HC Deb 07 November 1968 vol 772 cc1205-12

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That a Select Committee be appointed to report on the activities in England and Wales of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by 31st December, 1968.

That the Committee do consist of Twenty-five Members:

That Mr. William Baxter, Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith, Mr. Edynfed Hudson Davies, Dr. John Dunwoody, Mr. William Edwards, Mr. John Farr, Mr. Andrew Faulds, Mr. Tony Gardner, Mr. Garrett, Dr. Hugh Gray, Mr. Paul Hawkins, Mr. Bert Hazell, Mr. J. E. B. Hill, Mr. Emlyn Hooson, Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine, Mr. Peter M. Jackson, Mr. James Johnson, Mr. Michael Jopling, Mr. Clifford Kenyon, Mr. John P. Mackintosh, Mr. Peter Mills, Mr. Derek Page, Mr. Patrick Wall, Mr. Tudor Watkins and Mr. John Wells be Members of the Committee:

That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; to adjourn from place to place; and to admit strangers during the examination of witnesses unless they otherwise order; and to report Minutes of Evidence from time to time:

That Six be the Quorum:

That the Committee have power to appoint Sub-Committees and to refer to such Subcommittees any of the matters referred to the Committee:

That every such Sub-Committee do have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; to adjourn from place to place; to report to the Committee from time to time; and to admit strangers during the examination of witnesses unless they otherwise order.

That the Committee have power to report from time to time to the Minutes of the Evidence taken before such Sub-Committees and reported by them to the Committee:

That Three be the Quorum of every such Sub-Committee.

That during the present Session the Committee have power to appoint persons with expert knowledge for the purpose of particular inquiries, either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the Committee's order of reference.

That the Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Agriculture in the last Session of Parliament together with Memoranda be referred to the Committee.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

I wish to raise one or two points in relation to this Motion. I particularly wish to refer to HANSARD of last Tuesday when the hon. Gentleman the Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, who spoke for the Government on that occasion, replied to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith). In answer to him the hon. Gentleman said that a Select Committee on Agriculture would be set up at an early date. My hon. Friend retired to the North thoroughly satisfied with what the hon. Gentleman had said and expected that during the weekend, or probably tonight, such a Committee would be set up.

It is also right to say that my hon. Friend was not alone in expecting that as a result of what transpired in the House on Tuesday night a Select Committee would be set up tonight. Not a single member of that Select Committee was aware that the Committee was to be dis-established and banished in six weeks' time. This is my reason for raising this matter. I want to put some questions to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he can tell me why the Committee is to be virtually cut off in the middle of what was a very painstaking study and survey into the activities of the Ministry of Agriculture in England and Wales. The Select Committee has been given roughly six weeks of Parliamentary time to come to a conclusion on the massive objective to which it has applied itself.

We have called a number of witnesses, but it is fair to say that we are barely in the middle of our task. To find that, unknown to all the members of the Committee to whom I have spoken, we have only until 31st December to conclude our deliberations and present our report is bad enough. But what happens thereafter? I am horrified that I can see no reference to the fact that the Committee will be reconstituted in January when the House returns from the Recess. If that is not the Government's intention, the House is entitled to an explanation. Are the Government dissatisfied with the work of the Select Committee? I have had the privilege of being a member of it for only a few months, but I well know the effective work which it did before that on the intricacies of the agricultural side of our application to get into the Common Market.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I ruled last year that we cannot discuss on this Motion the work of the previous Select Committee.

Mr. Farr

I am in your hands, Mr. Speaker. May I refer to the current Select Committee, which was hived off into certain Sub-Committees, two of which have reported. A great deal of work has been done on the workings and mechanics of the Ministry of Agriculture. I was privileged to be a member of one of the hived off Sub-Committees, namely, that dealing with horticulture. We sat on just as many mornings as the main Committee, but we never got anywhere near to considering the complete picture. If there were time, I could list a dozen or more subjects vitally important to horticulture which the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells), said would have to be deferred until the next Session of Parliament simply due to shortage of time and the fact that the Sub-Committee had to report.

Now that we are in the next Session of Parliament, not only is the Sub-Committee on Horticulture not set up to enable a valuable piece of work to continue—

Mr. Speaker

Order. We cannot discuss on this Motion the non-setting up of the Sub-Committee on Horticulture. The hon. Gentleman will be in order if he addresses his remarks to the date 31st December, 1968, mentioned in the Motion.

Mr. Farr

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We did not have a chance to finish our task in the Sub-Committee on Horticulture. I am told by the members of the Select Committee on Agriculture whom I have had the opportunity of approaching since the Motion appeared on the Order Paper today that the Select Committee on Agriculture simply has no chance of completing its task by 31st December, 1968. The Minister probably knows of some of the curricula to which the Select Committee on Agriculture has applied itself in recent months. I could list quite a number of very important subjects which have never been discussed by the Select Committee and which will never be discussed if it is dissolved on 31st December, 1968.

Is the intention to discontinue the Select Committee by 31st December in accordance with the wishes of the House? The Select Committee was set up as a result of a Report of the Committee on Procedure which was endorsed by hon. Members. In the absence of very sound reasons—perhaps a failing in duty by its members or a lack of usefulness—I cannot see why the Government should decline to continue the Committee after 31st December this year. Some of the topics with which the Committee still have to deal involve millions of £s of Government money and are important topics. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are responsible for forestry and are spending millions of £s every year on forestry.

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman may mention all of these subjects, but he may not discuss any of them.

Mr. Farr

I have tried to point out how important is forestry, but, Mr. Speaker, bearing your Ruling in mind, I will refer to other subjects which there has not yet been an opportunity to discuss in the Select Committee. There has been no opportunity in the Select Committee to discuss in any detail the last and very important outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. We are awaiting a report by the Northumberland Committee—

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Member is drifting at once into discussing the subject, and he may not drift. This is a procedural Motion. He must address himself to the proposal that the Committee should be set up and that its form should be as laid down in the Motion. I take it that his main objection is to the date in the Motion. He must link his remarks to that.

Mr. Farr

With the greatest possible respect, Mr. Speaker, I am trying to list the subjects with which the Select Committee have not dealt and to show how, in the very limited time suggested, it would be impossible for the Committee properly to conclude their deliberations.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I have stated that the hon. Member has the right to list the subjects. What he cannot do is to discuss them.

Mr. Farr

Another very important matter yet to be discussed by the Select Committee is the impact on the industry of the Training Board for horticulture, forestry and agriculture. Another matter which has not been considered in any depth is the operation of the new Meat and Livestock Commission. It has been set up and is beginning to get going, but we do not know how it will work, and millions of £s of taxpayers' money is involved in the operation of that Commission.

I do not want to detain the House, for the hour is late, but I hope that in the very limited time for which I have spoken—I have been very brief indeed—I have given the Minister an idea of the concern felt, at any rate by Members of the Committee from this side of the House, about the probability that all the work which we have put in will come to an end at the end of the year.

9.53 p.m.

Mr. Brian O'Malley (Lord Commissioner of the Treasury)

The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) referred to the fact that the setting up of the Select Committee on Agriculture was mentioned on Tuesday night of this week, when I gave an assurance that the Committee would be set up as soon as possible. I said that I hoped that it would be set up within the next few days. I thought, therefore, that it would meet both the desire and the convenience of the House if we set up this Committee, along with other Select and Specialist Committees, as soon as possible. The Motion, therefore, appears on the Order Paper this evening. I take it that the hon. Member for Harborough is not complaining about that.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I hope that the hon. Member will speak a little more loudly, so that he may be heard in the Press Gallery.

Mr. O'Malley

I assume that the hon. Member is taking exception to the fact that the difference between this Motion and the similar Motion last Session is that the Committee are required to report by 31st December, 1968. First, last Session the House operated as many Select Committees as its present arrangements and facilities could cope with. Secondly, while recognising the keen interest in agriculture of the hon. Member and other hon. Members on both sides of the House—including my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Dr. John Dunwoody), who is in the Chamber—I have to point out that some hon. Members are interested in matters outside those dealt with by the Select Committee on Agriculture and are precluded from any discussion of those subjects in Specialist Committees until changes can be made in the ranges of the Committees.

The hon. Member for Harborough said that if the Specialist Committee on Agriculture were to be cut off at 31st December, 1968, it would be virtually in the midst of its work. With respect to him, I understand that that is not the case. I think that the whole House has every confidence in the composition of the Specialist Committee on Agriculture and feels that it can complete its work by 31st December, or at least complete the Report upon which it is at present engaged.

The hon. Member asked whether the Government were dissatisfied with the work of the Select Committee. As he would expect me to reply, I do not agree with any assertion that the Government, or, for that matter, the House—although we have not yet seen the Report of the Select Committee—are in any way dissatisfied with the work of the Select Committee. It is simply a question of attempting to set up Specialist Committees which will give hon. Members with various interests opportunity of discussing in the Specialist Committees subjects which particularly interest them.

I must tell the hon. Gentleman and the House that at the moment it is the firm decision of the Government, to give help to other Members who are interested in other subjects, to conclude the work of the Specialist Committee on Agriculture by the end of this year. We are confident that the Committee can do this.

Since, in fairness to the hon. Gentleman, I have made the position absolutely clear, and as we put the Motion on the Order Paper as soon as we possibly could so that the Committee could get on with its work and complete its report, I trust that the hon. Gentleman will allow the Motion to go through so that there is no further delay in setting up the Committee and it can present its report to the House by 31st December, as we are all hopeful and confident that it will.

9.56 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Stodart (Edinburgh, West)

I find the hon. Gentleman's statement somewhat surprising, and I should like to know whether what he has just told the House is known to any members of the Committee, the Chairman included. He has said a good deal about the Committee's finishing its work. It has not been my privilege to be a member of the Committee, but my impression is that that was just one of the many subjects the Committee was to deal with. When it was set up the Committee deliberated on what topics it would deal with first.

I must register a considerable protest and ask, if it is the decision of the Government that this Committee has got to go because other Committees are needed, why single out the Select Committee on Agriculture? I should have thought it had done conspicuously good work. I am on record as having said at this Box that the Reports it had made hitherto had been of considerable value.

I hope, therefore, we may have some more information for the benefit of the House.

9.57 p.m.

Dr. John Dunwoody (Falmouth and Camborne)

I welcome the speed with which my hon. Friend has brought this Motion before the House, but I must express some anxieties and doubts which I have about it. I am not very happy about the date, 31st December, 1968, because I doubt whether this will give the Committee sufficient time even to complete its present investigation.

The field which we have been studying over the last 12 months is a very extensive one. I have had the honour to be on the Sub-Committee on Horticulture. We have covered a vast range of subjects, but not as many as most of us would like. I have some doubt whether about six weeks of Parliamentary time which the date 31st December gives us is sufficient for us to complete investigation of the subject we are in the midst of investigating at present. There are a number of other subjects which we reported we hoped to be able to investigate in the future.

Another point I would make ties up with one which my hon. Friend made about the expansion of the Select Committee and Specialist Committee concept. The Motion suggests ways that the Committee shall consist of 25 members. I had the honour of being on the Committee from its inception, when there were only 14 of us. The number was increased to 16. We have been 25 for this last year. It is a very large number, and I think that most of who have been on the Committee throughout its history have found this to be a rather unwieldy number and that we were not such an effective Committee as we were when we were a smaller number.

In view of the difficulty experienced in manning other Committees, I have doubts whether 25 is the ideal number. The attendance, in numerical terms, with 25 members has been even lower than it was with 14 or 16 members. This Committee is an important one, and I would not like—

It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.