EU: Trade Agreement on Banana Imports

Lord Palmer Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer]

My Lords, gosh, what an act to follow. We have heard a very emotional speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, for introducing so succinctly this incredibly important subject. She has asked several very important questions, and I was most interested in her ideas for biomass in terms of renewable energy, something that is close to my heart. As usual I have to declare an interest as a residual beneficiary of a banana plantation on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, and my comments are going to be strongly related to that island. I am very grateful indeed for the help I have had from the St Lucian High Commissioner.

All noble Lords taking part in the debate are by and large singing from exactly the same hymn sheet. Some 100 years ago, there were over 6,000 banana plantations on St Lucia, while today there are fewer than 2,000, which is a dramatic drop. Twenty years ago, the island produced a massive 135,000 tonnes of bananas, which has dwindled to a mere 6,000 tonnes today. This has been caused mainly by the new European Union trade regimes coupled with the huge increase from Latin American producers who, with their geographical terrains, can harvest their crops at a fraction of the cost of the ACP countries, and this is due especially to the much cheaper labour and the size of their farms/plantations. As such, the lovely island of Grenada, which I have been lucky enough to visit, has ceased exporting altogether. This has caused great hardship to those who live in the countryside and who are not involved in the slowly developing tourism industry, which, of course, is being hampered by the grossly unfair APD—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made this point particularly forcefully. It really is madness that to fly to Hawaii is cheaper in APD than to fly to the Caribbean, particularly given that Hawaii is slightly more than double the distance of the Caribbean from London.

I have one very serious point to make on diversification for the small producers, many of whom live on our property in St Lucia. They need to earn a living. Their easiest option is to turn to growing the likes of cannabis, which is dead easy to grow in such a lovely climate and all of which will make its way to the nearest port in the United States of America. This surely cannot be a sensible state of affairs. It would encourage an increase in drug trafficking, which in turn would lead to a huge increase in organised crime. I urge Her Majesty's Government to do all they can to avoid this ghastly scenario.