HC Deb 10 June 1943 vol 390 cc907-17

Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."

Mr. Sexton

I was referring to the distribution of the supplies of fruit that are in the country at present. I am not going to talk about a long-term policy except to suggest that more home fruit could be provided by the use of railway embankments and other waste land. The Forestry Commissioners have issued a Report, which I have not seen yet, so I do not know whether they recommend the planting of fruit trees. The essential problem is that the industrial areas of the North, districts with unkind climates, shall have a fair share of the fruit that is required. The fruit that is coming from North Africa at present could, I think, be increased. Instead of importing wines, I think the country would be better served if more fresh fruit were brought in.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden (Doncaster)

My hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth (Mr. R. J. Taylor) has raised a most acute problem which is well known to the Minister, and I am certain that the chief officers of his Department have been doing their best to examine it and to apply remedies in particular areas where evidence has been submitted to them, but when my hon. Friend raises the question of geographical areas and asks whether unrationed foods are related on any particular basis at all, he is asking the Minister for evidence which only wholesale greengrocers and distributors of food can possibly provide. Unless this issue is seriously tackled in the next month or two, I feel that even Lord Woolton is likely to lose some measure of his high reputation for equity and fair distribution. There is a reason for it, and a definite and known origin. It is simply that, in regard to the tasty bits, commodities such as meat by-products and similar provisions, which should be normally available on an equitable basis throughout the country, there is no real Order laid down by the Ministry which equates the right of supply to the mouths that have to be fed. I want the Minister to look into these various Orders. I believe they go back to what the grocer himself was able to obtain in 1939. Owing to industrial development and migration of various kinds, there have been intense changes which have affected the numbers of mouths to be fed by particular grocers. For instance, a grocer may have had an increase of, say, 50 per cent. in the number of registered customers over the last two years, but it does not necessarily follow that he is receiving from the wholesaler 50 per cent. more of the tasty bits which are really needed to augment the rationed commodities to which the consumer is entitled under the rationing scheme. So I appeal to the Minister to re-examine fundamental causes and see whether he cannot tell the wholesalers that some new scheme of distribution is necessary in the relationship between the wholesaler and the retailer and the number of mouths to be fed in any given area.

I think we ought to be quite frank about the inadequate supply of tomatoes in certain areas. A new language is springing up in the market already. The trouble does not begin with the retailer. He is a most unfortunate person. When he goes to market he finds that commodities are being exchanged one for the other. Tomatoes are bought by peas. It is a kind of dual currency. The greengrocer goes to the wholesaler and asks if he can have six boxes of tomatoes. There may be 300 boxes, and he may have plenty of money and may be an old registered customer of the wholesaler, and he may have plenty of consumers who want a supply, but the wholesaler answers him right away, "I am selling peas." He does not make it a condition of sale. He simply says, "I am selling peas." The poor retailer is only told that if he is disposed to purchase four or five sacks of peas which he cannot possibly sell at 1s. a lb., and which incidentally are not controlled, at a fantastic price he may get an allocation of a few boxes of tomatoes. I seriously ask the Minister to see that this kind of foul practice is exterminated this season. It obtained last year and the year before. In a few weeks he will find a strawberry ramp taking place. The poor retailer will go to the wholesale market and, when he asks for a few baskets of strawberries at the controlled price, the wholesaler will say, "I am sorry, but I am selling cherries," and 12 baskets of cherries may give him a title to six baskets of strawberries. Does the House wonder that the retailer introduces under-the-counter practices and favouritism of a distasteful kind, which is the cause of complaints throughout the land? There is no doubt that it can be exterminated if the Minister will act properly.

With regard to oranges, I think the Minister is well aware of what is happening. We do not complain that there is inequitable distribution in the main. Most retailers apply themselves to carrying out the Minister's wishes. There are some retailers who do not sell any of their oranges to children under five. I would say of one retailer I know that the children he supplies have beards or have been shaving for years. When mothers go to buy oranges from this retailer he does not apply under-the-counter methods; he says that they are for registered customers, but that simply means a few of his favourite friends, none of whom have children. I admire the next door greengrocer by contrast. He acts on the principle which the Minister would approve and he sees that the oranges are put on show. Any mother who goes along with a ration card for a child under five to that greengrocer and many hundreds like him can get them on the principle of first come first served. I appeal to the Minister to make further representations to his enforcement officers carefully to watch these practices because there are disquieting features and they are causing grievances. I believe that a word in season or a note sent out by the Minister on some of the points raised in the Debate would remove the risk of a lot of trouble coming to him in the next few months because of maldistribution of the tasty bits which of necessity our people must still scramble for.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Mr. Mabane)

The hon. Member for North Battersea (Mr. Douglas) has raised a topic that is undoubtedly of general interest. I am sure, however, that neither he nor other hon. Gentlemen who have spoken would wish, nor has it been their intention, to create an unnecessary atmosphere of suspicion. The hon. Gentleman who opened the Debate said that he had many cases of which he had specific knowledge. May I ask him whether he will give me precise details? He has referred particularly to one case of the sale of oranges which, if the facts are as he stated them, was certainly a breach of the instructions of the Department. He said he knew the shop. I ask him to give me the particulars. I was a little concerned lest his speech should be interpreted as an attack upon the traders in food. I feel certain that no hon. Member would be prepared to say that in his constituency on the whole the traders are not doing their best to carry out a difficult job with fairness and efficiency. I do not think that even the hon. Gentleman who opened the Debate would be inclined to make that accusation against the traders in his own constituency. I was glad to hear the words of the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Leslie) who has an expert knowledge of the distributive trades, putting in a plea for those trades on the very real ground that they are severely handicapped not alone by shortages of staff but by reason of those very controls that have been imposed upon them. Therefore, I hope that we shall agree that if certain food trades are employing improper or unfair practices they are a very small proportion of the total. It would be a bad thing if it went out as the result of this Debate that the House had any doubts as to the loyalty or patriotism of the many people engaged in the food trades.

I should like to deal as far as I can with some of the points that have been raised. The hon. Member for North Battersea and an hon. Gentleman representing a constituency in the North-East raised the question of soft fruit. Let us face fairly this matter of soft fruit. Let us recognise that the supply is extremely small and that the Department, in its endeavour to secure that that fruit is distributed as fairly as possible, has decided that the most fair way in which it can secure distribution is by converting it into jam.

Mrs. Hardie (Glasgow, Springburn)

When you are doing that with the fruit, will you set a standard for the jam and see that some fruit is put into it?

Mr. Mabane

I hope the hon. Lady does not mean to suggest that the fruit is not in the jam?

Mrs. Hardie

I do.

Mr. Mabane

I am glad that the hon. Lady said that definitely, because I want to say that the fruit is in the jam. We import a great deal of fruit pulp. We cannot make the supply we need for the ration if we use fruit alone as grown in this country. Therefore we import a great deal of fruit pulp. The hon. Lady knows far better than I do that if you make jam of fruit pulp plus fruit, you do not get as good a looking jam or, indeed, as good a tasting jam as if you make it of fruit alone.

Mrs. Hardie

The point is that it is watered down, and gelatine is put in to stiffen it. I know, because I am a practical person. If you send the fruit to a jam manufacturer they spoil it in this way. I would not say that there is no fruit in jam, for that would be an exaggeration.

Mr. Mabane

The hon. Lady has rather diverted me from my point. We must face the fact that there is very little soft fruit and that what there is we want mainly for jam. Those who complain that soft fruit is not to be found in the shops should persuade people that it is only to be expected that there will be virtually none in the shops. I have figures which enable me to give the House the total amount of the more important soft fruits available per head of the population. These figures are the total crop before pre-emption. The figures are: Strawberries, half a pound per head per annum; gooseberries, half a pound per head; raspberries, half a pound per head; blackcurrants, half a pound per head; red and white currants, 2 ozs. per head; loganberries and blackberries 2 ozs. per head. We want to get as much of that fruit into jam as we can so that it is no use complaining of the shortage of fresh fruit in the shops.

Mr. E. Walkden

Is there any prohibition on caterers that they shall get no more than their fair share, or will favouritism be permitted?

Mr. Mabane

I am trying to make the point that there is virtually no soft fruit available for the general body of the population. The catering trade is a different question which I will refer to later.

Tomatoes was another important matter raised. Earlier in the day I met a deputation of Members of Parliament on this subject. A curious thing happened. I was asked yesterday afternoon to meet certain Members and the arrangement was made to meet at noon to-day. Later some other Members asked me to meet them and I told them that the meet-ting was at noon. When I got to the Department I found that the two sets of Members were representing two different points of view—one that of the growers who were complaining of the restrictions placed on their right to sell and the other that of the North-East part of the country complaining that the limitations upon the growers were so slight that the North-East area got too few tomatoes. I am sure that these two deputations were able to appreciate some of the difficulties of the Ministry of Food. I was able to show that we do impose a reasonable restriction on growers and that we set out to secure as far as is humanly possible an even distribution of tomatoes throughout the country. Last year the amount of tomatoes available worked out at 4¼ lbs. per head and in the North-Eastem area it was 3.85 lbs.

Hon. Members must realise that willy nilly there is a certain advantage to those who live near the growing areas. Certain of the growers have retail licences to sell direct to the public. We restrict those licences, and not unnaturally the growers are apt to complain. The very fact that these retail licences exist means that there is a tendency for those in the growing areas to get rather more, but we shall do our best to secure that so far as is humanly possible the amount distributed over the country is even and that those in the North-East do not merely get tomatoes during the glut period. I think that in general we can say that although last year was the first year in which the tomato distribution scheme has been operated and that it was the first time that anywhere in the world an attempt had been made to control a highly perishable crop of such a large amount, the scheme worked reasonably well. In November last year we began going round the country to learn from the experience of growers, primary and secondary wholesalers and retailers what had gone wrong and what we might put right. I do not want to anticipate, particularly in view of the warning of the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Taylor), but I assure the House that we want to do all we can, and I think we shall succeed, to secure that the distribution scheme will be even better than it was last year.

The hon. Member for North Battersea referred to what he called inequalities in the distribution of rationed goods. He complained that some people got pork all the time and that some people never got good cuts of fish. The House must realise that from time to time the meat position has its difficulties and that it is better to have pork than to have no meat at all. I was interested to hear Mr. Paul Winterton, after a year in Russia, broadcast the other day that the rations in this country would appear to the Russians as a series of banquets. In regard to fish, the amount of prime fish being caught is very small; it is only 1 per cent. of the total. Let no one suppose that somewhere in this country there are large numbers of people feeding themselves every day on soles, turbot and brill. There are not. Our main supply of fish now is cod, and for purposes of transport ecnomy it is filleted at the ports. I think that hon. Members will agree—indeed, we were pressed to induce the port wholesalers to fillet—that we should not go back on our instructions and have the fish sent whole, although I know that cod fillets do not look as good as cod steaks or the whole fish. Let us recognise that we are doing pretty well if we get fish at all. What the hon. Gentleman said is entirely in line wish the views of the Minister of Food when he said that variety in the diet is of great value apart from the calorie or vitamin content. I can assure the House that the object of the Department has been to introduce variety wherever possible. He quoted what Mrs. Roosevelt said. Remember that Mrs. Roosevelt was acting as a very good friend to this country. There are perhaps those in the United States of America who do not fully realise some of the deprivations we have had to suffer, but——

Mr. Douglas

The hon. Member must not suggest that I was casting any aspersion upon Mrs. Roosevelt.

Mr. Mabane

The hon. Member must let me complete my sentence. I was saying that some people in the United States are not perhaps fully aware of the deprivations we have had to put up with, but I am certain the Administration there is, and I think Mrs. Roosevelt's words were intended to, and perhaps did secure, a greater degree of willing consent throughout the United States to the great help that is being given to us at the expense of citizens of the United States. We were very glad to see that Mrs. Roosevelt thought fit and proper to draw the attention of the inhabitants of her country to the very real need we had of all the generous help they were giving to us. The hon. Gentleman hoped that some relaxation could be obtained. If he will suggest any relaxations that we could obtain I shall be very glad to know them. He remarked upon the statement of the Prime Minister that our shipping position seemed likely to improve, but nowadays it is not merely a matter of shipping but a matter of food production. After four years of war it is not unnatural that in some producing areas there is not the abundance of food that there was four years ago, but I do assure him that wherever we can see a chance of importing foods that will lend variety to diet and in such a form that they can be distributed, I hope through the points system, we shall do it.

I should like to say a word about the points system. After all, the points system has been successful and has been a way of bringing to the generality of people some of those tasty bits of which my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster spoke. But there are other things that lie outside the points system and lie outside the general rationing system. These, as I pointed out in the Debate upon the Estimates, are mainly perishable commodities, such as soft fruits and tomatoes. There are other tasty bits to which the hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden) has often referred—poultry, meat offals, rabbits, game, and so on. I must emphasise that the amount, calculated per head of the population, of these things is extrem[...]ly small. The House has always recognised the extreme difficulty of bringing into any rationing system those highly perishable commodities. All I can say is that work in the Department has never ceased on methods to secure that, if at all possible, these tasty bits shall be brought as evenly as possible to the consumers' tables.

In conclusion, I should like to say a word or two about the general background of this Debate. After all, if there is anything in what the hon. Member for North Battersea has been saying it is that he desires a further degree of control. It is very evident that the further we press this matter of control the greater the difficulties we meet. It needs far more manpower in administration, it needs far more man-power and effort in enforcement, the nearer you get to the edge of the rationing procedure. The House ought to consider carefully what it wants. It has recently shown some reluctance to accept the views of Departments that the flood of Orders is really necessary. We have heard a lot about Statutory Rules and Orders, and I must say that the Ministry of Food is no more agreeable to a flood of Orders than this House, but we cannot carry control further unless we make more Orders. And when we make the Orders let no one imagine we thereby achieve the object at once. What we do is to create offences and often the Orders are extremely difficult to enforce, and we create further problems for those for whom the hon. Member for Sedgefield spoke, the shops. We also create, perhaps, an atmosphere of suspicion.

Let me give a simple example. It was suggested yesterday that it was owing to the machinations of the Ministry of Food that tomatoes had disappeared from the shops. We could have tomatoes, strawberries, eggs in the shop windows and on sale to-day by one simple process, by removing control—and having tomatoes at, what, 6s., or 7s. a lb., and eggs at, what, 1s. 6d. or 1s. 9d. each? What we do by control is to bring the prices of these commodities, which admittedly are in short supply, within the purchasing range of practically the whole population. Thereby we enormously expand the demand, and is it small wonder then that these things are not so readily available for purchase? I feel that the food laws of this country are being obeyed at present because they are reasonable. I was much struck by something which the horn Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) told me the other day. He has recently been in many many countries/ east and west, and he said, "This is the only country in which rationing works; this is the only country in which, if you go to the ordinary man or woman in the street and say, 'Where do I get this on the black market?' they do not know what you are talking about, or know where the black market is."

Therefore, we may take credit to ourselves that the food laws are being observed because they are reasonable. If we were to try to create an economic structure that was perfect, complete and logical we might bring the whole of the food rationing procedure into disrepute, because we should make it impossible of enforcement. We direct our enforcement officers on to the real black market offenders. We have not got all that many officers, and we do not want to take a further toll of man-power, and we do not want them to chase after offences that are either minor or not really black market offences. Nevertheless, I do hope there will go out from this Debate a balanced opinion, shall I say, an opinion such as is represented by the hon. Member for North Battersea, who desires that all shall do their best to play fairly; and in this war we have to rely a lot on what people do of their own volition and not what they will do because the law says they must. I hope, too, that we shall get out into the country the point of view of the hon. Member for Sedgefield, and that is that we in this House do recognise the difficulties that face the food distributive trades. We know that many temporary workers in that trade have never worked in a food shop before and are doing a piece of work of great difficulty with considerable skill, and we do not wish them to feel that this House regards them as people who are doing their best to give unfair preferences to this person or to that. When hon. Members have specific cases I ask them to let us know of them, so that we may follow them up. As to tipping nobody has given us a specific case to work on. Let us have the cases, and then I am sure we shall have the proper people watched, and those who, as is the case with the vast majority of people, are playing the game will feel quite happy that this House has full sympathy with them.

Mrs. Beatrice Wright (Bodmin)

I should like to put a point in connection with the distribution of oranges. As it is common knowledge that they are vitally important to young children, and particularly to infants, would it not be possible to have oranges distributed from the food offices rather than from the shops? At the food offices they have the records of young people and could see that those for whom the oranges were intended in fact got them.

Mr. Mabane

We have to do our best to work with the food trade. There are proper channels of distribution, and if we interfere the result may be that we shall not get anything like as good distribution. I think we can rely on it that the majority of traders do play the game, and I think the proper way is to maintain the existing channels of distribution. If there are improper practices let them be brought to our notice.