§ Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 69.
§ [Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend Section twenty-eight of the Bacon Industry Act, 1938, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament, and into the Exchequer, of such sums as may become so payable by virtue of the following retrospective amendments of that Section, that is to say, amendments—
In this Resolution, the expression 'the ascertained lard price for the month' means a price (calculated to the nearest shilling per hundredweight, any odd sixpence per hundredweight being disregarded) representing the average of the prices at which during the month such descriptions of lard as are specified in regulations were sold by wholesale on such markets in Great Britain as are so specified."—(King's Recommendation signified.)—[Sir R. Dorman-Smith.]
§ 8.31 p.m.
§ The Minister of Agriculture (Major Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith)I am moving this Resolution on behalf of my right hon. and gallant Friend the Financial Secretary 1659 to the Treasury. It provides the necessary financial authority for payments by and receipt to the Exchequer in respect of proposals embodied in the Bacon Industry (Amendment) Bill, which received a Second reading in this House on 9th February. The House will not expect me to go into the detailed proposals because we had them before us so recently. The first three paragraphs of the Resolution deal with the lard price insurance scheme, which is the main feature of the Bill. It may be well to remind the Committee that under the principal Act the curers have been insulated for three years against movements in the prices of bacon in order that they may be able to pay pig producers the fixed prices provided for in the Act. The Committee will be aware that certain notional prices have been settled and that the curers received money equal to any fall in those prices. If bacon prices rose, they paid to the Exchequer the amount of the rise.
In the scheme, although bacon itself was insulated, the offals were not, and lard, next to bacon, forms one of the most important products which is manufactured from the pig. There has, unfortunately from the curers' point of view, been a tremendous fall in the price of lard. During last year there was a sustained fall, and the price is now about 20s. per cwt. below that which was ruling when the structure of the Bacon Industry Act was settled. It is proposed, therefore, to bring lard into the shelter of this insulation plan, and just as we fixed a notional price for bacon, so a notional price will be fixed for lard, tapering in the same way as the bacon prices tapered. The price will start off as fixed at 65s. per cwt. for lard, which is the same as it has been for the last 16 years. Broadly speaking, the purpose of this Resolution is that for every shilling by which the ascertained price of lard falls below the notional price, the curers will get one penny more from the Exchequer per cwt. of bacon. For every shilling by which the ascertained price of lard rises above the notional price, the bacon price will be diminished by one penny.
With regard to paragraph (d), I invite the Committee to look at the Amendment which appears on the Order Paper. It seeks to re-define the ascertained bacon price which appears in Sub-section (4) of Section 28 of the principal Act. It has 1660 been found on re-examination of the Act that there are in the principal Act, certain loopholes which might operate to the disadvantage of the Exchequer. It is proposed there to define the expression "ascertained bacon prices," and the regulations may provide for the ascertainment of the average market value to curers of tank-cured green Wiltshire bacon made from pigs produced in Great Britain, so that it may give to the Development Board a discretion to ignore what we may describe as "evasive" sales. The last paragraph provides the cover for any small financial changes which may be the result of a proposal in Clause 1 to allow curers to weigh their bacon in bulk and thus to facilitate their claims under the principal Act. Those are the main points in the Resolution and I hope that I have given a sufficient explanation of it for hon. Members opposite.
§ 8.36 p.m.
§ Mr. A. V. AlexanderI do not need to keep the Committee more than a moment or two, because under the procedure now in operation, by which the Second Reading of a Bill is taken first and the Financial Resolution follows it, I am afraid that we have even less power than we had before to get any effective Amendment introduced into the Financial Resolution. [Interruption.] Well, that is how it seems to me. In this case we had a Debate on Second Reading in which we had no offer from the Government to introduce even wider amending legislation than that which is in the Bill, and I do not see that we can effectively move an Amendment—I think the Chairman will agree upon this—which is not in accordance with the Title and purposes of the Bill. That is my real difficulty to-night. I do not think that the amending Bill for which this makes the monetary provision goes far enough. We quite see that it is essential to pass this legislation, at least in order to meet the lard situation, following upon the American Agreement, but in view of the serious administrative difficulties which have arisen and which affect merchants, some of us think that the Minister, especially as he has come new to that office and is therefore, perhaps, unprejudiced by the action of his predecessors, might have given us a better show.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Resolution to be reported upon Thursday.