National Farmers' Union (Hansard, 19 January 1978)

§ 5. Mr. Newton
asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will next meet the President of the National Farmers' Union.

§ 9. Mr. Temple-Morris
asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will next meet the President of the National Farmers' Union.

§ Mr. John Silkin
I have no specific plans, at present, for a meeting with the President of the National Farmers' Union, but I keep in close touch with the union.

§ Mr. Newton
When the right hon. Gentleman next meets the president, will he be aware that his skill in dodging direct questions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) will be no substitute for a clear assurance that he has sought an immediate devaluation of the green pound of at least 7½ per cent.? Before he goes, will he assure his hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Roberts) that the housewife's burden will be a great deal heavier very soon unless something is done to restore confidence inside British farming?

§ Mr. Skinner
Get out of the Market. That is the answer.

§ Mr. Silkin
The hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton) is making a number of rather sweeping assertions. The question of devaluation of the green pound is one that, understandably, the President of the National Farmers' Union has very closely in mind. I, too, have it closely in mind, because I have to balance the interests of agriculture, because I am the responsible Minister of the food industry, which has other points of view, 646 and of the housewife, because I am also sponsoring the food which she will have to pay for. The balance of those three imperatives must always guide what I do.

§ Mr. Temple-Morris
Three years ago we had a White Paper, "Food from Our Own Resources", which was intended to instil confidence in British agriculture but without sufficient money to back it up. Now we do not even have a White Paper. When the Minister meets Sir Henry, what will he tell him to give him confidence in the future of British agriculture?

§ Mr. Silkin
I think that the hon. Gentleman has already seen a copy of the annual review, and that may well form a very interesting topic of discussion in what I understand may be the subject for Monday's debate. But I would not recommend the hon. Gentleman to quote too much from it. There is a great deal that I might quote from it.

§ Mr. Hardy
Will my hon. Friend repeat comments that he has already made to ensure that the Opposition are enlightened? Will he confirm that the pig sector is the most hard-pressed sector of British agriculture at present, that that sector would not necessarily be helped by changes in the green pound and that the prime need for the pig sector, and possibly for beef, is early and substantial changes in monetary compensatory amounts? The Opposition are not helping in this regard.

§ Mr. Silkin
My hon. Friend has put the matter very clearly. It is the beef and the pig sectors that are suffering most at the moment, and, understandably, they are doing so from a large competition of MCAs. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Roberts), I said earlier that the trouble with the green pound is that it is a very blunt instrument. If one could use a national means of this sort, or any other national means, selectively, it would be a great deal of assistance.

§ Mr. Peyton
The right hon. Gentleman has not answered my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton), except with a familiar dirge. Cannot he say whether, in his view, the point has been reached that the interests of the consumer and of the livestock producer are converging, or have converged, since both 647 have an identical interest in the preservation of a healthy and competitive livestock industry? If we go on in this way, with Ministers putting off the inevitable, the problem will get worse and worse, and the right hon. Gentleman will be to blame.

§ Mr. Silkin
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is converted to my point of view, which all the way along has been that the interests of the producer and of the consumer coincide. When, as happened at the Farmers' Club meeting of which we have both spoken, someone said to me "You are an excellent Minister of Food but an"—expletive deleted—"Minister of Agriculture", I tried to point out that, in fact, the interests of the two go together. But there is another way in which the interests go together, and the right hon. Gentleman must direct his mind to it. All the evidence shows that if the price of foodstuffs goes up there is a corresponding fall in consumer demand. The farmer must be aware of that, too.

§ Mr. Newens
When my right hon. Friend is next in contact with the President of the NFU, will he discuss with him the problems of glasshouse growers? Does he agree, with regard to fuel costs, that the Dutch are still enjoying a very unfair advantage and that our EEC partners have been most unfair in holding up progress towards a fair equalisation of fuel costs? Does not this illustrate the disadvantages for horticulture of our being in the EEC?

§ Mr. Silkin
There are a number of balancing advantages and disadvantages here. I am well aware of this point. If I were not, my hon. Friend, who has been a marvellous champion of the growers in his constituency and who has always made the point fairly, would see to it that I was. But there are a number of considerations to be taken into account, one of them being that progress is being made in this field, and one hopes that the results will eventually turn out to be right.