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Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen): On a point of information, what is the position on the continent in terms of animal feed? The general population has learned an awful lesson about the feeding of animal protein to cattle and sheep which are herbivores. Is that still the practice in other European countries?
Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman is right. The regimes of some countries on the mainland of Europe have been much less satisfactory as regards the use of mammalian protein being fed to farm animals than has been the case here for many years. However, controls have been tightened, and the Commissioner himself intends to make new proposals in that regard. As the hon. Gentleman suggests, it is important that the requirement is EU-wide in its application.
My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) asked about support. We have introduced a range of measures to safeguard the future of the key links in the chain. My hon. Friend will remember that the Agriculture Council in June agreed a range of EU assistance worth about £110 million for beef farmers. Of that, about £29 million, or 34 mecu, was available as a discretionary spend. I am announcing by written answer today how we propose to spend this.
In substance, we will be using the £29 million to pay a headage payment in respect of cattle sold for slaughter between 20 March and 30 June--provided, of course, that the necessary documents can be produced. We have thereby gone a long way towards meeting the wishes of the farming community and its representatives, so as to ensure that the money gets quickly into the pockets of those who have suffered most.
To make it plain, £29 million of the £110 million will be used as I have just described, and the balance will be loaded on to the premium. However, it is not our intention to introduce national aids.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed):
I sympathise with the Minister's losing his voice. Although his announcement will be some consolation and help to producers who sold at a significant loss earlier this year, what can he say to those who produce suckler calves on the hills and who are contemplating the autumn calf sales with great anxiety, because they cannot afford the fodder to keep those animals throughout the winter months?
Mr. Hogg:
The real honest answer is that consumer confidence has to be built up. The market price is the only way to bring about permanent financial assistance or resources to the sector of the farming community that we are debating. We do not have it in mind to introduce a further top-up scheme; nor are there currently any proposals for such a scheme.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire)
rose--
Mr. Hogg:
No, I cannot give way. I must make progress.
I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that, essentially, the solution lies in the market. We need to ensure that market confidence is restored.
On many occasions since 20 March, the House has had an opportunity to discuss BSE and how we can best respond to the grave difficulties that we all face. It is for that reason--the fact that we have been here before--that I have not thought it necessary to go into overmuch detail, but have focused on those matters which are of most immediate concern.
In closing, I should like to pay tribute to the good sense and patience of the farming community and of those who represent it. I have been deeply impressed by the courage and dignity with which those engaged in agriculture and in related industries have met these quite exceptional and most challenging of times. They have our support.
Indeed, I believe that only a Conservative Government would have had the will to commit such vast resources to the assistance of British agriculture. We have thereby given powerful and conclusive evidence of the importance that we attach to this vital sector of the British economy.
Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd (Morecambe and Lunesdale):
Before my right hon. and learned Friend sits down, will he give way?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. I rather thought that the Minister had already sat down.
Mr. Hogg:
I was making my final observation, and I give way to my hon. Friend
Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd:
My right hon. and learned Friend is most kind. I know that he mentioned the cold storage scheme, but unfortunately I had to attend to an urgent matter outside.
Let me briefly draw to his attention a point about the north-west and Lancaster in particular. Although it is a small market, there is a great backlog of 2,700 cattle awaiting slaughter. That figure will increase dramatically in the autumn, and there could well be animal welfare problems. That makes it so important that an adequate cold storage scheme is provided in the north-west. I should say to my right hon. Friend that there is a belief--
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am sorry, but interventions should be brief, and this is an one-and-a-half-hour debate.
Mr. Hogg:
I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister for Rural Affairs has been to Preston to discuss exactly the point that my hon. Friend has raised. Our objective is to ensure that the 30-month scheme operates as effectively as possible. There are rather more than 40 abattoirs operating in England and Wales.
Dr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East):
It seems appropriate that we should debate BSE on the day that the House rises. The matter has rightly preoccupied hon. Members for many months, and it has been the subject of several debates.
The House will be all too aware of the Government's appalling record on BSE since the disease was officially identified in 1986. It is a record of delay in regulating to protect human and animal health from the BSE agent and of dreadful under-enforcement of those regulations.
By May 1989, the Labour party had realised that it was vital to ban cattle offal from human food, to compensate farmers fully for slaughtered BSE cattle, and to ban the export of meat and bonemeal for cattle feed. Six years ago, in 1990, we called for a tagging system for all calves to be introduced in Great Britain. We knew that traceability would be the key to tackling the problem. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) and for South Shields (Dr. Clark) are on record calling for action, much of which was belatedly taken by the Government.
Had the Conservative Government listened to Labour, the difficulties faced by the beef industry now would be on a far smaller scale.
There is now great resentment--and a lack of confidence among consumers and the beef industry--at the Government's handling of the crisis that followed the statements made on 20 March that BSE was the most likely explanation for an apparently new strain of CJD.
The House will remember that on that day the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food stated:
As bits of policy have emerged since the statements of 20 March, they have been dogged by chaos and confusion. Nowhere was that more apparent--nothing had more impact on the industry--than in the introduction of the 30-month slaughter scheme. Only last week, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster admitted on radio that there were still problems with the scheme. At least one Conservative Member has drawn attention to the aspects of the implementation of the scheme that are a matter of great concern to the industry.
There is continued dissatisfaction with the selection of abattoirs involved in the scheme, and in my view it is certainly time to review the level of payments made to slaughterhouses participating in the scheme. There is a general feeling in the industry that the rate paid for slaughtering an animal under the 30-month scheme is exceptionally and unjustifiably high.
On 16 April, the Minister promised that there would be exceptions to the 30-month rule for those herds--especially organic and specialist herds--with no risk of BSE. No such scheme is yet in operation. The Minister addressed the selective slaughter scheme, which is the main item before the House today.
Mr. Marland:
We have heard this before from the hon. Gentleman. Before he leaves the section of his speech in which he criticises what is happening in the slaughterhouses, will he tell the House what his party proposes and how Labour would sort out the problem? It is not good enough for him to echo the Irishman and say, "I would not start from here if I were trying to find a way forward." It would be interesting to hear what the Labour party would do.
Dr. Strang:
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there is tremendous dissent in the slaughterhouse industry. We recognise that there is overcapacity and that it has created problems. There is a feeling in many of the slaughterhouses and abattoirs not involved in the scheme that those participating in the scheme are achieving high profits and that the scheme is giving them an unfair competitive advantage in a difficult market.
"I do not believe that this information should damage consumer confidence and thus the beef market."--[Official Report, 20 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 387.]
The Government had no strategy to cope with the crisis, and our rural areas are paying a heavy price for that misjudgment.
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