HC Deb 09 December 1957 vol 579 cc1021-32

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey (Sunderland, North)

I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Delegation to County Agricultural Executive Committees (Amendment) Regulations, 1957 (S.I., 1957, No. 1602), dated 6th September, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12th September, in the last Session of Parliament, be annulled. I believe the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will agree with me that these Regulations are largely consequential on the Minister's decision substantially to implement the Arton Wilson Report. That Committee recommended generally that the county agricultural executive committees should be relieved of routine work in the administration of various grants, subsidies and trading services. The Committee felt that it would be better if this sort of work were performed by the civil servants responsible to his Department.

I have previously expressed my opinion in the House about the Arton Wilson Report. I do not wish to detract from anything which I have said about that Report. I think it is very good. It is a first-class Report, although I would not agree—and I know the right hon. Gentleman does not agree—with all the recommendations that the Report makes, but I think I should say at once that generally, in relation to the matters we are now discussing, the Committee makes out its case.

I want to make certain qualifications and reservations about the Committee's Report. As I say, I do not wish to support it altogether. The first reservation I would make and about which I feel strongly is this. The Report tends to take rather too much of a Civil Service approach to the matters which it discusses. I can quite appreciate the civil servants' reluctance to concede executive powers to an outside body, but I for one believe that this is an excellent development which ought to be encouraged, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary, however embarrassed he may later be, will take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the county committees. I have no hesitation in saying that, wherever possible, and not only in the Ministry of Agriculture, we should follow the precedent set by the county committees.

My second point is this. I have already indicated that the Minister has not accepted this Report. In fact, he has rejected some of its main conclusions, so that we have to pay very different attention to what he is doing to implement part of the Report.

One of the matters which the Arton Wilson Committee recommended, with a good deal of weight, was that there ought to be an appeal from the decisions of the civil servants, and that this appeal ought to be to practical men of all-round experience. The right hon. Gentleman has already indicated that he does not accept the recommendations of the Arton Wilson Committee on this matter. This very much affects the view which we take of the means by which these Regulations take this work from the county committees.

We want to know from the Parliamentary Secretary why he has rejected this recommendation given to him by the Committee. We cannot, without better explanation, accept the rejection of what appeared to us a very proper recommendation that provision should be made for the appeal from these decisions, whilst leaving the machinery of the decisions within the Civil Service, as the Report says, to practical men of all-round experience.

The point I make is that the Government have not accepted the recommendation of the Arton Wilson Committee on the changed construction of the committees and they have rejected the proposal about executive panels. I am not going to argue the merits of this case, and it would be rather wide of the present debate to do so; but what is disturbing is that the Arton Wilson Committee made its recommendations to strengthen the work of the committees, and all the Government have done has been to reject those recommendations. They make no recommendations themselves. After all, these Regulations have been working for some time now. If the Government are to reject the views of the Arton Wilson Committee, we ought to have their views. in the light of experience, about improving and strengthening the work of the committees.

I come now to what we regard as a very disturbing factor, which is the reason that we shall not lightly agree to any derogation from the powers of the county committees. We know, and the Prime Minister is making a virtue of it now, that the Government have decided to scrap Part II of the 1947 Act. This is to continue the policy of the Government in the face of the recommendations of the Arton Wilson Committee. The Arton Wilson Committee made quite clear what its attitude was, yet we find that the Government, who are now taking away powers from the county committees, are the same Government which proposes to take away all powers under Part II. The position is entirely changed.

I will remind the Parliamentary Secretary of what the Arton Wilson Committee said about Part II. In paragraph 23 of its Report, the Committee said: As a result, in 1947, permanent Committees were again established, as part of legislation under which the State guaranteed prices over a wide range of agricultural products, assured markets for their disposal, and afforded security of tenure to tenant farmers. In return, the State required proper standards of husbandry and estate management, and the County A.E.Cs. were to be the means of ensuring that the industry honoured the obligation. This interplay of State and industry has often been misunderstood; if it had been made clearer it is probable that there would have been less criticism of the C.A.E.Cs. as an instrument of public administration. That was the view expressed by the Arton Wilson Committee, which specifically made recommendations with regard to the application of Part II.

What was the ground for the Committee's recommendations in this respect? Why did it think it important to improve the administration of Part II? The reason was, as the Committee says in its Report, that it had regard to the possibility of a thorough going, systematic application of the Act. In other words, quite contrary to the argument of the Minister, the Arton Wilson Committee, in its Report, notwithstanding what this present Government may be doing, said that it envisaged—to quote its own words— a thoroughgoing and systematic application of the Act. The Committee thought it worth while to make recommendations, rightly or wrongly, with regard to the implementation of Part II.

It is, therefore, a very different matter if the Government come to the House saying that they are taking away powers from the county committees and, at the same time, we can see before us very real evidence that they are resorting to the pattern taken by their predecessors after the First World War; they do not like these committees and they are slowly going to bring them to an end. We consider that that would be very undesirable and we intend to resist the Government. I have often said that it is becoming far too obvious that we have very few political decisions from the Government. Time after time, the Government's decisions are taken by bureaucrats. Of course, the bureaucrats want to get rid of county committees. [Interruption.] The most bureaucratic Government we have had in recent years is the one now in office.

We are discussing at some length a Slaughterhouses Bill, which has been conceived by bureaucrats. This is the same thing. I have said that the Report is a good one. In so far as we criticise it, we criticise the tendency to show an allergy towards committees which are outside the Civil Service. We say, too, that in this case, because the Government have decided to take away essential powers which the committees are exercising in the good interests of the industry, we cannot lightly agree to the removal from the committees of these powers and their transference to civil servants.

With regard to the powers which the Minister wishes to remove from the committees to the Department, I say at once that by and large a good case appears to be made. Concerning pests, for example, there is every ground for saying that the procedures should be simplified and streamlined and that we can save in administration. I would say the same concerning drainage and hill farming improvements. These are matters which I have previously raised in the House, and I have complained at the waste in effort and administration in dealing with them.

We are not yet satisfied that the Minister is right in saying that if he removes this delegation he should allow no grounds of appeal outside the Civil Service. We await to hear what the Parliamentary Secretary has to say, but we express this apprehension not without a good deal of justification. We do not like the attitude of the Government towards the committees. We think their intention is to dismantle these committees.

We will have an opportunity sooner or later of discussing Part II and what the Government intend to do about it. For the moment, I conclude by saying that every tribute should be paid to the work of these committees and that they should be encouraged. We are sorry to see what appears to be the deliberate policy of the Government to whittle away their powers. We cannot divorce these Regulations from the other steps that the Government have in mind. We intend seriously and apprehensively to watch the Government and to endeavour to safeguard the interests of the county agricultural executive committees.

10.13 p.m.

Mr. Sidney Dye (Norfolk, South-West)

I beg to second the Motion.

It is not so easy for a layman to understand the phraseology of the Regulations, but it means that the Minister of Agriculture is no longer delegating certain duties to the agricultural executive committees in each county. In so far as he is taking the duties from them, he is undertaking them himself. Whether this will mean that in future he will not be able to make a trip to India or other parts of the world but will find himself very busy killing rats and sparrows and other pests, or whether—

Sir Arthur Vere Harvey (Macclesfield)

Vermin.

Mr. Dye

Are they vermin? They are described in the Regulations as pests. Does the Minister now think that that work can be done better directly under his own officers and not through or controlled in any way by the agricultural committees? I think the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) is saying that the responsibility will be put on the farmers. These Regulations do not say so.

Mr. Willey

It will be on the Minister.

Hon. Members

Back to Whitehall.

Mr. Dye

The Minister is no longer delegating it to the county agricultural committees but is reserving functions to himself and his officials, as I understand the Regulations. That may save money, but what I am concerned with is whether more pests will be destroyed or not.

If the pests are not destroyed, to whom will those who are troubled by them make their complaints? In the past the members of the agricultural committees have been selected from panels of people belonging to the agricultural community. The panels have been composed of representatives nominated by the National Farmers' Union, the Landowners' Association and the workers' trade union. If people found that the work was not being done properly, they could make their complaints to persons they knew who were members of the committees engaged in the agricultural industry. If those people no longer have responsibilities for pest control, to whom will the ordinary farmers and others go? They will go to Members of Parliament. Now we know why so many hon. Members on the benches opposite are not going to stand as candidates at the next General Election. They are afraid they will be overcome by complaints by people in the countryside about pests.

Among the agricultural committees' functions are functions set out in the First Schedule to these Regulations: Receiving and approving schemes for field drainage and the improvement of ditches, and the supply of water to agricultural kind. Receiving and approving schemes for the supply of water to farms, farm houses and cottages. Now, in future, they will not be their functions but they will be carried out by the Minister.

If anyone had a grievance about these matters in the past he could go to a person living in his own locality, and not a paid official, to see the matter was put right. It will be of no use people writing direct to the Minister about such things, nor will it be any good writing to the person against whom the complaint is made. So these complaints will come to Members of Parliament if they, as I do, live in their own constituencies. Now we know why Tory Members are either leaving their constituencies to live in London or are not prepared to stand again as candidates, because they can see that a scheme which has worked so well over recent years is being dismantled, and, as my hon. Friend said, that it is to be administered by bureaucrats. It will make the bureaucrats more bureaucratic and less responsive to the democratic touch.

Considering the various things which are now to revert to the Minister, it seems to me that on the Government side there has not been full appreciation of the very great work which the men on the county agricultural committees have done unpaid. Taken as a whole, the agricultural committees have been manned by men with a very high sense of responsibility, who have carried out their duties, which sometimes are distasteful. On the whole, they have proved an effective instrument for raising the standard of agricultural production. They have not finished that work, and it seems to me that the Minister, before very long, may regret changing the scheme of things to this extent at this time.

10.20 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. J. B. Godber)

The hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) and the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) have given me the opportunity to explain briefly to the House what is involved in the Regulations. I could not help but feel a certain sympathy with the hon. Member for Sunderland, North when he was moving the Motion. I have never before heard him finding it so difficult to make bricks without straw as he did on this occasion; but he still battled valiantly.

To put this matter in the right perspective, I should remind the House that the Arton Wilson Committee strongly recommended that county agricultural executive committees and sub-committees should cease to participate in the routine administration of grants, subsidies and trading services. It stressed the ending of wartime conditions and the development of Government agricultural policy in response to changing national needs away from control and towards greater productivity through technical development. The Committee saw this as the primary task of county agricultural executive committees, composed of practical farmers, landowners and workers, and it thought that they should be free to give more time and attention to it.

Many county agricultural executive committees were carrying out duties commonly performed by civil servants—the routine executive work of subsidies, grants and trading services—and the Arton Wilson Committee saw this as a waste of the time of the county agricultural executive committees on work for which officials had been specially recruited and trained. The system also led to confusion of responsibilities between committees and officials, particularly in financial matters; delay in dealing with cases which were held up waiting for committee meetings, and expense in preparing schedules, minutes and reports for committees.

All this led my right hon. Friend to accept this recommendation of the Wilson Committee, and the reorganisation came into force on 1st April last. Since then, the routine work involved in the running of trading services and the administration of grants and subsidies has been taken over by officials. The economy achieved by withdrawing routine executive work from the county agricultural executive committees is difficult to measure precisely, because it cannot be separated from many other economies which have followed the Wilson Report. Nor can total savings due to re-organisation be separated from other economies on the one hand and new work which we have taken on in the Department on the other. But it is correct to say that something of the order of 500 staff have been saved as a result of this and other Arton Wilson recommendations. This is a fairly considerable saving and justifies our action in accepting the Report.

The hon. Member for Sunderland. North quoted paragraph 23 of the Report, but he did not mention that it came under the heading of "Historical Development". I do not mind the hon. Member quoting history, but he should remember that that paragraph was merely setting out in perspective the earlier stages.

The Report goes on later, in paragraph 26, to refer to the setting up of the Ryan Committee and then in paragraph 27 says: Five years after the Ryan Committee's Report, however, we find that production targets have disappeared, the Farm Survey has virtually ceased, supervision cases have been reduced to a mere trickle, and—to judge by our evidence—only a relatively small amount of work is arising from the 1948 Act. In these five years, therefore, the work which mainly occupied C.A.E.Cs. has largely come to an end. And then in paragraph 29: If, therefore, the partnership between State and industry is to survive, both will have to concentrate on technical development… The Report goes on to develop what the Wilson Committee felt were the appropriate changes that should take place. The recommendations therefore were submitted in relation to conditions which apply now and not in relation to those of the time to which the hon. Member for Sunderland, North referred. It is only right to point that out.

Mr. Willey

Before the Parliamentary Secretary leaves that point, perhaps he will turn to the explicit examination made by the Committee of Part II, and the views expressed about supervision and so on. I merely summarised what I thought was fairly to be regarded as the views of that Committee on Part II.

Mr. Godber

Part II is not the issue we are discussing tonight. No doubt we shall have ample opportunity of doing it later. There are several other paragraphs I would be happy to quote, but I am certain that hon. Members are well conversant with every paragraph of the Report and that there is no need for me to do so.

The hon. Gentleman then said that the executive committees were not able to decide on matters which had been taken out of their hands and left in the hands of civil servants. He felt that was wrong. I must remind him, however, that in reply to a Question which he put down on 2nd August, 1956, my right hon. Friend in a statement circulated in HANSARD said: The report suggests that C.A.E.C.s should he relieved of routine work connected with the administration of various grants and subsidies, trading services, etc. I accept this recommendation but consider it most important that the local practical knowledge of committee members should be fully used in suitable cases. I think this can best be achieved not by leaving them to hear appeals against the decisions of officials, as the report suggests, but by arranging for them to be consulted in appropriate cases at an earlier stage so that their knowledge and experience is drawn upon before decisions are reached."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd August, 1956; Vol. 557, c. 184.] That really meets the point. The hon. Gentleman feels that they should have the opportunity after officials had considered the matter, but my right hon. Friend explained fully that he felt it was better that they should bring their experience to bear before those decisions were reached, and of course an appeal always lies to the Minister in regard to any of these cases if injustice is being felt. That being so, the decision reached by my right hon. Friend was a reasonable one; the point was not quite clear from the comments of the hon. Gentleman.

Coming to the points in the Regulations, I gather from him that there is no great divergence of opinion between us. Whether it be on pests, on drainage, on water supply—on all these vital topics—I gather that the House is at one, and so I do not think there is any need for me to explain these points in detail. The principle is that we are taking these routine matters out of the hands of the committees and placing them in the hands of the civil servants. That has been generally accepted from the Report as being a sound and reasonable method of approach, and I feel that on this basis the House would do well to reject the Prayer.

Before coming to that, however, I want to accept the invitation of the hon. Gentleman, who asked me to pay a tribute to the work of county committees. I am only too glad to do that. I have a great regard for the members of these committees, who do a wonderful job of work. During the last few months I have been round talking to some of them personally. I have been seeking to put the views of the Government to them, but I have also gained a great deal of knowledge from them. They are a valuable forum for the two-way exchange of ideas, and both my right hon. Friend and I attach the greatest importance to maintaining the committees, which we believe perform a useful service in keeping a proper relation between my Ministry and the farming community. Therefore I am glad to pay this tribute, and to pay it most sincerely.

Having done that, and in the light of the explanation I have given, I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he would care to withdraw his Motion.

Mr. Wiley

To help me consider that request, would the Joint Parliamentary Secretary deal with this point? I am obliged to him for calling the attention of the House to the statement made by his right hon. Friend. I gather that the case can simply be put in this way, that the Minister rejects the idea that was put forward by the Arton Wilson Committee of providing for an appeal, but provides instead for consultation. Could the hon. Gentleman tell the House what effective steps his right hon. Friend has taken to ensure that there will be pre-consultation with the committees?

Mr. Godber

Of course, there is pre-consultation. Where any farmer feels in any way that there is injustice in his case, where he feels that officials have not recognised the importance of the points that he has put to them, the farmer is then free to put his views forward to the committees. In many cases the committee members are brought in to advise at the stage before a decision is reached, when the initial consultations take place, and it is at that stage that they can effectively help.

Mr. Willey

I do not wish to prolong the debate by cross-examination, but would the hon. Gentleman review this in the light of the recommendations of the Franks Committee, considering whether it is satisfactory to have this informal procedure and whether it would not be better, as apparently the Wilson Committee felt, to formalise the procedure?

Mr. Godber

I should not think it was necessary. I should be happy to look at the matter again, but I do not think there is any case for it. The proposals of the Franks Committee bring up matters in a much wider sphere, and we shall have proposals to put before the House in a few months' time dealing with the wider aspects. I do not feel that I could usefully take the matter further tonight.

Mr. Wiley

I am much obliged to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for the reply he has given. He has reminded the House that we shall, unfortunately, have another opportunity to discuss the position of the committees. In view of that, I think my hon. Friends and I will be well advised to reserve our criticisms of the action of the Government for that occasion. Being charitably disposed, I concede that it may well be that the Minister took this decision before he took his later outrageous decision—that this may be a decision taken on the recommendations of the Arton Wilson Committee.

With regard to the removal of the specific delegation, provided that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will continue to review the matter and make the best use of the committees, as he has assured us he will, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.