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6.46 pm
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry): I, too, listened with care to the hon. Member for South Down(Mr. McGrady) making a plea for his constituency. He and I and the hon. Member for Belfast, South(Rev. Martin Smyth) have the same problem, and it is one to which we shall no doubt return with increasing frequency during the coming months and years unless there is a considerable improvement in the distribution of investment from overseas in Northern Ireland. Many of us are not very happy when we find our constituencies and folk bypassed time after time. Often, as in my case, they are areas which have been completely peaceful for the past 25 years, and they do not think much of their reward for good behaviour.
I had not intended to start there, but rather with the question of my hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Mr. Forsythe) on fluoride during Northern Ireland questions today which, if I may say so, received a most unhelpful answer. I noticed that the Minister quietly skated around my hon. Friend's point, which was simply that such mass medication was not acceptable to the population at large or to the representatives of the people at large, and had nothing whatever to do with whether it was good for us. But we are told by the experts that what we think does not matter because they believe that it is good for us, so they will cram it down our throats anyway. Such an attitude is not acceptable in a democratic society.
I have talked to dentists and others and they have said they do not think that there is any harm in fluoridation, and that it is quite a sensible idea because it stops tooth decay and so on, but one lady said to me, not so very long ago, that while she herself did not believe that it did any harm, it was completely wrong for an unelected quango, appointed by the Ministry, to tell people what they should and should not drink. That is my principal objection to the fluoridation of water. It is mass medication whether people want it or not. For that to be said by a smiling Conservative Minister is strange, coming as it does from a party which demands freedom of choice.
As it is possible for anyone who wants fluoride to take it in tablet form, I should have thought that it would be much cheaper to make fluoride tablets freely available through chemist shops at much less cost than adding it to the water, and then folk could make up their own minds whether they wanted decaying teeth or fluoridated teeth. That is what I call freedom of choice, and it is a far step
from mass medication. It is not the fluoridation of water that can cure the problem but rather a change of diet. If we can reduce our children's sugar intake, no doubt most of them would have much healthier teeth. I cannot say that I disliked sweets when I was young, but parents now take more interest and are constantly concerned about the amount of sugar that children consume in sweet drinks and so on. We need a fundamental change of attitude in the home between children and parents. That issue touches on the health and social services budget, which leads me to the next issue that was raised with me--the pay and conditions of service for employees of Foyle Health and Social Services trust.
I have to confess that my information is somewhat sketchy, because the matter arose only at the weekend, but my understanding is that doctors and dentists, and probably some others, received a 2 per cent. increase in salary this year, and that it was, as usual, staggered. I understand that it is a national pay award and that it has nothing to do with the trust as such. My understanding is that the increase should be paid by May, but it has not been paid as yet, and, it seems, it will not even be discussed by the trust until the June meeting.
I presume that, somewhere along the line, the money is available to the trust. I presume that it is sitting in the trust's bank account and that the trust is drawing down interest on it. If it is, that is quite unforgivable. It should be in the bank accounts of those who are entitled to it. I should also be grateful to know what pay increase has been agreed for nurses and industrial staff. Will they get anything on top of the national agreements? When will they get their increase, as cleaners and the other industrial staff are fairly poorly paid and need any increase that is available? No worker should be deprived of money for which they have laboured for any longer than is necessary.
I listened with considerable interest to the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley), who quite properly asked about BSE. Only now are people throughout the country waking up to the size of the problem, which is one of vast proportions. As I do so often, I waited in vain for some lead from the hon. Gentleman as to how the Labour party would resolve the problem. The Labour party needs to say what policy it would follow, as the problem will be with us for some time. It is a difficult problem, and I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman would have said rather more than he did.
Having said that, I believe that responsibility still lies with Ministers on the Treasury Bench, so I shall make some points to which I hope to get sensible answers. First, I want an assurance that compensation for 30-month-plus animals will remain at its present levels until the huge backlog of cattle for slaughter has been dealt with. We cannot kill the animals quickly enough and the backlog will be with us for some time, especially in Northern Ireland, which exports so much of its stock. I believe that the figure is nearer 80 per cent. than 70 per cent. Indeed, 28 per cent. of all United Kingdom beef exports came from Northern Ireland. They went to Europe and South Africa--to all sorts of places--and some of those markets will start taking beef again if we can get the ban lifted. Until that happy situation arrives and the backlog of cattle has been dealt with the present compensation levels will remain.
We have an enormously difficult situation in that the beef market has collapsed and there is an urgent need of additional finance and support to prevent many farmers
from getting into severe financial difficulties and possibly going out of business, in the sense that they will not have the money to replace their present stock when they sell it. They will probably have to sell it for less than they paid for it. Farmers are small businesses. They do not have large bank accounts. They are dependent on a steady flow of money as their wages every year, and unless something more is done, the entire agriculture industry in Northern Ireland will be in a very depressed state. There is currently no market at all for young bulls under 24 months of age and those more than 420 kg deadweight, and therefore there is an urgent need for the 420 kg upper limit in intervention to be removed, or some other outlet for such cattle.
The reality is that farmers, as the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central said, are losing a lot of money. They are losing £250 to £300 a head, which is their entire profit plus part of the buying price of their cattle. They are being sold at a considerable loss. The farmer simply cannot open the door and let them out. He cannot walk away from them. He cannot stop them eating--unless they are slaughtered. There is a real problem with such stock. The Government must go a bit further than they have and deal with the problem. We must have an assurance that once the United Kingdom and the European Union agree the criteria for the removal of the export ban and it is up and running, the ban on Northern Ireland will be lifted immediately. I think that Northern Ireland can meet the agreed criteria, as we are further ahead than any other place, but we need some light at the end of the tunnel, and some confirmation that Northern Ireland will be free to export as soon as the agreement is reached.
The reality, however, is that the lifting of the ban is not the end of the problem. There is a tremendous marketing job to be done in the former markets and in new markets once the ban is lifted, and that will also need financial support. It is not only a Northern Ireland problem but a United Kingdom problem. I hope that the Government are taking that fact on board as well and that in a week or so cold storage will be available in Northern Ireland so that we can get rid of the existing backlog of cattle as soon as possible.
I draw the Minister's attention to two other difficulties. When a holding in Northern Ireland is flagged up as "BSE contact", it is the holding that is flagged up, not the animals on it. It is therefore conceivable that the farmer sells every animal, cuts his losses and gets out. Let us say that he has bought a lottery ticket so that he is able to replace his stock and that he has been very lucky. But that does not get rid of his problem. The holding is still flagged. He takes his cattle to the market six months or a year down the road. The computer will still show that these are flagged cattle and that the holding is "BSE contact". It is completely new stock. It has had no contact with BSE, but it is still flagged up and as a result is pretty well valueless.
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