§ Mr. Marlowasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Northampton, North on 30 April, Official Report, c. 459, he will publish in the Official Reportthe table attached to his letter to the hon. Member on 8 May.
363W
§ Mr. Peter WalkerThe following is the table referred to. I must make clear—as I have already done to my hon. Friend—that the figures set out in the table are not a reliable measure of the "cost" of our membership of the Community to the British housewife as the last part of my hon. Friend's earlier question appeared to imply, since the level of world prices in the absence of the common agricultural policy is a subject only for conjecture. Fluctuations in the price of sugar show what a totally unreliable guide this would be.
(1) Net imports from other member States in 1980* (2) Average United Kingdom import levy 1980 (3) Col. (1)† Col. (2)‡ '000 tonnes £ per tonne £ million Common wheat -482 48 -23.0 Barley -365 41 -15.0 Maize 833 51 42.8 Rice 90 69 6.2 Other cereals 45 39 1.7 Beef 89 ‡572 50.8 Pigmeat 144 259 37.4 Bacon 287 ‡250 71.6 Lard 183 83 15.2 Poultrymeat 19 161 3.0 Eggs -1 343 -0.3 Butter 26 **863 22.0 Cheese 94 **658 61.7 Other dairy products -54 343 -18.4 255.6 less adjustments for monetary compensatory amounts†† 35.4 220.2 * Including the estimated quantities of the commodities concerned contained in composite food products, and the carcase equivalent of live animals. † Figures in column (3) cannot be derived exactly from columns (1) and (2) owing to rounding in all columns. ‡ For beef and bacon reduced rates of levy have been employed to take account of the fact that the greater part of beef imports take place at concessional rates of levy under special arrangements and because it is considered that the full rate of levy on bacon overstates the difference between Community and world prices. ** For butter, and formerly for cheese, special arrangements exist for imports from New Zealand; the full rate of levy is considered to overstate the difference between Community and world price and the average rate of export refunds has been applied. †† In order to avoid double counting with the calculation of the United Kingdom's net budgetary contribution to the EC the value of UK monetary compensatory amounts acting as levies on imports or exports have been subtracted from this trade cost and where they act as a subsidy on exports they have been added back to the trade cost.