HC Deb 03 August 1972 vol 842 cc1009-30 (1) There shall be set up an Advisory Committee on all aspects of agriculture production, marketing, processing and distribution. (2) The Committee shall consist of representatives of the following groups—
  1. (a) agriculture producers;
  2. (b) the agriculture trade and the food industry;
  3. (c) workers in agriculture and the food industry;
  4. (d) consumers;
 each group shall have three representatives and shall be responsible for selecting its own representatives after consultation with the Minister; the Committee shall have a Chairman appointed by the Minister; and the Committee shall regulate its own procedure. (3) The Committee shall be consulted by the Minister on all problems arising out of the implementation of the common agriculture policy of the European Economic Community in the United Kingdom. (4) The Committee may consider ways of improving the production, marketing and distribution of agricultural products and food within the United Kingdom and may make recommendations to the Minister. (5) Notwithstanding anything in the Agricultural Marketing Acts, any proposal for a change in the existing statutory arrangements or for new statutory arrangements for agricultural marketing in the United Kingdom shall be submitted to the Committee for comsideration before being embodied in legislation.—[Mr. Peart.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Peart

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With the new Clause we are to take the following Amendments: No. 55, in page 18, line 18, leave out Clause 22.

No. 56, in the Title, line 3, after '1950', insert: 'to establish an advisory committee on agricultural production, marketing, processing and distribution'.

Mr. Peart

The Clause deals with the setting up of an advisory committee on agricultural production, marketing, processing and distribution. It says that there shall be an advisory committee on all aspects of the industry. It then spells out in detail that the committee shall consist of representatives of the following groups: first, the agricultural producers, the farmers; secondly, the agriculture trade and the food industry, which is a large one; thirdly, workers in agriculture, the farm workers, and also workers in the various food trades covering the whole of the food industry; fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, the consumer. The Clause provides that each group shall have three representatives, and shall be responsible for selecting them after consultation with the Minister.

I shall not spell out all the words in the Clause, but we are trying to create a new advisory committee. The reason for this is that we are about to enter the EEC, or at least the Government are trying to get us in. Their Communities Bill has passed through the House. Although they drastically curtailed the rights of Members to debate the Bill, we spent at least one day discussing the CAP. The Minister need not shake his head. He knows that what I am saying is true. The hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins), who is now a Government Whip, need not indicate his dissent, either. I believe that he used to participate in our agricultural debates, and he knows that what I am saying is correct.

There were few opportunities to debate the CAP. One day on it was not sufficient. We therefore believe that there should be an organisation which will enable producers, consumers and all sections of the food industry to be consulted by the Government. If we are to enter the EEC we have to accept the CAP. That is the price that we must pay for entry. The Government have acceded to M. Pompidou's request. The Government have given in. The Prime Minister has accepted the arrangements made by the French for their farmers. France has gained considerably in the Community discussions that we have had.

6.0 p.m.

We have now to accept that there is to be a common agricultural policy. As I have often described it, it is neither common nor, as yet, is it a policy. There are still great variations within the Community and there is still no free trade within the Community in agricultural goods and food products which move across the various frontiers. However, we have to accept this. We have to agree to Clause 6 of the European Communities Bill, which sets up a new type of organisation. I shall not spell it out. We debated this matter. The Minister has announced what he is to do in relation to an intervention board and the policy which will be pursued for the marketing of cereals and for the various grain centres in the British Isles. We have had that detail given to us. It was sprung on us at the last minute when we discussed Clause 6 of the European Communities Bill. There should have been a White Paper about it.

Nevertheless, inevitably we shall enter the Community, in which major decisions will be taken outside this country. Whatever one's views about Community policy, whether one agrees with it or one is anti-Europe, or a sceptic like myself—"sceptic" is a good word to express my views—or whether one is like most Ministers, who are fanatical about their desire to rush into Europe, that does not matter. Inevitably, the main decisions will be taken by the Commission. There will be a Council of Ministers, however, and our Minister of Agriculture will be a member of that body. There will be a European Parliament, which as yet is only a consultative assembly which has no power to check and scrutinise the legislation in the way that we know from our parliamentary procedures. This was one of our worries and concerns during the passage of the European Communities Bill. We are afraid that there will not be adequate scrutiny of the legislation which may flow from Brussels. As the Parliamentary Secretary knows—I am sure that he will be objective about it—approximately 75 per cent. of the delegated legislation which flows from the Community is concerned with agricultural policy. It is spelt out in great detail that we have to accept the directives of the Community which in many ways will affect even the Bill we are discussing.

We have said this time and again. We stressed it in Committee and on Second Reading. We feel that, inevitably, if we are to have a decision-making body outside this country it is important that the effects of this agricultural policy on the consumer, the producer and those who work in the industry should be adequately safeguarded. Therefore, it is right that the Department should set up some machinery which will enable the various people listed in the Clause to make their views known to our Government. This will be extremely important.

In this modern world, there is great talk of devolution, of more responsibility being placed on individuals. This is a very important political matter. It is a wider matter which we could discuss at great length. I shall not pursue it too far. However, if we are to have partnership with industry and if we are to enable our ordinary citizens to feel that they are part of government, we must create a body of the kind we propose. There is a great danger that Britain will be subject to decisions of a bureaucracy without adequate parliamentary scrutiny or check. It is reasonable that in the Bill some machinery should be created which would enable the House of Commons and industry connected with agriculture and food to have their say and convey their views adequately to our Minister, who, after all, will be on the Council of Ministers and here, too, will be responsible for the new policy which will emerge in Europe.

I should have thought that such a provision was reasonable. I am not being dogmatic. Even if we did not enter the Common Market but had to play our part in a wider community, with EFTA still and, probably, with a new association with the Six, we should inevitably have to create the sort of machinery we have proposed in the Clause.

Another specific reason for the Clause is that the Bill contains various Clauses which destroy the committees which exist in Britatin. For example, Clause 19 deals with Section 78(1) of the Agriculture Act, 1947. That Act contains arrangements for the setting up of a body to furnish information to an agricultural advisory committee relating to statistics and the information necessary for those in the industry, because this is vital to the industry and the Government.

We also had, for example, our annual discussion during the price review procedures. This is to go. I do not know for what reason. When we enter the Community, we shall be subject to a directive which will say to Britain that she must set up a new advisory committee. There will be an advisory committee which will collect information necessary for the Commission to make decisions and for the new price procedures which will arise in the new Community. These price review procedures will not be the same as those we have at present, which flowed from the 1947 Act. Some of our farmers believe that the situation will be the same. I think that they are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. The sort of review which we have been used to will go and the procedure will be quite different when we finally accept the common agricultural policy. Indeed, the intervention board, which fundamentally acts as an agent for the Commission in relation to prices and marketing issues which affect cereals—a very large section of our farming industry—will make a new kind of procedure inevitable in Europe. Many sincere farmers are worried about this and feel that there will not be the meaningful consultations that we have now through our review procedures. This will be a pity. If price decisions are made in Europe and elsewhere, we shall have to have discussions.

The procedures have been spelt out in the Treaty of Accession. Hon. Members know full well what they mean, so I shall not go into detail. On page 124 of the Treaty of Accession, Part I, there is a declaration which deals with the system for fixing Community farm prices. It is there spelt out. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, on behalf of the Community delegation, made a statement on the system for fixing Community farm prices. In reply, on behalf of the United Kingdom delegation the Chancellor of the Duchy recorded his agreement with the statement of the Community, and said that he was certain that it was the intention to have effective and meaningful contacts in particular with producer organisations operating at Community level. He went on to spell out in detail the sort of machinery which will exist. This machinery will be quite different. That is why we are anxious to preserve that consultation at a United Kingdom level with our producers, farmworkers, consumers and others in the industry.

Moreover, in the Community there is a whole series of committees dealing with the industry. A whole list of committees dealing with agriculture is given in Annex IX of the Treaty of Accession, which sets out the committees referred to in Article 148(2) of the Act of Accession.

There are the Joint Advisory Committee on Social Questions relating to Paid Agricultural Workers; the Joint Advisory Committee on Social Questions in the Sea-fishing Industry, which in a way is associated with agriculture; the special Transport Committee; and the Advisory Committees on Milk and Milk Products; on Pigmeat; on Beef and Veal; on Poultrymeat and Eggs; and on Cereals, of which there is a Specialist Rice Section. Although we do not grow rice here, we consume it. There are also Advisory Committees on Oils and Fats; on Sugar, which will no doubt cover problems affecting our sugar-beet industry; on Fruit and Vegetables; and on Wine-growing. In view of what I said earlier, we know that we have our own home-grown wine industry. There is an Advisory Committee on Live Plants. We shall have many advisory committees when we enter Europe. I have not mentioned all those which are listed, but I must mention the last two, which are very important: the Advisory Committee on Questions of Agricultural Structure Policy and the Advisory Committee on Social Questions relating to Farmers.

That means a great deal of work for the Department and various other people who will have to be found to man the committees, which I assume will sit in Brussels and will be in touch with the Commission and the bureaucracy there. They will no doubt report to the Council of Ministers, whose views will perhaps filter down through our British representatives on the committees to the Minister here. Would not it be far better if we created the sort of committee spelt out in detail in our Amendment and the Clause?

The Government are ending for ever the main legislation which has been enshrined in two major Acts, the Agriculture Acts of 1947 and 1957. The first was a Labour Government's and the second was a Conservative Government's Act. They set the pattern for our whole administrative policy for the industry in the post-war period. The 1947 Act created a partnership in the industry. In it we spelt out how the industry should be consulted. The machinery set up then is to go. The county agricultural executive committees are to be destroyed. There is vague talk about regional panels, but the machinery will not be of the same type. The farming community will need something. Whatever we may have said about the county committees, they represented a type of machinery which enabled the producers—the farmer and the farmworker—to make their views known directly to the Minister and to help the Minister administer policy.

The machinery was unique, envied by agriculturists all over the world. It is now to go. The details of its ending are spelt out in various Clauses. I have mentioned Clause 19, but the main Clause in question is Clause 22, which abolishes agricultural executive committees, and even the bee committees. How doctrinaire can the Minister be when he deals specifically with those committees in a Bill like this? The Clause also abolishes agricultural wages committees in Scotland.

In order to embrace a new policy, the Community policy, we are to have a levy system and a managed market. We are to destroy an administrative structure which has enabled the farmer to give advice to the Government. We are also to destroy advisory committees, which have worked well. We are to destroy a system which has been an example to Europe and far beyond.

6.15 p.m.

That is why I feel very strongly about the matter. It will be a tragedy if we do not have the meaningful co-operation that we have had at a county level over the years under successive Governments. Sometimes those county committees would meet at Whitehall Place. Together, their representatives from England and Wales and their chairmen and vice-chairmen would express their views on a price review, or a major aspect of policy, to the Minister. Here was a means whereby, apart from producer representations through the price review or through the officials at Agriculture House, the leaders of the National Farmers Union rightly consulted Ministers from time to time on many major matters. Here was a way in which at county level, the grass roots of the industry, we could have the views of the men in the areas.

The committees were comprised of ministerial nominees together with three direct representatives from the NFU, two representatives of the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, and two representatives from the Country Landowners' Association. They performed a remarkable job.

There is another reason why many hon. Members who have been interested in safety matters will be concerned about what the Minister is doing. I refer to the large number of county safety committees, which I believe will inevitably be cut out and become defunct. If the executive committee goes, county safety committees could be affected. I know that the NUAAW is worried about this. It knows that many of the county committees had a staff which serviced the safety committees. I should like to know whether the abolition of county committees can affect the safety committees. Who will administer some of the services which are essential to their work? It would be a tragedy if the safety committees went.

However, the Minister is anxious to get ahead with his policy, anxious to rush into Europe, anxious to have the Bill, anxious to destroy a system which has worked, anxious to end the advisory committees which were set up under previous legislation. It is a tragedy.

That is why we have moved the Clause. We have sought to create a new type of machinery which would enable us to have a discussion through the representatives of the agriculture producers, workers in the agriculture trade and the food industry, workers in agriculture and the food industry and the consumers. They could all have their views made known to an advisory committee, which in turn advised the Minister. I do not think that this would mean a vast bureaucracy or that it would cost much. We have spelt out the numbers, saying that each group should have three representatives. The cost would be a small price to pay for co-operation, and I believe that it would be sensible to pay it. The Minister has claimed that he is cutting down administrative costs. One of his justifications for the Bill was the argument that he had to make cuts in services.

It is for that reason that we are making a strong and I hope a powerful case for the Clause. I hope that we shall receive a constructive reply. This is one of the most important measures which we shall debate this evening. Inevitably that is so because of the reasons which I have mentioned and because the Miscellaneous Provisions Bill is ending a committee system which has worked and has given positive advice in the long run to the Minister of State, which is so essential.

We are now going into a larger European organisation which will for obvious reasons be much more remote from Whitehall. Therefore, the industry is bound to feel that in the end there must be proper consultation. For that reason I know it will support the Clause.

Mr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East)

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Peart), I am prepared to accept that we must look to the common agricultural policy as being Britain's future agricultural policy. Much as we may deplore it, we must come to terms with the fact that in future our agricultural discussions will be in the context of the CAP.

I find it irritating in the course of these discussions, and particularly in the course of the arguments, on the European Communities Bill, to hear right hon. and hon. Members opposite pretend that the CAP is something which will benefit us. Perhaps there are some arguments in favour of entry into the Community, but the one thing on which we shall lose on every count is the CAP. It will be a total disaster for this country. It would help our discussions a great deal if hon. Members who are in favour of entry into the Community were prepared to accept that. No one in their senses can possibly regard a policy which forces up food prices, and requires us to spend hundreds of millions of pounds from our balance of payments surplus to achieve it, as one which makes sense for this country.

The committee which we propose in the new Clause would not have any significant effect on the major planks of the CAP. No one is suggesting that the committee would influence the level of prices decided in Brussels. No one is suggesting that the committee would influence the hundreds of millions of pounds which the British people must pay into the central agricultural fund. A whole host of regulations and a massive bureacracy will be applied to this country, and they should be discussed openly. Members of the proposed committee would be able to create a dialogue which would be reported in the mass media.

I am sure that no one would deny the tremendous variations and differences between agriculture in this country and parts of the Community. The matters which the committee could usefully discuss would be in addition to a whole host of minor regulations. The committee could discuss more important things, such as the regulations which will affect the Milk Marketing Board and the likely changes which will have to be made in the board's policies. Surely it would be useful if such policies could be openly discussed by the committee—for example, the proposal to introduce sheep regulations. There is a good deal of discussion about that matter and the farmers' unions are not sure whether they should be in favour of the regulation. An organisation of this type could perform a useful role in seeking to evaluate the effect which the Commission's proposals would have on different sections of agriculture in this country.

The issue which is most frequently raised is our marginal and hill farms. As we know, the Community is looking at the possibility of introducing new measures and proposals for it. Would it not make sense that, in addition to the discussions which we have in Parliament which are restricted, we should have a body of this nature, composed of people who are respected throughout all sections of the agricultural industry, who could freely discuss the effects which the regulations would have on agriculture? Such a body could support the Minister in his representations in Brussels. It would be to his advantage to be able to quote the conclusions and deliberations of the committee when he is arguing forcibly that we must have certain modifications to the proposals which the Commission may bring forward to meet the interests of our agricultural industry.

My right hon. Friend dealt at some length with the degree to which the Government are sweeping away the agricultural executives and other bodies which enabled people in the industry to participate in the application of agricultural policy. Although not all the agricultural executives in Scotland, for instance, were working excellently, I am sure that the Secretary of State for Scotland would point out that some of the Scottish executives were doing a useful job. Much of the discussions which took place in the executives were reported in the newspapers and provided a valuable source of information. The question of what land should go for urban development and other issues were discussed by the executives and help was given as a result of the attention which the executives directed to various matters.

This all falls into a pattern. We are seeing a massive cut back, a sweeping away of existing bodies whereby people in the industry, as opposed to civil servants, have been able to participate in some sort of quasi-official way in the application of policy. The committee would reverse that trend. It would offset the fact that we are sweeping away all these bodies. At the same time as the Government are ending participation in that direction, they are massively increasing the number of civil servants in agriculture. It is true that the Minister of State has managed to make a few cuts and that one or two advisers have been paid off, but in their place we shall recruit an army of civil servants which will do nothing positive.

Mr. John Brewis (Galloway) indicated dissent—

Mr. Strang

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. Is he saying that no additional civil servants will be recruited? Is he saying that the other officers throughout the country will not require the recruitment of additional civil servants? The fact is that an army of new civil servants is being recruited to do nothing positive. It will not enable the industry to be more efficient, like the advisory service does, but will simply operate the whole paraphernalia of regulations and the absurd method of forcing up agricultural prices to bring us into line with the Common Market prices.

6.30 p.m.

It is sad that we seem to be getting into a situation in which the Minister and Whitehall are not prepared to listen on any scale to the views of the industry. They are anxious to dispense with as many as possible of the bodies which enable people in the industry to put their view and to have a dialogue which is reported in the agricultural Press. We are seeing the philosophy that the man in Whitehall knows best—and if he does not know best, the man in Brussels will not.

The advisory committee we propose would to some extent offset this philosophy. It would give the people in the agricultural industry a degree of confidence, some reassurance that they would have a forum in which their views could be thrashed out, that there would not be simply discussions through representatives of the farmers talking to Ministers and COPA and Community officials behind closed doors. They would see the advisory committee as a genuine forum for representatives of the industry to express their views and attitudes about the effects which Community policy will have on the British aspects of Community agriculture, and they could do so without inhibition.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give the new Clause serious consideration and draw back from his appalling view that all these bodies should he swept away and that the whole thing should be administered by civil servants in Whitehall, Reading and Brussels.

Mr. Torney

I am not an agricultural expert by any means and would bow to the greater knowledge of the Minister of Agriculture. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Well, I understand that he is a farmer and he should therefore know something about it. But I do not think that one needs to be an expert to see the evidence before one's eyes. That evidence shows that there have been great improvements in agriculture in recent years, certainly since the operation of the Agriculture Act, 1947. The growth in the efficiency and success of British agriculture in these last 25 years is due in no small measure to that Act.

Sections 71 and 72 of the Act set up the county agricultural executive committees and new Clause 4 seeks to embody in this Bill some similar form of consultation. The Act laid down that the agricultural executive committees would be established …with the duty of promoting agricultural development and efficiency … The Preamble to the Act said that it was also to promote the efficiency and stability of the industry. Just as Sections 71 and 72 of the Act were concerned with the efficiency and stability of the industry in 1947, so such concern for the efficiency and stability of the industry is just as necessary, if not more so, in 1972 and onwards. I was not impressed in Standing Committee by the reasons which the Government advanced for the repeal of Sections 71 and 72. I was not convinced by their rather flimsy arguments that these committees are no longer required.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) has stated the need not only to maintain the efficiency and stability of British agriculture by the maintenance of the highest possible level of consultation with producers, workers and consumers. He has pointed to the shackles which our entry into the European Economic Community will place upon us because of the weakness of some sections of the agricultural industry on the Continent to which we are to conform, and about all because of the complete abolition of democracy as we know it today through our not being allowed to have consultations of any kind. Because of these factors, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, there is an even greater need to maintain the watchdog Sections of the 1947 Act.

New Clause 4 should be accepted by the Government in order that in these times of trying stress for all our industry, particularly agriculture, we are still able to maintain the high form of consultation we have had in the past. If the Government refuse to accept the new Clause, I hope that they will tell us exactly what they intend to do, bearing in mind our entry into the EEC, to ensure the highest possible level of consultation with all sections of the agricultural industry—employers, workers and consumers—as envisaged by the 1947 Act.

Mr. Deakins

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) is a little optimistic if he hopes that the Government will accept new Clause 4. They were generous about new Clause 3, although they did not accept it. They said that they would be bringing in legislation to deal with the matter it raised. If we have the same sort of assurance on new Clause 4, we might feel that that is the sort of safeguard we are looking for, even though the Government cannot accept the wording of new Clause 4.

New Clause 4 and Amendment No. 55 go together. We are not merely suggesting that a new advisory committee should be set up for the agricultural industry to replace county agricultural executive committees. We are suggesting—and I hope that we shall be able to show our feelings in the Division Lobby—that county agricultural executive committees should not be abolished and that in addition there should be set up this new advisory committee.

We regard county agricultural executive comittees in particular as being a major means, certainly since the war, whereby the Ministry has been able to keep in touch with grass roots opinion in agriculture. I stress "grass roots" because, of course, there are always consultations between Whitehall and Agriculture House, the headquarters of the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales. But important as these latter consultations are, they are no substitute for on-the-ground contact between representatives of the farming community and their own members in the districts, acting as a channel of communication to the officers of the Ministry in the regions.

Furthermore, we are much concerned that the consultation should not be confined to consultation with farmers. Agriculture will face changing circumstances over the next decade or so, some of them induced by the Government, and some which would have happened in any event, under a Labour or a Conservative Government. In such changing circumstances, any Government ought to broaden the area of consultation, for this is, after all, not just an agriculture industry, important though that is, but is also a food industry, with many other interests at stake in the future well being of agriculture itself.

Subsection (2) of new Clause 4 proposes that the new advisory committee should cover not only farmers but workers in the agriculture and food industries. The workers do not at present get a look in on any advisory bodies dealing with agricultural matters. Also, we propose that consumers should be brought into proper consultation. At present, consumers are lucky if they have representation on any of the statutory bodies. There may be one consumer representative on one of the marketing boards, perhaps—I think that there is a consumer advisory committee within the Meat and Livestock Marketing Com- mission set-up—but consumer representation at that sort of level has not been particularly effective in protecting consumer interests. If British agriculture is to prosper in the future in the way it has undoubtedly prospered since 1947 and the great Tom Williams Act of that year, we must have much more consultation with and regard for consumer interests as well as for the interests of agricultural producers.

There is a fourth category covered by subsection (2), namely, the other industries, many of them great industries employing many thousands of people, who are dependent on the well being of agriculture itself. I refer not only to the meat trade but to the cereals trade, the seeds trade and the many other trades supplying requisites of one kind or another to farmers which ought to have a voice when agricultural policy matters are being decided.

It was always a matter of regret to me before I came to the House that our Price Review procedure had not been reformed for a number of years and that it was still very much a matter of bargaining between the Government and the leadership of the National Farmers' Union, not taking into account all the other interests in and dependent upon the agriculture and food industries which were nevertheless directly affected in their well being by the Price Review.

The period of change through which we are likely to go will be induced not only by the disastrous common agricultural policy which we shall have to adopt for the few years while we are in the Common Market but it will be the result of changes in the functions of many of the groups and bodies at present working in agriculture. I think, in particular, of the changing rôle of agricultural cooperative societies and non-agricultural groups of traders making efforts to secure better terms for their products. The marketing boards are having to adapt to the new situation brought about partly by the present Government and partly by the general rise in food prices resulting in some measure from world factors and in some measure from the Government's general economic policy.

It is vital that there be an advisory committee which will pay regard to the future pattern of marketing boards in this country. The Minister owes the House and the country an explanation in this respect, because his attitude to marketing boards is dubious and devious, to put it mildly. I am sure that, unofficially, he is telling the leadership of the NFU, particularly in England and Wales, that it should lay off all the talk about new marketing boards for meat and cereals because he is a bit worried about the general marketing board picture.

I am sure that that is his attitude, and I have wondered why he adopts that line, for there is great grass-roots pressure from farmers to have more statutory marketing arrangements for cereals and meat, which are, after all, responsible for about 40 per cent. or more of total farm sales in this country. In considering the future of cereals and meat, we should have regard to the grass-roots demand being expressed by farmers for strengthened statutory marketing organisations.

Perhaps the Minister does not like marketing boards, though I think that hardly possible because anyone who has any connection with agriculture must appreciate the great work which they have done since the 1930s. It may well be that the right hon. Gentleman has some doubt whether new marketing boards would be acceptable to the Common Market authorities. If that is the reason for his rather devious attitude on the matter, it must give us cause for concern, since we have been proceeding quietly on the assumption that the position of our existing marketing boards would be satisfactory to the EEC and that no real changes in functions or powers would be required.

6.45 p.m.

If the EEC is saying, "We do not like your marketing boards system and we would not agree to any new ones", that would put the futre of our existing boards in jeopardy. The House ought to be worried about that, and it is a matter with which our proposed advisory committee could well concern itself.

The new Clause would, for the first time, recognise the importance of the consumer in agricultural matters. Good though our agricultural policy has been since 1947, and good though it has been that our Minister of Agriculture has always—or nearly always—been Minister of Food as well, the fact remains that we have neglected the interests of the consumer, and at no time more so than in recent years, with the rises in food prices. For that reason, if for no other, it is vital that there should be some such advisory committee as the new Clause would establish.

Mr. Gwynoro Jones (Carmarthen)

I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for calling me in this debate. After last night's performance, I thought there was some danger that my recess would begin rather early. But the patience of the Chair is immense, and for my small peace offering I undertake to be very brief on this occasion.

New Clause 4 is of immense importance to the farming community in the context of the Common Market. I should say at the outset, however, that there are certain aspects of the new Clause about which I am not altogether happy. As one who believes in devolution of authority and in allowing people—in the present Government's phrase—to stand on their own feet and to get on with their own tasks in life, I am not altogether happy at the proposal that representatives from each group would be appointed after consultation with the Minister. Equally, I am not quite happy at the idea that the chairman of the new advisory committee should be appointed by the Minister.

I can well understand the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) in framing the new Clause in this way, since he hopes one day to be Minister himself and he wants to be involved in the administration of the advisory committee. For my part, however, I should argue forcefully that there is need for a great devolution of authority in this respect, and the proposed advisory committee could have been used as a step in that direction.

In my view, advisory committees on a regional basis could be even more effective than a national advisory committee. The problems of agriculture in Wales, in Scotland and in East Anglia, for example, differ considerably, as do the problems of West Wales from those in Glamorganshire. I feel, therefore, that regional advisory committees could have led to a more effective analysis of the situation. But, be that as it may, this is a step in the right direction.

Each group which would be represented on the advisory committee is directly involved in and affected by the implementation of the common agricultural policy. There is great concern about various aspects of the CAP among British farmers, consumers have a direct interest in the way prices will increase, and so on. It will be no good the Minister saying that this is just another advisory committee in a long line of such committees over the years, and we shall now have a new set-up. Indeed, we shall have a new set-up, but it will be highly undemocratic. It will be exceptionally bureaucratic, something we have never experienced in agriculture since the war. What will happen next year will be a new departure. We shall have a bureaucratic system and considerably less democratic control.

I turn to the question of the agricultural executive committees. In Committee the Minister of State said that there were 800 people involved in such committees. According to him, the work which they were doing was not of immense significance. Yet he went on to talk about the advice which they gave in difficult grant and subsidy cases and the borderline cases which often arose on the hills and uplands. They advise the Minister whether he should allow late claims in cases of hardship.

For 25 years the county committees have performed an important task. At times they have been appeal bodies to which farmers, feeling aggrieved about the decisions of the Minister, could go either through their union or directly to the chairman of the committee and ask for a review or examination of the case. The value of this procedure was that the farmer knew that his case would be reexamined, not by officials, but by other farmers. If a hill farmer genuinely believed that he was entitled to the hill sheep or cow subsidy and the Department and the local official said that he did not fall within the regulations, a panel would be set up, together with a farmer who was a member of the county committee, to examine the situation.

The Minister will have to give better excuses than that we shall save £150,000 every year as a result of abolishing the agricultural executive committees. The liaison officer to whom farmers could go direct was the contact with the Minister. The danger of what is proposed in the Bill and of what will happen when we enter the Common Market is that consultation and contact will be lost, and people will feel that they do not matter and that decisions may be taken without their control or without their being asked for their opinion.

The Minister will have to adduce far better arguments than those which were adduced in Committee. To talk about saving £150,000 and, at the same time, to devote hundreds of millions of pounds across the exchanges to the common agricultural policy and French farmers—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State gets excited when we talk about the French farmers, so I had better leave the matter there.

The Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture, Scottish Office (Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith)

A saving of £150,000 may be unimportant to the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Gwynoro Jones), but to the ordinary people and taxpayers of this country any saving is worth while. The hon. Gentleman's attitude is typical of that of his party when it was in office. It had no care for the taxpayers' money; it was there to spend and to run through the fingers of the Government. Precisely the same attitude has been adopted by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that those who at a future election will have to bear in mind that the Labour Party aspires to government will remember the speech of the hon. Gentleman and his lack of husbandry of the resources of the country.

This debate has demonstrated three things. First, we have been entertained yet again to a classic demonstration of the Euro-phobia of the Labour Party. The right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) continually refers to my right hon. Friend the Minister and others among my colleagues as Euro-fanatics. The Labour Party aspires to be an international party. When the right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Cabinet, it teetered on the brink of the Common Market, but it had neither the courage nor the resolution to continue with its policy. No one more than the right hon. Gentleman has gone back on almost everything which was said and written about Europe when the Labour Party was in office. Such speeches as we have heard today, and lectures from the right hon. Gentleman and his friends, which we had so often in the debates on the Common Market, come ill from the Opposition.

Secondly, the Labour Party has demonstrated yet again that it never moves with the times. What was good enough for the right hon. Member for Workington in 1947 is good enough for him today. Although the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) may be unable to do his mathematics properly, I believe that, 25 years on, we must adjust and adapt our policies to the new situation and not maintain them exactly as they are. The hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins) was the one hon. Member opposite who at least paid lip service to the possibility of reforms and he was prepared to countenance them, no matter how dogmatic—and he is dogmatic—and traditionalist the right hon. Member for Workington may be. We have had a demonstration, not only of Euro-phobia, but of conservatism of the most reactionary sort from the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Peart

I was trying to demonstrate that the 1947 Act, later amended by the 1957 Act and subsequent legislation which I had the honour to pilot through the House, was far superior to anything which had emerged from Brussels. Even Dr. Mansholt, the German Foreign Minister recently and Ministers in this country know full well in their hearts that inevitably the common agricultural policy will have to be altered and will have to come nearer to our system.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith

What conceit! The 1947 and 1957 Acts are good, and I should be the first to pay tribute to the benefits which they have brought to farming. But we on this side of the House are not content with what is good. We believe in excellence and improvement. We do not sit back on our laurels, as the right hon. Gentleman does, feeling content with what we have. We are prepared to look at the legislation and structure of government and to improve it. The right hon. Gentleman, by his intervention, has demonstrated how much of a conservative he is.

The third main point which this debate has demonstrated is that the right hon. Gentleman in particular but hon. Members opposite in general have not only completely ignored what was said in Committee and failed to read the reports of the Committee proceedings but have failed to understand what we are doing and why.

The first point that I make in dealing with the matters raised in the debate is that what we propose in the Bill about the agricultural executive committees has nothing to do with Europe, in spite of what the right hon. Gentleman tried to make out. As we said in Committee, this has been done for its own reasons, and I shall give them in a moment—

It being Seven o'clock, and there being Private Business set down by The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS, under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business), further Proceeding stood postponed.