AGRICULTURE (Hansard, 25 March 1964)

§ LORD WILLIAMS OF BARNBURGH

Well, my Lords, I asked the noble Lord to look at it on Monday, and I shall be very sorry if I have misrepresented the noble Lord in any respect. Probably it never occurred either to the Minister or to the Parliamentary Secretary that a Government buying commission, acting for the nation as a whole, could buy any such commodity at a lower price than that at which it was originally offered and market it in this country in such a manner as to avoid upsetting our own marketing arrangements, and probably make millions of pounds of profit to help the Treasury during the course of every year. But, because the noble Lord and his Government disagree with Government trading of any sort or kind, they prefer this curious, intriguing policy of limiting the lowness of the price of imported foodstuffs that we may require for man or for beast. I shall mention the reason for the extraordinary suggestion later on. With regard to increased prices for fat cattle, potatoes, sugar beet, wool and a reduction of 1d. per dozen for eggs, I think the Minister makes out a good case and comment from me is unnecessary.

As this happens to be the last Price Review before the General Election, whether that should be in June or October (it seems to me that the latter date is becoming more and more likely as the Government get into deeper and deeper cold water, with majorities of one), I propose to remind your Lordships of some of the more important incidents during the past eleven or twelve years relating to agriculture and the attitude and actions of the Government towards both the industry and farmers. But, first, I should like to say how I welcome the shift to the system of operation now embodied in the latter part of paragraph 3 of the White Paper (Cmnd. 2315), which says: 1263 The system of support through deficiency payments suits us as a nation and is of very great benefit to consumers as well as producers. By safeguarding it from undue pressures in this way the Government are maintaining the system with its advantages to the community. The safeguards referred to are in paragraph 2: control of imports or import prices, combined with the extension at home of standard quantities. This is by no means the first time that this or similar language has been used in White Papers over the last ten or eleven years. But a reference to these words was out of fashion during the 1962 period when the Government were so involved in the Common Market talks. They will be more popular in the countryside during an Election campaign, however, and that is why I assume they have been resurrected in this White Paper.

In any event, agriculture is still our largest industry. But, while it has made enormous progress since the war, in terms of both efficiency and productivity, we are still the largest food-importing country in the world. Moreover, as a great manufacturing nation, we are obliged to import most of our raw materials for industry. So agricultural policy and productivity are not only important to the farming community as such, but of vital importance to the whole nation, particularly where the balance of payments (which are referred to in "Neddy's" latest Report, published this morning) is concerned. It is true that it required decades of depression under Conservative Governments, a couple of world wars and a Labour Government to appreciate this lesson. Indeed, I am not at all satisfied that the Conservative Government have yet learned the lesson, although the White Paper (Cmnd. 2315) seems to indicate that they are now willing to move from their ancient citadel of free markets and the law of supply and demand since their humiliating experience in 1962.

We welcome this healthy sign, but I regret having to remind noble Lords opposite still further of a few more weak spots in their armour. I have been struggling to try to avoid being more political than was the Leader of the House last Tuesday, and the Chairman of the Conservative Party last 1264 Wednesday, but the truth must be told. The simple truth, of course, is that neither before the war nor since the war have the Government had what could be recognised as an agricultural policy. In 1939, the year of the outbreak of war, there was no such thing as a co-ordinated agricultural plan: no direction, no controls, no confidence, minimum production, and maximum of poverty in the countryside.

After the war, however, with all its physical destruction, it was inevitable that rationing of food would become general for several years. The urgent and serious question for this country was what conditions were really necessary to induce farmers to produce more food from our soil; to reduce, and finally abolish, food rationing; to make what contribution an efficient agriculture could make to our economy and to our balance of payments; to encourage large-scale investment; and certainly not to repeat what happened after the First World War. Your Lordships will remember, however, what happened in 1947, and I need not linger upon that. But, as a result of what happened in 1947, the Review White Paper for 1962–63 said that the forecast of output for that farming year was an 86 per cent. increase over and above pre-war in productivity. This year it is supposed to be something over a 90 per cent. increase on pre-war. That is an average increase in production of no less than 6 per cent.

The National Farmers' Union, in a document which, I suppose, has been circulated to every one of your Lordships, Farming Incomes and the Facts, go a little further and say that agriculture is Britain's key industry, with an output of £1,800 million a year, twice that of coal mining or the motor industry. As a customer, agriculture spends something like £1,000 million with other industries. As an import saver, the increase in home agriculture since the war is worth nearly £400 million a year. On the question of efficiency, Britain's farmers produce 2½ times as much grain as they did pre-war; 99 per cent. more eggs; 114 per cent. more sugar beet; and our dairy herds produce nearly 200 gallons of milk per cow more than the pre-war figure. Yields of wheat, barley and sugar beet have risen 1265 67 per cent., 62 per cent. and 80 per cent. respectively. And all this has been accomplished with 170,000 fewer agricultural workers.

But what contribution have the Conservative Party made to this minor agricultural revolution? Precious little that they can feel proud of! For, despite their lip-service to the 1947 approach, they have always been very lukewarm towards the 1947 Act; and, indeed, I am convinced that, had it not been for the possible political consequences to the Conservative Party, the remainder of the 1947 Act would have vanished long ago. Let me remind noble Lords that, within two years of their taking office, they announced their grand policy of "Set the people free!" The announcement came through the then Prime Minister in another place, and I propose to quote a short paragraph from his speech. He said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 520, cols. 26–27]: The House knows that it is our theme and policy to reduce controls and restrictions as much as possible and to reverse, if not abolish, the tendency to State purchase and marketing which is a characteristic of Socialist philosophy. We hope instead to develop individual enterprise founded in the main on the laws of supply and demand and to restore to the interchange of goods and services that variety, flexibility, ingenuity and incentive on which we believe the fertility and liveliness of … economic life depend. I need not remind noble Lords where that sentence comes from. But no controls, no restrictions, no State purchase, no marketing.

There is no wonder, therefore, that the noble Lord in charge of this Price Review, and the Minister of Agriculture, are driven back to those minimum prices of imported food to which I referred earlier on. That was no sort of a policy. It was just a blind, doctrinaire onslaught on planning and controls which, if pursued, would definitely undermine the basic principles of the 1947 Act. It was typical of Conservative Party thinking on agriculture. They would sincerely, I suppose, sacrifice the tremendous gains just quoted to satisfy their ancient inhibitions and beliefs. I thought at the time—I still think—that it was a dangerous moment both for agriculture and for the nation. I described it at the time as ill-considered, half Liberal-half Conservative, and absolutely half-baked: and I am sure it was all of 1266 them. Instead of well-thought-out proposals for new marketing schemes to match the new productive capacity of the industry, we were presented with a grand new policy, resurrected from the 1850's.

The noble Lord the Leader of the House should remember something about the lack of controls, for as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, I think it was he who made the announcement that the country could do with 1 million more pigs round about 1953. The farmers, the boars, the sows and the gilts co-operated loyally. The pigs were here before the end of twelve months. But what the noble Lord had forgotten to do was to provide a reception committee for them. When they had the 1 million extra pigs, they did not know what to do with them. Therefore, prices slumped. The deficiency payment went up like a balloon, and the 1947 Act was made responsible for the blunders of the Ministry. After that piece of chaos, the present Leader of the House decided that there were too many economic gates wide open. He went off to the Ministry of Defence to learn how to spend more, for so little, than any other Government Department. Then he went off to Australia for a real bathe in the sunshine, and I think he was very wise to do so. He looks better for it to-day, and we are all glad to welcome him back in his elevated post.

Fortunately, however, the nation as such, and agriculture in particular, escaped the worst that might have occurred under the Conservative so-called new policy. The farming community, who hitherto dithered at the very mention of controls, were no longer afraid of them. They had already tasted such economic freedom as never existed before, and they were even having visions of a brighter future under the deficiency payment system. There were definite signs that the farming community would revolt against a reversion to the policy of the 1850's. Farmers made loud noises in the counties, and they even went so far as to pass resolutions. The Government became clearly aware that it would be politically unsafe for them to abolish all controls, and to abolish the basic principles of the 1947 Act.

That did not mean that the Government were still converted to better 1267 things, for when they saw a chance of joining the Common Market they tried to grab it with both hands. By the autumn of 1962 they were almost grovelling on their hands and knees to get inside. All the statements made in White Papers over ten or eleven years extolling the virtues of the deficiency payments system were forgotten or ignored. The ex-Prime Minister at the Prime Ministers' Conference in 1962 stated plainly that he preferred the European system to our own. The Deputy Prime Minister echoed those sentiments, and the Minister of Agriculture almost went poetical when he addressed the Northants. Agricultural Society's annual dinner at Kettering. There he said: The managed market as a system of protection for British agriculture against competition from other spheres will bring a price protection which it has never had or has never dreamed of. It would bring fundamental changes in Britain's agricultural system with producers getting the whole of their returns from the market and consumers paying the full cost. In other words, if the present Minister of Agriculture had had his way we should have gone straight back to the pre-war conditions, plus unlimited protection against imported foodstuffs determined, not by a British Government, but by six European Governments.

That was a policy which the electors of this country refused in 1923 for the then Conservative Party. But this present Conservative Government were willing to hand over to six European Governments the power to say how much we in this country should pay for our food. Thousands of figures, one way and another, have been used to illustrate this point and that point. I shall be content to use one set of figures to show what we might have walked into if it had not been for the generosity of de Gaulle. These figures were in reply to the Financial Times, who had been suggesting that we were not competitive in our food production in this country. The editor, or sub-editor, of the Farmers Weekly said on January 17 of this year: I have been comparing some of our prices with those of Common Market countries. In Paris last week, sides of beef cost up to 4s. 5d. a lb. wholesale, with hinds up to 5s. 10d. Comparable qualities on Smithfield sold for 1s. 11d, to 2s. 2d. a lb. Top quality lamb (carcass) in Paris fetches 6s. 11d. a lb. 1268 wholesale, with legs reaching 10s. 6d. Smithfield prices—1s. 10d. to 2s. 2d. In Belgium and France, pigs have been selling at 54s.—65s. a score dead-weight against 37s. to 48s. (including guarantee payments) here. Unsubsidised English butter, fetching higher prices as milk supplies have run down, has been selling wholesale at 1s. 6d. to 3s. a lb. Consumer prices in the E.E.C. have been round about 7s. 6d. a lb. and up to 10s. in Germany. Belgian wheat growers have been getting £45 a ton. Here the current market price is about £24 (standard price £26 10s. 0d.). Those are the prices that we might have had to pay if it had not been for the stubbornness, stupidity, generosity or wisdom of de Gaulle. I will not say which it was. But, if the Conservatives had had their way, clearly the wage problem in this country would have been just chaotic. How all those with static incomes would have gone on none can tell.

I have tried to show just one or two things and no more; and that, with their ideological and doctrinaire background, although the Conservatives have been in office for two-thirds of this century, they never had a reasonable agricultural policy; that their policy of "Set the people free!" in 1953, and their efforts to join the Common Market in 1962, have proved conclusively that their only idea or policy on the subject of agriculture is protection and taxes on foodstuffs, as with their forbears a hundred and fifty years ago. For these reasons, I submit that a Conservative Government can no longer be trusted with agriculture, and the sooner the Parliamentary Election comes the better. I beg to move for Papers.