HC Deb 28 July 1977 vol 936 cc914-7
7. Mr. Marten

asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the increased expenditure by the EEC following decisions of the price review.

Mr. John Silkin

Information on the cost of the 1977 price fixing has been made available to the House in documents R/851/77 and R/1226/77. My aim at this year's price negotiations was to achieve the maximum restraint on common support prices and the increases finally agreed were the lowest for several years.

Mr. Marten

But is not the sum of £50 million, which, I think, we are due to receive for the butter subsidy, more than cancelled out by the £60 million that we have to pay in on the amended supplementary budget No. 1? That being so, does it not show that we should now stop this charade of financial obfuscation and move over to a national agricultural policy that is under our own control?

Mr. Silkin

I hesitate to correct the hon. Gentleman's figures, but I understand that the butter subsidy is worth £65 million, not £50 million.

Mr. Marten

That is not what is said on the document I have here.

Mr. Silkin

I think that that is, in fact, what has emerged. The other factor is the value to the consumer of the butter subsidy. I do not want to get dragged into the butter subsidy issue, because I know that that was not the main thrust of the hon. Gentleman's question, but it is a fact that the reduction of 10p per pound, which has been fairly widespread, has helped the British consumer very much, from the days when the hon. Gentleman and I thought that there might be an increase of 18p or 19p a pound, as he well remembers.

I agree that there are unsatisfactory features in the general financing of the situation.

Mr. Raphael Tuck

Can my right hon. Friend say whether this country has derived any benefits whatever from the £700 million per year that it has to pay to the common agricultural fund and, if so, what these benefits are?

Mr. Silkin

If I were to answer this question directly, we should be involved in a very long debate. One would have to consider a balance, partly of advantage and partly of disadvantage. But I have to tell the House that an unamended common agricultural policy is one which, taking the balance, is not of benefit to this country and ought to be remedied.

Mrs. Dunwoody

Has my right hon. Friend taken note of the fact that, following the marvellous job he did in the price review of keeping the levels as close to small increases as possible, he may find himself this year dealing with a much worse situation, because it seems very likely that we shall have bumper cereal harvests, and we shall then be in an even more ridiculous situation vis-à-vis the intervention prices that have already been fixed?

Mr. Silkin

I do not think that we can be hurt by having a heavy harvest. I think that it must be of help to livestock producers. But, in general, my hon. Friend is quite right, and it remains part of our policy—not the whole, but a part—that the price reductions that we started to obtain this year on institutional prices of commodities in surplus shall be continued and pressed on with.

Mr. Temple-Morris

Is the Minister aware that there are hon. Members—I hope on both sides of the House—who are getting increasingly tired of agricultural Question Time being used—not by the Minister but by certain hon. Members —to present tirades against the Common Market? Is he aware, further, that we need things from the Common Market and we shall not get them if we behave in what I am afraid to say is the ridiculous way in which certain hon. Members behave in relation to what was a democratic decision of the British people?

Mr. Silkin

That is a very wide and philosophical question, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for the compliment that he indirectly but implicitly paid me. What he is saying, of course, is that my reasonable, courteous and gentle way of handling my partners in Europe has been successful.

Mr. Wrigglesworth

Does my right hon. Friend agree that British farmers have benefited in general terms from the common agricultural policy? Can he say by how much they might have benefited as a result of the recent review?

Mr. Silkin

To think of farmers as one collective mass is to give entirely the wrong impression. It depends upon the sort of farming being done. Some farmers have done better than others. I do not know that one could necessarily do a Gallup Poll on numbers. But one can survey farming sector by sector. In cereals, for example, there have been undoubted benefits. That is why I did not agree totally with my hon. Friend when he made his point. It is also true that the benefits to pig farmers have sometimes been illusory.

Mr. Wiggin

In view of the TUC-Labour Party liaison document published yesterday, which apparently has the blessing of the Prime Minister, in which it is said that deficiency payments shall be extended, will the Minister now say how much more expensive deficiency payments would be to the British Treasury if the same level of prosperity were to be afforded to farmers at the present time? Could it be three, four or five times as much?

Mr. Silkin

To do that, one would have to quantify one basis against another, and it would be a very long calculation. But I cannot remember the Opposition Front Bench attacking—it was one of the few occasions on which they did not—when we managed to get the variable beef premium, which is our own deficiency system, made permanent for the whole year, and possibly permanent in history. Indeed, some Opposition Members have asked why we do not extend the system.