HC Deb 24 November 1954 vol 533 cc152-3W
Mr. Hurd

asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he has now reached a decision on the proposal that a beet sugar factory should be built in the southern counties to allow the more economical production of sugar in that area.

Mr. Amory

The following is the reply.

  1. 1. I have now completed consideration of the evidence which the National Farmers' Union and other interested bodies submitted at the Government's request, on the proposed erection of a sugar-beet factory somewhere in the south of England.
  2. 2. In so far as such a factory enabled the acreage of sugar beet to be increased in the southern counties, it would be a welcome assistance to the crop husbandry of farms there. But the savings in operating and transport costs it would produce for the British Sugar Corporation would 153 be far from sufficient to balance the capital charges the Corporation would have to incur in raising the £3 million it would cost to build.
  3. 3. Moreover, the Government could not at present contemplate an increase in the sugar beet acreage. Home consumption of sugar will normally be covered by home production and imports from countries in the Commonwealth, whose economies are in many cases based almost entirely on sugar exports. Any further increase in the home acreage would, therefore, displace imports which the Commonwealth has been encouraged to produce under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. The cost of home produced sugar would be of the order of £10 a ton more than the sugar that it would displace. In this connection it must be remembered that estimated production from the existing acreage in this country has increased by nearly 50 per cent. in a normal year over the past five years.
  4. 4. I have, therefore, reluctantly come to the conclusion that for these reasons the erection of a new factory there cannot in existing circumstances be justified. It is, however, intended to continue to use the county quota system to ensure that beet growers in the south may retain or even in some counties slightly increase their existing share of factory capacity.
  5. 5. I am placing in the Library a fuller statement of the reasons for this conclusion.