Intervention Stores (Hansard, 21 February 1991)

§ 8. Mr. Skinner
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the current amounts of foodstuffs held in EC and non-EC intervention stores in the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Curry
A table showing intervention and private storage stocks in the EC and United Kingdom is deposited monthly in the House of Commons Library. Latest figures were tabled on 19 February.

§ Mr. Skinner
Will the Minister admit that, despite all the set-aside schemes and attempts to run down the industry, surpluses in intervention stocks are increasing again? Does he agree that at a time when every family is paying £16 a week to prop up the common agricultural policy, and when we have the cock-eyed MacSharry proposals before us that will make matters worse, it would make more sense if those stocks of food found their way into empty bellies in the third world instead of being wasted as they are now?

§ Mr. Curry
First, the House should note that this is one of the rare occasions on which the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) agrees with his Front Bench, in his condemnation of the MacSharry proposals. His suggestion that European surpluses should be sent to the third world would do positive damage to the third world by simply wiping out local production. To suggest getting rid of our surpluses by using the third world as a dustbin does no good to European agriculture and would be a major disservice to the third world.

§ Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop
When will my hon. Friend discover what ought to be self-evident—that only by a quota policy can we ensure that agricultural support goes to the producers of food, not to the storers of food or the exporters of subsidised food?

§ Mr. Curry
What I have discovered is that we must have an agricultural policy that is closer to the marketplace and the consumer. I am afraid that the formula that my hon. Friend suggests would have precisely the opposite effect.

§ Mr. Ron Davies
We all agree that a system of agricultural support that does not benefit producers or consumers but rewards people who store food, people who destroy food and people who dump food cannot be justified and has to be reformed. We know which reforms the Government oppose. Why are they so coy about giving details of the reforms that they would like to see?

§ Mr. Curry
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman reads the speech by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the National Farmers Union. It spells out clearly what we have said for years—that farming must get closer to the marketplace and that institutional prices have to come down. We have to make sure that farming is compatible with the environment and that its job is to supply what people want to eat. There is nothing very original about that. It is common sense, and common sense is the hallmark of the Government's policies.