§ Mr. Neil Hamiltonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when it is anticipated that the work of the milk tribunals in dealing with appeals for extra quota will be completed.
§ Mr. Jopling[pursuant to his reply, 14 February 1985, c. 255]: I have today laid before Parliament the Dairy Produce Quotas (Amendment) Regulations 1985 which will make the changes necessary to implement the package of changes to the Community rules which were recently agreed by the Agriculture Council. Principal among these are the facility for producers with mixed businesses to interchange unused direct and wholesale quotas and the provision to allow (in respect of the first year of quotas) 324W unused quota to be re-allocated between producers within a region and between regions. I am pleased that this package of changes has wiped out the liability for levy in the United Kingdom for this year, except just possibly for a few direct sellers.
The amendment regulations also enable Ministers to allocate additional quota to small producers and remote areas, these allocations being drawn from outgoers' quota.
The Dairy Produce Quotas Tribunal for England and Wales has now virtually completed its work. Letters will be going shortly after Easter to producers who have received secondary quota or exceptional hardship awards, notifying them of their final quotas for 1984–85. For this year, final quotas will consist of primary quota already allocated plus the following elements where appropriate:
- (a) Base year revision awards met in full;
- (b) Development awards to the extent of about 65 per cent. of the award;
- (c) Exceptional hardship awards to the extent of about 75 per cent. of the award (based on an allocation for this purpose of 60 million litres from outgoers' quota).
Because no wholesale producers will have to pay levy this year, the restriction of the development and exceptional hardship awards has no practical effect.
Direct sellers will receive their full base year revision awards, development awards and exceptional hardship awards.
Within the next few weeks producers in England and Wales will also be informed of their 1985–86 quotas. We shall at this stage aim to provide for the restoration to base year levels of quotas totalling less than 200,000 litres, as well as for an increased allocation of development and exceptional hardship awards, but this will depend upon the sufficiency of outgoers' quota. Letters will go out as soon as possible.
We have made every endeavour to inform producers of their final quotas as rapidly as possible. But the tribunal and the local panels have had to deal with an enormous volume of work—22,250 cases before local panels, with 5,700 appeals to the Tribunal and 5,100 exceptional hardship cases. We are continuing to press ahead to complete the outgoers' scheme.
In Northern Ireland producers have offered only about 12 million litres under the outgoers' scheme, whereas provision was made last May of some 66 million litres to be purchased there. To alleviate the situation in the Province we are considering using the resources previously allocated there to purchase quota from outgoers in Great Britain who would otherwise be disappointed by being unable to enter the scheme; this will, however, depend upon the total volume of acceptances.