Agricultural Prices (Hansard, 21 May 1981)

§ 7. Mr. Marlow
asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether it remains his policy to freeze the agricultural prices for those items in structural surplus.

§ Mr. Peter Walker
It remains the Government's policy to contain output of products in structural surplus through action on price and such other measures as are appropriate and negotiable. Over the period since we took office, average support prices for the three main surplus commodities, milk, cereals and sugar, have fallen in real terms.

§ Mr. Marlow
Is my right hon. Friend aware that he and I gave a solemn undertaking to the British people on 3 May 1979 that we would not permit an increase in prices for agricultural commodities in structural surplus? There was no mention of future inflation in financial terms. As the poor, the unemployed, the elderly and one-parent families have to pay up to twice world market prices for foodstuffs, will my right hon. Friend ensure that during the negotiations on the restructuring of the CAP this year the Government will refuse to permit any increase in the price of foodstuffs in structural surplus?

§ Mr. Walker
My hon. Friend refers to what he adhered to in the Conservative manifesto at the last election. I am delighted to hear that he adheres to all the enthusiastic passages about the Common Market that appeared in the manifesto. I shall remind him of them on frequent occasions. What matters in real terms is that we have succeeded in reducing the price of all items in surplus. That is a considerable achievement. My hon. Friend is totally and completely wrong about the difference between prices here and world prices.

§ Mr. Jay
Has the Minister informed the Prime Minister of his various U-turns, because she goes on saying that the CAP should be reformed?

§ Mr. Walker
The Prime Minister and I are totally at one on this issue, as on all others.

§ Mr. Peter Mills
Will my right hon. Friend try to explain to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) that in many cases surpluses are good housekeeping? Will he try to explain to him the fact that if expressed in terms of weeks' supplies there is no problem; indeed, that this helps the consumer?

§ Mr. Walker
A dairy surplus is not defensible on the grounds of good housekeeping or anything else. It is an expensive surplus that is not required. Sugar represented the second worst surplus when I took office, but there were crop failures in other parts of the world and it became a commodity in great shortage. The European price turned out to be well below the world price. That is an illustration of what my hon. Friend says.

§ Mr. Skinner
Why does not the Minister go back to his constituency this weekend, make a speech like that of his hon. Friend the former Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy and say that he loyally supports Conservative statements in the election manifesto for keeping down food prices, and risk getting the sack, as happened to his hon. Friend?

§ Mr. Walker
I should much prefer to go to the hon. Gentleman's constituency to describe how the rate of increase in food prices has halved since the Labour Government went out of office.

§ Mr. Skinner
Prices are still rising in Bolsover.