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Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will the hon. Gentleman comment on the advice that the National Farmers Union has issued by fax today to all its members with fax machines? It has been issued also to cattle markets. The representatives of two cattle markets have expressed considerable sadness to me today that the NFU should encourage traditional farmers who go to a cattle market to take their cattle direct to an abattoir, thus cutting out the cattle market which, in many areas, is a vital part of the rural economy.
Mr. Morley: I accept the hon. Gentleman's genuine concerns. I think that he will accept, however, that many producers have always had a direct relationship with slaughterhouses. The dead weight option was rightly reintroduced by the Government, although at a late stage.
There were welfare implications for many animals. The dead weight option means that it is possible to get more animals straight to the slaughterhouses, thus reducing delay. I think that the hon. Member for Macclesfield(Mr. Winterton) is more concerned about compensation arrangements, which I am sure the Government could reconsider.
The Government should give some thought to beef animals that are generally not marketed until they are over 30 months of age. The Government have said that these animals are under consideration against the background of the European Union. Has any progress been made on exemptions, which would reduce the great pressure that now exists?
Can anything be done to increase rendering capacity?I understand that a business cannot suddenly switch on extra capacity. It will not be able to find the necessary capital, especially if demand will decline or is in decline. It has been made clear, however, that the scheme will run for a considerable time. Renderers, because of the gearing of the scheme, receive much financial advantage. Have the Government discussed with the renderers whether it would be possible to introduce extra capacity within their businesses?
There could be a problem with incineration capacity in dealing with rendered products. Does that mean that some rendered products will go into landfill sites? Is the Minister able to give a categorical assurance that all rendered products will be incinerated?
Beef has been exported and, because of the worldwide ban, it will have to be imported back into the United Kingdom. I do not know whether the Minister knows--I am sure that she has had representations from beef exporters--that South Africa currently has 27,000 tonnes of British beef. That 27,000 tonnes will have to be brought back to the United Kingdom, at the insistence of the South African Government, because of storage problems. How will all that beef--and, indeed, other consignments that are coming back from abroad--be disposed of? Will it be rendered, incinerated or put on the market? The Minister must be aware that some of it will be from animals aged over 30 months, and that putting it on the market would cause difficulties: it would be in breach of the Minister's own rule.
The hon. Lady shakes her head, but I should like clarification of how that beef will be dealt with. It is a real problem for the sector of the beef industry that we are discussing. I appreciate that the problem is caused by a worldwide ban, and I am keen for beef exporters to receive some support. British beef exporters deserve all the support that they can get, and the sector will receive no compensation from the package.
Will the Minister also give some consideration to bull beef producers, whose animals tend to be ready for market at 24 months? It is almost exclusively an export market, and is particularly important in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland. Will the Minister consider including that category in the 30-month compensation scheme, at the very least until the export ban is lifted? Because there is no market for such beef in the United Kingdom, the producers are likely simply to retain the cattle until they
reach the age of 30 months and then put them into the 30-month scheme; but they will have to find six months' worth of feed, which they would not have to find in normal circumstances.
It is a pity that some of the suggestions that we made some years ago, which I mentioned in my introductory remarks, were not accepted at the time. I know that action is now being taken, and I believe that the Government are trying to rectify the position by introducing measures to help the consumer and restore consumer confidence, but I must disagree with the hon. Member for St. Ives--who generally speaks thoughtfully about issues such as this--on the question of the Government's responsibility.
The Government introduced the scheme, and they are responsible for it. We have heard tonight that some of the problems are being caused by the rendering sector, but surely the Minister and the Government must have some influence on the operation of that sector, which is insisting on working with only 21 slaughterhouses. Ultimately, they control the purse strings. Ministers cannot escape their responsibility; I suspect that the hon. Member forSt. Ives would not disagree with that.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon):
We have had an extremely good debate. The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) should recognise that we are discussing a substantive motion with a substantive amendment, and that a substantive vote can take place at the end of the debate.
The Minister of State, who spoke for 51 minutes, made a good fist of a difficult situation. He gave many detailed answers and explained a number of issues in response to questions from hon. Members on both sides of the House. I commend him for that, but he must still accept that outstanding concerns, some of which were expressed by Conservative Members, remain. The hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) wasted a certain amount of his speech with gratuitous attacks, but identified one or two important problems.
In replying to the debate, will the Parliamentary Secretary, to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food answer the question that one or two people have raised about whether supermarkets are discriminating against abattoirs? Numerous abattoirs do not wish to be included in the scheme for fear of being tainted with the idea that they are not acceptable for prime beef slaughtering. If that is the case, it is important that we know that it is the case and that the Government take a grip on the position.
The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) raised a number of points. He stressed in particular the difficulties that farmers are facing with the high cost of additional feed and the delay in waiting to get their cattle to market, which, for some of them, could be considerably longer yet. In an intervention on the hon. Gentleman--again, I would appreciate it if the Minister dealt with this--I asked whether representations could be made to allow, on a one-off only basis, early access to set-aside land in mid-July instead of in September to take account of the fact not only that we have a problem, but that we have it after a long winter, when there was even less grass than usual for the time of year.
The hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) was his usual frank and disarming self in dealing with the position in an honest way. He identified the concern about the delay, the continuing shortage of abattoirs in his constituency and the problem of the lack of rendering capacity or of some other means of enabling the process to continue.
The hon. Member for West Gloucestershire(Mr. Marland) again could not resist a few gratuitous attacks, but his comment about the 30-month rule missed the point and his comments quoting my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) did not prove the hon. Gentleman's point. It does not matter, because we are stuck with the position, but the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was suggesting one weekend that the entire British cattle herd might have to be slaughtered. Faced with that or a cull of 30-month-old cattle, which would you choose, Mr. Deputy Speaker? There was also a recognition--numerous people told my colleagues and me this when we visited Brussels--that, if urgent action had been taken at the beginning to put a scheme in place, progress towards a lifting of the ban might already have been made.
The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe made the only speech from the Labour Benches. It was odd that he had to refer to a letter from one of his hon. Friends when there was plenty of opportunity for a Labour Back-Bench Member to make a speech, but, throughout the debate, not one Labour Back-Bench Member was present. That reflects the arrogance of the Labour party, which is interested in who is moving the motion rather than the substantive issues that it deals with. I give credit to Conservative Members, who have made speeches on behalf of their constituents and whose questions were answered by the Minister. That seems to be the right and constructive response.
I was unable to attend a large part of my Scottish party's conference a few weeks ago in Aberdeen, a week after the ban was imposed, because I was accompanying the noble Lord Lindsay, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland with responsibility for agriculture, in my constituency in Aberdeenshire. We were seeing for ourselves the scale of the problem. Both of us were shocked by what we saw and by its implications. We visited one farmer who said, "I have 120 head of cattle, which will be going to market in the next two weeks and for which I have already run out of feed. What is going to happen?" That farmer is still facing that problem and still feeding those cattle. No progress has been made towards resolving the problem.
The noble Lord Lindsay and I then visited Donald Russell, a meat company in my constituency. Literally10 minutes before we arrived, it paid off its entire work force of 34 people because it had no market. That company has developed the top end of the British export market for prime Scottish beef. It had a £10 million turnover and 98 per cent. of its products--80 per cent. of which were beef--were exported. Now that company has no market and no business. It is desperate, and, so far, no measure has come near to giving it any chance of surviving and getting back into the market when the ban is lifted.
Any suggestion that the lifting of the ban is not the most urgent priority is simply unacceptable. We need to get measures agreed, in place and working so that we can persuade our partners to lift the ban as early as possible. That is what we must deliver and it is why people are so concerned about the delay.
I shall give the basic statistics for Scotland. Last year, £120 million-worth of Scottish beef was exported and the industry sustained 21,500 jobs. It is unacceptable, when 21 per cent. of Scotland's beef production is exported, to be told that, in the long run, the export ban might be lifted. It is vital that it is lifted at the earliest opportunity.
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