§ Mr. WebbI am coming to the £120 in a moment. The only real figure we could accept and measure without some ambiguity as to its significance was, in fact, £140 per ton. Therefore we resisted it. Was it wrong for us to resist paying more money for the food that comes into this country? The Opposition must make up their minds. They cannot assail the Government for not keeping down the cost of living if, at the same time, they assail the Government for trying to keep it down by trying to reduce the price of imported food.
There are only four ways of reducing prices. The first is that of price control. I doubt whether that commends itself to the Opposition, although they may support it for the moment. Another way is by reducing the distribution costs between producer and consumer. I doubt whether that commends itself to the Opposition, but we are working on that. There is the way of subsidy and I doubt whether that commends itself to the Opposition.
The only other way is to refuse to pay more and no country such as ours, dependent for more than half its food supply from outside sources, could cut down the cost of living without showing some resistance to what it considered to be unreasonable demands. That is what we did. Are we to be condemned? If so, the Opposition have no case at all about the cost of 2561 living. The Opposition really must make up their minds on what ground they are challenging the Government.
Now I come to the question of £120 per ton. The figure of £120 per ton offered by the Argentine representatives in December has often been quoted in a loose sort of way as a hard figure. In fact, it was a completely mythical figure.
§ Captain CrookshankWhat about the pamphlets?
§ Mr. WebbI am talking about the decisions taken by the Government and not about pamphlets. No responsible Government, until it had secured clear elucidation of what ranges of meat that figure covered, could ever accept it without doing great dis-service to the interest of this country.
§ Mr. TurtonWill the right hon. Gentleman explain why he himself said on 8th February:
They made the suggestion that we could arrive at that overall figure of £120 a ton by taking a considerable quantity of chilled beef, instead of frozen beef, and by paying a much higher price for it."—[OFFICAL REPORT, 8th February, 1951; Vol. 483, c. 1969.]
§ Mr. WebbThat is quite consistent with everything I have said. That has been the whole of our trouble. When we came to the end of the negotiations which broke down the dilemma was to get precision about the amount of chilled meat. We could not get a guarantee about the amount of second quality meat we were going to get. It was not a figure we could have accepted. That is all there is about the £120. There is no great mystery about it. It is a figure we could not have accepted. Now, after careful negotiation and after discussions, we have been able to arrive at a precise estimate of what is available and what we can expect in an overall figure of £128 per ton.
§ Captain CrookshankThe Economic Secretary denies it.
§ Mr. R. S. HudsonWe have all been listening.
§ Mr. WebbSo have I, and I have followed these things even more closely than the right hon. Gentleman. There is no evasion about this. We have set down in all these negotiations the approximate quantities of meat we supposed we were 2562 going to get. That happens all the time and the figures we arrive at are the figures we expect to get, though in some cases they may be more and in some cases less. [HON. MEMBERS: "The Economic Secretary denied it."] I do not think so. [HON. MEMBERS: "Of course he did."] We shall see that when we read the OFFICIAL REPORT more closely. I think there is no inconsistency between our approaches to this matter.
I wish to deal with some of the important points raised by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. He asked particularly about coarse grains, and why was not coarse grains included in the agreement. This was not intended to be a comprehensive Agreement, covering all our trade arrangements with the Argentine. Indeed, a large number of commodities are excluded. Just as we have not given any commitments over a wide field of our own exports so we have not received any definite commitments about coarse grains on their side.
Instead, both sides intimated the sort of quantities of goods which seemed likely to be available for export and on that basis we arrived at this Agreement; but it is still left open for other commodities which cannot so easily be determined at this time, and one of those is coarse grains. We expect, and I hope we shall get at a reasonable price, adequate quantities of coarse grains from the Argentine. We shall do this in the ordinary way and it will be the job of the joint consultative committee set up under the 1949 Agreement which, as the House knows, has to consider other exports, to go ahead and work out proposals to cover the buying of coarse grains.
The price will be difficult, because the amount of coarse grains available in the world is not adequate for world demand, but when we get a settled price I am reasonably confident that we shall get adequate supplies of coarse grains from that part of the world. But its exclusion from this Agreement does not amount to anything at all—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It is only one of a number of commodities which were excluded by common agreement, and which are still subject to other and continuing negotiations.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie (Mrs. Mann) again voiced her old request that we should 2563 look into the question of marking this meat with the price, quality and cut when it gets into the shops. As she knows, we have looked at that many times and we have not found it practicable. I have asked the butchers to do it voluntarily, and to a large extent many of them have done so. But I am not anxious to make orders which cannot be carried out. The whole process of using Orders in Council and Statutory Instruments would, I believe, be brought into disrepute if it were to be applied when an order could not be satisfactorily carried out. In this case, I am sure it cannot be done. Once we introduce chilled meat into the shops however, a new situation arises. I think then we are entitled to make quite clear this distinction from other meat, and we shall take the necessary steps.
A number of hon. Members opposite referred to the question of bulk buying generally. I do not want to anticipate the results of our present examination of the future organisation of our meat supplies, but I must say that there is a lot of nonsense talked about bulk buying. The issue is not between competitive private buying and State buying. The simple issue is between bulk buying by private monopoly or by publicly controlled agencies. That is the simple, practical issue before us. There has not been competitive buying of meat in the Argentine since 1920. The Plate Conference settled all that a long time ago. There is a completely closed shop regarding the carrying on of bulk buying, and the practical issue is whether it should be bulk buying by private monopoly or bulk buying by State controlled instruments.
The views of this side of the Committee are well known and I do not propose to labour them. In any event, we recognise that bulk buying has its imperfections, and I would agree that we have to consider very carefully how we can insulate the instrument of bulk buying from some of these disadvantages. We 2564 on this side of the Committee are wise enough to see the weaknesses and imperfections of our ideas and to put them right, but, fundamentally, the bulk buying of meat has saved this country hundreds of millions of pounds which would not have been saved by private buying. There is no doubt about that, and the figures show that any return to private purchase would cost consumers in this country far more money than we could afford.
The hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison) made what I considered a very sensible and realistic speech. I agree with him that this is a much larger issue than the question of meat. He went on to say that somehow we on this side of the Committee had distorted the picture. We had got our commercial arrangements out of perspective and out of proper proportion by distorting and emphasising the meat side of the question. But that is not our responsibility. If there is anybody guilty of distortion and focusing attention on meat the responsibility rests on hon. Members on the opposite side of the Committee. I have repeated over and over again that I was involved in wider issues than my own Departmental considerations.
I think we are all grateful to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for having brought the matter back to proper pro portions and having reminded us of the general matters which are the wider responsibility of every section of the Committee at this time. We may have made mistakes in our approach and handling of this matter. I made one mistake— I overestimated the patriotism of hon. Members on the opposite side of the Committee. I believed that, faced with a situation like this, they would act with responsibility, and would not indulge in rash and reckless exploitation of our difficulties for partisan purposes. Apparently I was wrong. I made a mistake, and that mistake will be apparent to public opinion in this country.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.