HC Deb 13 July 1938 vol 338 cc1355-88

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £2,043,778, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1939, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, including grants and grants in aid and expenses in respect of agricultural education and research, eradication of diseases of animals, and improvement of breeding, etc., of livestock, land settlement, improvement of cultivation, drainage, etc., regulation of agricultural wages, agricultural credits, and marketing, fishery research and development, control of diseases of fish, etc., and sundry other services."— [Note.—1,400,000 has been voted on account.]

4.13 p.m.

Sir Percy Harris

On a point of Order. There are several Votes on the Order Paper all relating to agriculture, and there is also on the Paper a Motion to reduce this Vote, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-on-Tweed (Sir H. Seely). I suggest that it will be for the convenience of the Committee if you allow a discussion on as wide a range of subjects as possible, and if my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-on-Tweed moves his reduction of the Vote at the end of the discussion. If he moved it earlier the discussion would be limited in its scope.

The Deputy-Chairman

There are on the Paper six Votes, all dealing with different aspects of the problem of agriculture. I think it would obviously be for the convenience of the Committee if we are enabled to take a discussion covering all the subjects raised by those six Votes, and if the Committee are agreeable to that course I shall raise no objection; but, of course, it will be necessary to postpone moving the reduction of the Vote until the end of the Debate.

4.15 p.m.

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

I am sure, Captain Bourne, that your Ruling will be welcomed by the Committee, because it is desirable in a case of this sort that we should have as wide a discussion as we can. I am grateful to hon. Members below the Gangway opposite for having put down this Vote to-day, because I take it as an indication of that new interest in the subject which is so refreshing to a Minister of Agriculture. When a Vote of this sort is put down, it is customary for the Minister, in view of the fact that he is asking for money, to give an account of the operations of his Department over the past year, and to justify, if he can, his further call on the public purse. But when I look at the extent of the operations of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and the wide ramifications of the various matters with which it deals, I find myself faced, not with a lack of topics on which to discuss administration, but with an embarrassment of riches. I think, therefore, that probably the best service I can render to the Committee will be to give as accurate a picture as I can of the state of agriculture at the present time and of its recent history, so that we may at least have a common basis of facts on which to found the discussion that will subsequently take place. I have a tremendous amount of information here about all sorts of things, and if any hon. Members desire information on any particular points or have any observations to make, I hope I may be permitted at a later stage, as we are in Committee, to reply to them. I am anxious to put the Committee in possession of as full information as I can.

At the commencement of my review of our present position I think it is only right to impress upon the Committee something of the size and importance of our present agricultural industry. When I tell the Committee that its gross annual value is of the order of £250,000,000 a year—a figure which exceeds the annual value of the agriculture of any of our Dominions—they will see that it is really an enormous industry of great national importance. It is a remarkable fact that the wide territory of Canada, stretching, as it does, from the Arctic Circle to the confines of the United States, and placing agriculture absolutely in the forefront of its economy, still has an annual output which is below the value year by year of the agricultural produce produced in this little island of ours. There is another feature of agriculture to which I ought to refer, and that is that it is an extremely varied industry. It consists of a group of industries whose common feature is that they are all engaged in producing food from the soil. Sometimes the interests of one branch of agriculture are not the same as those of another, and that is a factor which has to be borne continually in mind in considering agricultural policy. It is a very vital industry. Based as it is upon the processes of life, it is not affected, perhaps, to the same degree as some more mechanical occupations are affected by political changes. Often, when I survey the field of Europe to-day, and think that, in spite of all the alarums and excursions, the peasants of Europe are still proceeding with their ancestral occupations, I feel that the peasant mind has in it something of great stability, and something which we should be very wrong to exorcise out of our own people.

For the information of the Committee I propose to contrast our position now with our position at two other periods—the one the pre-war period, and the other the period of 1930. The crisis in that year and the War were two dreadful experiences which left their mark upon agriculture, and it might be of interest to compare how we stand now with how we stood in those two periods. First of all, may I say that I do so in no party spirit? I am grateful for the interest that the House has shown in agricultural matters, and I think that these two dates are so crucial that it will inform our discussion if we refer to the position at those times. If we take first the period before the War—and I choose as the basis of my comparison the year 1913—arid contrast that with the year 1936, we see on the side of production the following facts. Our wheat production to-day is very much the same as it was in 1913. Our production of meat is up by some 8,000,000 cwts.; our production of milk is up by 329,000,000 gallons; our eggs are up by 3,000,000,000—an increase of some 200 per cent.; and as for sugar, there was none in 1913, and we now produce at home about a quarter of our total requirements. There have also been increases, though some of them are very slight in character, in the domain of fruit and vegetables. I could give the figures if they are wanted, but I cite as an example the production of apples, which has risen from some 4,000,000 cwts. in 1913 to some 10,000,000 cwts. in 1936.

These increases have been accompanied by decreases, and it is right that the Committee should be put in possession of these too. There has been a decline in the production of oats amounting to 294,000 tons. The Committee will observe that, while there has been an increase in what I may describe as human foodstuffs, the decline has occurred in the raising of animal feeding stuffs. I must say that oats are not a very happy instance for a Scotsman to refer to, for we have the authority of a great Englishman that, as regards England and Wales, at any rate, oats are to be considered exclusively as an animal feeding stuff. The position with regard to oats is that, although there is that decline, we are to-day about 97 per cent. self-sufficient in this product. The importation of oats from overseas is almost negligible; there is none from foreign sources, and only a little from Canada. Of course, the consumption of oats has been affected by the decline in the horse population, due to the invention of the internal combustion engine, an invention which presents statesmen with problems outside the realm of agriculture as well as inside it. Barley is also down by some 680,000 tons, and in this connection it is interesting to notice that the production of beer has decreased from 36,000,000 barrels in 1913 to 22,000,000 in 1936. I am informed that, in the case of some beer at least, barley is used in its manufacture. There have also been declines in peas and beans.

If the position is summarised, I think it will be found to be as follows, in contrast with 1913. As regards human food, there has been an increase of production in the dietary which is preferred by the public to-day; that is to say, there has been a rise in the production of milk, eggs, vegetables and protective foods generally. A remarkable feature of the change in agricultural production is the way in which it has adapted itself to a growing realisation on the part of the public of the great value to health of fresh food, and fresh food means British food in most cases. Looking at the animal foods, we see that there has been a decrease. It has been found by farmers to be economically cheaper to buy abroad when the prices of animal feeding stuffs were at the low levels at which they have been during the past few years. It has been a better proposition for many farmers to buy imported feeding stuffs than to raise their own. The Committee will, I hope, allow me to express the opinion that that is not a good thing. I would like to see more of our feeding stuffs for animals produced at home, and it was to that end that we inaugurated last summer the grassland campaign, with the subsidies for lime and basic slag, and also the price insurance scheme for cereals such as oats and barley. The decline is chiefly in what I may call fodder root crops, and it represents in the main, I believe, a change of great importance in agriculture, namely, the change-over from arable sheep farming to grassland sheep farming. I would point out that a great deal of the loss in respect of these food crops is compensated for by the introduction of sugar-beet tops and pulp.

It is interesting to examine further the position as compared with pre-War times, and to see what fraction of our total requirements of these foods is now produced at home as compared with pre-War. Except for butter, barley, peas, and, to a very slight extent, beef and mutton, we are now producing a larger percentage of our total requirements than we were before the War. I may say that in the case of butter I was surprised to find that actually, according to the figures, we are producing more butter than we were before the War, though the importation is so great that the percentage we produce of our total requirements is less. These facts are not very easy to assimilate with many of the statements that are made about agriculture, but I think the Committee should have them. I believe you cannot really gauge what is happening on the production side of agriculture by a mere comparison of arable acreage on the one hand and the number of workers employed on the other, or, as I have sometimes seen it argued, the number of horses employed in agriculture now as compared with pre-War. As I have shown, our production of human foodstuffs, like milk, meat, eggs and vegetables, is actually up.

The fact is that there has been a profound change in the methods of agriculture in these years. It is a change that can be described roughly, but not quite accurately, as a change-over from arable to grassland farming, and that change has taken place because grassland farming has been more profitable than arable farming. This, of course, affects the acreage under arable cultivation, as does also the annual loss of agricultural land which we suffer as a result of building and of the use of land for defence purposes. But although I have often seen it argued that this tendency, which is a very old one, is bad for the country as a whole, I would point out that it has certain compensations. In the first place, animals contribute very greatly to the fertility of the soil, and, when we consider the possible troubles in which we may be, it is good to reflect that in our livestock population at the present time there is a store of valuable food of the value of some £170,000,000, not concentrated in any one place, but scattered over our fields. At any rate, as a matter of policy it would be a very great mistake to change this natural economic tendency back to an arable cultivation, unless you could make that arable cultivation permanently prosperous. There are compensations in our grassland system which should not be lost sight of. I have heard it argued that because there are fewer horses on farms to-day, agriculture must be declining; but there are 50,000 tractors on our farms to-day, whereas before the War there were practically none.

The change that has been a continuous process for a number of years, from arable farming, has had an effect on the number of workers employed; but it is not true to say that, because there are fewer workers, production has declined. We all regret the fact that there are fewer agricultural workers, but I suggest that that is not actually a sign in itself of a decline in production. A very interesting control set of figures is available in East Anglia, where, in a most important agricultural district of England, the soil and climate are such that arable farming must be the mainstay of the population. They have received assistance under the Sugar Industry Act, and arable farming has gone on. In East Anglia, the figures for the period from 1931 to the present day show that the decline in the amount of labour employed has been very small indeed. In the whole of the district the decline is only 2 per cent., while in the Isle of Ely, and the Holland district of Lincolnshire, there have been actual increases in the number of men employed. This important matter is one of the factors to be taken into account. The fact is that the agricultural worker to-day has changed from his pre-war predecessor, not only quantitatively but qualitatively. He was more numerous before the War, but often miserably paid and badly housed, and his output was very much lower than what it is to-day. I, personally, do not lament the increase in the status of the agricultural worker to what it is to-day. He is better paid, and I hope he will be better housed, and is producing per man much more than his predecessor did. I should like to see the industry in a position to pay him better and to put a great many more of him on the land.

The Committee should not imagine that in the interval between now and prewar times agriculture has been static, or that the tendencies we have seen have gone on undisturbed. There have been great disturbances. The first was the War, when you had a temporary scarcity. In 1917, there was a Measure, the Corn Production Act, which was designed to increase our agricultural production. There was a period of high prices and a short-lived, and somewhat artificial prosperity, in the agricultural world. But when the War was over the Corn Production Act was repealed and there was a steady deterioration, to relieve which, from the point of view of prices, nothing was done until there was some relief in the matter of rates, culminating in their abolition by my right hon. Friend the present Prime Minister, when he was Minister of Health. These processes had their inevitable end in the collapse of agriculture all over the world in and around 1931.

The first important step we had to take was the introduction of the Agricultural Marketing Act in 1931—a good Act, which suffered from the one drawback, in our eyes fatal, that it did not propose in any way to control the importation of food from abroad. We had a continuous flooding of the market, and I believe that if that process had been allowed to go on unchecked it might have landed not only the producers, but ultimately the consumers, too, in a very serious position, because when land goes out of production there follows a period of scarcity and high prices. Surely we should try to arrange our markets so that producers and consumers alike are saved these wild fluctuations in prices, and assured of a steady supply. In 1931, when this Government came in, we started with the horticultural duties. These produced a very marked change in the outlook of those who derived a livelihood from gardening. Accompanied, as they have been, by many improvements in the packing of goods by the producers, they have made the horticultural branch of the industry second, I believe, to none in the world to-day. Also, there was added control of imports from abroad. We saw boards come into being for dealing with hops, potatoes, pigs, bacon and milk. These boards I think have brought a new measure of stability into the agricultural world. That is shown by the fact that when there is a proposal to abolish them the farmers generally vote in considerable numbers for their extension.

One is forced to the conclusion that this new stability, offering, as it does, some hope of remuneration proportionate to the risks involved in farming, has encouraged men to produce more, and we have seen as a result an improvement. I need not remind the House that the livestock industry, one of the worst sufferers from the depression, received assistance of various kinds, which was codified last year under the Livestock Industry Act. These commodity Measures are still going on. The House has now just finished considering the new Pigs and Bacon Bill. At the end of last summer we introduced and passed an Act which provided grants for lime and slag, for drainage, for new State veterinary services, and for the eradication of animal disease, and also made provision with regard to the quantity of wheat that will rank for the full subsidy, and a new price insurance plan for oats and barley. I have made my comparison with pre-war times. I think the fact that these figures can be given to-day is very largely the result of the measures taken in the last six years. When we compare production now with that of 1930, we see that the production of beef is up by nearly 2,000,000 cwts., of pig meat by nearly 4,000,000 cwts., of milk by 76,000,000 gallons, of wheat by 348,000 tons—and I believe this year's crop, for which the husbandmen will, I hope, be paid a bit better, will be the best since 1922. Apples, to give an example of fruit, have increased by more than 5,000,000 cwts., and vegetables and other horticultural products also show satisfactory increases. This is an example of agricultural expansion in a relatively short time.

Mr. Craven-Ellis

Before my right hon. Friend completes his comparison, will he show what is the difference between the population of this country before the War, in 1931, and in 1937; and will he also make a comparison of the purchasing power of the people?

Mr. Morrison

I cannot give my hon. Friend the information about population figures, because I have lately been concerned more about the population of four-footed creatures than of my own kind. But the point about the purchasing power is undoubtedly very important. Unless the purchasing power of the people keeps steady agriculturists, in common with other people, are bound to suffer. We are all interdependent in this country. I do not know what point my hon. Friend is going to make on that. The whole policy of the Government in regard to the purchasing power of people in the towns has also had an important effect.

Mr. Craven-Ellis

The point I am making is that the population has increased and the purchasing power of the people has increased, but that increase is benefiting the foreign producer more than the British producer.

Mr. Morrison

Not at all. If my hon. Friend wishes to develop that argument, no doubt he can find an opportunity in the course of the Debate, when I shall be very glad to give him a reply. Since 1930 agricultural production has increased. I agree with my hon. Friend that purchasing power is an important element in that, but I think I can claim for the Government that they have increased the purchasing power of the people as well as improved the agricultural position.

Major Braithwaite

Has my right hon. Friend figures in regard to turnover?

Mr. Morrison

I can get the figures quite easily, and give them to my hon. and gallant Friend. I was saying that in a relatively short time, in years which have been very difficult for agriculture throughout the world, this has been achieved, and it shows what can be done if you proceed on the simple lines of trying to improve the conditions of the farmers and their workers. We have proceeded always, with regard to marketing organisation, on the line that the price of agricultural produce is the vital consideration as far as the farmer is concerned, and that he is entitled to measures to protect his markets against the dumping which was a feature of previous years. We have proceeded on the basis that the home producer has the right to the first place in his own market, that the other nations in the Commonwealth have the right to the second place, and that the third place ought to be given to those foreign nations whose trade is of benefit to our industrial workers—those nations which trade with us. We cannot permit the unregulated use of our shores as a dumping ground for all sorts of products. We have our arrangements with foreign countries whereby we employ tariffs in some cases, quantitative regulation in others, and in the case of the Livestock Industry Act we took power to regulate quantitatively the importation of meat from all sources. In the first place, we entrusted the task of that regulation to an organisation of producers themselves, that is to say, to the International Beef Conference, which has hitherto carried on the duty of regulating the market very satisfactorily.

The House will have been interested to hear of the resolutions which were recently passed at a conference of producers held in Sydney, Australia, and I thought myself that they were of sufficient interest to circulate their exact terms in the OFFICIAL REPORT a short time ago. On that subject, I should like to make the following statement. His Majesty's Government have noted with great interest and have given careful consideration to the resolutions which were unanimously adopted at the recent British Empire Producers' Conference held in Sydney, New South Wales, in connection with Australia's 150th anniversary celebrations. The conference was organised by associations of primary producers in various countries within the British Commonwealth of Nations and was attended by delegates from those bodies. While the conference was, therefore, in no sense an official gathering, His Majesty's Government are impressed by the evident desire of the spokesmen of the farmers' associations to play their part in the development of marketing organisation on a voluntary basis by the institution of commodity councils on the lines of the Empire Beef Council and the International Beef Conference, with a view to the better regulation of the flow of supplies of primary products to the United Kingdom market in the interests of producers and of consumers, and the development, where possible, of new markets for Empire surpluses of such produce.

It is understood that the recommendations of the Sydney Conference are now engaging the attention of the farmers' organisations in Empire countries. The general bearing which these recommendations, if endorsed by farmers' organisations, will have on Empire agricultural policies and the question of their applicability in particular cases is no doubt also being carefully studied by His Majesty's Governments in the Dominions concerned. His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom are in general agreement with the view expressed by the conference that orderly marketing of primary products is necessary in order to maintain continuity of supplies and to prevent instability of price levels and speculation. In cases where action is desirable to secure stable conditions in the United Kingdom market, the Government would prefer that the responsibility for such action should be assumed by producers in the various countries concerned and exercised in the light of joint discussion of the problems involved. The Government, therefore, cordially welcome the proposal that Empire producers' organisations should co-operate with one another and with corresponding bodies in other countries to establish such commodity councils as may be deemed necessary, producer-controlled and financed, the representation thereon being on the lines of the Empire Beef Council and International Beef Conference, and the decisions of which to be effective shall be unanimous.

I think that that points to a prospect of another great step in the task of orderly marketing of agricultural products, and I believe that that should be the chief interest of everyone, whether he be a producer or a consumer. I hope the lesson is now well learnt that this great edifice we have built up of commerce and industry in various countries rests upon the foundation of primary production throughout the world, the Empire and our own country. If the primary producer is denied his proper reward, it soon brings ruin upon those who hope to sell him their goods, and I believe that stable organisation for a market of this kind would really be a contribution not only to the prosperity of agriculture, but to the prosperity of trade and commerce as a whole throughout the world.

I will conclude my long story with a reference to the progress which has been made in the latest, and by no means least, step which we have taken to help agriculture, that is, the Agriculture Act of last summer. Dealing first of all with the problems of drainage, the Committee will recollect that the steps to be taken were intended to supplement the great work done by catchment boards on the main arterial rivers by grants to internal drainage boards for the better equipment of their particular districts and the reduction of flooding, and so on, in their own areas. Up to date we have approved some £200,000 worth of schemes of this character, and if the Committee really does think that that is a small figure, there is one fact to be borne in mind, and that is, that the Act did not receive the Royal Assent until the very last day of July, and there was not as much time to prepare schemes on the part of the local authorities as there will be this year. I hope that they will continue to take advantage of it on an increasing scale, because there is no doubt that the problem of drainage in this country is one of the most fundamental things we have to face.

As regards lime and slag, the Committee will recall that we made a departure whereby we were prepared to pay half the cost of lime, including transport, and a quarter of the cost of basic slag for the farmers to put on their land. At the time there were many views expressed as to how far this would be taken advantage of by the agricultural population, and I am very glad to be able to assure the Committee that the response has been very great indeed. In the first season, from September, 1937, to May, 1938, 409,000 tons of slag ranked for contribution as against 240,000 tons delivered in the previous year. There have been also immense increases in the amount of lime applied to the soil, and though we have not the figures for liming before this scheme was put into operation, we know that under the scheme 1,250,000 tons of lime had gone on the land, and the cost has been £920,000.

Major Dower

How many applications have been made?

Mr. Morrison

I do not know how many applications, but it is a very large number, and I can get it for my hon. and gallant Friend. The amount that has been paid out is £920,000. It may be said that this restoration of the ancient practice of liming the soil will be of immense benefit to the farmer community and to our, agriculture as a whole. There was also a Section of the Act which dealt with the problem of animal health, which at the time I remember telling the Committee cost our agriculturists, it is estimated, £14,000,000 a year. We established a State service, taking over a large number of veterinary officers previously employed by local authorities, with the desire of having a drive against animal diseases on a much wider front than had ever been done before. I am glad to be able to tell the Committee that this transfer was smoothly accomplished, and the State service came into being on 1st April last. Within a few hours of its inauguration it had to combat a very serious position with regard to foot-and-mouth disease. I am glad to say that though we have suffered from that scourge, this year we are now out of danger as far as that is concerned.

Mr. Churchill

We did far better than other countries.

Mr. Morrison

I am obliged to my right hon. Friend. It is the fact that though the figures to us are very distressing, they are simply nothing in comparison to the ravages of the disease in Continental countries. The fact that that is so gives us an additional ground to be grateful for our island position and for the fact that we have been able to control it so successfully. Another disease which is very destructive is tuberculosis, and I am very glad to be able to report to the Committee a very satisfactory increase in the past year in the number of attested herds. There are now nearly 1,900 herds attested, and there are about 2,000 more awaiting the tests which, as the Committee will remember, we are assisting under the Agriculture Act. Also the scheme has been extended to beef herds as from 1st July, this present month.

Mr. Kirkwood

How does that statement affect Scotland?

Mr. Morrison

I am answering only for England and Wales at the moment. The question with regard to agriculture in Scotland ought to be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Mr. Boothby

You are giving us the beef.

Mr. Morrison

Oh, yes, and I think that the Committee may rest assured that Scotland will not receive less than her proper share. Another feature of the Act was the subsidy for oats and barley, the price insurance plan. We have already paid £165,000 by way of assistance to the barley growers who are registered under this scheme. The wheat part of the Act has, as I have said, resulted in a very large increase this year, and I hope it will be a very good crop indeed. These are the only matters with which at present I would trouble the Committee.

The other great activities of the Department in research, education, marketing and so on, are going on with vigour. The problem of agricultural research is a fundamental one, and I am glad to say that that has gone on very well indeed in the past year. We have followed, and intend to follow, the policy that we have adopted, the aim of which is to attack each of the many problems presented through the instrument of improving returns and the prosperity of farmers and their workers, in the belief, as I hold, that a prosperous rural community can solve many of its own problems for itself. The process is necessarily a slow one, as each of these problems has been left long neglected and is none the easier of solution from that cause, but I think agriculturists may take courage from the revolution which has taken place in the last seven years in the attitude of the Government and of this House towards the oldest and the greatest of our industries.

4.58 p.m.

Mr. Lloyd George

We have had, as we might expect, a very interesting speech from the right hon. Gentleman, and I think that most Members in the Committee will feel that it is also a very disappointing speech. We had hoped that he would have given us some indication of a realisation by the Government of what is the position of agriculture, and of any plans that they have in their minds for increasing substantially the food supplies of the country not merely for peace, but to prepare for the grim emergencies of war. We have not heard a word. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was complacent. He seemed to be not merely satisfied with the position of agriculture as it is, but was inclined to boast about it. He does not seem to realise that the industry itself is throughly discouraged at the present moment. It is seething with discontent, and the country as a whole is alarmed at the neglect by the Government of measures for putting us into a position in the event of war as would spare this country the horrors of starvation and the dread of having to surrender because our people were not adequately fed.

The right hon. Gentleman gave us a review of the position of agriculture. It was one-sided, it was very inadequate, and, while I am not saying that he was deliberately doing it, it was very misleading. He pointed out that we had more beef, and I think he said we had more mutton, and more apples. I am very glad, as an apple grower, to know that there is a greater demand for British apples, but apples will not save us in the days of famine that may come in a great war. The hon. Member for Southamp, ton (Mr. Craven-Ellis) pricked the bubble completely with one question. Has the population not increased? It has increased by something like 5,000,000. There are 5,000,000 more mouths to feed since 1913, and yet, according to the right hon. Gentleman, we have practically the same quantity of food. It is not merely that. He talked about the increase in beef, but he did not tell us that that beef is not fed on British grass, on British corn and British roots. The production of roots has gone down. There has been an increase of 700,000 tons in feeding stuffs imported from across the seas. That beef is practically of foreign importation. Those 700,000 tons of feeding stuffs have been converted into beef. He omitted that fact.

He omitted what I think is the most important fact, and that is the serious decrease in the fertility of the soil That is what will matter if ever we are engaged in a great conflict with some of the powerful nations of the world which are arming at the present time. There is this serious decrease of fertility. He quoted a very long resolution from Australia, the full purport of which I did not gather, but I shall read it to see what it means. He did not read the resolution passed by the Joint Standing Committee of the Central Landowners' Association and the National Farmers' Union, a few months ago. This is their view: Home agriculture is in a position much less favourable than it was in 1914 to meet the demands that might be made on home production in the event of war. That is their view, and I do not think that anyone can challenge it.

I should like to review the real position of agriculture in this country at this moment, when we are arming for the defence of the country. We are to-day spending, perhaps, £2,500,000,000 on Defence, but what are we spending in order to prepare against the emergency which very nearly broke us in the Great War? Go round the country, and what do you see? You see land going out of cultivation. We are 2,000,000 acres down in arable land since 1913. The right hon. Gentleman says that that gives us more grass. What sort of grass? Does anyone tell me that the grass lands of this country are comparable with what they were in 1913? They, too, are going out of cultivation. The returns which the right hon. Gentleman will get will be about pastures and grass. If you drive across the country on roads which are familiar, or you traverse roads once or twice a year in the west, the north or the south, you find that year after year there is a visible deterioration. Fields that were verdant with fresh grass, with growing corn or with roots, are now yellow with ragwort and every kind of poisonous abomination. I have seen them and I have talked to a great many people about them. I have made inquiries in various parts of the country from agricultural experts who are in control of agriculture and they tell me that the grass lands have been neglected. They would not fatten stock. What is happening in a county like Anglesey, which has been noted as a fattening county? The grass is deteriorating seriously. I had a report from there the other day to say that there was a visible defertilisation of their grass lands, that they cannot do anything comparable to what they used to do. It is no use telling the House of Commons and the country that we are in the same position as we were in in 1913. We ought to have been much better then, but we are certainly not in the same position to-day as we were at that time.

A county agricultural expert, a man I know well, tells me that farmers are concentrating on the best lands. They are heavily manuring them. Since 1913 there has been an enormous increase in artificial manures, which stimulate the soil and give the appearance of producing far more per acre, but that expert said that the farmers are almost completely neglecting the second-rate land. In other countries the second-class lands are a higher percentage of the total cultivable land than are the best. In this country we have a higher percentage than in Germany or even Denmark of good lands, but the percentage of our second-rate and third-rate land, which is cultivable, is very much higher than the best. The farmers are concentrating on the best and letting the rest go out of cultivation year by year. These grass lands are deteriorating, defertilising, and it is these lands we shall have to depend upon for an increase in our foodstuffs if ever we come to a great war.

May I at this point say that I had arranged to make this statement on behalf of my hon. Friends before the Prime Minister had delivered his speech at Kettering? Therefore, the suggestion that I am coming here to make an attack upon him, is not true, although I shall have something to say about that speech. The arrangement that I should make this statement was fixed days before the Kettering speech. I simply wanted to make a speech on the present position of agriculture. The Minister talked about our interest in agriculture being new. I think I was interested in it before he was born. That is by the way. The Prime Minister said that the Government have measures ready to put into operation, immediately there is a war, to increase food production in this country. He is an inveterate townsman and it required a pure townsman to make so really ignorant a statement as that. The idea that you can take land, defertilised land, neglected land, and just plant it and get your crop, is ludicrous. No man who knows anything at all about the subject would ever dream of making a statement of that kind.

When land gets into a condition of that kind it takes years to condition it. I know it from my own experience. We discovered that in the last War, and it is one of the experiences of the War that we ought to have profited by. You must keep up the fertility of the land so that you can turn it to the production of any food which the nation requires at any particular moment or in any emergency. To say that you are going to allow all this land to go out of cultivation, to become defertilised, to become practically waste, growing nothing but weeds, or converting it into fields which produce neither milk nor beef, because there is no vitality, no life in the grass, and then to say that you can use that land the moment war occurs, is sheer nonsense. If that is the Government's idea of preparing for war, which is one of the things I do know something about, I wonder what they are doing about aeroplanes.

The whole of this neglect is disastrous from the point of view of the fertility of the soil. The other day I came across a letter in the "Times" from Sir Christopher Tumor, who has made a lifelong study of this problem, and he is a singularly able man. He said: So much can be done and done economically. The area of arable land is shrinking"— This is the sentence to which I would particularly call attention— and millions of acres of grass lands call out for reconditioning. Our land is not only the best storehouse but the safest source of supply. I am certain that the most effective way of strengthening our food defence is to bring peace-time food production up to its economic maximum. I should like to quote from Professor Stapledon, the greatest living authority on grass lands in the British Empire. He has made a 25 years' study of the question, not merely in the glens but on the moorlands and on the hillsides of Wales. He was the man on whose authority I submitted to the Cabinet proposals for lime and basic slag and for drainage. The answer given to me then was what I will call the Kettering answer. If they wanted lime they could get it under the Agricultural Credits Act, and besides there was the objection—all of my proposals were given exactly the same answer—of the effect it would have upon our customers abroad if we were to increase our own production by this means. The Kettering speech was not a temporary lapse, a kind of indiscretion of which even the most careful speaker may occasionally be guilty. That is the sort of excuse given in an article in the "Times." In a very grandmotherly way it rebukes the Prime Minister and tells him not to tell the truth too startlingly. That last word is mine. But Professor Stapledon has made a study of grass lands. Although he is a Devonian he has made his experiments in Wales, and I can assure the Prime Minister that farming in Wales is just as good as it is in England. I am not quite sure whether it is as good as it is in some parts of Scotland. The conclusion to which Professor Stapledon came was: Only 39.8 per cent. of the lands of Wales are doing their duty. Sixty per cent. of the lands of Wales are in urgent need of drastic improvement and wholesale reclamation. I could give plenty of quotations to show that we are not making the best use of the land; and to make the best use of the land will be a question of life and death for us, as it was between 1914 and 1918. Let me touch upon another very vital matter. There is a declining population on the land. The population generally has increased by 5,000,000 since 1930 and the occupied population has increased by about 3,000,000. But the agricultural population has steadily decreased, and is still decreasing. I see by a newspaper which at one time was the official organ of the Prime Minister, the "Daily Express"—which is now following the practice of savage tribes who beat their neighbours because the weather is bad—that there is a decrease of 1,000 per month going on at this moment, while these complacent and optimistic speeches are being delivered. Since 1921 the decrease in the workers on the land has been 238,000.

Sir William Wayland

Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many were due to mechanical power being used?

Mr. Lloyd George

I hope the hon. Member will allow me to develop my argument in my own way. I do not mind the question, and perhaps it may be as well for me to answer it at once. Any good farmer using mechanical power, if he is farming well will increase the number of labourers on the land. That is my own experience, as well as the experience of my neighbours.

Sir W. Wayland

It is not the experience of most farmers.

Mr. Lloyd George

There has been a reduction of 27 per cent. in the number of workers on the soil, but the most serious reduction that has taken place has been in the youth on the land, in the young workers. The general reduction has been 27 per cent. But the young people are leaving in droves and there has been a reduction since 1921 of 44 per cent, in the number of young workers on the land. Young labourers and farmers' sons are fleeing from the land as if it were stricken with the plague. That is the measure of their confidence in the Government's agricultural policy. Compare the position here with that in other countries. I have given the figures before, but I am going to repeat them until I get them into the minds of the people. Belgium, which is a great industrial country, has 19 per cent. of its population on the land, Holland, which is also largely industrial, has 22 per cent., Germany has 30.5 per cent, on the land, but in England and Wales there are only 5.5 per cent, on the land. In 1913 it was 7 per cent.; now it has gone down to 5.5 per cent., and it is still going down and down. In France there are 8,200,000 persons on the land, in Germany 9,800,000, but here only 1,250,000, and the number is still going down rapidly.

Something has been said about the towns. There are agricultural towns as well as industrial towns. There are towns which depend almost entirely for their livelihood and for their industries upon agriculture, and when you talk about 90 per cent. of the population living in towns a very considerable proportion of the population which lives in the towns is dependent upon agriculture in the surrounding areas. What is the position there? I have taken 20 well-known agricultural towns and I find that there has been a reduction in the population of these towns since the census of 1911 of anything between 10 per cent. up to 36 per cent. The villages are decaying. Instead of being better off than we were in 1913 we are getting worse and worse by every test that can be applied, and the process is going on despite milk boards, potato boards and pig boards and heavy but ill-distributed subsidies. It is no use talking about our not being able to compete with the foreigner. The competition was worse in 1913. They are beginning to suffer from defertilisation in huge areas. Their prairies have been exhausted and thousands, indeed millions, of acres have been more or less destroyed for agricultural purposes.

We are getting into a stronger position to face their competition year by year. We have the best markets in the world, a greater density of population, more purchasing power, and an approximation of markets to the fields of production, but our marketing system, in spite of all these boards, is a thoroughly ramshackle affair. The little experience I have had of it shows me that it is a joke; a bad joke for the producer and not a very good joke for the consumer. The only man who enjoys the joke is the middle man. Judging by the supreme test, not merely by an increased production of cattle and pigs which have been fed on imported foods, but by the test of a strong virile population of men and women living in the villages, the industry of agriculture is on the decline. There are three factors which make it very serious. The first is chronic unemployment. For 17 years our unemployment figures have run from 1,000,000 up to 2,800,000. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed a Commission to investigate the causes of unemployment in the distressed areas. He appointed very able Under-Secretaries and they did their work very thoroughly. There was one very able report by the present Financial Secretary to the Treasury. That is a very important post, and any man who is chosen for it must have a great variety of gifts. This is what he said after his investigation: No comprehensive survey of the condition of the Durham coalfield can avoid the conclusion that the ultimate destiny of a large part of the county, now industrialised, must be to return to agriculture. He went on to say that unless that was done, he could not see anything for the surplus population in the mining industry except to be condemned to a permanent state of pauperisation. For 17 years the unemployment figures have been between 1,000,000 and 2,800,000; at the present moment, 1,800,000 are out of work. Here is an industry which the right hon. Gentleman described, in eloquent words, as being vital, which is producing more than the whole of Canada, which is producing £250,000,000. It is capable of enormous expansion, according to the advice of every expert. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to name one expert who is worth quoting who will not tell him that we could increase enormously the produce of the soil. You need more labour to do that, and you have 1,800,000 out of work.

There is the problem of under-nutrition. According to all the testimony, millions of the people of this country are not receiving enough food to sustain life efficiently. There is the question of security in war. We have the warning of 1914, and it is incredible that we should have forgotten it. We had a colossal combat on land for 4½ years. That distracted our attention from the more decisive death struggle on the high seas. It was a struggle between two mighty Empires as to which would starve the other into surrender. There was a blockade on our side against unlimited sinking of ships by submarines. It was touch-and-go who would win. I wonder whether the Committee realises how near it was. Germany was producing nine-tenths of the food which would maintain her population. Had she rationed as we rationed at the end, sternly but fairly, had she not been over-confident and actually sold grain to Holland, thinking the war would be over soon, had she not taken her young labourers off the land and put practically all of them into her army because Hindenburg thought they were the best fighters, she could have got through. There would not have been a very full ration, but a ration that would have carried her through, with the help of what she was getting in Rumania and in Russia. It was food that beat her even more than fighting. She and Austria had to keep 1,000,000 of their men in Russia in order to collect food for their starving population.

I saw an allusion to this in one of the newspapers recently. Her men, having broken our line, half-famished, with inadequate and poor rations, were held up by dumps of our food stores and the time they lost prevented them from penetrating the gap between the French armies and ours. But for food, it would have ended in a stalemate. If we had not managed to defeat the submarine, the value of which the Germans themselves did not realise for the first year or two, it would not have been a stalemate for us, but a surrender. That lesson, grim and deadly, is not taken in by a Govern- ment that is spending £2,500,000,000 of money upon armaments and leaving this, the weakest point in our armour, practically unrepaired and unstrengthened. I do not understand it. I do not understand the House of Commons standing it, and I cannot understand why the nation does not compel them to deal with it. Nobody knows what is the danger, but if you want to precipitate the danger, go on as you are, because the enemy knows it just as well as you do, or better.

What has been the position since then? According to the Central Landowners' Association and the National Farmers' Union, you are in a much less favourable position for dealing with the food problem than you were in 1914. The land is not as fertile; there is defertilisation. The population has increased by 5,000,000. The Prime Minister says that we can depend on our ships. We have fewer ships by 2,000,000 tons, and when you come to the ships that carry cargoes, as Lord Runciman pointed out the other day—I do not know why the hon. Gentleman opposite is laughing at that state of affairs—we are down, according to Lord Runciman, 2,000 ships of the type that carry cargo, as compared with the position at the end of the War. What is still more important, the danger is double. The submarines are much more powerful than they were then, and there is a new factor which was not in existence then, bombing from the air. As far as I can recollect, not a single ship was hit by an aeroplane during the War. If anybody can recall one, I should like to hear of it. It is much more difficult now to protect ships on the high seas, and, what I think is still more dangerous, in the harbours. Aeroplanes sweeping along the great docks at Bristol, Hull, London and Southampton, may miss most, but sink one. There may be more sinkings from that than from submarines.

That is one reason why I deplore the Government's attitude towards the sinking of food ships in Spain. I cannot understand it. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister may depend upon it that the answer which was given to him by General Franco to-day is not General Franco's answer. He has taken a long time before giving it. I have not the slightest doubt that it is an answer concerted with both Germany and Italy, and that it represents their definite and determined policy with regard to the sinking of ships, food ships or any other ships, in harbours or on the high seas, in future. That is why I thought we ought to have taken the challenge immediately. It is of most vital interest to us. Submarines, a blockade—the blockade captures the ship, and the submarine sinks the ship; but there are boats, and several escape. Here it is bombing without warning, machine-gunning without warning, it is a question of being out to kill; that is the policy with which you are confronted. And you are depending upon shipping, which is down by 2,000,000 tons, which is liable to the double danger in a coming war, and your land is less fertile. You give us £900,000 for lime—useful, but not adequate for the demand which may be made upon it.

The Prime Minister assured us that we had a reserve and that we were going to spend £7,500,000 in providing a reserve, to be ready for the beginning of the war, until this defertilised land comes into production. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford University (Sir A. Salter) gave a very effective answer to that. He said that if you spend it on corn, altogether it would last five weeks; if you spend it on wheat, sugar and whale oil, it will only last for two. The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence is able to assure us that, if the worst comes to the worst, he can give us a fortnight's ration of sugared blubber. I think that he could perhaps afford to pass on his ration to some of his colleagues. [An HON. MEMBER: "Cheap."] I remember that in November, 1916, we were told that in London there were two days' supplies of wheat, in Bristol, only two weeks' supply; the Wheat Commissioner had purchased 700,000 quarters in North America, but there were no steamers to bring the wheat to England. That was two years before the end of the War and before the unlimited submarine warfare began. We would not have accepted this policy, for which not the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture but the Government as a whole, and especially the Prime Minister, are certainly responsible.

In another place, Lord Feversham said that go per cent. of our population were in the towns and that we must consider them first. We must, of course, consider the majority of the population, but what would happen to that go per cent, if there were a failure of food supplies in this country? Our interests are identical and all this talk about town and country is disastrous. I think it is imbecile. Are no customers worth having except customers across the seas? Are customers living on our farm lands not worth something? The only difference is that we are selling to customers across the seas who put up high protective duties against us, whereas these people from our fields and our farms who buy the goods of our manufacturers, are putting up no tariffs against us. This talk about town and country as if they were rivals is all wrong. I think it is time it was ended, and I was very glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture made reference to it in the course of his speech.

The Prime Minister in his famous Kettering speech—probably much too famous for his comfort—talked about those who made claims for self-sufficiency. I do not know anybody who says that we can produce all the food that we need in this country. The utmost that we have said is that you can double the quantity now produced, but that is not self-sufficiency. I know there are others who put it a little higher, but I do not know anybody who has claimed self-sufficiency. The higher you put it, the less would be the strain upon your shipping involved in making up the deficiency, and that is all we claim. The Prime Minister has laid down some very interesting doctrines for a Protectionist. They sounded like a sort of echo of the speeches which were once delivered by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was a much more extreme Free Trader than I was—indeed I would say almost a rabid one. First of all, we are told that we must not increase our food by artificial means. What are tariffs? What are subsidies? What are all these for? They are all artificial means. Even when you give lime and basic slag to the farmers they are artificial manures. These are all artificial means. Then we are told that we must not increase our food to such an extent as to injure our customers across the seas. Well, that is extreme Free Trade doctrine.

I think that in the case of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister there is a reversal to type. He was brought up as a Free Trader, in the most formative and creative period of his existence. He was a stout Free Trader, and these are echoes from the speeches, which he heard in the Birmingham Town Hall in the days when he listened to that stoutest of Free Traders, John Bright, haranguing. He has gone back to that. It is the sort of thing that happens sometimes in my orchard. There is something that is called "bud pruning." You cut off all the bud branches that produce a particular apple and then you graft those little bud branches on to other apple trees in order to convert that stem to the production of a particular crop. But I will tell you what happens sometimes. Unless you are very careful—and I was warned about it—the old stock breaks out and if it does, it destroys the tree. You do not get either a Pippin or a Bramley. All that happens is that the tree is so utterly muddled, between the one and the other, that it produces only sour and desiccated crabs.

That is what has happened to the right hon. Gentleman. I am not a particular student of Adam Smith, but I think he never laid down the doctrine that Free Trade meant that you must not increase the production of your own country and develop its resources to the utmost. Richard Cobden never said so. Now that he has become a Free Trader, I would say to the right hon. Gentleman—let him take another course of study, and it will save him from speeches like the Kettering speech. Mr. Asquith was a very strong Free Trader. He was supposed to be a better Free Trader even than I am, but he never took that line. In 1913 he was at the head of proposals for a very drastic reform of the Land Laws with a view to increased production, and he was against dumping. But this is not Free Trade. The right hon. Gentleman says that we must not cut down our imports from these people to whom we sell goods.

Let us have a look at these great countries whose custom we must not cut down by increasing our food production. There is the Argentine. This is our total trade with them. In 1937 the imports were valued at £60,000,000, and our exports to them were £20,000,000. That is one of the countries, as to which we are told that we must not increase our food production too much, lest we deprive them of the means of paying for our exports to them. From Canada we imported £88,000,000 worth and we exported there £28,000,000 worth. From Denmark we imported £36,000,000 worth and we exported £17,000,000 worth. From the United States we imported £114,000,000 worth and we exported there £42,000,000 worth. But we are told that we must not increase our food production by £100,000,000, lest we should deprive these countries of the means of paying for our exports to them. I take all the table which I have here, including re-exports, and I find that there are only two countries in whose cases we export more than we import. One is Ireland and the other is South Africa. The other eight countries which are on this list, together send to Great Britain £284,000,000 worth more of goods than we sell to them.

What is the good then of talking as the right hon. Gentleman did? What do these countries do with that surplus? Everybody knows the operation of bills of exchange. We draw bills of exchange and there is a deduction for what we sell to these countries. What becomes of the balance? These bills of exchange are generally used to enable those countries to buy the manufactures of Germany and the United States. That may be good business, but do not let us say that we cannot increase our production of food in this country, even though we run the risk of famine in war time, lest we damage these customers who are buying from us. Our adverse balance of trade is getting worse. If our invisible exports were calculated on the same principle as that on which they were calculated until recently, our adverse balance would alarm everybody. We have been distending our invisible exports by every conceivable means. We have said "We can double this item, or we can treble that item, or we can add a few millions more on to the other item," and so we have gone on, distending our invisible exports by all kinds of tricks of accountancy, until, at last the toy balloon has burst in our hands and we find, with all this, last year an adverse balance of trade of £52,000,000. The present outlook is worse. This is a very big annual subscription that the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to pay to the Cobden Club.

I hope the Government will take the matter seriously in hand. I begged for years, one Government after another, to carry out a survey of our agricultural position. There have been surveys but only a few hundreds of pounds have been spent on surveying very large territories. Only the Government can undertake a survey on a large scale as to the position of arable, the position of grassland, the position of drainage. Arterial drainage is not the only drainage that matters. There is field drainage. What is the position of the buildings? They are tumbling down. What is the position of the housing? That has a good deal to do with keeping people on the land. What can we do for reclamation? What is achievable in the matter of reconditioning? We have two very great countries that are at the present moment arming against us. They are spending thousands of millions on armaments, but they are also spending corresponding sums on developing the resources of their soil, because they know that that is an essential part of defence. Why should we cringe before them in their worst and not emulate them in their best? I appeal to the Government to undertake, to undertake at once, and to undertake boldly, a measure that will restore agriculture and increase the invaluable yield of an industry which is so essential for the health and security of this land.

6.2 p.m.

Mr. Boothby

The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), who has just sat down, always speaks with the greatest authority on the question of war and the dangers of war, and I think the Committee will agree that he has delivered a very impressive warning to the Committee and the country on the potential dangers that lie ahead of us all. We must not forget, and we do not forget, that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs did see this country through by far the greatest crisis with which we have ever been faced, a crisis of a magnitude which we must all hope will never be repeated, and I think we were all impressed by the detailed disclosures which he made as to how near we were to disaster in 1917 and 1918. He also gave an analysis of the present position of agriculture and told us how acres were still going out of cultivation, how skilled workers had left the land, and how families were still leaving the land. I am afraid that that is broadly true, and it is a very unsatisfactory picture, but I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that I was a little disappointed that his speech contained no detailed, constructive proposals to remedy the situation.

Mr. Lloyd George

The hon. Member, who is an experienced Parliamentarian, will know that you cannot, in Committee of Supply, make any suggestions which involve legislation, and pretty well all of them except what I did suggest, and that was a survey, would have involved legislation. Therefore I could not enter into them.

Mr. Boothby

The right hon. Gentleman threw out one or two broad ideas, but I still think that, within the limits of order, he might have done more. He is a practical farmer. I have sat for 14 years for a constituency which is the leading beef producing constituency in this country, but I am not, like he is, a practical farmer, and I should have been very interested to have heard some more practical suggestions, which I think he could have got round the point of Order to make, as he is a far older and more adroit Parliamentarian than I. I think he might have given us some clearer idea of what is in his mind, for I certainly do not feel that a survey is adequate to the present situation. It would help, but it is no solution. In so far as the right hon. Gentleman did make a general constructive suggestion, it seemed to me to imply that the Government of this country must somehow accept responsibility for keeping the second-rate land of this country, or a very large part of it, permanently fertilised. With all due respect, I think that is the wrong end from which to tackle the problem. It would cost an immense amount of money, and I think that it would not be money well spent.

If you are going to spend money in order to help agriculture, I think that the way to do it is to spend it by subsidising, in one form or another, the consumer, especially the poorest class of the community, and thus stimulate the demand for agricultural products. I do not believe that, either by way of public works, land settlement, land development, land drainage, or any of the other things which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, you can get a direct return on your money which is big enough to justify the expenditure involved. If you can get reasonable agricultural prices, stable and remunerative prices, and increase the demand for home-grown food in this country, then people will go back to the land of their own accord, and you will not have to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in subsidising them to do so. I believe that the Government should concentrate at present on stimulating the demand for home-grown agricultural produce rather than by spending on—[An. HON. MEMBER: "HOW?"] I will come to that in a moment, but I would remind the hon. Member that I too am governed by the Rules of order. I feel that it is in this direction, rather than in taking direct steps to fertilise the land, that the more hopeful line of advance lies.

The agricultural problem is a triple one. There is the problem of production, the problem of price, and the problem, finally, of distribution. And I would like especially to say a word or two upon the subject of distribution before I sit down, because I was disappointed that the Minister never touched upon this question, which is of vital importance, and which is a problem that has never been faced by any Government in this country since the War. The right hon. Gentleman the present Minister of Health did a lot of valuable pioneer work in the direction of organising production, but he never attempted to organise the distributive side, and I hope that before the present Minister of Agriculture finishes his tenure of office he will concentrate on the distributive side.

I suggest that the Government are right in taking a balanced view of the whole agricultural problem, in striking a just balance, in weighing, commodity by commodity, what we ought to concentrate on, and in establishing an order of priority in these matters, all of which have a bearing on the war situation. I see, from the speech of Lord Feversham in the House of Lords, that the Government are not going to embark on any spectacular policy of artificial expansion, and I thought the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs was rather contemptuous of that; but there is a good deal in it, and for my part I still cannot see why everybody was so shocked by the Prime Minister's Kettering speech. I have read and re-read it, and while I do not say that it was a very stimulating or encouraging speech, it did not seem to me to be such an awful speech as all that. I thought he told the truth about the present situation very fairly. He did not go out of his way to announce or launch a new policy, but I do not think he excluded it, and I cannot see what all the fuss was about. It is after all true that we are to some extent dependent on international trade and that we have to take account of what foreigners buy from us and of what we hope to export to them.

I would now like to point out that one of the difficulties of agricultural production in this country at the moment—and it applies to agriculture all over the world—is the lack of capital. That is a fertiliser that is even more important than artificial manure, and it is very difficult to get adequate supplies of capital flowing into the agricultural industry of this country. I suggest that here is a line of attack for the Government to take up. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs mentioned credit facilities, and I think he implied that they were inadequate at present. I agree. I think that existing credit facilities are inadequate, and I think that, so far as 'good agriculturists are concerned, we might well approach what Mr. Keynes has described as zero interest for the farmers at this present time of emergency. I am sure that no farmer in this country, if he is a good farmer, ought to feel that he is not in a position to launch out on whatever schemes of improvement he considers necessary on his farm by reason of the fact that he cannot raise the money to do it.

Mr. Quibell

What for?

Mr. Boothby

For food production. That is what farming is generally for.

Mr. Quibell

If the hon. Member agrees with the Prime Minister that there should be very little increase in agricultural production, why worry about giving facilities for further production?

Mr. Boothby

I never said I thought there should be very little increase in agricultural production. All that I said was that I did not understand why people were so shocked by what the Prime Minister had said. But I never said, and I do not think, we ought not to increase agricultural production. I think we ought to increase it in every way possible, and I am suggesting one way now, by making credits available on the cheapest possible terms to the farmers of this country. I further submit that in respect of lime and basic slag the Government have already embarked upon a policy which is both hopeful and useful. I do not see that it does any good, in the consideration of this problem, which, after all, is a national rather than a party problem, to do nothing but pour cold water the whole time on the efforts of the Government with regard to agriculture, and to disparage everything that is done, because it gets nobody any farther; and the fact remains that no Government in the history of this country has ever passed so many Acts for the benefit of agriculture or, as I am sure the hon. Member will agree, has paid out so much hard cash to agriculture, as the present Government.

I believe, in spite of what the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said, that livestock remains the main source of farming in this country, and that we ought to concentrate on improving and on giving every possible encouragement to arable stock farming, which is and always has been the basis of British agriculture. That is really what I meant when I said that some selection was necessary, and some variation in the treatment of different commodities. I still maintain that the most monstrous waste of public money that has almost ever taken place in our history was the waste of public money on the sugar-beet subsidy. From the very start millions and millions were practically poured down the sink by successive Governments, and if we had only saved those millions and spent them in 20 other different directions, they would have done 20 times as much good to the agricultural industry. As it was, half the money went into the pockets of the Dutch company promoters, and—

Mr. De Chair

Does the hon. Member deny that we are now growing a third of our sugar in this country as a result of that policy?

Mr. Boothby

No. But I still think that is an absolute disaster from the point of view of Jamaica and of the Crown Colonies. I also think we ought to go easy, to say the least of it, where the question of pigs is concerned, because you have not got much transport in the time of war, and you have not got to bring your bacon all the way from America. I think the idea, which the right hon. Gentleman seemed to hint at, that we should practically shut down all imports of bacon from a country like Denmark is monstrous. They are one of our best customers and friends, and they are a magnificent nation, and why should we abandon them and concentrate upon an enormous expansion of pig production at their expense at present, when I submit that it is far more important for us to concentrate upon cereals and upon livestock, which are the two vital agricultural products in time of war?

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down mentioned also what I might describe as the social side of the industry, and there is no doubt that if you want to get workers back on the land, you must never leave that out of account. One of the reasons why there has been such a flow of agricultural workers from the countryside to the towns is that under modern conditions the amenities of the country are simply not good enough for the younger people. Anything the Government can do to improve them will redound enormously to the benefit of the agricultural industry as a whole. They have passed the Agricultural Wages Act, which will undoubtedly do good. But there are certain other aspects of the question which are equally important. There is the question of housing, for example. An Act was passed the other day making it a statutory obligation that you cannot recondition a house in Scotland without putting in a fixed bath, although everybody knows that the water supplies in the rural districts of Scotland are grossly inadequate, and that in many districts you could never fill a bath when it was put in. Why should you lay down silly clauses like that, which only make it more difficult to put cottages in the country in a proper condition? There is, again, the question of transport which is also closely bound up with the question of amenities in the country. This illustrates another of the difficulties in which we always find ourselves when discussing Departmental Estimates. We find that, whatever Department we may be talking about, questions concerning other Departments arise, and that they overlap each other. The association of the Ministry of Agriculture with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Transport is therefore bound to be very close indeed.

Whereupon, the GENTLEMAN USHER OF THE BLACK ROD being come with a Message, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair.

Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair.

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