Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
WEDNESDAY 6 MARCH 2002
MS GEORGINA
DOBSON, MR
GREGOR HUTCHEON,
MS EMILY
DIAMAND AND
MS LIANA
STUPPLES
Mr Borrow
640. I have still got a problem. We have talked
about £3,000 million that goes into supporting agriculture
at the moment and that has always been sold on the basis that
that sustains a certain amount of production and it means that
the British public have that guaranteed food production and it
just happens to be by subsidising agriculture in a way we do not
subsidise other industries. Yet if we are seeking to support rural
communities in a different way but use that same amount of money
we have got to be sure that the public will know what we are buying
with that 3,000 million. What puzzled me was the expression that
Liana mentioned about using that 3,000 million to concentrate
on supporting small family farms irrespective of the market situation
and I got the impression that it was important to support that
structure of small family farmers. I can remember 15 years ago
when there were similar concerns about supporting communities
in the coal field areas where people said "we cannot continue
to support and subsidise those communities" and those communities
changed. I am wondering whether it is possible that the British
public will continue to want to spend 3,000 million to support
small family farms in rural areas when we do not provide that
sort of cash to support industrial and urban communities that
are dependent on dying or marginal industries.
(Ms Stupples) I think the first part in answer to
that question, and it is something again that has not been touched
on this morning, is the role of food production with perhaps our
vision of what sustainable agriculture will be. I really think
that food is crucially important. The Curry Report, for example,
has the statement along the lines of "we must maintain some
capacity to produce food in the UK if we were to find we needed
to do that for various reasons". I think what we would argue
is that we already have enough justification for us to say that
we do want to do that. If you look, for example, at the public
loss of confidence in the quality of food, the reasons for that
are many and varied but I think the Curry Commission and many
other people have pointed out that part of that is because of
the long distance now between the producer of the food and the
consumer of the food. Part of that long distance means that we
have to do things like use more pesticides or resort to more treatment
of that food, which again is partly leading to the loss of confidence
in the food. What we are hoping to be able to inspire is this
idea that this is the reason why people are so keen now on these
little initiatives like farmers' markets, organic food boxes,
etc, because it helps engender that trust in food and we would
argue has great potential for delivering better quality food.
The other issue which I think points towards the need to consider
more about maintaining some capacity in this country to grow and
consume our own food here is the ecological footprint, the technical
term, the patterns of food consumption. We would like to be able
to not have such huge carbon dioxide emissions from having to
ship apples, for example, all the way around the world. We have
got fantastic potential, or we used to anyway, say in Kent, having
our own indigenous apple orchards. We used to have 30 or 40 varieties
of apples that were consistently grown and were part of our heritage
and part of the daily food. Now apple orchardists in Kent are
finding they are going out of business because the supermarkets
are not stocking that food on their shelves. Why? Because the
supermarkets are finding that they can get their apples far cheaper
from somewhere else. It is all connected. We come back to this
idea that, in fact, locally producing food and locally consuming
food will create a lot of feedback loops and most importantly
will have that money circulating in the local economy. We think
it is possible to put together a package of policy measures which
would be geared to that end rather than what I think is the inevitable
conclusion of what has been discussed so far which is there is
a wrong assumption that a certain form of free trade liberalisation
is inevitable and, therefore, competitiveness rules above everything
else. I do not think we have worked out the dilemma between this
concept of competitiveness and whether we can have this vision
of sustainability at the same time under the current market conditions.
641. So you are not in favour of further trade
liberalisation and you would think it was quite legitimate for
the Government or the EU to erect trade barriers to defend sectors
of its own economy rather as President Bush did for the steel
industry in the United States last night?
(Ms Stupples) We think globalisation is inevitable.
Obviously greater communication. Of course there will always be
products imported and exported but I think rather than call things
free trade or not, what we will be saying is there are some so-called
free trade policies, like the abolition of production subsidies,
which we completely support, because that helps us get to what
is a sustainable development end. There are some other policies
that I think we should be considering how useful they could be,
for example some forms of import controls, whether they be temporary
or not, that might actually help us be able to grow these local
economies. They might be so-called anti-free trade but they would
be policies that we think we should be considering in a portfolio
of policies to help support these local economies. Of course it
is inevitable that there will be more discussion about liberalisation
in agriculture but I feel to say further liberalisation is completely
inevitable is actually putting our heads in the sand. The Curry
Commission themselves have pointed out a number of places even
amongst the relatively modest proposals that they are putting
forward where they could be under threat from the WTO. Even the
relatively modest environmental proposals on payments that they
are talking about could potentially be ruled illegal. We already
know of a number of other mechanisms, like Government procurement,
for example, or Government favouring British made or locally made
food, that increasingly could be subject to legal challenge under
the WTO. I think now is exactly the right time to be questioning
those, now is exactly the right time to say where do we want to
get to and how can we adjust our lobbying strategies within CAP
and the WTO to do what is in the best interests for the environment
and for global sustainability?
Diana Organ
642. Three quick questions. Trade liberalisation:
surely that is the best way to protect the small family farmer
in the developing world? If we start to put in all sorts of tariffs
in the strong markets, America, Europe, elsewhere, do we not completely
shut out the small family farmer in the developing world?
(Ms Stupples) Again, from our contact with exactly
those people in the developing world, one of their key principles
is they think that all governments should have a right to be able
to take measures to protect their own local economies. The problem
that many of the farmers in the developing world have at the moment
is that in some countries up to 42 per cent of their revenue that
they are gaining from their current food exports are just going
to pay off the debt that they owe. In many cases their need to
be able to be export-driven in their economies is just a result
of the structural adjustments that have been made to their economies
under debt repayment provisions or through the IMF or the World
Bank. In fact, many small farmers in those countries would be
just as happy being able to produce food that their own families
could eat and that they could sell in their local markets rather
than being amalgamated and restructured themselves to have to
be able to supply commodities that they can sell on the world
market and be open to all those shocks in the world market, commodity
price changes and that kind of thing. In our talking to local
farmers in those countries they have a very similar view to what
we are saying. They are completely against the production subsidies
and the export subsidies that we currently have, they should go,
but they are in favour of being able to find ways, and that may
include controls at the border for example, that allow governments
to be able to support and encourage their local food economies.
643. When you were talking before about changes
to the CAP in order to help rural economies and rural areas, you
talked about protection against rural depopulation. Surely the
problem in the whole of Southern England is that we have not got
rural depopulation, in fact we have got quite the reverse, we
have got a massive exodus from urban and suburban areas into the
rural areas. How are we, therefore, going to devise a system that
supports services in the rural areas where they need to be without
giving handouts to Hertfordshire and Sussex and Gloucestershire
which are almost suffering from congestion?
(Ms Stupples) I think part of the answer to that question
is when I argued before that we should be protecting small family
farms I think what I was arguing for was a fair deal for them.
I think what they get is a double-whammy of mistreatment, if you
like, by not getting access to the money and the support that
has been available, partly by virtue of their size and partly
by virtue of the deliberate structure of those schemes. If we
did put food at the heart of what they are doing and did actually
include the idea of trying to support these rural communities
in our policy making we could find a way of being able to do that.
Some of the farmers in the South-East, for example, and I mentioned
the Kent apple orchards as a good example, why can we not find
a way to be able to ensure that we can have those apples stocked
locally in the shops in London? That is not happening. We did
surveys with our local groups just a couple of months back and
we had a bumper crop of apples coming through from Kent but damn
all of those apples were in any of the major supermarkets and
were not on their shelves. We have got other anecdotal evidence
from some of those orchardists who are saying they may have to
end up throwing those apples away because they cannot get the
markets for them locally.
644. But not all rural areas are the same and
they are not all driven by agriculture. Lots of rural areas, particularly
those that are ex-coal fields, their background economy is that
of manufacturing. The idea that we can just move things because
it is some kind of garden out there is not true and the basic
economy in my area and in many others represented around this
table will be manufacturing. You are talking about moving the
support into rural development, rural areas. Are you prepared,
therefore, in the way that you want to put money in to support
small family farms to move those kinds of funds into supporting
other areas of the rural economy which may be the IT sector, it
may be manufacturing, it may be the service sector?
(Mr Hutcheon) If I can come in on that. What we said
in our initial statement was we want an increased proportion of
the funds in the RDR budget, the Rural Development Regulation
budget. We are arguing that we can continue to support farming
in a different way across all of England, and I think farmers
in the South East should have as much access to the environmental
support and rural support that we are arguing for as farmers in
the Forest of Dean or up in the North of England. What we can
do with the additional Rural Development Regulation money is to
come up with schemes that reconnect farming with the wider economy.
CAP is not the only source of European money which is coming into
the English countryside, there are Objective 1 and Objective 2
funds in some areas. One area that we have not looked at enough
is Objective 3 funding. Objective 3 funding is actually about
education, training and skills and these are the priorities in
rural areas and helping those most disadvantaged communities in
rural areas to engage in new opportunities and the wider economy.
Mr Todd
645. Protection cannot be locked into one particular
sector, so to protect agriculture the consequence, as President
Bush may well find on steel, is people respond in other sectors
of the economy. I think this idyllic concept that we can somehow
protect small farmers in the UK by imposing controls without substantial
consequences in other parts of our already globalised economy
is, to be honest, quite naive. Also, as Diana correctly pointed
out, it is potentially damaging to farmers in developing countries
who every study of economic history has shown are the first motors
of economic growth towards industrialisation and development.
A curious theory is being expounded. Can I just take up the point
about supermarkets. Are supermarkets seen to be part of some conspiracy
against their customers in which they deliberately do not stock
apples from beautiful English orchards because of some obsession
of theirs? Are they not effectively responding to perhaps mistaken
views amongst customers that they prefer apples from New Zealand
or even from France rather than the ones that are available from
traditional English breeding?
(Ms Stupples) I think we can clearly dispel the myth
that the supermarkets are deliberately the devil incarnate. I
think what they are doing is responding to the market signals
that they are finding, although I think the point that we would
make, and indeed many farmers are making, is that the supermarkets
are increasingly very powerful players in the food chain. There
was an inquiry quite recently and 52 separate practices had been
identified where supermarkets could be construed as abusing their
power, whether that be through acquiring new suppliers to pay
for promotion in-store, whether that be for not having written
contracts for their suppliers. Essentially the supermarkets are
increasingly in a position where they can be price setters rather
than price takers. I think that is the squeeze that is putting
a lot of farmers in the UK under. That is increasingly one of
the contributory factors to the fact that we might not be able
to maintain anything near the current structures that we have.
The supermarkets are doing what the market is telling them to,
I guess I am questioning is that the way we want the market to
be structured? To come back to your point about perhaps the naivety
of trying to build a special case for agriculture, under the WTO
agriculture already does have a special case, the Agreement on
Agriculture is in fact a separate agreement, it has negotiated
quite a lot of different concessions, it is not treated the same
as other trade and I think there is a very good reason for that.
We would go one step further and argue why perhaps should agriculture
be under the WTO at all, why is it not negotiated under a separate—
646. It will take us about ten years back to
the Uruguay Round.
(Ms Stupples) I think it will take us forward. The
thing about the supermarkets, very quickly, is obviously—economics
101—more free trade leads to greater competition, greater
international imports usually and a drop in prices. In some cases
that might actually be something that is not very good for that
particular sector. We know Dyson quite recently, a great UK business,
had to relocate to South East Asia because of its import costs.
Unfortunately, we cannot do that with our farms, we cannot export
our farmers to China and say they can set up there, it is not
possible, they are tied to the land. There is not a level playing
field that exists in agriculture. Here we have a certain climate,
we have a certain biodiversity that is intrinsically linked to
our farmers and we have a certain way of life and I do not see
why we cannot actually—
Chairman: We have a certain amount of time as
well.
Mr Borrow
647. I just want to explore a bit more this
notion of sustainability and environmental sustainability. We
have had quite a good idea from Friends of the Earth what they
mean by sustainable agriculture and I note that the CPRE in your
written submission said you would encourage the sustainable use
of land.
(Mr Hutcheon) Yes.
648. And encourage environmental sustainable
farming policies. I wonder if you could give us a little more
detailed idea of what you mean by that. I wonder if you would
agree with the National Farmers' Union who said in their submission
to us that they believe very firmly that with very few exceptions
modern agriculture is environmentally sustainable?
(Mr Hutcheon) Thank you for that question. I suppose
a short definition would be that we think sustainable development
is about meeting economic and social objectives in ways that protect,
restore and enhance environmental assets and resources. In the
case of farming we see that farming has a multipurpose role, it
is about producing high quality food at a fair price, a diverse,
accessible and beautiful countryside and contributing to vibrant
rural economies and communities. In the past farming has been
environmentally unsustainable. We have heard from previous evidence
about the loss of environmental quality, biodiversity, soil erosion,
the loss of wild hedgerows, something that CPRE care about quite
passionately. These are not farmers acting out of malice or out
of a desire to destroy the environment, they have been encouraged
by production subsidies and the direction that CAP has been pushing
them. What we would argue for in the future is that the environment
should be seen as an integral part of every farm business. We
would agree that farming needs to be economically viable and to
do that we see four different models. The bulk of farmers will
continue to produce bulk commodities to sell on global markets,
we think that is a reality in many areas. We would argue that
increasingly those commodities are going to be marketed on the
basis of quality, and quality is the way forward where UK farmers
can actually compete because I think they are unlikely to be able
to compete on price in the longer term. An environmental dimension
built into that market sector is actually a competitive advantage.
The second route where we think farmers should be looking to is
on added value, going into the niche markets and getting a better
price for the products that they produce. A third area is in delivering
the environmental public goods, some of the public goods that
we have heard a lot about today. The fourth area is a new area,
I guess, in paying farmers for carbon sequestration, in managing
flood and water issues and water resources and the harder environmental
resources too. Those four strands with a mix of market incentives
and a mix of market support offer viable, economic and environmental
objectives and outcomes.
649. Have you given any thought to what effect
putting those policies into practice would have, for instance,
on employment in rural areas?
(Mr Hutcheon) There is a lot of evidence which shows
that environmental support schemes actually generate employment
in rural areas. There is support too, on which you have spoken
a little about, for local food economies with Friends of the Earth.
CPRE is also very much in favour of the development of local food
economies. We have shown that those schemes that try to link farmers
directly with consumers actually help to generate jobs and generate
greater amounts of revenue within local economies and actually
contribute to rural regeneration.
650. There is just one other issue that I would
like to direct to both organisations. Professor Bainbridge in
a session of oral evidence to us talked about GM technology and
said that the arguments about the reduction of herbicides and
pesticides are starting to come through as people relate the environmental
concerns that they have with the advantages of GM. She was suggesting
there could be advantages to GM. There was a report in the Sunday
Times on 17 February which you might have seen, and may have
been in other papers as well, in which Professor Alan Gray, Professor
of Farm Genetics, said it was becoming clear that declaring GM
crops to be either all good or all bad was simplistic and naive
and that report talked a little about evidence that shows in growing
GM modified maize the use of herbicides had been cut and what
had been encouraged was the growth of grasses, weeds and seeds
that prevent soil erosion. I wonder if I could have broadly the
views of both organisations about GM technology in the light of
those comments.
(Mr Hutcheon) We do not think GMOs are necessarily
a panacea, nor do we think they are inherently bad, what we are
concerned about is that more effective testing of the actual environmental
and health implications of GMOs is done before we actually take
it forward.
(Ms Diamand) I think we support that. The other point
to make is in terms of the environmental benefits that are often
touted for GM crops, they are false benefits in a sense because
there is always an alternative: reductions in pesticide use, reductions
in herbicide use. There are existing alternatives that are cheaper,
that do not send benefits back to these big companies but they
are not being developed because there is no profit to them. They
are often more environmentally friendly and they are already existing.
(Ms Stupples) Can I just add one thing in respect
of those two particular cases that you say. We are about to come
to the end of a rather controversial set of farm scale trials.
We have already heard from a number of different august bodies
that we now know the experiments that were set up were not enough
to be able to decide one way or another that we should go ahead
with GM crops in the UK. So farm scale trials may well have contributed
to some aspects of our understanding about the impacts of GM crops.
The pesticide use was something that those trials was set up to
look at. However, what the trials were not set up to look at,
or indeed answer the question about whether we should go ahead
with GM crops or not, were some other issues, and I will just
mention one. That would be the whole issue of cross-contamination
through the travel of pollen and whether or not on a small island
like the UK we can simultaneously have non GM agriculture, organic
agriculture, which does not want any GM, and GM. I think there
is increasing evidence to show that may not be possible, certainly
with the current generation of crops. I think that debate still
has to carry on and, indeed, Michael Meacher has announced that
we do have to have a wider public debate that considers those
very narrow definitions of environmental benefit or not and the
wider social and ethical considerations that it involves.
651. Will that need a further round of farm
scale trials?
(Ms Stupples) I would not advocate a round of the
type we have currently had precisely because, again, Margaret
Beckett has had to already admit that the separation distances
used were not adequate in order to protect neighbouring farmers.
We do not yet know whether there will be a decent liability scheme
in place for neighbouring farmers to have any kind of recourse
if they are damaged. Certainly the political and administrative
environment is not right for further trials and I doubt that there
is justification for that current generation of crops to go through
that system again. I think the GM companies would be better served
to go back to the drawing board.
Paddy Tipping
652. I want to keep my questions fairly focused
on can-do questions, how we change things. In the course of the
evidence this morning and the written submission you have used
this phrase a few times of "public goods". I am interested
in public goods. What are the public goods that your membership
of CPRE want? How do you measure that? Most importantly, how do
you pay for that?
(Mr Hutcheon) The kind of public goods that get CPRE
volunteers going are things that are hard to measure. It is almost
a spiritual relationship with the countryside, it is the landscape
that gets them going most.
653. This is a can-do question.
(Mr Hutcheon) I am getting on to that. When you actually
look at what the landscape comprises of, it comprises of hedgerows,
field boundaries that can be distinctive to localities, whether
it is the Cornish bank or a Derbyshire Dale dry stone wall, it
can be about bird populations, our volunteers care about wildlife
too, they care about vibrant rural communities and we were very
passionate about the threat to rural post offices recently. How
we get there is through enhanced support for the England Rural
Development Programme, it brings a number of benefits. In particular,
it is clearly focused on agri-environment and rural development
measures. It brings a regional sensitivity to the delivery of
agricultural support. It also engages a huge range of stakeholders.
We have members on all of theregional consultation groups, as
do a whole range of other organisations, it is not just farmers
and Government. We would support what we heard earlier from the
RSPB for a ten per cent modulation to get on with delivering this
new approach now. In particular we would support the broad and
shallow schemes because it will make sure that these schemes are
available to all farmers, including small farmers. I should say
as an aside that the CPRE does not necessarily think that small
farmers are intrinsically good, what we care about are farmers
who deliver the public goods that I have just articulated.
654. You have listed a whole list, and I do
not disagree that people want those, but how do we decide the
priorities within those and how do we actually get the money across?
Okay, we have got a vehicle to do it but it is the measurement
that I am interested in.
(Mr Hutcheon) One of the areas that we would like
to explore where I think we would provide a unique contribution
is in using the countryside character approach, which may be new
to Members of the Committee today. It is an approach that has
been led by the Countryside Agency. It maps the whole of England
and defines what is unique about the characteristics of different
landscapes across rural England. There are 159 character areas
at the moment at a regional level but that is being taken forward
by local authorities to define what is distinct about their landscapes
in their area. Because that information is there already, it is
on GIS, it could be used to start targeting the support that we
would like to see farmers receive.
655. In our earlier discussions we talked a
little bit about wilderness areas and the countryside going back
to nature. What would be the views of CPRE members of this because
if I were cruel there is a perception that they are rather twee
people who like to keep things as they are.
(Mr Hutcheon) I think you might be surprised. For
your information, we have just removed the word "Preservation"
from our Articles and we now use "Protection". I think
the idea of wilderness is something that we should be considering
now. Again, the character assessment process can actually begin
to help local people identify what it is they value and what they
would like. It is not about pickling landscapes in aspic, it is
about what you might want to continue and also what you might
like in the future.
656. Both organisations list the need to change
agri-environment schemes and Friends of the Earth say "We
would like a Rural Sustainable Development policy that supports
rural communities, encourages farmers to protect the environment
and wildlife, aids the development of high animal welfare standards,
promotes organic farming and develops local food economies."
You are going to devolve the decision making on that to a regional
level. That seems pretty hard to do with one policy.
(Ms Stupples) I am not apologetic for having something
that is about trying to look at food and farming and its relationships
to local economies in the round.
657. I am not interested in the round, I want
you to tell me how it will work in practice.
(Ms Stupples) Speaking quite immediately there is
already a draft bill around, an Organic Targets Bill, which is
talking about being able to increase the level of organic production
in the UK to about 30 per cent of the land. That is not pie in
the sky, it could definitely be done and, indeed, other countries
across Europe have done that. I do not think there is even any
barrier now within Government against the principle of doing something
like that and you could definitely measure that, that could be
a key part of how you use the rural development money and that
is a definite target. The other thing is the reduction of pesticide
use. The survey that we have done of consumers and certainly of
our members shows that people are increasingly very concerned
about pesticide contamination of their food as well as the impact
that has on our drinking water and on wildlife in the countryside.
I think we could set some very reasonable targets about reductions
in pesticide use and, indeed, the elimination of some of those
older pesticides or the ones that are now emerging to be hormone
disrupters. There are plenty of mechanisms for doing that. One
of the things we have not talked about, for example, is perhaps
having some kind of levy on pesticide manufacturing and that money
would be used to help farmers make the transition off that treadmill
of having to use pesticides. A key way you could achieve that
would be to get the supermarkets to come clean on what their spraying
requirements are and to adjust those so that the farmers do have
some room to manoeuvre. Another key thing I do want to add is
about targets for reducing food poverty. We know that in this
country there are tens of thousands of people essentially living
in food deserts, who simply do not have access to certain types
of foods. One of the problems I have of only going down this niche
market route of organic food or farmers' markets in the middle
of West London is that they effectively consign a lot of the food
poor, those on low incomes, to not being able to eat the correct
food, to put it in a nasty way. I think everybody should have
a right to eat food of a certain standard. Last but not least,
something you can measure is actually recirculation of money in
local economies. This might be better if some of our regional
bodies were more politically accountable. If you did have those
then you could take into account some of the things that Diana
was talking about in terms of the whole mix of the economy in
the area. One other thing that we have not touched on is the issue
about having processing capacity as being a key block why we cannot
have more local food economies at the moment. It is okay if you
are growing apples or rearing sheep because you do not need to
do that much to them but if you are growing organic wheat and
the only organic mill happens to be over the other side of the
country then you are not going to be able to build up those local
markets. I think that is another key role for the regional rural
development focus, making sure those infrastructures are in place.
658. Are both organisations arguing for reformed
agri-environment schemes? Both of you argue for targets, regulations,
incentives. What is the balance? What is going to work out of
that list?
(Mr Hutcheon) What we have argued for is to use the
ERDP, the England Rural Development Programme, and the regional
chapters as the mechanism for agreeing and targeting what your
objectives are so that you can actually tailor your rural policies
and support to the different regions and their different priorities
in a way which is open but has farmers involved and a wide range
of stakeholders. We do not support the Organic Targets Bill for
that reason. We do support organic farming, we would like to see
a greater encouragement for farmers to go organic, but we do not
support the target in that way.
(Ms Stupples) I think there is, of course, a mixed
approach. There is definitely an element of the carrot that does
need to be brought in, that goes without saying, and I think farmers
are particularly the ones where we should talk about the carrot.
There are other players in the food chain who I think got off
relatively easy at the stick end of it. Particularly I would point
to the voluntary code of practice on the supermarkets at the moment.
The voluntary code has only got four of the big players participating.
I think there is a far stronger case there to be able to almost
balance the market power that they have with clearer responsibilities
to suppliers and to the economic wealth here in the UK. Perhaps
a more legally based code of practice for the supermarkets would
be an example where I think the stick still has a role to play.
Mr Breed
659. We touched on modulation a little earlier
but perhaps I could put this to the CPRE. You indicated that you
believe that the current flat rate system disproportionately disadvantages
the small and medium sized farmers. Can you just briefly say why
you believe that is the case? Secondly, can you tell us what system
of modulation you would prefer?
(Mr Hutcheon) We recognise that modulation at the
flat rate could adversely affect the smaller farm businesses because
they are on closer margins and are getting a smaller proportion
of the money already. We are not in favour of supporting small
farmers for the sake of being small farmers, it is about delivering
a wide range of public goods and those are the farmers that we
should be supporting, not just by the nature of their size. We
welcome the Curry recommendation of a flat rate ten per cent now,
particularly because it was linked to the delivery of an effective
and accessible and well-resourced broad and shallow scheme which
we hope will be tailored in a way that those smaller farmers who
perhaps are feeling most vulnerable will be able to access and
perhaps offset some of those losses. That being said, I think
the reality is that maybe there will be some restructuring in
the farming industry and that restructuring may happen in any
case in the future if we took a different line. We think the general
thrust of what modulation is trying to deliver might be a bit
uphill in some areas but it is taking us in the right direction
which means we will have a sustainable industry and environment
that will be sustainable in the longer term.
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