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Mr. Davies : One sees how confused the Conservative party is.
Mr. Speaker : Order. May we have the brief quotation? It does not seem to be very relevant. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Marland) may then wish to comment.
Mr. Davies : That is sensible, and I am happy to follow your guidance, Mr. Speaker.
Lord McAlpine says :
"Mr. Selwyn Gummer--why did he behave like this, first plotting the downfall of Mrs. Thatcher, then crying all over the place after the event? This seems to me entirely within the parameters of his character as I know him. I remember his dealings in the downfall of Cecil Parkinson and how he treated Cecil at that moment"-- [ Hon. Members :-- "No."] I am about to come to the punch line.
Mr. Speaker : Order. This has nothing to do with the subject of the debate. It does not seem to be very relevant.
Mr. Davies : When I give the punch line, Mr. Speaker, you will see precisely how relevant it is.
The punch line is :
"Entirely typical of the chap. Mr. Major, do not go for a walk in St. James's Park with this man, let alone the jungle."
One can understand why the farmers are upset.
Mr. Marland : The hon. Gentleman told the House that he had a special invitation earlier this evening to speak to farmers in my constituency. I beg that, when he goes to my constituency, he makes a speech exactly the same as the speech he is making now, so that my return to this place after the next election will be guaranteed.
Mr. Davies : I am delighted that the prospect has crossed the hon. Gentleman's mind that he might lose his seat and one day might have to revert to doing an honest day's work.
Mr. Martlew : Is it not a fact that, on one occasion, the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Marland) said in the House that salmonella was a dangerous orgasm, and that we should not take too much notice of what he says?
Mr. Davies : I think that I had better stick to my own speech rather than be led down these attractive by-ways.
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The Government have lost the confidence of the British farming industry. We can see the depth of the divisions within the Conservative party. We can see that the Minister of Agriculture is not capable of adopting a tone and a method of argument to unite the House to strengthen his negotiating position. Their Lordships are throwing up their hands in distress at the actions of the Minister of Agriculture. The media are turning against him.The National Farmers Union disapproves totally of the way in which the Minister of Agriculture is conducting his affairs. I refer briefly to an article in Big Farm Weekly of 17 October 1991. It is headed "Naish opposes calls to snub John Gummer." Naish of course, is the president of the National Farmers Union. The article said : "John Gummer should not be invited to address the NFU AGM, say many of the union's council delegates. One council delegate said that people must be blind and stupid not to see through Mr. Gummer's weasel words'."
I suspect that that anonymous NFU delegate speaks for many farmers in Britain in 1991.
10.26 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. David Curry) : I shall do my best to say twice as much in half the time. I do not think that that should prove too difficult a task. For a minute I thought that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) was going to rise to the occasion. He said that he opposed Mr. MacSharry's proposals in that they were discriminatory. He said that he trusted my right hon. Friend and myself to negotiate to get the best in the interests of British farmers and he said that he would vote with us tonight. We are grateful for that. It is important that a message goes from the whole House and we shall count carefully to see how many have stayed to take part in the vote.
Having got to the big moment, the hon. Gentleman collapsed in a heap. We then had an irrelevant knock-around for 20 minutes which I hope will be read by the farming community so that farmers may see what constructive proposals were put forward about the prospects they would face in the unfortunate event of there being a Labour Government.
The hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) never fails to disappoint. He remained true today. He repeated that the essence of MacSharry would be accepted. I wonder whether in his heart he would like it to be accepted because that would make his political task so much easier. He repeated his horror story about all the things we cannot eat, about meat and BSE. In every speech he talks about the disasters in that area. Farmers know that he is a great disaster-monger.
I keep a note of all the Opposition's spending promises. The hon. Member for South Shields reproached us for not checking every farm every year for set-aside. There are 3,500 farms. I take it that it would be Labour policy to check every farm every year. I would be interested to know the cost and the number of officials who would be required to do that. I wonder whether farmers would welcome that increase in the burden of bureaucracy.
The hon. Gentleman then attacked the best part of the set-aside programme, the conversion and diversification schemes. It must make sense to do our best to get land
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more permanently out of production, remembering that technology always endows us with an underlying yield increase of 2 per cent. per year.The hon. Gentleman accused my right hon. Friend of aggression and later of irascibility. The hon. Gentleman offers his own alternative--a farmer- friendly, animal-friendly, environment-friendly, consumer-friendly, Euro- friendly, Uncle-Tom-Cobbleigh-friendly alternative--anonymity. He is the Doctor Who of the Labour Front Bench.
If the hon. Member for South Shields failed to rise to the occasion, I was genuinely disappointed by the remarks of the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells). I give him credit for being genuinely concerned about these matters. Where he has felt that the Government have performed well he has never failed to give us credit for it, and we are indebted to him for that. I know how genuine is his concern that we should be able to give farmers some signposts. We all recognise that they live in a world in which uncertainty appears to be compounded by uncertainty.
But a 10-year plan is not a realistic option. What assumptions can be built into it? What assumptions should be built in about how many member states there will be in the EC ; the GATT outcome ; the situation in eastern Europe and the level of liberalisation for imports into the Community ; the development of biotechnology, one of the greatest developments in agriculture ; and dietary and consumption trends? A 10-year plan cannot be anything other than a wholly speculative document.
But better was to come. The hon. Gentleman said that he would take his hon. Friends to Brussels to persuade Mr. MacSharry to adopt his party's proposals. One of my hon. Friends asked what they were. I listened carefully to the response because we were all anxious to know. He said : "At another day I might inform the hon. Gentleman what our policies are". That is a reassuring statement. We are all deeply reassured to know that at another day we will know what are the Liberal Democrats' policies. That is what is known as precision.
Mr. Geraint Howells : It is unbelievable that history is repeating itself in the House. The two major parties are defending each other's policies against the wishes of the Liberal Democrats and the majority of British farmers who want confidence to be restored, stability in agriculture and a 10-year plan. If the Government do not look after the interests of the agriculture community, we will do so.
Mr. Curry : I should have thought that if the Liberal Democrats wished to restore farmers' confidence, it should seize the occasion of what is virtually the annual agriculture debate in the main debating forum in the land to reveal their policy. But the hon. Gentleman did not do that. When the hon. Gentleman was challenged by Labour Members on the cost, he said, "It is very difficult". That is the summary. We shall find out what the Liberal Democrats' policy is later and it is difficult to give the cost. That is a song to sing in the valleys and I shall make sure that it is known fairly far and wide.
It is curious that from a party which proclaims its adherence to the federal principle we get the great exposition of the disaster story which is MacSharry. If there was a party which should be predisposed to accept those proposals it is the Liberal Democrats. For them the F-word is "fraud".
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I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) for his kind remarks. As he knows, we have been concerned about the fate of the mushroom industry in his constituency. I shall devote my attention to that in future. I realise that it is an important matter and I note that he will send me some information on it which I undertake to examine immediately I receive it. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) mentioned the whisky industry. He listed the Scottish NFU's five points, with which we agree. There is no dispute between us on that and I know the importance of the excellent beverage to which he alluded. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) made an important point about marketing. He will know that we have introduced a marketing scheme. The idea is to tell farmers to get away from the idea that somehow they must be turned into French farmers, to co-operate in a French style. We are looking for something different, for something British. We are looking for something that does not have the overtones of the French-style co-operatives. We do not want them to be retailers or processors ; we want them to be more efficient farmers by farming for the market. That is the entire message of the marketing initiative, which has received an extremely good response. I am delighted that the NFU has complementary proposals, which will enable us to marry our ideas to their ideas and to get a response from farmers on this important matter.I noticed that the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) winced when one of my hon. Friends mentioned the damage that horses do to fields because I think that he has a family interest in horses. Once again, he defended the present status of the Milk Marketing Board. It is indefensible in its present form and the board knows it. It is the board which initiated the process of reform. If we said that we were going to defend the status quo, it would deeply damage farmers' interests. Therefore, we are saying to the board, "You must promote the change and we shall help you to do so, but it is your industry and you must decide what you want to do with it." What farmers do not want to do is to hold it back.
My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord) said that he would like to repatriate the common agricultural policy. That is not what the debate is about. If the United Kingdom is to be at the heart of the debate, there is no point in espousing ideas that immediately put us on the margins of the debate. We had that trouble in the past. We do not intend to repeat it. That does not mean that we accept the CAP, despite all its blemishes ; it means that we must negotiate our way to a better system. There is no effective alternative.
As for the speech of the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n (Mr. Jones), we defend the interests of Welsh, Northern Ireland, Scottish and English farmers. We do not stand for any sectional interest ; we stand entirely for the interests of British agriculture. That is our sole purpose in the negotiations. I give a clear undertaking that we make no distinction between farmers in fighting to defend their interests against proposals which we feel damage them universally. There is no sector of British agriculture which has been miraculously insulated from the effects of the proposals.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) mentioned the importance of environmentally sensitive areas. I take note of what he said. I recognise, too, the concern about eastern Europe. We cannot say to eastern
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Europe, "Sorry, go away." It is important to us that we should give them a helping hand. Trade liberalisation is the most economically sensible way to go about it. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. However, we must ensure that it is done in a sensible, orderly and measured way, since it is important to ensure that we create a fair marketplace.The hon. Member for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Jones) referred to repatriating the common agricultural policy. He made the sensible point that the small Welsh farmer was not excluded and that the CAP would adversely affect him.
The hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) made the sort of remarks that I would expect from a member of his party. He wanted me to go round the country telling farmers how awful the MacSharry proposals are. They know how awful they are. What they want is an assurance that we are going to fight them, improve them and ensure that we obtain a package that is acceptable to farmers. That is our message to farmers and it is just as true for Scottish farmers as for any other farmer in the United Kingdom. We shall defend their interests with as much vigour as we defend the interest of any other farmers in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Andrew Welsh : Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Curry : No, because I have nearly finished my speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) said that the common agricultural policy could not survive and that we should get rid of it. The conclusion that I draw from that is how mistaken it is to arrive late. If we had been members of the Community earlier, we should not have the CAP as it is now. The conclusion which I draw is that if the Community were to propose other exciting ventures that would have an enormous influence on how the Community develops, it would be very sensible for the United Kingdom to be in at the beginning, otherwise the penalties for this country might be very great.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams) referred to the millionaire farmers who would have to bear the burden of MacSharry. I will take him to meet the millionaire farmers in my constituency and throughout the country. We shall spend a long time looking for them. They no longer exist. I should be delighted to let him just talk to them--
Mr. Martlew : How can he, if they no longer exist?
Mr. Curry : --so that they can tell him how well they are going to do under the MacSharry proposals, which is what he said. The hon. Member for Carmarthen is misleading the farmers in his constituency if he thinks that the small farmer is insulated. That is not the case. Small farmers will suffer just as much as anyone else. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Amos) referred to tenancy reform. That is crucial. As my hon. Friend knows, we have got that matter in hand. He mentioned its importance to the whole of the rural community. We all say amen to that.
The hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) said that industry depends on agriculture. It is an important issue. We are just as mindful of that as we are of agriculture as a whole.
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The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) referred to the Goodman case. It is being investigated in the Republic and I do not intend to comment upon it.The hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards) referred to discrimination and corrected what his hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen said. He talked about the family tradition of countryside livelihoods. With my constituency, I cannot but share his very real concern.
Farmers must face up to three interlocking negotiations--the eastern European negotiations, the MacSharry negotiations and the GATT negotiations. They touch on each other and sometimes they ricochet off each other. They are all crucial to this country, to the future of the European Community and to the world trading system. My right hon. Friend and I have made it absolutely clear that in all the negotiations we shall defend the British farmer and we shall not relinquish that task.
Question put, That the amendment be made :--
The House divided : Ayes 28, Noes 152.
Division No. 22] [10.39 pm
AYES
Alton, David
Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Beggs, Roy
Beith, A. J.
Bellotti, David
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Carr, Michael
Cryer, Bob
Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)
Fearn, Ronald
Godman, Dr Norman A.
Howells, Geraint
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Mo n)
Kennedy, Charles
Livsey, Richard
Loyden, Eddie
Maclennan, Robert
Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James
Paisley, Rev Ian
Ross, William (Londonderry E)
Salmond, Alex
Skinner, Dennis
Stephen, Nicol
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)
Wray, Jimmy
Tellers for the Ayes :
Mr. Archy Kirkwood and
Mr. Alex Carlile.
NOES
Alexander, Richard
Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Amess, David
Amos, Alan
Arbuthnot, James
Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Boscawen, Hon Robert
Bottomley, Peter
Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Bowis, John
Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Bright, Graham
Browne, John (Winchester)
Buck, Sir Antony
Burt, Alistair
Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Carrington, Matthew
Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Chapman, Sydney
Chope, Christopher
Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Conway, Derek
Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Cope, Rt Hon Sir John
Couchman, James
Currie, Mrs Edwina
Curry, David
Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)
Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)
Davis, David (Boothferry)
Day, Stephen
Dixon, Don
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Dunn, Bob
Dykes, Hugh
Farr, Sir John
Favell, Tony
Fishburn, John Dudley
Forman, Nigel
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Forth, Eric
Franks, Cecil
French, Douglas
Fyfe, Maria
Galloway, George
Gill, Christopher
Golding, Mrs Llin
Goodhart, Sir Philip
Goodlad, Alastair
Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)
Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Gregory, Conal
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn
Hague, William
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)
Harris, David
Hayes, Jerry
Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney
Haynes, Frank
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