to be allowed to dispose of. He knows where he can dispose of them; he knows his market; and he has protested very strongly, along with many big producers, who would not have produced these potatoes at great trouble and expense, unless there was a market in which they could sell them. I hope that the Minister will give us some indication that he will secure a reconsideration of what I believe to be a gross injustice.

11.16 p.m.

Mr. H. G. Williams

The hon. Member for Brigg (Mr. Quibell) was cross with me because of a certain comment that I made while he was speaking, but, if it had not been for the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, of which his party were very proud, we should not have had a Potato Marketing Board. I am one of those who have never voted for any such board, because I do not like it. I am certain that the hon. Member, when standing for election, praised the policy of his own party, and said what wonderful fellows they were in 1931 because they invented the idea of a marketing board. Here the hen has come home to roost. It was the hon. Member's party who introduced the idea of marketing schemes, which I have never liked and have never supported. I have not been able to get all the information I should have liked to get on the subject, but I observe that in April, 1935, Mr. Glossop, who was then a Member of this House, asked a question about these 1-lb. potatoes, and the right hon. Gentleman who is now Minister of Health, and was then Minister of Agriculture, replied; and the interesting thing is that no hon. Member opposite took the opportunity of protesting against this regulation about 1-lb. potatoes. That was their real opportunity. It is 3½ years since the regulation was made.

I agree with the hon. Member. I do not believe in somebody in some office being able to say that you must not do this, that and the other thing. Although I am commonly regarded as a Right-Wing Tory, I am a Liberal in that respect. I believe in freedom of contract. On the Front Bench opposite is a right hon. Gentleman who stood for the principle of liberty at one time, until he went wrong. No human being in this country preached the doctrine of liberty more than he did. The right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for India when this Measure was passed for the purpose of depriving the subjects of His Majesty of their freedom of contract, and now at last the hon. Member for Brigg, who is a Labour Member, though not too Labour and not too Socialist, I am glad to observe, is indignant because his own constituents, as a result of an Act of Parliament invented by the Socialist party, are deprived of their freedom to sell potatoes over 1 lb. in weight. I think it is a good thing that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite should realise what are the ultimate consequences of the Measure which they supported.

11.19 p.m.

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

The matter of which the hon. Member for Brigg (Mr. Quibell) complains arises out of the Potato Marketing Scheme of 1934, paragraph 66 of which says: The board may regulate the sale of potatoes by any registered producer by determining from time to time the description of potatoes which may be sold and the terms on which potatoes of any description may be sold by any registered producer. The scheme is founded, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams) has just said, on the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931. The scheme itself was approved by Parliament in 1933, but the power is derived from the Statute of 1931. The object of the Statute was the perfectly simple one of giving producers the opportunity of combining together to regulate the sale of their products to their own advantage.

What is desired in connection with potatoes, as with other agricultural products, is a steady price and the avoidance of those severe fluctuations which arise from nature being very bountiful in one year and very niggardly in the next. The price of potatoes, as of other agricultural commodities, is regulated by supply and demand, and it so happens that the demand for potatoes is singularly rigid and inelastic, whereas the supply is very variable. The position is that in a normal year our acreage has been sufficient to give as many potatoes as we can consume in the country. Sometimes we are under-supplied, through seasonal causes, and have to import to meet the demand; and sometimes we are over-supplied, and then the effect on the producers is extremely severe. In 1930 there was an excess supply of 16 per cent., and that brought down the price to the producers, not by 16 per cent. but by 44 per cent. So it is evident that if the principle of the Agricultural Marketing Act is to be observed and the purpose for which it was designed fulfilled, there must be some method of regulating excess supplies.

The normal way of dealing with excess supply is by the use of a riddle, the function of which is to exclude from sale for human consumption potatoes under a certain size. The present regulation was designed by the Potato Marketing Board, for the purpose of spreading the sacrifice more equitably over the producers. It so happens that there are parts of the country which produce small potatoes. They do not produce potatoes like those magnificent prodigies which the hon. Member displayed to the House to-night, but a smaller potato. But in the past the sacrifice has been borne entirely by those districts which produce the smaller potato.

This year it is estimated that the production will be 300,000 tons over that of last year, and it was felt by the board that as there had to be regulation to steady the market, the land which produced only small potatoes should not alone contribute to the sacrifice, but that some part of the common endeavour should be subscribed by districts like those represented by the hon. Member for Brigg (Mr. Quibell) which excel in the production of very large potatoes. The hon. Member suggests, on the advice, I gather, of his constituents, that it would be a more equitable thing to increase the size of the riddle, thereby preventing potatoes of a more normal size from reaching the consumers, and also avoiding any part of the sacrifice falling on the land which produces the big potatoes. As a matter of fact, the ordinary housewife, I think, would have reason to complain if she were denied the normal sized potato which is used in ordinary cookery.

I think it is just for the board to argue that the course they have taken is one which spreads the sacrifice over the districts in the most equitable manner and, at the same time, maintains a normal supply. The hon. Member asked me to refer to the question of importation. The control of imports is not part of the scheme, but is governed by the Potato Import Regulation Order, 1934, and it is worked through the agency of the Potato Imports Association, which has about 400 members. Each of these members is entitled to a fixed proportion of the quota about to be imported, and it is impossible to distribute among members of the association a monthly allocation of less than 1,000 tons. That is the actual fact. That is the minimum allocation which can be given in any one month if the potato trade is to exist at all. That sounds a very large figure, but when I tell the House that this immediate allocation of 1,000 tons is less than one-third of r per cent. of the total supply, they will see how little effect such a tiny importation of potatoes can possibly have upon the market. In each of the last four months of this year the import quota has been precisely that minimum, and it is the view of the board and other people that, if you are to maintain in existence, even in a skeleton form, the channels of the potato trade abroad, so that you may use them at a time when nature denies us a plentiful harvest in our own market, that minimum should be maintained.

Sir E. Shepperson

Do you include in that figure the imports of potatoes from Northern Ireland, because I understand that last week the imports of potatoes from Northern Ireland were 2,000 tons? I would like to ask whether these potatoes from Northern Ireland are subject to the same riddle restrictions.

Mr. Morrison

I am not quite certain how the Northern Ireland scheme works, but prima facie I would say that imports from Northern Ireland are not included because Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.

Sir E. Shepperson

Is it subjected to the same riddle restrictions, and the large potatoes taken off?

Mr. Morrison

I am not prepared to say without notice.

Mr. Quibell

I am informed that it is not.

Mr. Morrison

I should imagine that the importation from Northern Ireland has very little effect upon the total supply. The matter to which my attention was directed was the foreign importation, and this very small quota can have very little effect on the position. The hon. Member for Brigg says that the regulation made by the board in this matter is impracticable. That is a matter upon which the board express a contrary opinion. It has been in operation in several districts and no complaints have been made on the ground of its impracticability.

Mr. Quibell

I gave cases.

Mr. Morrison

I would point out that under the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1931 there is a certain procedure laid down for dealing with complaints against marketing schemes, and the position of the Minister is prescribed. If anyone complains against a marketing scheme he must follow the course laid down in the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1931.

The board, when they made this regulation, expressed the view that this course is necessary because of the exceptional conditions and expressed the hope that the condition of the market would soon be such as to enable them to resort to the normal methods of regulating supply.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-nine Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.