AGRICULTURE (NATIONAL ADVISORY SERVICE) (Hansard, 22 October 1946)

§ Major Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)
The subject which I wish to raise tonight is one which is not easily associable with foreign affairs, except that it does perhaps introduce to our agriculture, something which is extremely foreign to most of those who work in it. It brings to farmers a matter which is foreign to them unless they are first convinced that the qualifications of those who are bringing it are adequate and that there is some useful purpose to be served by its being brought. I refer to the National Advisory Service for Agriculture which came into operation on 1st October.
It is, I think, generally agreed that there is a place, and a time, for an agricultural advisory service in this country, but we have to ask ourselves whether this is really quite the right moment to introduce it. I must apologise for the fact that, although I originally tried to speak on this subject before the Summer Recess, I was most unfortunately unable to find an opportunity of raising it until tonight. But even now that the scheme is in operation, I still believe that there is time to prevent one great mistake being made. I have been looking into the figures of this new Service, and I find that we are spending £4,861,000 a year on the new county executive committees and the National Advisory Service for Agriculture. Of that figure, £1,500,000 is the estimate which the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture has given in respect of this new service. I am certain that there is no farmer, and no land worker, who would reject the offer of so much money to be spent on his industry, but they would, I think, be very anxious that the money should be spent wisely and at the right moment. It seems to me that we should consider the number of people involved. As the Minister said 1624 last week, there are 10,000 people employed in the agricultural executive committees, and we are to add another 1,500 to that figure for the National Advisory Service. We know that there is a shortage of men on the land, and we on this side of the House are not at all satisfied that the problem is being properly tackled. Yet at the same time we have the introduction of these 1,500 people in the Advisory Service.
It is, I think, important that we should try to work out in our minds exactly what the purpose of this new service is to be. According to Professor Scott-Watson, in a statement made to the Press on 30th July, the aim of the National Advisory Service was to enable every farmer and grower -to obtain an answer to any conundrum about the growing of food. I have been thinking considerably about the way in which advice can best be offered, and the way in which it is most likely to be acceptable. An important little book was written not very long ago by Mr. J. P. Maxton, who has honourable associations with this House through his late brother. In that book, entitled "The Control of Husbandry," he made one statement which is particularly important in the light of the establishment of this service. He said: The indirect influence was more extensive, and perhaps more effective, than the direct, the more so in maintaining good relations between the individual fanner and the committee. He was referring to the war agricultural executive committees. A farmer may willingly and with extremely good grace accept advice which carries with it a permit for a scarce commodity or the hope of modification of a cultivation order. It does not necessarily follow that he will even seek advice, or that he will not resent it when offered, if he can buy what, where and when he likes. Even if he is anxious to get advice, he will not necesssarily seek it from the war agricultural executive committees if the latter do not control the supply of essential goods, or have not the authority to issue individual orders. I think that there is a great deal of truth in that suggestion. There is a great shortage of many of the commodities which farmers need to carry on for the production of livestock and food in this country. At the same time, we have to realise that this new service is running a very great danger from the very outset in completely ignoring the fact that the indirect method is sometimes the best method of 1625 approach. There is one error which is being made right from the beginning, and that, I think, is in appointing one man as the chief executive officer and the chief advisory officer. I am in agreement, as I think are many of my hon. Friends, that in this war the agricultural committees have done a good job of work and although there are, of course, misfits, the chief executive officers have done good service. But can they be expected to produce the same results with the new Advisory Service if they are to be responsible for the advisory side? It is like trying to combine the rôle of the sergeant-major and welfare officer in one man.
Professor Scott-Watson has said that one of the changes involved in the setting-up of this new service, is that there must be more specialists. Can we say that the executive officers are really specialists? I am not at all sure. Some are very good, while some are not so good. I believe that we are putting a very great strain upon them if we expect them to be the link between the Minister, the central organisation of the service and the actual farmer himself. On the executive officer is going to depend the working of the service, and I do not think the best way is to combine the two jobs of advising and executing. The advisory officer goes round and suggests to a farmer that he might do this or that, and the farmer ignores that advice. What is to happen? Is the executive officer to be responsible for that advice? If he is, how can he, a few weeks later, "dress down" the farmer for not having taken it? I sincerely suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that this matter does want reconsidering because, otherwise, we are going to destroy a lot of the good work done by the executive committees and may damage the reputation which they have built up by putting on them a job for which they are not suited.
This service, I understand, is to be divided into provinces. Can the Parliamentary Secretary tell us how many provinces there are to be? There has been a certain amount in "The Times" today about the various areas, and there seems to be a slight discrepancy between Professor Scott-Watson and Dr. Taylor. Professor Scott-Watson gives three definite counties, and six possible ones for the setting up of experimental farms and Dr. Taylor gives five experimental 1626 stations. Are the stations to be set up, and given nine provinces or five provinces? I would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would clear that up. As I understand, county executive committees have been graded in the Ministry according to whether their areas are classified as horticultural or arable or dairy. Officers of these committees have been chosen to conform to the particular grade in which each area has been put. I wonder whether the policy with the experiment farms is to make a farm of each type and put it in a province which is of the same type. If the provinces are of a small number, it seems there will be some provinces with many different types. I should very much like to know the answer tonight to the question, whether the experimental farm set up in any province is to be of one type; and is it to be of a type most characteristic of the province it is in or is this to be done from a national point of view, having one type of a certain farm here, and another type there. If advice is to be given, it should be readily available otherwise it serves little purpose. If the experimental farms are to serve their purpose, it seems to me the correct type should be available for those who are to give the advice to the farmers.
I do not want to take too long because there may be other Members who want to speak but there are one or two further points I wish to raise. The first is about the universities' part in the advisory service. Reading the Loveday Report on higher agricultural education published in January this year (Command 6728), we find in page 16, paragraph 28, this sentence: If as we hope administrative farms and experimental centres in husbandry are provided as part of the advisory services the universities should play an important role. Earlier in the report the proper function is stated as education rather than advice. Every Member who has any connection with agriculture will be ready to agree on the part the universities have played from an educational and advisory point of view in the past. But I am not at all clear from the Minister's statements, since the setting up of these committees, what part the universities are to play in the future. As I understand it, a certain number of the selected officers are to continue with the universities for the moment. But what is to happen in the meantime to 1627 the work which is going on in the universities? The former two-year course for students should be carried on from the new farms when they are instituted. The diploma course has been abolished and the degree course is to take five years. Reading the Loveday Report with the information published about the National Advisory Services, one finds it difficult to fit them together. Are the universities to be completely divorced from the training centres of the advisory services? Or is the happy liaison now existing to continue? In the meantime, while these new institutes are being set up, and the new experimental farms are being started, is research to go on at universities, or are we to have a hiatus? I think all these questions are very important.
There is one other point of great importance. Regarding the selection of candidates, I understand that 3,500 people applied to enter this service, and, of that number, 1,500 have been selected. As far as I can make out, there are three regular grades of classification for these candidates, and a fourth grade is known as probationary. Grade 1 is to be paid £810 a year; grade 2, £660 a year; grade 3, £350 a year; and the probationary grade, £275 a year. One point immediately occurs to me. If the chief executive officer of the agricultural executive committee is to combine also the role of chief advisory officer, is he to be paid twice over? Is he to be paid under both heads? If not, it seems to me that we are going back to the old business which anyone who has been in the Army knows too well; if the Treasury can make one man do two jobs, for the same salary, it is only too glad. It seems to me grossly unfair to expect the chief executive officer of the new county executive committees to carry out his job in the executive role, and 1o expect him, without addition to his salary, to carry out the role of chief advisory officer as well. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary tonight will be able to give an answer on that point. I would also like to ask how many of the 2,000 rejected candidates were ex-Service men, many of whom had been prisoners of war, and who in many cases were Bachelors of Science, and were rejected simply and solely because they were not considered up to date. There are two cases of which I know. I have a feeling that there may be more. It seems grossly unfair to 1628 these men, who during the war did what they could for their country, that they should now be asked why they did not take the instructional course during the period in which they were prisoners of war. If such questions were asked by the tribunal, it seems wrong to me.
There is another question which arises on this matter. There have been mistakes, and I can quite understand that mistakes would be made, in the selection. But as I understand it, the only way the selection can be rectified at the moment is by waiting for a promotion board. It seems to me that may take a long time. If this service is coming into operation as quickly as it should, then perhaps we may expect the promotion board very soon; but I would like to hear how often these boards are to meet, and what prospects there are of the early mistakes which have been made, being rectified before people are so discouraged that they no longer consider this as possible employment for them. I believe that this advisory service, if applied in the right way, can be a great service; but I suggest again to the Parliamentary Secretary, as I did at the outset, that it is often by indirect methods, rather than by direct approach, that the advice will be made most welcome; and I hope this will be the spirit of this new service.

§ Mr. Swingler (Stafford)
I want to be very brief. I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) for raising this subject. There is one point on which I would like the views of the Parliamentary Secretary tonight, and that is in connection with the development of farm institutes. One of the things which the inauguration of this service does is to take away the responsibility for general advisory work from local education authorities. In some countries—not very many—there have been developed farm institutes. There are, I believe, 18 farm institutes in the country at the moment, 15 of which are functioning with educational and advisory work. They have done very considerable and I think very remarkable work in the development of agricultural education and in advisory service to the farming community. The institutes, where they have been successfully developed, have established strong links with the farming community as a whole, 1629 and the community has a great deal of confidence in them. They have the advantage that they are independent of the county agricultural committees, and that they combine agricultural theory and practice under the local education authorities. I feel that in the new development of the National Advisory Service—and the point has been brought out before—there is a danger of bureaucracy. In linking it directly with the county agricultural committees there may be caused a suspicion among the farming community about it, some may be hostile to it, and may even regard it as a set of snoopers. I hope the new advisory service is not going to mean a discouragement in the development of these farm institutes which have developed a good spirit of agricultural education, and I hope that where they are doing valuable work, special pains are going to be taken to establish good relations between this service and the staffs of the institutes, because I know that among those staffs there is a good deal of concern about whether a great many of the functions which they have been performing are to be taken away.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture (Mr. Collick)
I am indebted to the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) for raising this most interesting subject, and my one regret is that in the few minutes which have been left to me it will be almost impossible to reply to the perfectly proper points which he and the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Swingler) have raised. I thought, when the hon. and gallant Member for Ely made his first point, that he was rather objecting to the new Advisory Service, but he will appreciate, I am sure, that it is too late in the day now to do that. I think we want to get this quite clear, that the outstanding purpose of this new service, which became operative on 1st October, is to get a complete coordination of the whole agricultural advisory work in the country. Everybody knows the complaints that were made under the old method before the war, that the advisory services were very neglected in some counties, and rather advanced in others. The one purpose behind this new co-ordinating scheme is to improve the whole of advisory work right through the 1630 country, and get it more advanced than it was under the old system. Since the decision was taken that the war agricultural committees—that word "war" we shall drop—should be a permanent part of the agricultural setup in the country, the important thing was to decide how closely and in what way could the work of the new advisory service be linked with the county committees. The closest attention was given to this matter, and the decision was made that the county advisory officer in each county, would, in the main, be one and the same person as the executive officer of the new county committee.
The purpose, I think, is quite clear. One thing that everyone at any rate every agriculturist would agree with, is the exceeding importance of getting the highest degree of efficiency through the industry, and if that is to be achieved, the one thing that needs to be done is to bring the work of the research worker and the scientist as closely as possible to the work of the farmer. The closer integration we can get between the new advisory service and the county committees, the better it will be in the interests of the whole industry. Therefore, we thought the best way of doing that was to make the county advisory officer the executive officer in the county, and, by and large, that will be done almost over the whole country. There are a few exceptions. For example, where you have a county executive officer who, on account of age and, in some cases, through not having the requisite technical or scientific training and knowledge is not suitable then we think in those cases it is rather better to make a separate arrangement. There will be a few counties where the county advisory officer will be the senior officer next to the executive officer, just in those few odd counties where such circumstances as I have mentioned occur. That will be the exception and not the rule, and, by and large, when the new service gets working the executive officers in almost all the counties will be the county advisory officers.
The hon. and gallant Member asks how many provinces there are to be. There are to be eight provinces in England and Wales, and the headquarters of the provinces will be as near as possible to the university centre so as to get, as the hon. and gallant Member quite rightly suggests, the closest possible contact with the work of the provinces and with all the 1631 things that have been happening in the university, and so on. That is deliberately planned as part of the work. There will be a relatively small headquarters' staff for the Advisory Service. There will be Professor Scott Watson with three other scientific officers. There will be the officer in the provinces, and then the county officer, and then we hope that the district advisory officer will work in the closest possible touch with the district committees.
I want to emphasise that, because we do attach the greatest importance to maintaining these district committees and having the district advisory officer working closely with that district committee, and through that channel we shah be able to link up the research work which the scientist is doing, all the way right down through the provinces, from the county committee to the district committee and to the working farmer. In other words, it must be, to succeed, a two-way traffic. We want to bring the knowledge of the scientist to, and get it applied practically by the working farmer, and, equally, to have the problems of the working farmer passed to the scientists. I have no fears, such as the hon. and gallant Member has, of a reluctance to do that. Surely, all the experience of the war has taught that the practical farmer when he has seen another farmer applying what science teaches, and 1632 has seen the practical results which follow is only too ready himself to adopt such methods—I think that is the general experience.
About the expense, let me say that we hear in this House, again and again, how vitally important it is to get research work done. If we are getting research done, it is far more important to apply the results of that research to the man who is doing the job on the land. Therefore, let me say to hon. Members that the cost—certainly it is the figure which the hon. and gallant Member mentioned and which the Minister gave in answer to a Question—would work out at less than ¾d. per £ of agricultural production in this country. Who is going to quibble about that? I am perfectly certain that in the degree to which this knowledge which the advisory officers will disseminate among working farmers is obtained, we shall get that money back, again and again, in increased efficiency and by increased efficiency we shall be able to maintain the standard both of the farmworker and the farmer in what, I hope, will henceforth be a prosperous farming industry.