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6.57 pm
Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton): At the outset, I must declare a couple of interests that appear in the Register of Members' Interests that may be related indirectly to the debate. I welcome the continuing commitment to reforming the common agricultural policy, which was reaffirmed by my hon. Friend the Minister of State and stressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Sir J. Cope) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone).
The common agricultural policy must be reformed urgently, for three reasons. The first is cost. I am sure that--particularly in the light of our unhappy experience a few years ago--Conservative Members will not want to vote any more money to the European Community. A number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce), referred to set-aside, and that must be addressed. After 30 or 40 years, the means of determining member countries' payments to the European Community--which is not related to gross domestic product--remains unsatisfactory.
The second reason is the need and the desire for enlargement. Three countries--Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary--have in different ways earned their right to membership of the European Union through their suffering over the past 150 years in the cause of human liberty and of national independence. They should become members not in five or 10 years, but very rapidly. Therefore, I would like to admit them to the Union and thus put pressure on the existing members of the Union to sort out the CAP so that those countries can integrate into the single market gradually.
The third reason why we need urgent reform of the CAP is linked to what has become the main subject of the debate--the current beef crisis. As we have seen over the past eight weeks, there have been delays in reaching solutions, because many issues have had to be referred from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to Brussels. Every time that happens, there is a delay. That leads me on to the role of the Ministry in the crisis. I pay tribute to the way in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture and my hon. Friend the Minister of State have given detailed explanations to the
House. A powerful case was developed in the debate on Monday by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has also played a stalwart role, especially in the west country, where the crisis is acute.
I received a written answer on 15 May, which described the small numbers of extra staff, mainly clerical and administrative assistants, who had been taken on by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food during the crisis. Perhaps the Select Committee will consider whether the Ministry has been properly staffed to deal with such a crisis. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes referred to contingency planning. I strongly suspect that there were not enough high-grade policy advisers in the Ministry, and I hope that such people will be employed to address the longer-term points that I put to my hon. Friend the Minister of State in an intervention earlier.
We have been anxious that high-grade and detailed information should be available from regional and area offices for farmers and others in our constituencies. I confess that I am not sure that that has been the case throughout the crisis. On occasion, Ministers, in trying to help the House--I do not say that there is any suggestion that they intended to mislead the House--have made statements that clearly did not reflect the situation in the field. Ministers have not been fully informed by MAFF officials of the situation and that is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Certain problems have been put to us recently that require urgent action. This morning, after yesterday's lobby, when farmers and others from Somerset came up to the House, I received a fax from the county chairman of Somerset National Farmers Union, Mr. Bartlett. He says that the situation has reached
Similar points have been made by my constituents and others in the region. Mr. Johnson, the NFU regional spokesman, has said:
My hon. Friend the Minister of State has mentioned the regrettable action by some of the supermarkets. It is fair to say that Somerfield has been the leading culprit in making matters difficult for the abattoirs. There are enough difficulties in getting the cull cattle through the abattoir
process and into rendering for us to wish to avoid that intervention by some of the supermarkets. I contrast their action with the welcome action yesterday by Asda.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire(Mr. Kirkwood) made a reasonable speech. I am also glad to see the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) in his place. He usually speaks reasonably on such matters, but his speech on Monday, which I read, and I was present for most of it, was a typical example of the Liberal party scouring for every vote and raising every scare and perhaps smear.
I am not sure how far I should blame the hon. Gentleman for that, because he is rather like the early Red Army military units that had political commissars inflicted on them, which completely adulterated their approach to their normal job. For the whole of the hon. Gentleman's speech on Monday, his political commissar sat behind him--the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), who has taken an entirely unrestrained party political attitude to the whole matter.
For example, I intervened in the speech by the hon. Member for North Cornwall and quoted the scary statement by the Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament for Somerset, that the Government had inflicted the crisis through the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health on20 March. The hon. Gentleman said that he would reply to that intervention, but he did not. Further, during his speech he suggested that some Conservatives--I hope that he does not include me--would like to see the ban prolonged to help their campaign against the European Union.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Nicholson:
I am sorry, but I cannot give way. We are on 10-minute speeches and the hon. Gentleman has had many opportunities to speak on the subject.
Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley):
One of the biggest flaws in the common agricultural policy is the tobacco production subsidy. If ever there was a waste of taxpayers' money, that is it. The subsidy gets far too little
This year, as every year, the European Union, through the CAP, will spend about 1 billion ecu on subsidies for European tobacco producers--that is more than£800 million spent on supporting tobacco production. A huge sum of public money is spent supporting a crop that has no positive benefits and that kills its consumers.
Furthermore, the subsidies support a crop that is almost worthless commercially. Tobacco growers in the EU produce so-called dark tobaccos, which are high in tar and unfashionable with consumers and manufacturers. There is little or no market for them. The CAP subsidies for tobacco were intended to encourage farmers to grow commercially viable varieties. The subsidies were supposed to help to maintain farmers' incomes while they adapted their production from dark to light varieties. The intention was to reduce imports into the EU, but the tobacco growers have simply absorbed the subsidies. Patterns of tobacco production have remained virtually unchanged and CAP-supported dark tobaccos continue to be sent outside the EU and light tobacco imported.
In 1992, the CAP reforms set a ceiling on tobacco production, but left unchallenged the principle of tobacco subsidy. Those reforms made no effort to eliminate the tobacco varieties that have low commercial value and, therefore, made no effort to achieve the CAP's stated aim of reducing imports.
Today, EU-based manufacturers still import 70 per cent. of their tobacco. Meanwhile, two thirds of the EU's own tobacco production is the cheap, high-tar crop that the CAP was supposed to eliminate, and most of that crop is dumped in eastern Europe and north Africa. Therefore, in relation to tobacco subsidies, the CAP has failed member states. It has also failed the citizens of Europe.
The CAP tobacco production budget is some£800 million compared with the smoking prevention budget of the EU organisation Europe Against Cancer of£1.2 million. That is nonsense. The World Health Organisation estimates--I believe conservatively--that nearly 500,000 EU residents die every year from tobacco-related illnesses. Yet the CAP spends upwards of £1,600 a head helping to kill those EU citizens. A mere 275 of the 182,000 European tobacco producers receive among them more money than the total budget of the European anti-smoking programme.
During the past day and a half, many hon. Members have pointed to discrepancies, inconsistencies and unfairnesses in the current beef market. Problems with beef and fish have been well aired. Some have expressed the view that the CAP is wrong-headed and its priorities muddled on occasion, and that is certainly true with regard to tobacco. But with tobacco, the CAP is moving into much more dangerous territory. It is spending money on subsidies that have an effect well beyond simple economics and national rivalries.
Tobacco-related illnesses accept no boundaries and obey no quotas. They strike at smokers and non-smokers alike. Tobacco is clearly a drug that kills. The House should question why we allow the CAP to subsidise such a disastrous undertaking.
Where is the value for money in killing consumers? The European Court of Auditors certainly could not find any. In 1994, it examined the CAP tobacco subsidies,
two years after the reforms that were supposed to change the face of European tobacco production. The court said that the policy was badly managed and that the subsidies were a "misuse of public funds". The European Court of Auditors questioned the whole principle of subsidies for tobacco production.
We should consider that principle too, especially as it has already been proved that it would be cheaper to give farmers direct income support than to continue to subsidise tobacco production through the CAP. For example, in 1993, the average farmer's income from tobacco was 6,500 ecu. The European Court of Auditors estimated that 43 per cent. of that income was taken up with expenses associated with crop production. That left 3,700 ecu per farmer as the amount of income received from tobacco subsidy.
If farmers stopped growing tobacco and were instead paid the 3,700 ecu direct, the total cost to the CAP would be 556 million ecu--about 327 million ecu less than the subsidies being paid. In other words, the EU could save around £260 million a year by ending tobacco subsidies and eliminating production of the crop.
I urge the Minister to look carefully at the way in which the tobacco regime operates. An end to CAP tobacco subsidy and its replacement with direct income support must be a sensible first step. It would save taxpayers' money and free resources for other use. More importantly, it would end production of a patently uneconomic product--a product which kills its consumers and which the EU is inflicting on poorer countries by exporting the tobacco that we do not want to other parts of the world. Europe produces highly dangerous high-tar tobacco, for which the market in the EU is practically nil, yet we still waste millions on subsidising it.
I remind the House that just £1.2 million is being spent by the EU on anti-smoking programmes. There is a potential surplus within the CAP of more than£260 million, in the tobacco subsidy regime alone. Some of that should go to health education within the EU rather than to subsidising tobacco. The CAP has done and is continuing to do serious damage to Europe's health. Hundreds of thousands die every year and millions more fall ill. We should divert resources away from rewarding the killer towards supporting the victims and preventing new victims.
"crisis proportions"--
and he continues:
"the situation must not be allowed to drift".
He also hopes that emergency powers might be sought to sort out the problem with the renderers and the absence of proper incinerating capacity, which might involve an emergency approach to the planning process. I know that the situation is difficult, but it is vital that it is dealt with.
"The top-up payments on farm support payments, whilst welcome, are not properly targeted. The farmers who need the help are those who had been selling cattle during the last two months."
Rebecca Barber, from the NFU West Group in Somerset, tells me:
"The market price for beef is falling drastically at the moment and farmers are obviously worried as to what on earth they are supposed to be doing with these animals."
Reference has been made to intervention and price support; when my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary winds up, perhaps she will refer to those matters specifically.
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