§ 46. Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Minister of Food what is the average period between the manufacture and consumption of margarine.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Edith Summerskill)About 3½ weeks elapse between manufacture and sale in the shops.
§ Mr. Boyd-CarpenterIs not that approximately a period three times longer than before the war, and is it this delay which gives to the margarine that distinctive colour which makes it so easy to distinguish from butter?
§ Dr. SummerskillThe last part of that Question is a little stale. The answer to the first part is that the hon. Member is wrong. The time which elapsed was about two weeks. It is now longer because grocers keep a reserve in stock a 1216 little longer in order to ensure that the ration is honoured.
§ Captain CrowderCan the right hon. Lady say whether this margarine is mixed with butter to make up what is called "standard butter," because the butter nowadays is very nasty?
§ Air-Commodore HarveyWill the right hon. Lady give an assurance that the young twins whom she was nursing in a recent photograph were not fed on this margarine?
§ Dr. SummerskillThey were fed on welfare food supplied free by the Ministry of Food, and I think they are a credit to the Labour Government.
§ Colonel Gomme-DuncanWould not the right hon. Lady agree that those healthy parents who were brought up under "Tory misrule" are producing the healthy children now?
§ Mr. Godfrey NicholsonSurely it is an advance in physiology if the whole of the Labour Government can be responsible for them?