Milk Producers (Hansard, 17 January 1985)

§ 4. Mr. Colvin
asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next plans to meet the president of the National Farmers Union to discuss the problems of milk producers.

§ The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Michael Jopling)
I have frequent meetings with the president of the National Farmers Union, at which a wide range of subjects are discussed, including the problems of milk producers.

§ Mr. Colvin
I am pleased to hear that my right hon. Friend has these meetings. Next time he meets the president, will he be prepared to discuss the maketing of quotas, by sale or by lease, so that next time he goes to Brussels for price fixing negotiations with our European partners we have firm proposals to put before them? As it seems, from estimates, that this country is likely to be the only one within its quota by the end of the year, are there not strong arguments for this country proceeding with its own scheme for the marketing of quotas, whatever our European partners may do?

§ Mr. Jopling
I should not be so bold as to say that this country will be the only one within quotas by the end of the year, but I agree that there are strong arguments for greater mobility of quotas. Precisely how this should be achieved is the subject of detailed discussions which my Department is having with the milk industry, to which my 496 hon. Friend the Minister of State referred last week. I shall certainly discuss this fully with the president of the NFU when I next meet him.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell
Has the Minister made any real progress in arrangements for making quotas surplus in one region available to other regions?

§ Mr. Jopling
The right hon. Gentleman has no doubt spotted in the press that the Commission made proposals on Monday of this week which suggest that it is possible to make exchanges in this way between regions of a country. I ascertained from the commissioner that this was intended to embrace two regions of the country where one region is on formula A and the other is on formula B. The signs are hopeful, but I must stress that the arrangements are not yet finalised. We shall be returning to this in February.

§ Mr. Latham
Before the first anniversary of the quotas, does my right hon. Friend expect to have sorted out all the bureaucratic hassles?

§ Mr. Jopling
I would be a great optimist if I thought that we had sorted out all the bureaucratic hassles. As I warned the House before we embarked on the matter, it was inevitable that such a situation would arise. I pay tribute to the commissioner, so soon after taking up his post, for having suggested a number of alterations to the scheme, some of which will, I hope, be of great assistance to this country.

§ Mr. Torney
When the Minister next meets the president of the National Farmers Union, will he also remember and consider the problems that face both the farm worker and the dairy distributive worker because of the milk quota system? Will he take action on those problems?

§ Mr. Jopling
The hon. Gentleman has referred to this problem frequently in the past few months. We can find relatively few examples of redundancies among farm workers, but, as the hon. Gentleman and I both know, there are many redundancies in the milk processing industry. However, the Milk Marketing Board, for instance, has a redundancy scheme that is significantly better than the basic state scheme.

§ Mr. Harris
Has my right hon. Friend had an opportunity to re-read the report of our debate last week on the outgoers scheme? If so, will he now agree to an increase in the sum of £15 million allocated to that scheme, so that more quotas can be redistributed to needy cases?

§ Mr. Jopling
The amount allocated to the scheme is £50 million, not £15 million. I am afraid that I have nothing to add to the guidance that I gave to the House last week when I said that the Government had no intention of increasing the amount of money available.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
When the Minister next meets the president of the NFU, will he apologise not only to the NFU but to all those employed in the dairy industry for his ham-fisted approach to the imposition of quotas, which has led to turmoil in the industry and—because the cut in production has been 43 per cent. greater than was agreed by the Minister in his sell-out last March — to the ludicrous result of a milk shortage?

§ Mr. Jopling
As a farmer, the hon. Gentleman should remember, before he produces such ingenious statistics, 497 that there was a drought last summer. That was the principal reason why the reduction in production in this country was greater than in any other.