WAR AGRICULTURAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEES (Hansard, 19 May 1944)

§ Mr. Edgar Granville (Eye)
The life of a Minister of Agriculture is far from peaceful ful and the right hon. Gentleman, having got the Second Reading of his Milk Bill must now justify the machinery of his war agriculture executive committees, which is the subject I desire to raise in this Adjournment Debate. I have never been opposed to these committees, which were set up by the Minister as a war measure; indeed, I realise that they are composed of hard working and patriotic men who give their time and service to further the war effort and I realise that they have done a particularly good job, and that may be the case in the East Suffolk area.
Recently, we had an Adjournment Debate in which we were discussing the annual expenditure of £8,250,000 for the British Overseas Airways Corporation. The budget for these war agricultural committees last year was nearly £12,000,000 and if the House will permit me I would like to refer to items of this expenditure as given in the Civil Appropriation Accounts for 1942. Vote 1, which concerns the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (War Services), shows that expenditure incurred by the 62 county war agricultural executive committees in England and Wales in 1942 amounted to £11,820,369, of which £2,110,500 went on administrative expenses of the committees, £2,984,697 on machinery operations, £3,140,455 on gang labour, and £2,381,680 on lands of which possession had been taken under the Defence Regulations. The Vote further states: Receipts by the Committees during the year were £4,746,514 (included in Subhead Z) and consisted mainly of £3,235,777 in respect of goods and services to farmers, and £1,379,164 in respect of lands in possession. The amount charged out to farmers in respect of goods supplied and services rendered in the half year ended 30th June, 1943, as shown by the returns furnished by 54 out of the 62 Committees, was approximately £2,170,000, and approximately £1,000,000 was recorded as due and outstanding at that date. The Committees are authorised to recover debts due to them from grants payable to farmers by the Ministry, and over £260,000 was so recovered in 1942, as well as a further £230,000 in the period 1st April, 1943, to 31St January, 1944, from grants for ploughing up grassland and for hill sheep. Recoveries amounting to £40,000 were also effected in 1942 544 from potato acreage payments made by the Ministry of Food, and £490,000 in the period 1st April, 1943, to 31st January, 1944, from acreage payments made from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Vote in respect of potatoes, wheat and rye. That is the only explanation, as far as I know, that the Minister of Agriculture has given to Parliament dealing with an expenditure of £12,000,000 last year which involves either the taxpayer or National Savings. Because of this I am asking him if he will request his officials to give us the figures for each county. He is possibly going to say that, if he does, one county will be able to make comparisons with another, and comparisons are odious, and it will be reflected in the war effort. But, surely, the tendency will be entirely the opposite and competition will be more likely to produce efficiency. In East Suffolk there has been for a considerable time a certain amount of criticism about waste, needless expenditure and the inefficiency in some of the undertakings of these Committees. Why not tell the story? Why not publish a balance sheet for each county? The criticisms may be unfounded and, if the figures show that the committees are doing their job, it would exonerate those of his own officials, who are doing a good job of work.
May I say a word about the future? One day we shall have to have a showdown on these war agricultural executive committees. It cannot be all cakes and ale and confidential talks between the Minister and various interests whom he consults in the industry, the story only being told at the end of the war. One day the right hon. Gentleman will have to tell the House whether these committees are to be continued after the war and, if so, is it the intention that they shall be continued upon a basis of nomination by his Ministry or election by shall we say the county or rural councils or some such authority? Agriculture cannot make its plans for the future unless it is told what are the Government's intentions with regard to these committees and whether it is going to continue them.
I am going to be bold enough to give the right hon. Gentleman some homely advice. In the years gone by he was one of the Members of what was called the "Conservative Y.M.C.A." and we had 545 great hopes of him. He is now occupying an important position, responsible for the production of food in the war effort. As he knows, he is not popular with some farmers and in some parts of the country. He himself said so on a previous occasion and told a story about it. I see that a rhyme has been made about him in the "Farmer and Stockbreeder," and I will quote part of it: Let the rising politician Elsewhere take his carpet bag, Seeking fields for his ambition Other than the Min. of Ag. Be his manners ne'er so charming, Howsoever blue his eyes, Why should he be offered farming As a consolation prize? To which has been added: So ye Yeomen—rise to hope; Only the soil can end your troubles. Ministerial soft soap Merely ends in blowing bubbles. The Minister must have achieved some fame if the rhymesters are taking him up. The right hon. Gentleman has had at various times tributes paid to him from all over the House for the difficult job he has done. We are told, and I believe his record shows it, that he is an able administrator. The advice I would give him is that it is necessary not only to administer a great Department efficiently but to take public opinion with him. I would urge him to take a leaf out of the book of Lord Wootton when he was Minister of Food. When we get out of the war and into the post-war programmes, the right hon. Gentleman may like other Ministers have to do some unpalatable and unpopular things, so I beg of him to cultivate fully the art of the political head of a great Department, and to remember that not only is it necessary to administer his Department with efficiency, but it is important to take public opinion, particularly agricultural opinion, with him in whatever he is trying to do.
In appealing to the right hon. Gentleman to publish these figures with regard to the expenditure of the county committees, and in asking him to try to indicate to the industry his intentions with regard to the future of these committees after the war, I would appeal to him to open the book of these committees and let his public relations department get to work and tell the public the story of what they have done to help in the programme of food production and whether it has been done efficiently or not. 546 Let him take us in the House of Commons into his confidence. If he will do that he will not only render a service to this great industry, but he will go a long way towards creating an interest for the future which will enable us to organise the industry to face the tremendous responsibilities which it will have to bear in the years immediately after the war.

§ The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson)
My hon. Friend asked me to supply him with figures about particular counties. I fully appreciate his desire to secure the greatest efficiency of the committees and, of course, it is one that I naturally share with him. The only point on which I differ from my hon. Friend is that I do not think his proposal would achieve the object that he has in view. It would serve rather to darken counsel, because the thing that has struck me most when going round the country and paying visits—I try to do it as often as I can—to the committees, is the infinite variety of circumstances in this country. Unless every single account of each committee were accompanied by a very long and detailed explanation of the particular circumstances in that particular county, it would be impossible, from the bare figures, to draw anything but, in my view, very wrong conclusions.
Counties, as my hon. Friend knows, vary to-day. They varied still more when the war broke out. Some areas were almost wholly grass. Other areas were predominantly arable. Some counties consisted of large farms, others consisted of small. In some cases you had farmers who not only had the knowledge and experience, but also the equipment, to come to the public's assistance by themselves supervising, helping and in some cases cultivating land which gave the committee anxiety. In other cases, the committees had to undertake all that work themselves. Some committees had great drainage problems to overcome. Others had comparatively none. Some committees were fortunate in requiring comparatively small amounts of additional labour. Other committees were faced with the problem,. especially in the earlier days, of finding labour in the highways and byways and we had to appeal to the Minister of Labour to let us have labour from wherever we could get it.
It was labour of all sorts, skilled and unskilled. Often the men had formed for 547 years the hard core of unemployment and perhaps, through no fault of their own, were not as able-bodied as their fellows. Two of them might do as much work together in a day as could be done by one ordinary able-bodied man. Such was the peril in which this country stood and such were the fears that we then entertained about the possibility of starvation, losses from U-boats, demands on our very limited tonnage for military operations, that I instructed the committees to go all out, to use whatever methods they could at whatever the expense. Very often half a crop was better than nothing. In those circumstances, it would obviously be grossly unfair to publish the returns of a county like that and to let them be compared possibly with returns from an adjoining county which did not have to cope with that sort of difficulty.
My hon. Friend was very generous in the tributes he paid to the work of the volunteers, farmers who have come forward and devoted many hours, and often many days, a week to this work of running the executive committees and the district committees. I am sure that he would agree with me on reflection, that it would be an ill reward for that work to publish naked figures which might have the result—in my view would certainly have the result—of causing public controversy and which would probably hold up members of one particular committee to public criticism because, on the face of it, their figures were not as favourable as others. They would, naturally, be tempted to divert their attention from the task which still lies before them, of obtaining as high a production as possible over the next four years, to the task of defending themselves in public or in private, and that really would not be to the public interest in my view. The day will come, no doubt, when a full account can be written, and having regard to all the circumstances, I do not think we need have any fear then of the verdict of history. Meantime this House has a Public Accounts Committee and has set up a Select Committee on National Expenditure, who are fully entitled to investigate, and indeed have exercised their right to investigate, the accounts of my war agricultural committees. I think it is fair to 548 say that they have come to the same conclusion that I have; they have agreed that, for the moment at all events, these accounts should not be published in detail so far as the counties are concerned.
My hon. Friend asked me if I could say anything about the future of the war agricultural committees themselves. It is obviously one of the points we are discussing with the various sections of the industry, and I shall have—the Government at all events will have—in due course to come down to this House and ask for approval of the legislation we shall eventually have to bring in to provide both for the termination of the various Regulations under which we act at present, and for the setting up of whatever bodies may finally be decided upon as the appropriate bodies to succeed the county war agricultural committees. We are not losing any avoidable time, but quite clearly I do not think on reflection that the hon. Member can expect me, on a Motion of this kind, to enter on a prediction of what the set-up of such bodies will be, or, still more difficult, of the date of the termination of the emergency, or the date when they will have to be set up.

§ Mr. Granville
I would like the Minister to tell us whether, in making his postwar plans, those who are responsible in the counties will—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Charles Williams)
The right hon. Gentleman was very nearly out of Order in referring to possible legislation just now. We may not discuss on the Adjournment anything requiring legislation, and the Minister would not be able to answer a question of that kind.

§ Mr. Granville
While respecting your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, may I submit that I am asking the Minister if he can indicate whether, in making post-war plans which may not require legislation, the counties will be told in time whether these committees are to be continued?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is getting much too close to legislation.