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Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney): A few moments ago, the hon. Gentleman said that he would omit part of his speech. Is he planning to omit his solutions to the problems that we have been discussing? All I have heard so far are four proposals for pig farming: two are illegal, one is already being implemented by the Government and one, concerning labelling, was not implemented by his party when it was in government. Then there was a lot of hot air about the beef on the bone ban, which is irrelevant, and criticism for delay--[Interruption.] It is irrelevant to the lifting of the beef ban, which he is criticising the Government for delaying. Their policy is an absolute success compared with the policy of non-co-operation in Europe, or "PONCE", that his Government pursued disastrously for this country and which got us into this mess.
Mr. Yeo: I hope that every consumer and farmer inthe Waveney constituency notes carefully the hon. Gentleman's statement that the ban on beef on the bone is irrelevant. I was going to omit, but shall now reinstate in my speech, the fact that last November, when the Minister made the first of the many statements about the lifting of the beef export ban, the hon. Gentleman told the House that champagne corks were popping in his constituency. I hope that he will now apologise to those farmers, who are still unable to sell beef on the bone to the customers who want to eat it, for reacting so absurdly and ignorantly.
Mr. Blizzard: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Yeo: Not again; we have had enough nonsense from the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex): Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister to prepare a scheme whereby any further regulation in the agriculture sector will be tested against the overbearing and overarching costs that are driving farmers to the wall? I understand that the dairy herd tags are to be changed yet again, putting another obligation on already hard-pressed dairy farmers. What on earth could have prevailed on the Ministry to make it insist on a further change?
Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I welcome his suggestion, which is made with the benefit of his period as a Minister at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. We need to test regulations much more carefully for their impact, particularly on the small businesses that dominate the agriculture sector. I also suggest--this arises directly from the Pratt report--that we should stop interpreting these regulations over-zealously. It is clear that even those regulations that
we have accepted for perfectly good reasons are interpreted wholly differently in Britain, and usually much more onerously in respect of farmers, than in many other European Union countries.
Mr. Brown: I make the hon. Gentleman an offer: if he can give me a specific example of that, I shall have it looked at, at once.
Mr. Yeo: The ban on beef on the bone and abattoirs. I refer the Minister to the Pratt report. His officials should be following up its recommendations and finding out exactly how the inspection regime is operated in other EU countries. I know that they tried to suppress the report for several weeks, because they were embarrassed about the conclusions, but now it is in the open I hope that there will be a systematic response to find out exactly where we are going further than other EU countries. I shall certainly respond to the Minister's suggestion in more detail after the debate.
The debate is timely because the crisis in agriculture became significantly worse during the parliamentary summer recess. The British pig industry is being destroyed; dairy farmers are being driven out of business; beef farmers suffer as muddle and incompetence put off the day when the task of rebuilding confidence in their product can begin; sheep farmers are reduced to the heartbreaking task of shooting their own flocks; and cereal farmers are threatened with new burdens, though I welcome the Minister's statement about his opposition to the pesticide tax and hope that he will not be forced to resign should the Chancellor of the Exchequer overrule him. Horticulture farmers face an arbitrary and ineffective climate change levy and slaughterhouses disappear week by week, but all he can offer is a package postponing the imposition of yet more burdens and yet another round of consultation and review.
Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire):
It will not be too difficult to rise above that contribution.
In the European context, British farming has many natural advantages, certainly in terms of scale and climate, yet we have a struggling sector. The Opposition's response is that the problem is lack of Government intervention, and that we need further protectionism and cash support. Uncomfortable though it is to say this, I firmly believe that farming needs less Government intervention, rather than more, and that cash support needs to be reduced over the long term and transferred to payment towards social, environmental and welfare goals.
Subsidising production--particularly inefficient production offering no other gain--is harmful to farming. Regulating and organising the sector through state and parastate bodies stifles innovation, discourages market awareness and encourages dependence. Such regulation as
we require should be constantly reviewed against tests of effectiveness and competitiveness. I shall concentrate on what we are achieving by what we are doing and on what impact we are having on the competitiveness of the sector that we are supposedly trying to help.
Much the most significant feature of the welcome recent aid package was the announcement of a series of joint working groups to examine the weight and cost of regulation in the sector and its impact on competitiveness. That represents a change of stance by the Government. I have pursued this issue relentlessly in my time as a Member. Early last year, I tabled a parliamentary question asking the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Mr. Letwin:
The hon. Gentleman makes a serious and important point. Does he agree that, if the idea of a regulatory impact assessment were being taken seriously, in relation to all the regulations that he describes, the regulatory impact assessment would inevitably also look at the comparative costs of the countries with which we compete.
Mr. Todd:
Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I would extend that view to my experience of regulation in other sectors. I spent my career in the private sector before joining this House, and I have puzzled over the process of regulatory impact reviews and their effectiveness. The hon. Gentleman therefore makes a fair point.
Fortunately, the Government's attitude changed, and in the autumn of last year a review--perhaps partly prompted by my further letters to the Minister saying that the matter needed to be looked at further--produced a study of comparative costs and approaches to regulation within the European Union for the slaughter sector. The study, which lies in the House of Commons Library, reveals that some countries openly subsidise the slaughter sector, and that Government subsidies are available tothe various slaughter operators. For other countries, the
information was so hazy that it was hard to say exactly what was going on. In Spain, for instance, the study says--it is couched in careful wording--that
That is welcome, but the next step, in which the Government are engaged in their latest review, is to involve the industry in looking closely at how the regulatory burden works, and the costs associated with it in the competitive context, which is the real world of much of our livestock sector. We trade most of our livestock products internationally--although sadly not fully in beef as yet--and we must face the fact that the costs borne by our producers are also experienced in different forms by our competitors. If we choose to levy different burdens, that has an impact on our competitiveness.
That is a welcome and realistic recognition of the significance, in both financial and morale terms, of the perceived inequities in the burdens faced by the sector. Farmers constantly tell me of the burdens which they think other member states' farmers face, and of the lack of regulation in other member states. We need truth and transparency, which is what we are gradually working towards.
I also welcome the hold placed on increased charges in the last package pending a full appraisal of their competitiveness impact and a review of their effectiveness in achieving public health goals. That is an important initiative, which is belittled by Opposition Front-Bench Members, who say that the Government are putting off a charging regime which perhaps should not have been imposed at all. The announcement is much larger than that and looks at deferring the charges and at the effectiveness of the whole regime. That is welcome, too.
I also commend the review of common agricultural policy administration conducted within MAFF last year. That is another subject that produces laughable anecdotes from farmers whom I represent about how inspection regimes operate in other member states. The review highlighted both significant savings that might be available in the administration of the CAP and the potential reduction in the bureaucracy that faces farmers in carrying out their tasks and conforming with the regime.
It is perhaps regrettable that it took that review, which was conducted externally by Coopers and Lybrand, to recommend establishing something as obvious as a best practice unit to identify the best ways to implement the rigours of the common agricultural policy across the various regional centres through which MAFF delivers the CAP process. It is surprising that such an initiative needed to be made and had not been identified previously.
Properly addressing the concerns of over-regulation is one strand of a strategy for assisting farming, but there are others. As parts of farming move progressively from
being regulated and directed, farmers need specific help. The recent MAFF publications on how to use the additional flexibility after Agenda 2000 make some interesting suggestions on how we should develop current initiatives and look at other ways of assisting farmers. Early retirement, support for marketing initiatives, training and retraining for farmers and support for co-operatives all feature, and those are steps that I would commend. I would add to those the encouragement that could be given to joint ventures along the food supply chain, which the Minister mentioned in his speech.
We must consider how to improve the supply chain throughout its length. Let us take milk as an example, and step into a future in which we have no quotas. I agree with the Opposition spokesman that we should move in that direction, although the hon. Gentleman is not sufficiently economically literate to understand its implications in terms of pricing. Nevertheless, efficient and well-organised British farmers would welcome that prospect. We must look at how to take maximum advantage of that freedom and the particular strengths that we have in Britain, which would enable us to have a highly competitive dairy sector. It is crucial to look at the various links in the supply chain, and at the inefficiencies that exist.
"if he will publish comparisons of charges made to ensure public health in the slaughter process in the United Kingdom with those prevailing in other EU states",
to which the answer was:
"The information requested is not available"--[Official Report, 12 February 1998; Vol. 306, c. 373.]
The response added that this issue was essentially a concern of individual member states and that it was for the European Commission to pursue any discrepancies. At the end of that month, when I pursued the matter further and asked
"pursuant to his answer . . . concerning charges for veterinary inspection and controls, if he will make it his policy to collect the information necessary to allow comparisons of charges across the member states of the European Union."
the former Minister of State, who is always a straight man, replied:
"No. Given the flexibility of the EC rules"--[Official Report, 26 February 1998; Vol. 307, c. 317.]
He then gave the same explanation, which was that this was a matter for individual member states and the responsibility of the European Commission.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests there may be considerable variation in the pursuit of charges. Information received from unofficial sources suggests that charges may not be collected in all regions. Evidence to support this has not been provided."
Sadly, a picture emerged of extremely incomplete information about the regulations and charging structure in that sector, and certainly of substantial variances from the British practice. I am glad to say that that has been built on by further Government research demonstrating that that is indeed the case, and that the matter has been pursued with the European Commission, which is responsible for ensuring that regulations are imposed evenly across the European Union.
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