AGRICULTURE

HL Deb 17 April 1957 vol 203 cc105-24

2.49 p.m.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH rose to call attention to the condition of agriculture; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I rise again to call the attention of your Lordships to the condition of agriculture. In thinking about the situation of agriculture, my mind was directed back to the reception which was given to the Annual Review and Determination of Guarantees, published in March, 1956. In that year there was a widespread storm of indignation among sections of the farming community. This year there has been only a whisper here and there. The leaders of the National Farmers' Union have received the special praise of the Minister of Agriculture, who described them as "statesmen" for not opposing the proposals of the Minister in the price guarantee.

Apparently the N.F.U. have been fairly successful under their new title of "statesmen" in not making too much fuss about the matter, but as I go about the country—and I daresay that noble Lords in all parts of the House have the same experience—I find in regard to the present Annual Review a sense of strong misgiving about the situation. It arises largely from the general condition of the industry, as the farmers themselves know it; and it is growing upon farmers, as I talk to them and they talk to me, that their personal net gains from farming are going down, while the personal net gains in practically every other industry or walk of life are going up. Even on the rather rough and ready estimates which are made from time to time of net farming incomes in the Annual Review, I think it is quite apparent that the farmers' net incomes, as returned there, have gone down steadily since the year 1952–53. Even the assessment which is made this year of their incomes, which I find rather high—and I shall be surprised to find in eighteen months' time, when the return comes out from the Board of Inland Revenue, that it is supported by actual taxation assessments—is at a lower figure than the figure of 1952–53. So there has been a continuous decline.

If we adopt the method usually adopted of portraying to the public this general movement in incomes of sections of the community, we find that there is an index figure of 100 representing the year 1950. The farmers' net incomes rose from 1950 to 1952–53, on the average, by an amount which brought them at that time to about twenty points above the figure for 1950 in the index. Since then, however, there has been a steady decline. They were on what has been described by the Prime Minister as "a plateau" for about eighteen months or two years, but since the end of 1953 the incomes have declined, until they are now no more than ten points above the index figure of 1950. But if we look at other returns of incomes, we find that there has been a continuous upward rise; and although I daresay one could find a few small classes, like people with fixed incomes from investments, old-age pensioners and people of that sort, who have not made similar rises, the great majority of the people in the country have gone rapidly up. I am looking now at the Economic Survey for 1957, where on page 11 we see Table IV, the Return of Personal Income and Expenditure.

Even coming down to the disposable income, as apart from the receivable income, and allowing for all deductions for taxes on income, National Insurance contributions, and less remittances from abroad, the incomes of these people have risen from £11,293 million in 1952 to £14,859 million in 1956. That gives general support—I do not say it gives detailed support—to my statement that in regard to almost every other class of the community incomes have gone up steadily between 1950 and 1956. But, as I say, even in respect of the returns made in the Annual Review and Determination of Guarantees, that is not the case in respect of the net incomes of farmers.

I cannot see that that is an indication that the farming industry, as a whole, is in quite the position that it ought to be. After all, when there are discussions upon wages and conditions in any industry, and when objections are made, in public meetings or in another place, about the lack of increase of wages or about the increase of profits, and when it is said, as some people say, that profits should be taken out of the industry, there are loud protests from members of the Government and their supporters. It is said that profit is the essence of business, and if the business is not run for a profit, and a good profit—one that will help you to put by for future years so that replacements can be made at their actual cost, even if helped sometimes by depreciation allowances—then the business had better not run at all. That is the kind of answer we get. But when we come to deal with the farming situation, that is just about what it seems to me many farmers fear the Government are doing to-day.

The situation has largely arisen from the general policy which has been applied in agriculture by the present Government since 1951–52. They were so anxious to change the kind of general overall system that we in the Labour Government had been applying that they brought in, stage by stage, all kinds of decontrols. Some they could not introduce at once, but they brought them in as rapidly as they could. They reduced the subsidies to consumers; they changed the subsidy on bread; more recently, they have made it exceedingly difficult for the only remedy that can be applied to the milk industry at the moment—that is, to ensure a much larger and wider consumption of liquid milk out of the national product of milk—by the removal of the subsidy on milk, thereby increasing the price to the consumer.

Then, as recently as last autumn, they finished off that process when milk was raised to 8½d. a pint, which brings the future winter price for certain, at least to the milk consumer, to something like 5s. 8d. a gallon, or an average price of 5s. 6d. a gallon over the year; whereas by the time the dairy farmer has received the reward for his gradually and steadily improving milk production over the whole year, his total yield, after the cost of transport has been deducted, will barely reach 3s. 2d. a gallon. I might add that the consequence is that the farmers are being severely cut in this last twelve months in the reward they get for their milk, and the average reduction, I suppose over the winter months has been certainly more than 4d. a gallon—it has been 5d. in certain months and 7½d. in others. Perhaps the noble Earl who is to reply to the debate will be able to tell us what the price of milk will be for the month of March; it may have been published but I have not seen it. I am not sure what the actual cut in their return has been, but certainly it has been an average of 4½d. a gallon.

We see that, not only in the case of milk but also in other sections of the farming industry, the policy of the Government has led to great difficulty to the farmer. Your Lordships will remember the great chaos caused in the pig industry some two and a half to three years ago. I was hoping that my noble friend Lord Silkin would be here to-day—unfortunately he is very busy—because he particularly wanted to speak to the House about the big reductions in pig returns. Certainly the pig section of the industry has passed through varying waters in the last three years, and for a time there was a serious decline in the numbers of the pig population. That has been climbing back steadily until now, only to be met in the last few months, under this free-for-all system, by a still further decline in remuneration—a decline which has led many friends of mine who are, as they say, "in pig production," to look at the future with some grave doubts.

Why does this general feeling of misgiving of which I have been speaking exist at the present time? It arises, I submit, from the free-for-all policy which the Government have been adopting, as I think is shown in the White Paper itself, and the manner in which the Government's decision has been announced. If your Lordships look at page 5, paragraphs 15 and 17, you will see that, after all the great claims made on behalf of the long-term policy of guarantees, that they would not fall below a certain figure, in effect, when they are worked out, there will be a decline. Now let us see how the matter is approached in paragraph 15. It says that The total value of the guarantees…for this purpose at the 1957 Annual Review was calculated to be £1,197 million and 97½ per cent. of this is £1,167 million "— that means to say, the minimum figure to which it can be reduced under the long-term guarantee, is £1,167 million. Paragraph 15 goes on: After the addition of the relevant cost increase "— that is where farmers are already out of pocket for the past year— of nearly £38 million, the lower limit for the Government's determination would he an increase of just under £8 million in the total value of the guarantees. That is to say, on the basis of the long-term guarantee process the farmer could be left with a debit on account of guarantees of £30 million.

It is true that as you go on to read paragraph 17, you see that the Government have been forced, possibly by the arguments of the farmers' leaders, to realise that they ought to do something about the guarantees themselves. So, instead of giving only the increase of £8 million, referred to in paragraph 15, they propose to raise the increase to £14 million for the current year. But that leaves £24 million, on the basis that for the current year, we shall have the same experience as in the year 1956–57. Farmers have to make up for themselves a balance of £24 million for the year. Let it be said straight away that £24 million is a larger sum than has been left for the farmers to meet in any one year since 1949. It means also, since this system of Annual Reviews, and things having to be made up by what is called increased efficiency year by year, that the farmers will, by the end of the year in which they get this cut of £24 million, have made up something like £125 million per annum cumulatively in efficiency. I should say that one would have considerable difficulty in finding other industries in the country which could match such a difficulty as that. That means increased efficiency—not merely increase in output.

Look around and see the conditions under which the other industries work. For years now the great majority of them have been able to build themselves up behind a considerable tariff wall. They may have been able—I do not deny it—to make improvements in plant and that kind of thing, by the protection they enjoy; but that protective tariff has to be paid for, and it is paid for by the consumers of the country. Yet directly we come to what the Government themselves have admitted again and again is a just set-up for the farming industry—considering their subsidy and what is given to general industry in tariff protection—everybody talks about the farmer being "feather-bedded", when in fact, while the wages of his own workers have been steadily rising, which I am glad to see, the returns to the fanner are going down. I should be glad to hear whether the noble Earl accepts the facts which I have been putting before him in that connection to-day.

I was referring just now to the fact that milk was an important question. What has been done in regard to milk means a large slice out of the profits of the British agricultural industry. I do not know what fellow farmers in the House may say, but I myself should be rather sorry to be wholly in dairy farming. There seems to be so much more interest and general ability in keeping up a standard of farming and husbandry if you have a mixed farm as well as a dairy. That aspect—the proper development of ley farming and grass production—has always interested me very much. If you take the general way in which dairy farming has been treated in the Review I regard it as rather shocking. I remember—and I put it down on paper—a statement last year by a farmer a long way from the district I know anything about. Mr. Robert Foster, of Skipton, said this about last year's Review: The Review is a smack in the eye for all those who have responded so well for increased production in the past for more milk, pigs and eggs. It is a mere flea-bite Review so far as the grassland farmer is concerned, and a disgrace to a Government which has frequently and forcibly announced its intention of supporting a healthy and prosperous agriculture. He was speaking of last year's Review— " We had expected at least 2d. a gallon increase on milk and considered we would not be over recouped with perhaps 3d. a gallon. "In dealing with milk in the Review this year, the Ministry admit that since then there has been another increase of 2d. per gallon in the cost of production of milk, but feel that, having regard to the general economic circumstances of the country at present (that is how I think they have been able to persuade the National Farmers' Union leaders not to oppose the settlement), they must not encourage milk production further.

I admit that the Minister himself, on March 14 or 15 last year, uttered a general kind of warning about the future of milk. But what is going to be done about it? Many of these farmers—in fact, the majority of them—have been building up their milk production for years; and it really does take years to build up a really good herd.

Who are the men who, according to the advertisements we see in the marketing papers we read, the Stockbreeder and the Farmer's Weekly, are getting out of milk at present? It is not the small man. The man who is getting out of milk at present is the man who advertises, through the most widely known nationally recognised auctioneers, the disposal of a dairy herd—it may be Friesians; it may be Ayrshires; it may be Shorthorns, but always herds which have been built up at great capital cost. Because he has capital, he is able to make changes in policy. You see at the top of the advertisement: "Owing to the decision of Mr. So-and-so, or Sir Somebody So-and-so, or Lord So-and-so, to change his basis of farming, the whole of the herd is to be offered for sale. Come and bid!" At least two-thirds of the farmers are not in a position to change like that, because most of them are unable to face the two-and-a-half to three years without any farming while they change, in the hope of ultimately getting a cash return from livestock or some other alternative cultivation. They are unable to face it. That is a fact. It is the big man with capital who may be able to stand up to this kind of non-continuous agricultural policy such as we have had in the last three or four years.

How do the Government propose to carry out their object? They are quite frank about it. They say that what they feel bound to do is to reduce the profitability at present to be found in milk, pigs and eggs. But I have already shown by my argument to-day that profit in these matters is already too small for the farmers. If we take the index of bankruptcies which I was able to obtain from the noble Earl the other day, whilst they are not startling figures—

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL ST. ALDWYN)

They certainly are not.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

They are not; but the figures over the last five years are much higher than they were. They are higher by from 50 to 60 per cent. I am not saying that they are startling figures, but they give a clear indication of the direction in which things are going at the present time. In my view, the condition of our country as a whole is not such that we can afford to let the agricultural industry down.

Let us take for a moment the question of how far attention is being given at the present time to the proper maintenance of the agricultural industry in relation to the great problems of our balance of payments and the maintenance of our gold and dollar reserves. I should have thought that at such a time as this it was essential that in every case in which the Government could work it under your free system—and one of the great troubles is that they have not been willing to exercise proper control—in every case where the home-produced article can satisfy the home market, home production should be the object. In fact, that is what is being urged all the time, in each successive farming Paper, upon the farmer himself. The Government fear that, where milk is being produced in growing quantities by the small farmer, it is being done by means of increased purchases of imported feeding-stuffs. The farmer is being urged over and over again to substitute home-produced feeding-stuffs. If that is the doctrine for the farmer to follow (I am sure he is doing that very well at the present time), then I would say that the Government's policy in regard to farming in general should be to seek the largest possible output from farming and to use that output to help in maintaining the balance of payments and our gold and dollar reserves.

The Government, however, do not seem willing to do that. In fact, the situation to-day in regard to our balance of payments and our reserves shows that, whilst we get a temporary relief here and there from month to month, the general situation is exceedingly bad. Our gold and dollar reserves are not so very much higher than they were in 1949 when the decision to devalue was taken. When you deduct from the published figure the fruits of the sale of the West Indian oilfields; when you deduct what has been borrowed from the Monetary Fund; when you deduct what has been received, in effect, by the action of the United States and Canada in letting us escape our current commitments and interest upon debts—when you have allowed for all that, then our net balance of gold and dollar reserves is less than it was in 1949. The position is much more serious than the majority of the people in the country seem to realise. It seems to me that, instead of saying in a Paper that they want to reduce production, the Government ought to be all the more concerned to see that production is increased. Yet, as I say, there seems to be a campaign on foot to make it more difficult for the farmer, and especially the milk farmer, to maintain his present production.

I noticed—as I expect other noble Lords also did—a report in The Times last Monday week (I think it was) of statements made by Dr. Sinclair, of Magdalen College, Oxford, on various matters. It is true that he comes from Oxford, and we always like to jibe at Oxford a little as being the home of lost causes—and we hope that in this case it is a lost cause. He was doing his best to try to persuade the country that milk is a bad food for infants and is not reliable; that milk should not be given indiscriminately and poured down the necks of children; that it is very dangerous for them. That was his view. And yet for the last forty years that I have been in public life we have been urging the production of more, better, cleaner and richer milk. We have urged that it should be used in the schools and in our welfare institutions. Returns have been made by the medical officers of health year by year since that practice was begun, and one can see unanimous reports about the great improvement in the health of the children, in their stature and in their general physical condition. That seemed to be associated in the doctor's mind—whether he had been inspired or not, I do not know—with the idea that generally we were doing far too much in the social and welfare services.

On that subject, the Government of course, hold different views from mine. I do not think they are doing far too much. They certainly did not help the farmer by taking the last bit of consumer subsidy off milk last October, and by raising the price when we wanted to increase liquid sales. They have not helped by recently substantially increasing the cost of milk to the nursing mothers and other people in attendance at the welfare centres. I am not surprised that Mr. Gaitskell was adding up these various things which have been taken from the people who needed them most in the country. At the very time when they are pursuing this policy of trying to reduce the production of milk by the farmer, the Government are finding £34 million for the relief of surtax payers. I must say that I find it exceedingly difficult to reconcile these policies.

I hope that, in spite of what has happened, all of us engaged in the farming industry will do our level best to keep it going, because the country needs the farming industry, and needs it very badly. Better arrangements may have to be made for disposing of surplus milk. I cannot for the life of me see why, because there has been a temporary increase in supplies of New Zealand butter and an unloading by Holland in this country of surplus stocks of butter from last year, farmers should be reduced, as we have been for the last two months, to selling milk for making butter here at 12.45 pence per gallon. There is not all the control of people who handle the milk and sell it, together with other farm products, that is brought up against the farmer every year. But if your Lordships' look at the general situation I have been portraying, of what is now being received from dairy farming, I am sure you would be persuaded that, whilst you would not perhaps agree to making it a nationalised industry, it would nevertheless be worth while for the milk marketing boards of England and Scotland to manufacture for themselves. If they can get only 12.45 pence per gallon to-day for milk sold for making butter, that seems to me to be just the psychological moment for the marketing boards themselves to go into manufacture. Then in the long run it would be for the suppliers from the farms to lay less stress, perhaps, upon winter milk and to have a more general spread of milk production and a mixing of the general results on a reasonable basis for the whole industry.

In regard to the other things concerned, I notice that whilst the guaranteed price of wheat is again to suffer a reduction, it is proposed on this occasion to make an increase in the guarantee for oats. I think it must be remembered—I hope the public will remember it—that although these guarantees are mentioned, large numbers of farmers never receive anything from them at all. The deficiency payment on the acreage of oats, as affected by, say, a standard price in the guarantee, reaches directly only the man who sells his oats off the farm. For example, last year most of the people who were growing oats had an unfortunate harvest with very poor returns—I do not suppose that there has been a worst oat harvest for a quarter of a century. What happens in such a case? The price of oats, in short supply, goes up, at least for the first few months of the season, at the market, and the people who have oats to sell are all right. But the people who have tried to follow the Government's dictum of growing their own supplies for feeding their cattle and their dairy herds, get no "whiff" at all of the guarantee or anything to help them in their partial loss. The scheme does not seem to be working out equitably. However, I should like to ask the noble Earl, in regard to the position of the oat producer, whether there is going to be a further announcement as to the last harvest, and whether there is still some deficiency payment to be made. I know of cases where a man who produced oats for the last harvest has been very hard hit indeed, and nothing has yet been paid.

My Lords, I am sorry to have detained your Lordships for so long, but I am most keen on this subject and very interested in it. My last word on the whole matter is this. I say that the Government have been engaging in what we call the free-for-all, instead of the ordered control that came about during the war and was continued after the war. I do not know whether any of my colleagues in the House are, like myself, used to looking from time to time for help and guidance at the works of the late adviser to the Minister of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food, Professor Scott Watson. But when I was thinking about this debate to-day I remembered the ninth edition of the book which he published jointly with Professor Moore on agriculture, and what he said in the introduction to it. This is what he said in 1949, in the ninth edition: Moreover, since it can be hoped that farm costs after the great rise of the past ten years have now become more stable. Section IV of the book has been re-written in terms of the wage rates and prices ruling in 1948–49. How interested he must be, seeing what has happened since, to look back upon writing that introduction! But it is the extent of the rise in farmers' costs, the extent to which the rise in wages all over the country has entered finally into the price which must enter into all the needs of the farmer, and how all this has been due to the free-for-all and the rise in the cost of living, that paints the real situation to-day. I beg the Government not to go on producing Budgets of the kind they produced the other day, but to produce a financial policy and a controlled policy for the country which will do something to give farmers the hope of a long-view position of stability and prosperity. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.27 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, if the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, were not a member of the Opposition Front Bench, our general debates on agriculture might perhaps not be so frequent as they are; and they would certainly not be so good. It is much easier in this House than in the other place to have a number of broad general debates on any subject, and we are indebted to the noble Viscount, who combines regular attendance in the House with the hard and praiseworthy occupation of a country farmer, for giving us the opportunity of discussing this subject. When we listen to him I think we realise that we listen not primarily to a politician, but to a man who loves farming, and we are all particularly delighted by the robust, bucolic vitality with which the noble Viscount always addresses himself to this subject.

The noble Viscount is an opponent of the Government and I cannot agree with everything that he said. But I am a little reluctant either to restraint his own ardour—if that were possible, which it probably is not—or indeed to dissuade Her Majesty's Government from being impressed by it, because anything that is said in that sense from this side of the House may sometimes be apt to give the impression that the farmer is having a comfortable and easy time, which he certainly is not. About a year ago, when I last had the honour of following the noble Viscount in debate, I ventured to make a few lighthearted remarks to your Lordships about the "bullish" nature of the bull market in Scotland. But my farmer friends at home did not think this was at all funny. They took it very seriously indeed, and some of them even seemed to imagine that I was trying to behave like a "bear" in the bull market.

I am most anxious not to say anything which might encourage Her Majesty's Government to act the part of an animal which has never been particularly helpful in the rearing of live stock. I would never accuse the present Prime Minister of being a bear—and he certainly does not look like one. But he did tell the Scottish Unionist Party Conference at Ayr last week that he "squeezed us because he loved us". We have all to be a little careful not to become too familiar with these powerfully demonstrative animals. The purpose of these affectionate but suffocating embraces which we all have to endure from Her Majesty's Government is to try to prevent inflation and to prevent personal incomes from increasing faster than production. I should like to ask your Lordships to make a very brief comparison between the White Paper on Agriculture, published last month, and the Economic Survey, published this month, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, has already alluded, and which does not deal only with agriculture but summarises the whole economic position of the country.

In the agricultural White Paper, dealing with the Price Review, paragraph 5, which is headed: "Changes in Income", says: The forecast of actual net income for 1956–57 is £317 million, compared with a revised figure of £325 million for 1955–56. That is in the year before. When adjusted for normal weather conditions net income is estimated at £334 million for 1956–57; the comparable figure for 1955–56 was £306½ million. I suppose that that is the official way of saying that the farmers might have earned a little more than they actually did if it had not rained so much. Let us now look at the income of the whole country as given in the Economic Survey for 1957. In paragraph 34 it is stated: Personal income rose sharply between 1955 and 1956. Total personal income rose by about £1,200 million or 8 per cent. So that the personal income of the country as a whole rose last year by £1,200 million, while the income of the farmer has been reduced.

Let me now finish paragraph 5 in the agricultural White Paper, which concludes by saying: Although actual net income is lightly below that of last year, net income under normal weather conditions is forecast to be about equal to the highest previously recorded, in 1952–53. I take that to mean that if we do not have the usual snowstorms in May, and incessant rain from June to September, the income of the farmer is estimated to be about the same as it was in 1952. May we now look at what national income was in this year which is looked on in the agricultural White Paper as a kind of annus mirabilis. These figures are given in the Economic Survey of last month, in the table to which the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, has already alluded. In 1952 the total national income was £12,900 million. In 1956 it is given as £16,900 million. That is an increase of £4,000 million, or nearly 30 per cent., in the last five years since 1952; while the income of the farmer, provided the sun, wind and rain all coordinate their activities in accordance with the best Civil Service traditions, is expected to be no greater than it was in that year.

Looking now at production, your Lordships will have seen from the agricultural White Paper that agricultural production rose last year by three points, from 156 to 159 (pre-war as 100). What of total production for the country as as given in paragraph 33 of the Economic Survey? Between 1955 and 1956 gross domestic production rose by just over 1 per cent. Most of this increase appears to have come from increased output by the distributive and service trades and from higher agricultural output. Industrial production did not expand at all. So this small increase in our overall production is almost entirely accounted for by agriculture. Let me remind your Lordships that the purpose of our dis-inflationary policy is to prevent incomes from rising faster than production. It seems evident from the financial survey that while personal incomes in the country as a whole have risen in one year by £1,200 million with no increase in industrial production, the farmer, who has increased his production substantially, is not expected to receive an income higher than that which he received in 1952 when the general income was about 30 per cent. lower than it is now.

I think it is evident from the facts revealed to us in these White Papers that the British farmer is a much better fighter in the national battle against inflation than he is in his own battle for his own pocket. The fall in the world price of primary products may have put the National Farmers' Union in a relatively weaker bargaining position than they used to be; but I do not think the farmers' representatives have ever used their bargaining position to obtain an advantage which was contrary to the national interest. There has never been by any farmers' representative any such statement as there was in a recent industrial dispute, that the farmers' individual interests must come before those of the country. There have never been strikes or threats of strikes in agriculture, nor have there been any restrictive practices in farming, although it is often peculiarly difficult for the farmer to change and adapt his traditional customs in accordance with new circumstances.

Whenever the Agricultural Wages Board does anything to bring agricultural wages more into line with the general level of wages, that is always regarded as a signal for everyone else to ask for more; for there is thought to be some kind of divinely constituted differential between the wages of the country worker and the wages of the townsman. Farming has given the national economy more, in exchange for less, than any other industry. It has increased its production by more than 50 per cent. The rate of production per man is of course more than that, while in the building industry and the coal trade that rate has fallen. The rate both of workers' wages and of remuneration of individual farmers is far less than that of other sections of the community whose incomes have been rising while farmers' incomes have remained steady. It can therefore be said that farming to-day is putting more into the national economy and is taking out less than most other people are doing.

The noble Viscount's Motion is framed in the most broad and general terms, and I thought it right to put these general considerations before your Lordships because they are too often forgotten by the country, and sometimes perhaps by its rulers. I will conclude with a very few remarks about the Price Review and the amount of annual assistance, on which the noble Viscount said a good deal. It may perhaps, from many points of view, be a disadvantage to the farmer that the amount of money which the Treasury is to contribute to price support is pubblished every year in the Budget. Everybody always knows what it is and can quote it straight away. Nobody can tell you off-hand how much assistance is being given to other industries.

The noble Viscount referred to the various kinds of assistance and subsidies given during the tenure of office of the Labour Government. When all the payments given at that time are added together, they represent a much larger sum than the present cost to the Exchequer. I am not going to discuss at this moment whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to alter the manner in which they were given, but I think the noble Viscount would agree with this, which is the important thing from the farmers' point of view: that at that time those payments did not represent an effective subsidy to the farmer because the guaranteed prices he was getting from the Government were below the general level of world prices.

The noble Viscount said just now that that does not prevent anybody from thinking of the farmers as being kept alive and subsidised by lavish sums of money from the taxpayer. He said everybody says the farmer is "feather-bedded." I do not know whether he remembers that the first person to use that phrase was a member of his own Government, who, I think, had to resign office in consequence—a right-wing member of his Government. I remember a pamphlet being published at the same time by the left wing, representing that farming was being expensively maintained at enormous subsidies high above world prices, which at that time was completely contrary to the facts. The prices of wheat, oats and barley which the Ministry of Food bought from abroad were higher than those of the cereals bought from the British farmer. This pamphlet very wisely concentrated on the prices given for Argentine beef, which were, in fact, less than the beef prices being paid to the British farmer. But it did not mention any other part of the world where there was a free market for beef, like North America, where the prices were higher than those we gave to the Argentine or paid to the British farmer, which was the root of the bitter grievance against us of the Argentine Government. They thought we were taking advantage of our position as practically the only buyers to drive a very unfair bargain. The important fact is that at that time the British bottom was below world level; now the British bottom is above world level. Perhaps the most important thing has not been the change in Government policy but the change in terms of world trade.

The £245 million which is being taken this year for agricultural price support represents a real contribution to agriculture from the British taxpayer. I think your Lordships will agree that it is not an inflationary contribution, and I have at least tried to show that in the figures I have quoted, it is a very good national investment. But at a time when our finances are so strained, it must be very difficult indeed for the Government and the National Farmers' Union to adjust this sum which can be spent on agricultural price support to the best advantage and according to the best pattern.

In the White Paper it is explained that the main objectives are to encourage greater production of better quality beef and mutton and also to grow a far larger proportion of our own feeding-stuffs at home. Having regard to our foreign currency problem and the general condition of the country, it is, I think, the right policy. But it is hard on the dairy farmer.

I have never tried to embark on any kind of dairy farming, so I cannot claim to speak with any knowledge, but I can claim to do so without bias. I think there is no branch of the farming community to-day which is having a harder time than the small dairy farmer. All his costs have gone up a great deal; he sometimes has to work himself seven days a week; it is extraordinarily difficult for him to get labour to look after the animals over the week-end. Last year his price was reduced by three-halfpence; now it has gone up again by only one farthing. In many cases his receipts are quite insufficient to cover his costs.

In some respects dairy farmers are perhaps the victims of a long-term dietary miscalculation on the part of the country. Before the war and for a very long time all our nutritional experts assured us, and they probably still do, that milk was the best kind of human food for anybody, and all our emphasis in agricultural policy was placed on dairy farming. It was always expected that when people earned more wages and became more prosperous they would buy and drink a great deal more milk. Now our consumption of food in general has gone up; people are living better and eating more, but they are not choosing to buy more milk. The White Paper points out that there is a danger of our milk production exceeding our requirements. It is pointed out that the milk manufactures are very often more cheaply imported from the Commonwealth, and the White Paper is deliberately designed, as it says, to reduce the profitability of the dairy industry.

In a free country no Government can compel people to drink what they do not want. I am not myself a nutritional expert at all. I would never dream of offering anybody a glass of milk if I thought he would prefer something else. But it is generally acknowledged that milk, although it should not exercise a monopoly in diet, is one of the best articles of food, and that we should probably do very much better if we drank as much of it as they do in Scandinavia and Switzerland. I wonder whether the Milk Marketing Board are doing as much as they ought to do to advertise the sale and consumption of milk.

I remember that before the war the Scottish Office and the Ministry of Agriculture asked the Board to embark on a big advertising campaign for milk, which they did, I think, with some success. We did not have television then; we did not have the I.T.V. on which you are allowed to advertise. Now I may be unobservant—perhaps I have not noticed it—but I have not seen much sign of a great advertising campaign to encourage people to drink more milk. When we think of all the patent medicines, cosmetics and other unnecessary things which the impressionable public is persuaded to consume by nothing more than the constant psychological pressure of advertising, surely it would be money well spent if the Milk Marketing Board were to do a great deal more than they are doing now in advertising to promote a greater consumption of milk. We do not want to make people drink milk if they do not want to, but surely it is better to try to make them drink milk than a whole lot of other things. And remember that in a free country it is only by advertising that public taste can be developed and led along.

In our debate yesterday a noble Lord—I think it was the noble Viscount, Lord Gage—referred to what he called the bipartisan policy in agriculture and to the great benefit which it had brought to this country. That, I think, is profoundly true. We have benefited enormously from the fact that there is no longer any fundamental dispute between the main Parties in the State. I listened carefully to what the noble Viscount said, and I do not think he said anything which could in any way be interpreted as undermining this bipartisan farming policy. On the contrary, I think he has shown a good deal more enthusiasm about it than a great many other people in all Parties. The difference between more controls and bulk purchase, which the noble Viscount favours, and the policy of average deficiency payments without controls may be important. I do not think it is fundamental. All I would say about it is that the policy of average deficiency payments without controls gives a slant to efficiency which I think has not been ineffective. I am sure that all Conservative candidates for the House of Commons who have to explain the Government's agricultural policy to their constituents would be highly delighted if all Socialist hecklers at their meetings took exactly the same line as that which has been taken to-day by the noble Viscount. Therefore I do not intend to disparage anything which the noble Viscount has said in moving this Motion. I hope that it will all help to keep the public well informed, as it ought to be informed, of the good service, the indispensable service and the not very highly paid service which agriculture is giving to our national economy.