HC Deb 15 March 1944 vol 398 cc257-8W
Mr. Astor

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is in a position to make a statement on the dispute in the Fiji sugar industry.

Colonel Stanley

Although the local Commission of Inquiry has reported that the price of cane has risen since 1939 roughly in proportion to the rises in the costs of living and of production, dissatisfaction is still widely felt with the existing arrangements for fixing the price of cane. It appears necessary, if the Fiji Government is to assist in restoring and firmly establishing the goodwill which is so vital to the sugar industry and to the whole Colony and which has been so unhappily disturbed, that that Government should at all times be in possession of full, information as to the circumstances in which the industry provides a livelihood for an important section of the people of Fiji.

I have therefore decided to send to Fiji at once an independent expert with full powers to obtain ail relevant information from the parties concerned, to conduct an inquiry under the following terms of reference:

  1. (1) to report on the existing agreements between the C.S.R. Company and the cane farmers:
  2. (2) to recommend—
  1. (a) whether any, and if so what, modifications are desirable in the public interest in the arrangements embodied in these agreements;
  2. (b) what measures should be adopted to secure that the Government should at all times be in a position fully to discharge its responsibilities in this regard.

I am glad to be able to announce that Mr. C. Y. Shephard, Carnegie Professor of Economics in the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad, has accepted my invitation to conduct the inquiry, and I am indebted to the governing body of the Imperial College for their co-operation in making this possible.

I am sure that the House will share my wish and hope that all those involved in this unhappy dispute should put aside their differences in this essential industry in the Colony and should resume at once all efforts to produce a bumper crop this year, no less in their own than in the public interest.