§ 2.42 p.m.
§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD CARRINGTON), rose to move, That the Ploughing Grants Draft Scheme reported from the Special Orders Committee on the 20th of May, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is the fourth Ploughing Grants Scheme to be presented. It is exactly the same as the one which was presented last year. As was promised in the White Paper which was published after the Annual Review, the amount of the ploughing grants is to be exactly the same as last year—that is to say, £5 per acre for ordinary pasture and £10 in special cases. I think your Lordships will agree that in the circumstances it is right to go on with these grants, and that to take any other course at a time like the present, when agriculture is going through a rather difficult period of adjustment, would be very dangerous. I feel sure, therefore, that your Lordships will agree that the draft instrument now laid before the House should be approved so that these schemes may be continued without change. I beg to move.
§ Moved, That the Ploughing Grants Draft Scheme reported from the Special Orders Committee on the 20th of May, be approved.—(Lord Carrington.)
§ THE EARL OF LISTOWELMy Lords, I should like to say just two or three sentences to support very warmly the proposal to renew these grants for the coming year. I said in our last agricultural debate just before Easter—and I think other noble Lords said the same thing—that I very much hoped that the Government would continue the ploughing-up grant this year. I am extremely glad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that they have decided to do so, and to do so without reducing the amount of the grants or making the conditions which have to be fulfilled by farmers in order to obtain grants more difficult than they have been hitherto. I should like to add one comment—though perhaps the noble Lord opposite will not agree. In spite of this ploughing grant, this subsidy to arable farmers, and in spite of the price 1035 guarantee, I do not believe that the increase in the tillage acreage which the noble Lord wants to see, in order to reach his production target, will be obtained. So I do not support renewal of the grant because I think it will enable the Government to get the increase in the tillage acreage and the tillage yield which they want, and which they need in order to reach their production target. But I do support it, and support it very strongly, because I am quite sure that if this grant were reduced, or, still worse, removed, at the present time, the increase in our tillage acreage, which, of course, diminished last year compared with the year before, would dwindle even more and might even result in the loss of tillage to grass—something which we saw in the years which followed the war. I should like to endorse what the noble Lord said in commending this Order to the House.
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.