BUTTER (Hansard, 27 June 1973)

§ Mr. Brian O'Malley (Rotherham)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Butter Subsidy Regulations 1973 (S.I., 1973, No. 1012), dated 5th June 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12th June, be annulled. For 2½p a week the Government have broken the confidentiality of the supplementary benefits and the family income supplement systems. Since 1966, when the Ministry of Social Security Act was passed, claimants have been assured that the payments of benefits to them were confidential. Indeed, during the campaigns which successive Governments have run to persuade those who may have entitlement to make their claims to the Supplementary Benefits Commission that assurance of confidentiality has been a major feature of the campaigns. Now, in a reversion to soup kitchen politics, the Government are to issue butter tokens which will serve as public labels advertising family poverty. How does the Minister think that poor people will feel when every shopkeeper where they go, every sales assistant in a supermarket and every member in a supermarket queue will know that they are on means-tested benefits? How would hon. Members feel if their wives had to do their shopping in those circumstances?
So it is that individual poverty is to be publicly exposed for 2½p a week. That is a derisory sum when set against the general rise in food prices, now running at over 20 per cent. a year.
I have the support of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who has cast doubt upon the benefits which this scheme will bring. During Question Time on 15th March, at a time when the benefit appeared likely to be 1½ a week rather than 2½p, the right hon. Gentleman said: One has to think of this in relation to the cost of administering a scheme such as this. This is a somewhat doubtful benefit."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th March 1973; Vol. 852, c. 1451.] During Question Time on 17th May the right hon. Gentleman said: …we have repeatedly said that we do not think this is the way in which one should 1664 normally make arrangements for those in need on social security benefits…".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May 1973; Vol. 856, c. 1695.] The only comfort which poor people can have who are to be issued with these tokens comes from the Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Lardinois, who told the European Parliament on 8th June 1973: …failure to solve the butter problem would be a deathblow to our institutions. At least it is comforting to know that the institutions of the EEC are as firm and as enduring as the unwanted butter and the common agricultural policy which is a feature of the European Economic Community.
The first complaint which will be made, which is already being made and which must be reflected in the House is that the Government—and the Minister knows this better than any other hon. Member —are destroying the confidentiality of the supplementary benefits system.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean)
indicated dissent.

§ Mr. O'Malley
It is no good the hon. Gentleman shaking his head. He knows that is so. How can it be otherwise when we are to issue butter tokens which will be a badge in every shop and supermarket saying: My family have to depend on means tested supplementary benefits. My husband has a job which pays wages so low that he has to be means tested in order to obtain family income supplement."? That is not the only charge which can be made against the scheme which is being introduced by the Government. In this, as in other areas of public policy, the Government continue to act as a divisive force rather than a unifying force within the nation.
There are about 7½ million retirement pensioners in this country, and about 2 million of them are to be eligible for the butter subsidy of 2½p a week. Those 2 million—I speak in rough figures—are the retirement pensioners who are currently drawing means-tested supplementary benefits. They are pensioners who were encouraged to draw such benefits on the assurance that their dealings with the Supplementary Benefits Commission were private and confidential and would be 1665 revealed to no man. Yet of the 5½ million pensioners remaining who have no entitlement under the scheme, as many as 2 million have incomes little above the supplementary benefit level. There are also substantial numbers the estimates vary from upwards of 500,000 to 1 million—of retirement pensioners who are estimated to be entitled to supplementary benefit but will not claim it.
All of us in our constituency advice bureaux know of these people and know why they will not claim. We try to persuade them to claim by saying "It is confidential and you are entitled to these benefits." But they will not claim because they feel it demeaning to do so and they have bitter memories of the old poor law and guardian days and will have nothing to do with the scheme. How can any Government operating a butter subsidy with public butter tokens ever again say to these people "You have an entitlement and there is no need to feel that you are receiving charity, and in any case the benefit is confidential"?
If these people are to claim their rights now under the butter subsidy regulations, the matter is no longer confidential. So, five out of seven of our pensioners—not wealthy people—are already precluded from this minuscule benefit and they are amongst a section of the population worst hit by the ravages of the inflation produced by the Government's policy.
As the Community regulations are apparently to be interpreted, one is informed by the Government that the subsidy is confined to recipients of supplementary benefits—not all recipients but most of them—and to recipients of the family income supplement. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), who raised this matter for the first time in the House, suggested originally that the persons entitled to the subsidy would total 22 million, Including all retirement pensioners, the sick and the unemployed. We are told that the correct figure is about 5 million.
It would have been one thing to have issued these tokens to the whole of the present generation of retirement pensioners, because then the badge would have been the badge of retirement, of age. It is quite different to confine the 1666 issue of such tokens to two out of every seven pensioners, because that means that the badge shows that they are those who have to rely on means-tested benefits which they thought were confidential.
One must ask a number of questions about entitlement which demand answer in considering these loosely-drafted regulations. As I understand it, the major body of supplementary benefit recipients who will be entitled to apply for and receive the tokens will be those …whose pension or allowance is paid by means of an order which is one of a series of orders for the payment of sums on account of benefit, which is, or has been, contained in a book of such orders". I understand that there are no order books for supplementary benefit purposes for the unemployed, even the longterm unemployed, since as long as a man is required to register at the Department of Employment for work no order book is issued. Therefore, paragraph 2(b)(i) apparently wholly excludes the unemployed, including the long-term and even the older long-term unemployed, from the availability of these tokens. In regulation 2(b)(ii) we are told that, in addition to these people who have order books, there will be entitled to this benefit: such other person as the Secretary of State may decide. That is a very wide non-definitive phrase within a statutory instrument and I hope that the Minister will explain it. Who among the unemployed, for example, will be entitled to receive these butter tokens under the regulations?
Again, the regulations do not make clear what the entitlement will be or how the problems will be dealt with administratively. Perhaps we can have an explanation. In a statement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who with his background clearly has a deep knowledge of poverty and supplementary benefits, we were told that the majority of persons on supplementary benefit were to receive or to be entitled to these butter tokens and that they would also be available to those who were continuing recipients of supplementary benefits. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will explain how a decision is to be taken on that basis. There is nothing said about it here. All that we are doing is giving the Secretary 1667 of State blanket power to act as he may decide.
Administratively, I can see enormous problems. What will be the position of a person who has been unemployed for six months or for more than 12 months and has exhausted his entitlement? Will such a person be regarded as being a continuing recipient of supplementary benefits? There is a whole area of confusion and doubt which need never have existed had it not been for the nature of these regulations to which the Government are tonight making obeisance.
There is a third group of people who will certainly not be entitled to such payments. We know that persons receiving national insurance benefits and no supplementary benefit will not be entitled. There is also the low-paid, who have incomes above the FIS level but who, because of the nature, size and age of their family or the level of rent they pay, are still below supplementary benefit level.
What about these? If the Government are being forced to draw lines of this kind by the EEC the Minister will have a job to defend such decisions. There has been a cutting-down of the entitlement from the 22 million first envisaged by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West and not disputed by the Government, who apparently knew little or nothing about it. Such restrictions might be explained if the encouragement of consumption on the scale of 5 million persons in this country along with similar numbers in other EEC countries was thought to be likely to reduce or remove the surplus. That is not the case. The scale of this operation to get rid of the butter mountain is nothing like enough even to see it reduced to tolerable levels by the end of 1973.

§ Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)
It will not even have become a hill.

§ Mr. O'Malley
There are some who believe that the mountain will stay at its present level. The problem is whether there are enough cold storage facilities and refrigerators to put the stuff in. Even with the sale of 200,000 tons to Russia the butter mountain will continue to be a feature of the Community landscape, certainly throughout 1973. There can be no confidence that it will be removed in 1974. The Community, with all its ex- 1668 pertise and agricultural policy based on years of hard experience, had this situation in 1969 and 1970. It tried to deal with the problem with measures of this kind and was unsuccessful.
Butter production throughout the EEC is now running at least 10 per cent. above the 1972 production levels. Therefore, although the Government have agreed to a 5½5 per cent. increase for French farmers in respect of butter and milk—and, however one looks at it, that is the deal which the Minister of Agriculture brought back from Europe—only a fraction of those in this country on social security benefit are to be included in the scheme.
Those are the two principal condemnations of the scheme—the breach of confidentiality, and its divisive nature.

§ Mr. Dean
The hon. Gentleman is blowing hot and cold, and I am not clear whether he is in favour of the Government taking advantage of the subsidy for supplementary beneficiaries.

§ Mr. O'Malley
The hon. Gentleman is not usually so naїve—at least, not deliberately so. He knows that the Labour Party, if it had been in office, would never have entered the EEC on the terms negotiated by the Government, which have produced the present nonsense.

§ Mr. Dean
Whether I am naїve or not, the hon. Gentleman has not answered my simple question: is he is favour of the Government taking advantage of the subsidy for supplementary beneficiaries?

§ Mr. O'Malley
If the hon. Gentleman will listen, that is precisely the balance of argument at which I am trying to arrive. However, whether he is an Opposition Front Bench spokesman or not, every hon. Member is entitled to consider a scheme and to ask what are the inherent disadvantages of it. That is what I am doing.

§ Mr. English
I was puzzled by the Under-Secretary of State's intervention. Has my hon. Friend noticed that the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications takes exactly the opposite view to that of the Under-Secretary of State about the question of subsidies in kind for old people?

§ Mr. O'Malley
The conflict is on the benches opposite rather than on these benches. A few months ago, when my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham, West and Farnworth (Mr. Roper) raised the issue, it was thought that 22 million people would receive the benefit without means testing, which stinks in the nostrils of millions of our countrymen. The situation then was very different from the scheme now brought forward by the Government.
I wish to ask the Under-Secretary of State a number of questions. When dealing with benefits of this kind, the first question which the hon. Gentleman will expect me to ask is about take-up. He has always been forthcoming on this matter. When the family income supplement scheme, which we on this side of the House disliked so much, was introduced, the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State had no hesitation in giving us their estimates of the take-up. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be as forthcoming tonight. I have no reason to believe that he will not be. It is estimated that half a million to 1 million retirement pensioners do not claim supplementary benefit but are entitled to do so. There are a further 700,000 persons on unemployment and sickness benefit who are thought to be entitled to supplementary benefit but make no claim, and only 50 per cent. of families estimated to be entitled to family income supplements claim them. I should like to know the estimated percentage take-up; that is to say, the number of persons who are entitled to the benefit. That figure will give a clear indication of the value of the scheme.
The £3 million estimated cost of the butter subsidy is to come from EEC funds. I understand the attitude of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he said that he disliked the scheme, that there was not much to be said for it and it was of doubtful value. He took the view that if the Community offered something for which the Community paid the full cost it would be wrong for us not to accept it. I understand that view, but what will be the administrative cost? That will not come out of Community funds, it will have to be borne by the British taxpayer. The £3 million is a tiny figure in comparison with the cost of the agreement with the 1670 EEC that has been made by the Government.
How many civil servants will be involved, and what will be the administrative cost? I expect the cost to be fairly high. If the administrative cost comes to one-fifth of the cost of the benefits, serious questions will be posed about the viability of the scheme. The cost of the part played by post offices in the operation of this short-term scheme will be substantial. As with take-up, estimates are made. We are not dealing with the mysteries of the Treasury and the conventional attitude that nothing can be said. The Minister is free to give the estimates.
The Minister must dislike the scheme intensely. He has a detailed knowledge of the operation of the national insurance and supplementary benefit schemes. Privately, although he cannot say so, he must be very uncomfortable tonight.
Regulation 4(1) provides that: Only the person to, or in respect of whom, a butter token is issued, or someone acting on his behalf, shall be entitled to use it. The penalties provided in Regulation 7 are horrific: Where a butter token is used whether fraudulently or otherwise, by a person not entitled to use it, the Secretary of State may recover the value of it from that person or from any other person who has dealt with the token contrary to the provisions of these regulations. Those are strong measures to deal with fraud and abuse. We are told that if a token is lost, another token is claimed in its place and the first token is found and is not returned to the Department the terrible troubles of hell will descend. The person concerned will have to pay the 2½p a week.
I can understand the Government's reluctance to impose huge penalties for fraud, but the whole thing becomes laughable when we look at the terms of the statutory instrument. Supposing somebody does not pay the 2½p or the 10p and the matter goes to court. Is the Department prepared to spend £500 a day in dealing with individual court cases involving such small sums?

§ Mr. Dean
The hon. Gentleman is now making out a case for the penalties not being adequate. Would he like to enlighten the House on what the penalties should be, so that consideration can be given to his suggestions?

§ Mr. O'Malley
I wish the Minister would keep to the point. I am saying that the benefits are not adequate. How can any sensible man discuss seriously the question of penalties in respect of a minuscule scheme of this kind?
When we look at the possibilities of abuse of the system, the matter becomes much more serious. What is to happen to the shopkeeper who takes those 5p butter tokens and allows the holder of those coupons to have 5p to spend on something else? Who can possibly check on individual butter stocks held in every shop and supermarket in the country? Surely the hon. Gentleman would have to say "Yes, we recognise the defects of the whole scheme. We are in a mess because we felt that we had to bend to the will of the EEC's social policy."
The social butter scheme now being introduced by the Governmet is one logical and farcical conclusion of Britain's entry into the EEC on the terms accepted by the Conservative Government. The House of Commons became aware of the relevant EEC regulations and directives on this subject only because of the activities of my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham, West and Farnworth. This is a reflection of the place of the British Parliament in the scheme of European affairs, as those affairs are managed in 1973.
What puzzles me about the scheme is that the Government are doctrinally opposed to food subsidies on items on which the consumer badly needs subsidies —with one proviso, and that is where the EEC decrees otherwise. The matter can best be summed up by a quotation from a leader in the Guardian on 8th June, which said when talking of CAP and the butter mountain: …the Community taxpayer now pays the farmer to produce butter, the consumer to eat it, foreigners to take some of it away, and the Community to store the rest. The purpose of this scheme is to sustain such a system.
The introduction of this butter subsidy is the outward sign that the poorest in the country are pawns in the struggle to maintain an inefficient, high cost and indefinable European agricultural system. It is in this light that we should consider these regulations.

§ Mr. Eric Deakins (Walthamstow, West)
I support the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley), particularly when he said that this scheme will amount to only a pittance for the poorest people of this country. Over a period of six months they are being offered butter tokens to a total value of 60p. We are discussing one pound of butter per month for six months at a subsidy of 5p per half-pound. That represents a saving of 60p. That is no substitute for a decent level of social security benefit. Moreover, as my hon. Friend pointed out, it does not even cover two-thirds of our old-age pensioners, many of whom will be fondly imagining that they can look forward to receiving butter tokens. I am afraid that they will be disappointed.
I also agree with the contention of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham that this scheme will mean a loss of confidentiality. That may not mean very much to the Minister or to a civil servant, but it will mean a great deal to the poorer sections of our community when they go shopping. At the moment, their neighbours do not know whether they are on supplementary benefit or in receipt of family income supplement. But here is a scheme which will make it widely known when people are shopping at least twice a month for six months that they are entitled to this charity from the Common Market.
I want to ask the Minister a number of questions. Why cannot we have a general butter subsidy? There are many working class families who cannot afford, and increasingly will not be able to afford, the level of butter prices that we are likely to face under the common agricultural policy. At the moment, butter is relatively cheap. We know that the price will start moving upwards as we put on levies on imports and progress towards the Common Market system.
This Tory Government dislike subsidies, although they have introduced one or two. This subsidy is a minor one. Why cannot they grasp the nettle firmly and introduce a general subsidy on butter, so helping to get rid of that butter mountain in Brussels? Better still, why not just lower the price of butter in this country? That would help more people to eat butter.
1673 This subsidy idea highlights one of the many absurdities of the CAP, which we have to put up with for as long as we remain in the Common Market. Prices to farmers encourage the over-production of commodities. But, automatically, they mean prices to consumers which discourage consumption because they are much higher than those to which we have been used. The result is that we have these expensive surpluses of butter and other commodities leading the Common Market, with all the brilliant brains of the bureaucrats in Brussels and other places, to devise schemes to get rid of the surpluses.
What has not been tried to get rid of the butter surplus in the Common Market? It has been fed back to cows as part of animal feeding stuffs. What an absurdity! Butter oil has been exported to other countries, where it can be re-converted to bunter. What an absurdity! Butter has been dumped on world markets, to the detriment of world agricultural trade, including that of our major supplier New Zealand. What an absurdity! At a tremendous loss to the consumer and taxpayer of this and other Common Market countries, butter has been sold to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. What an absurdity! Now we have the latest absurdity: a small subsidy for a small proportion of consumers in such Common Market countries as wish to take it up. There is not even any compulsion about it.
This subsidy shows not only the absurdity of the CAP but that its basic principles are incapable of the sort of reform which Ministers keep telling us they want to see. We have to scrap the whole system. The butter subsidy ought to be scrapped. If we had a proper agricultural system, levies on butter and other foods would be scrapped. Let us get back to a sensible agricultural policy which will produce food both at home and overseas at prices which all our citizens can afford and not just a minority of the people.

§ Mr. John Farr (Harborough)
I am surprised at what has been said by the hon. Members for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) and Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins). They seemd to be rather critical of what my hon. Friends and I, 1674 and probably most people in this country, regard as a very good scheme, albeit, we hope, a pilot scheme which will possibly be expanded later.
It is nonsense for the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West to suggest that the Conservative Party does not like subsidies. We introduced the Agriculture Act 1957 which subsidised food prices for many years most sucessfully, at great cost to the taxpayer but to the great benefit of the housewife. That Act was introduced by a Conservative Government and was sustained by them over many years in office.
I welcome the regulations. Many people will see that the Government have at least taken this chance of extending some form of real comfort to those in need, on however limited a scale. There are all too few occasions that any Government seize such opportunities.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have urged differing Governments to take more positive action on, for example, concessionary bus fares for the aged. Indeed, I had the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House not so long ago when I introduced a Bill to provide half-price television licences for the elderly.
This is a minute step that the Government are taking—two 5p tokens per month for limited categories of the population—but I welcome it as a pilot step, especially as regulation 2(b) (ii) indicates that, if we accept the regulations, the Minister will have power to expand the scheme. That is the attitude that I urge hon. Members on both sides to adopt. This is a good step to take. It is very limited, it is not enough, but it is a good step. I shall suggest ideas on how I think it can be expanded, and I know that they will be echoed by many of my hon. Friends.
I suggest that the scheme should eventually be increased in scope in various ways. Two 5p tokens per month is rather paltry. It amounts to £1.20 per person per annum. I should like to see that doubled for butter. I should like it to be applied to all old-age pensioners, as the hon. Member for Rotherham suggested. I should particularly like the scheme to be extended at a fairly early date to include commodities other than butter which are, or are likely to be, in surplus.
1675 Not so long ago in the House my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food undertook that in the ensuing few months, this summer, in Brussels and elsewhere within the Nine he would do his utmost to bring about an improvement in the common agricultural policy. It is generally recognised on both sides of the House that it is not working in a satisfactory manner. If we pass these regulations my right hon. Friend will have a positive contribution to make.
Suppose the regulations are extended to apply to sugar products. Because of the way that the common agricultural policy is being steered in Brussels at the moment, I suggest that we are heading for a massive sugar surplus within the EEC at an early date. The nine nations of the EEC are not signatories to the World Sugar Agreement, which is delicately balanced between supply and demand. Even a few thousand tons of surplus sugar coming on the world market can wreck the returns of all our third country producers in the Commonwealth.

§ Mr. English
The hon. Gentleman will recall that I discovered this subsidy in the OFFICIAL JOURNAL of the Community which comes through my door. He will be glad to know that this morning in the OFFICIAL JOURNAL of the Community there is a new regulation on the denaturing of sugar so that it need not be fed to human beings.

§ Mr. Farr
That is a red herring which I will not pursue at this hour. It sounds to be a project full of interest for hon. Members on both sides of the House.
The EEC is likely to have surplus sugar. We in this country have plans to produce a great deal more. Surely the regulations represent the basis of a sensible scheme whereby our taxpayers benefit by helping to rid this country and the other countries of the Nine of any surplus commodities that may be produced.

§ Mr. David Clark (Colne Valley)
Many of us are following the hon. Gentleman's argument and accepting it. Does he realise that within the last six months the Government have introduced orders to remove the sugar subsidy?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)
Order. I am sorry, but I cannot take arguments about the sugar sub- 1676 sidy. I should have corrected the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) earlier. Sugar is out of order on these regulations.

§ Mr. Farr
I have already said what I wanted to say about it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I shall not, in any circumstances, question your ruling.
I was about to conclude by saying that any arrangements which the Government and my right hon. Friend can enter into Brussels about the disposal of surplus Community agricultural products will be better than the way in which we disposed of our surplus butter to the Russians in recent months. Let us have an orderly system. Let the taxpayers of this country —after all, they are paying far more into the Community than they will ever get out of it—get back some of the money that they are required to pay.
I agree with these regulations. The Opposition have criticised them rather with their tongue in their cheek, because the fact is that it is no use criticising these regulations here in this House. If hon. Gentlemen opposite want to criticise these provisions, they should do so where they can make an impact. They should make their voices heard not in this House but in Brussels where the decisions are taken and in the European Parliament where the Labour Party is not represented.

§ Mr. Albert Booth (Barrow-in-Furness)
My main opposititon to these regulations is that they constitute a serious affront to the pride of many of my poorest constituents. To affront the pride of a poor person has always seemed to me to be worse than affronting the pride of a rich person, because the rich have so many other compensations.
I am sure that many of those who as a result of these regulations will hand over their butter tokens will do so with a sense of humiliation. If the Minister thinks that those who feel humiliated by using such a scheme as this should not use it, let me remind him that those who use the tokens will do so in order to obtain butter not for themselves but for their children and other dependents on supplementary benefits.
I shall not be tempted as far out of order as the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) was by talking about 1677 the possibility of this being a pilot scheme for other products, but in order to make a fair and objective judgment of the scheme one has to ask why only butter is being dealt with in this way.
The answer cannot lie in the categories of persons referred to in the regulations, because these are people in receipt of FIS and supplementary benefits; people to whom milk, bread and eggs are every bit as essential as butter for their well being.
If I may have the Minister's attention, I should like to deal with what I think must be a mistake in regulation 6(4). If the paragraph is printed correctly, it has no meaning whatsoever. It says: any token issued in respect of the deceased shall deliver it forthwith to an office of the Department of Health and Social Security. There must be some mistake there and I hope that the Minister will tell us what it should be. One assumes that the word should be "it". If the instrument is intended seriously, the Minister should at least have pointed this out at the outset.
What legal sanction is there for regulation 6(4), since this is not covered by the sanction mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley)? The penalty for failure to return the token of a dead person can be prescribed only by a regulation under the power contained in the Preamble to the Statutory Instrument. But if I read that Preamble correctly, this can prescribe a penalty subject to the limits of Schedule 2 of the EEC Act, of up to two years imprisonment or a fine of £400. This seems out of line with the penalties referred to by my hon. Friend, which relate to other regulations in the instrument.
The Minister must also tell us, if we are to understand the instrument, which recipients of supplementary benefit are excluded by the operation or otherwise of regulation 2(b)(ii). There must be an exclusion of such recipients, subject to the decision of the Secretary of State.

§ Mr. O'Malley
It is plain from the Press notices issued on this subject that one group of persons who will be excluded are the wives and children of men on strike. Since the Government have almost a "thing" about strikers and supplementary benefit, under these regulations, according to the Government advice to newspaper editors, the 1678 children and wives of men on strike, however long they are on strike, will not be able to get this butter in any circumstances.

§ Mr. Booth
I am grateful for the help of my hon. Friend, who is such an authority on these matters. But the Minister still has an obligation to say whether this limitation extends only so far as my hon. Friend has said.
I want to question the Minister closely on whether the regulations comply with the decision of the Commission on 29th December, which the Explanatory Note suggests the regulations are intended to carry out. The Official Journal of the European Communities for 13th February 1973 says, on page 40/15: Consumers shall obtain butter only on the production of a document proving their entitlement. Where in the regulations is this document described? Is it some new form of supplementary pension allowance or family income supplement book?
The regulations will be humiliating to some of my constituents and an affront to their pride. The Minister asked my hon. Friend whether or not he opposed the regulations. I have no hesitation in answering—I am opposed to them.
I urge the Minister to spread such relief as one can get from the inequities of the EEC common agricultural policy over the community as a whole and to deal with the very serious problem of those on social security and supplementary benefit by increasing their benefits.

§ Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)
I feel a little sorry for the Government tonight. The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) got matters slightly wrong. It was not a case of the Government thinking in the depths of the night what they could do to reduce the price of butter for old people and people receiving benefits. The Government did not even know about this subsidy.
Hon. Members have ben kind enough to mention that when I found the Minister of Agriculture talking one day about agriculture within the Community, I asked him about a butter subsidy. The Minister did not even know about it. Apparently his Department had not read 1679 the document produced by the European Commission only two days before we entered the Community. For some inexplicable reason, perhaps the intricate bureaucratic processes of Brussells, the document was not published until about six weeks after it was produced. The Department did not even know; nor did the Department of Health and Social Security.
My first question is very simple. I know the attitude of the Ministry of Agriculture, which I understand promptly instituted an inquiry into what had happened—or, rather, into what had not happened. Are the Department of Health and Social Security and the Ministry of Agriculture aware that laws are sometimes made in Brussels because of the Government's policy, and do they take note of them? Do the civil servants in those Departments tell their Ministers about them? They certainly did not tell them in this case.
The next thing that happened was that the Secretary of State for Social Services and the Minister of Agriculture were told about the regulations and had to get their heads together to see whether they would implement them. I strongly suspect that had the former Prime Minister of Ireland not, in the midst of an election campaign, announced that he would be implementing them in Ireland and that they could be implemented, and that every other State in the Community, apart from Britain, would be implementing them, our Ministers might have arrived at a contrary conclusion. The fact of the election in Ireland publicised this matter even more.
We know that this is not the Government's idea. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) was asked whether the Opposition were in favour of this subsidy. As a general principle, I agree with Ministers in that I do not like subsidies in kind. I have have visited old people's clubs in my constituency and defended the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, for example, saying that I did not want cheap television licences for old people. I said that I wanted old people's pensions to be raised to a proper level. I do not want to see this and that subsidy in kind. Apart from anything else, the hon. Member for Harborough should consider the administrative costs 1680 of having a thousand different subsidies in kind.
The most important point, however, is that old or unemployed people, or anyone receiving benefits, should have the same right as anyone else in the community to decide for themselves how they want to spend their money. Some may not want a television set. Some may prefer to go to a pub. It is not for us to judge them. If I am not receiving a benefit I am entitled to spend my money as I wish; if one is receiving one the same should apply.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said, we do not want this old attitude of charity. My hon. Friend was a little unfair when he blamed this old attitude of charity on the Government. It is not their fault. It is a European attitude which we are implementing. The regulation is a European regulation which the Government, under pressure, have decided to adopt. It is the Europeans who are saying "People must be singled out. If they produce tokens to prove that they are poor, they can receive charity."

§ Mr. O'Malley
I accept that, but my hon. Friend and I can agree that the Government need never have been in this position. After all, it was the Government who decided that the social, economic and political objectives of the Community under the Treaty of Rome were acceptable to Britain. It was this Government who took us into the Community on that basis.

§ Mr. English
I agree that the Government are responsible for our joining the Community. This regulation is something that they have got to wear, because it is one of the European attitudes. One of the European attitudes is charity towards people in receipt of benefit.
I shall quote in an election campaign the hon. Member for Harborough saying that he believes in real comfort for old people—2½p a week.

§ Mr. Farr
Far more than the hon. Gentleman did.

§ Mr. English
I want to ask the Minister a little more about the definition of eligibility. Where did he get it from? The only body which can interpret a European Community regulation is the European Court. Has anyone asked it? In 1681 English it says that those entitled are those in receipt of social security benefits. We know what that means in plain English. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said, it means 22 million people, including pensioners. In German it says "Sozialhilfe", which again means people in receipt of assistance from the State. The Danish and the Dutch versions have the same word with slightly different spellings. In French it is "assistance sociale". The Italians have much the same phrase. The Irish translation had not been made or was not available at the time I looked them all up. All these words have a very similar meaning to the English translation. So where do the Government get their translation from?
My hon. Friend criticised the lack of clarity of the Government's regulation. He should look at the original Community document. By the standards of the bureaucracy in Brussels, this is a model of clarity.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) pointed out some of the happier phrases in the Community's decision. On the question of how one checks the Community's decision, it has no provisions and no penalties. One knows that apparently everyone in the Vatican is supposed to be eating 30 tons of butter each.
We are supposed to represent all our constituents. On this issue I have no difficulty in representing them all. Apart from my Labour supporters who voted for me knowing full well my attitude to the Common Market, I am certain, as the hon. Member for Harborough implied, that there are few Conservatives in my constituency who believed that this Government would be partially responsible for a subsidy to the Communist Party of the USSR on butter, not to mention a concealed subsidy to the Vatican on butter.

§ Mr. Patrick Cormack (Cannock)
One must redress the balance.

§ Mr. English
In Britain the balance is somewhere in between that in the Community. On the common agricultural policy, an hon. Member opposite who is a delegate to the European Assembly has said that £50 million has disappeared by sheer corruption. The Commission gave 1682 the following splendid answer: "We are not quite sure whether that is the right figure. It may be more." What steps are the Government taking with regard to the common agricultural policy to see that the consumer's money is not wasted?
The situation is a fantasy at times, but the hon. Member for Harborough says that this is a step on the way, that he hopes to see more subsidies—no doubt on every food product whose price is raised by the European Community. It will mean an awful lot of separate subsidies and an awful lot of civil servants. But he need not worry, because the Government are not particularly keen on it either. That is obvious from the regulations. The Government know perfectly well who they send order books out to —people on the family income supplement, for example, or any of the other things that regulation 3(3) covers in their invented definition. It is not the definition of the Community. The regulation says: Butter tokens shall only be issued under paragraph (1) above on application for them being made by the person to whom the family income supplement, supplementary pension or supplementary allowance, as the case may be, is payable. The Government are really saying "We don't want to pay it out. We don't even want to send a 5p butter token to somebody. We shall make it as difficult as possible. You will have to fill in a form." Even an old woman of 88, half blind, bed-ridden and illiterate, will have to fill in a form, to make sure that it is as difficult as possible to get even a 5p butter token.
The Government have had the subsidy hung round their necks by the European Community two days before we entered the Common Market. They did not find out, partly because the Community did not tell anybody for six weeks. Now the Government are trying to look good, but they do not want it and they would not have thought it up for themselves. I do not blame them.
Is the Minister proud that under the present Government the average consumption of butter per head in this country has declined? We were told that we should go into the European Community in order to raise our standard of living. Raising our standard of living apparently means that butter consumption, on the 1683 Government's own figures in their food survey, should go down and we should eat more margarine. It is no wonder Unilever is one of the principal contributors to the European movement. It has a spectacular interest in it. It is no wonder it is a supporter of the Conservative Party. It has a spectacular interest in that, too.
The whole situation is caused by the European Community, for a very simple reason. I have always objected to the Community on the ground that it is not democratic. Because it is not democratic, it listens to farmers, to a minority of producers rather than the consumers. Everyone is a consumer of food. I was speaking only yesterday to an expert who had just convened a conference on agricultural economics in the Common Market, and he told me that the surprising thing he had discovered was that almost every European agricultural economist worked for an institute paid for by a farmers' organisation.

§ Mr. Cormack
There would not be much agriculture without the farmers.

§ Mr. English
Of course there would not, but there would be fewer farmers still if nobody was consuming their product.
We have the interesting situation that consumption of margarine, which can be produced in a factory, is rising, whereas consumption of butter is going down. I do not know that that is ultimately to the benefit of the farmers of the Community. It may be to the benefit of Unilever but I do not see the benefit to the farmer. The expert discovered that almost every agricultural economist in Europe was paid by a farmers' organisation. What will the Government do about that?
It seems that the common agricultural policy should be a little more democratic. It seems that more consideration should be given to the consumer as well as the producer; not "instead of" but "as well as" the producer. It must be remembered that people want food at reasonable prices Everybody wants food at reasonable prices instead of this stupid little subsidy. Old age pensioners may need an increase in pensions but everybody needs their food at reasonable market prices. They do not want inflated prices within the Community so that a quarter of a million tons 1684 of butter can be sold to Russia or a few more theoretical tons can be sold to the Vatican.
So that we can all as consumers have our food at reasonable market prices we must get rid of stupid little measures like this and return to a situation where butter takes the place of margarine rather than the other way round.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean)
The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) poured scorn on butter at reduced prices for those on supplementary benefit. I interrupted him to see if he would answer a simple question—namely, whether in the circumstances which we now face he would accept the subsidy for supplementary beneficiaries. To that question no answer was given. The Opposition owe it to the House, if they intend to pray against the regulations, to answer that basic question.
We have had no answer from the hon. Gentleman. He has treated a serious subject involving supplementary beneficiaries without the seriousness with which he usually treats these matters. We have had no answer from the Opposition. Indeed, they have tended to use this short debate as an occasion to mount an anti-EEC debate. If they feel that some aspects of the common agricultural policy or any other aspect of the EEC are wrong and need to be changed, surely the obligation is on them to assist the Government and everybody else by playing their part in getting changes made.
The Opposition are in great contrast to my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr). My hon. Friend made the point that in the present circumstances the real question which we should be asking ourselves is how we can take full advantage of the situation to assist pensioners and other vulnerable sections of the community.
Against this background I shall turn to some of the detailed questions which have been asked. I intend to restrict myself to what the regulations are about. I shall try to answer the questions which have been put and not get involved in a much wider debate on the pros and cons of the EEC policy.

§ Mr. English
rose—

§ Mr. Dean
I shall come to the points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English). I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for upbraiding his hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham. He said how unfair his hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham had been. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman because he has put the debate into perspective. We are not arguing about the pros and cons of EEC policy. We are discussing whether we should take advantage of arrangements which flow from the EEC policy. That is what the debate is about and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Nottingham, West for conceding me that point and for reprimanding his hon. Friend for raising issues which are extraneous to the matter which is before us.

§ Mr. English
In fairness to myself, I should point out that I raised a fair number of extraneous matters—with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The EEC regulation is permissive—member countries do not have to introduce it. The hon. Gentleman is in effect saying that he believes in subsidies in kind now. Does he therefore disbelieve in the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications' disbelief in subsidies in kind?

§ Mr. Dean
What I am saying is exactly what the hon. Gentleman said. The Government prefer benefits in cash, and for that reason we now have the annual review of pensions, coming into operation in October, and a bigger increase in pensions in real terms than on any previous occasion. But here we have an opportunity, through Community policy, to provide a modest—I do not exaggerate it—help to those on supplementary benefit who wish to buy butter.
The question before us, therefore, is whether the Government should advise the House to accept this modest help. The issue is as simple and as narrow as that. I am saying that we should do so. The hon. Member for Rotherham has not answered the question.

§ Mr. O'Malley
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for admitting that the Government do not like this scheme. Can he say why the Government are operating a scheme in which only the recipients of supplementary benefit and the family 1686 income supplement can have these tokens rather than the broad mass of retirement pensioners? Why are the Government discriminating against millions of retirement pensioners?

§ Mr. Dean
I will deal with that point. In December the Council of Ministers of the EEC passed a regulation deciding in general terms that in order to help dispose of the butter surplus which had arisen member States would be able to subsidise the price of butter to people receiving social assistance. For the marketing year 1973–74, which began on 14th May, the rate of subsidy paid here will be 10p per pound. The quantity on which the subsidy will be paid will be one pound per month. These are matters within the decision of the EEC rather than the United Kingdom Government. The hon. Member for Nottingham, West made this point.

§ Mr. O'Malley
Oh!

§ Mr. Dean
It is no use the hon. Gentleman saying "Oh". I am stating the facts. There may be views on the merits but I am stating the facts and confirming what the hon. Member for Nottingham, West said. The cost of the subsidy but not of the administration is born on the Community's agricultural guidance and guarantee fund. The value of the subsidy, if fully taken up, will be about £3 million. The Community regulation has effect until 31st December next.
The regulations now before the House have been made jointly by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Social Services and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act. They make the necessary arrangements for us to take on, from 1st July, the Community regulation governing the social butter subsidy.
Regulations covering Northern Ireland have been made in similar terms, namely the Butter Subsidy Regulations Order (Northern Ireland) 1973.
Who will qualify? This was the point raised by the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) in particular. The EEC regulation limits the subsidy to people receiving social assistance. Translated into our terms, that relates to schemes of means-tested benefits for 1687 people with inadequate resources, and people getting family income supplement or supplementary pensions or allowances.

§ Mr. Booth
If the definition the Minister has given is all-embracing who is excluded in 2(b)(ii)?

§ Mr. Dean
I am coming to that. Regulation 2(a) provides that all people receiving FIS and those members of their family for whom the supplement is paid will be entitled to the subsidy. Paragraphs (b) and (c) provide that all persons receiving supplementary pension or allowances by means of an order book will qualify, together with their dependants. In addition such other persons receiving supplementary benefit as the Secretary of State may decide will qualify.
The arrangements which the Secretary of State has made will ensure that all persons and their dependants receiving a continuing award of supplementary benefit will qualify. Persons who receive only single payments of supplementary benefit, generally the short-term sick and the short-term unemployed, will not qualify. The total number estimated to be entitled to the subsidy is about 5 million, including children.
In addition to benefiting from the general butter subsidy of about 2p per pound which the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry announced to the House on 7th May, each person will be able to buy one pound of butter a month at 10p less than the price which would otherwise be payable. The first point answers the question asked by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins) as to why there cannot be a general butter subsidy. There is.

§ Mr. O'Malley
Will the hon. Gentleman define short-term sickness and unemployment?

§ Mr. Dean
I am coming to that. The details about the qualifications are that a person who qualifies for the subsidy will be issued with two butter tokens for each month for which the scheme operates; that is, from July to December, inclusive. Each token will be valid for the purchase of one half pound of butter at 5p less than the normal price. Each token is valid for two months; that is, the month of the entitlement and the following month.
1688 I come to the arrangements for issuing tokens at the outset of the scheme. The vast majority of those who will receive benefit are those who will receive it by order book. This week post offices are giving the people concerned a form containing a simple declaration as to the number of people in the family. The completed forms are to be returned to the post office next week when the beneficiary will be given the appropriate number of token sheets, which will provide for tokens up to the end of the year.
The second group are people who are receiving a continuing supplementary allowance through the employment exchanges. I have in mind in particular the people mentioned by the hon. Member for Rotherham; namely, people who are unemployed, including the long-term unemployed. I confirm that all those who are long-term unemployed—in other words, those who are unemployed for more than a comparatively short period, a week or fortnight—will be eligible for the subsidy as long as they are on supplementary benefit. The hon. Gentleman knows from his experience that the period before which a regular payment is instituted varies. It can be as short as a week, sometimes rather more. Those who are on benefit for more than a very limited period will qualify, and they will include the long-term unemployed. In those cases employment exchanges are issuing declaration forms. In some areas the exchange will next week issue the token also. In other areas the tokens will be issued by the local social security office.
The other group of people are those who are receiving regular payments of supplementary benefit by Giro cheque. In their cases tokens are being issued direct by the local social security office. Other people will begin to receive qualifying benefit after the butter scheme starts, and they will be issued with tokens by their local social security offices.
Regulation 5 provides that if a retailer submits to the Secretary of State a valid butter token which is received by selling butter at subsidised prices he will be entitled to payment of 5p for that token. Participation by retailers will be voluntary, but the Government hope that they will be prepared to co-operate and help their customers by operating the scheme.
1689 The hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness referred to a printing error in Regulation 6(4). I am grateful to him for pointing it out, and I apologise for the mistake. The word "if" should read "it".

§ Mr. O'Malley
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the information which he has given about supplementary benefit recipients who do not have order books, and about the availability of the tokens to the unemployed. Why are the dependants of strikers to be discriminated against, as we are told they are in the notes to editors accompanying the Press notice issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on 7th May?

§ Mr. Dean
Anyone in receipt of the family income supplement will be entitled, but we have endeavoured to distinguish, as I think is right and proper, between people who are on continuing in benefit and people who are on benefit for a very short period. The Government hold to the view that in general benefit should be paid in cash and not in kind so that the recipients, as with the rest of the community, may buy goods which they prefer.
It is unfortunate that we have had from the Opposition a seeming desire to deny to supplementary beneficiaries a benefit to which they are entitled under the EEC arrangements. It is on that basis that I commend the arrangements to the House.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The Question is—

§ Mr. O'Malley
On a point of order. Mr. Deputy Speaker. I realise the limitations of the power of the Chair, but may I through the Chair bring that question to the attention of the Minister.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)
No, I am afraid not. A point of order is something which I must be able to deal with myself. If the hon. Gentleman will address me in those terms I will see what I can do.

§ Mr. O'Malley
May I, through the Chair, put a question to the Minister?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
No, that is quite impossible. The hon. Gentleman may put the question to me.

§ Mr. English
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I have the leave of the House to speak again, as there is still five minutes left before the close of the debate?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
No. The House objects.

§ Mr. O'Malley
I think that a situation has arisen which the Minister would not deliberately seek. May I, through the Chair, ask if the Minister may be requested to answer the questions about take-up and administrative costs, because I think that he has overlooked them?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The hon. Gentleman cannot ask the question through the Chair. I am afraid that I must now put the Question.

§ Mr. Peter Shore (Stepney)
Surely we are entitled to continue the debate until one-and-a-half hours have expired. As one who has not so far had the fortune to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I make a short submission to the Minister?
Given the definitions in the Community document from which the regulations derive of the categories which are to benefit from this subsidised butter, why have the Government limited the application of the benefit to those who are in receipt of means-tested benefits in Britain?
That may be the proper and inevitable interpretation of what the Brussels Commission meant in its superior legislation and superior wisdom, but the House would like to know what steps the Government took, first, to ascertain from the Commission in Brussels whether this interpretation is the correct one and, secondly, if that interpretation is correct, what arguments they brought to bear upon the Commission to make it change its mind. Whatever the objections may be to payments in kind as against payments in cash, what is objectionable are payments in kind that discriminate sharply between those who are in receipt of means-tested benefits and those who are not.
A different attitude would be found in the country and the House if a scheme of subsidised butter—however absurd the underlying policy that produced a surplus —were to apply to the whole category of 1691 recipients of social security benefits, rather than to those who have to show proof and evidence under threat of penalty that they are recipients of means-tested benefits. This is still, I hope, the House of Commons to which hon. Members are elected to represent the British people. The Brussels Commission does not represent the British people—it is not an elected body. I invite the Minister, in the few minutes that remain, to answer the question.