§ 3.9 p.m.
§ LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON rose to move, That the Draft Winter Keep (Scotland) Variation Scheme 1972, laid before the House on May 2, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Scheme, which applies only to Scotland, gives effect to the decision announced in the White Paper on the Annual Review 1972 (Cmnd. 4928) to increase by 50p per acre the winter keep acreage grant payable to Scottish farmers. This increase and the increases in the winter keep headage supplements, also 1290 announced in the White Paper, are intended in the case of hill farming to replace the reduction in the fertiliser subsidy about which the noble Lord. Lord Hoy, asked yesterday. These reductions and increases balance out at approximately around the £500,000 mark.
§ It may be helpful to your Lordships if I mention briefly that at the inception of winter keep assistance in 1964 grant was paid on an acreage basis throughout the United Kingdom. In 1965 acreage payments were discontinued in England. Wales and Northern Ireland and replaced by headage supplements on hill cattle and sheep qualifying for hill cattle and hill sheep subsidies. To ensure that Scottish farmers did not suffer disparity through being restricted to acreage payments, those eligible were also given a small headage payment on their hill sheep. Since 1967, when headage payments were introduced in Scotland, eligible farmers. have been given the choice each year of receiving their winter keep assistance as headage supplements or as acreage payments. The object of having these alternative methods of payment is to allow for the wide variation in Scottish conditions and to allow farmers to receive the assistance in the form they consider best suited to their circumstances. Since this option was introduced the number of farmers choosing headage supplement has steadily increased, but about a quarter of the 13,500 eligible farmers still choose acreage payments, which we consider represents a reasonable level of demand for this form of assistance. My Lords, I commend this Scheme to your Lordships.
§ Moved, That the Draft Winter Keep (Scotland) Variation Scheme 1972 laid before the House on May 2, be approved.—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
§ 3.12 p.m.
§ LORD HOYMy Lords, we debated fully yesterday the whole question of the Government decision in the White Paper to reduce by £20 million the fertiliser subsidy. This means that the Government have now called back 17s. 4d. of every £1 which they used to pay in fertiliser subsidy. It is true that in Scotland they did not do as we did—I say "we" as I was the Parliamentary Secretary at the time—namely, go over to a headage payment which we thought was rather economical, so that the farmer saved 1291 a considerable amount of time over form filling and administration, and which also represented a practical saving to the Ministry itself. To take away a quarter of a million pounds and give back £200,000, and to say that this is compensation does not seem to me to be doing a good job.
If the Government wished to continue to spend a quarter of a million pounds I would have thought from the country's point of view that it would have been better spent on the fertiliser subsidy. The Minister will say, "We leave it to the farmer. He will either choose to buy fertiliser or not do so." Then we shall be given another little homily, to the effect that farmers are so good, they will all use the fertiliser subsidy. If this is the case, the Government are saying to the farmers generally, including the hill farmers, that the £20 million which they used to get to help them do this job they will get no longer. That is why I regard this as a retrograde step.
§ LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTONMy Lords, If I may make one small correction to what the noble Lord said, I did say the reduction in hill-farming subsidies on fertiliser would be about the half a million pounds mark, not a quarter of a million pounds, and that the increase in acreage and headage payments will amount to just about the half million pound mark, too.
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.