Dairy Industry

Albert Owen Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who is doing an excellent job as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I appreciate the considered and thoughtful evidence-based report that her Committee has done.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) on securing the debate. Since I have been in the House, I have been working with him on rural issues. When he was the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, he came to the Anglesey show to see the best county in the United Kingdom in the glorious sunshine at its best, with the dairy industry central to that. He and I have been singing from the same hymn sheet for some time, and he helped me with a private Member’s Bill for a supermarket ombudsman at the latter end of the last Parliament—he was one of its sponsors. It was good that, at that time, the DEFRA teams in each of the major parties were on board, but it was difficult getting to the Business, Innovation and Skills Front-Bench teams. That has been part of the problem, and we should concentrate on that. This is specifically an agricultural issue as well, and we should try to look at it in that way to get a better deal for farmers.

The dairy industry is important and we should not see it in isolation. If we combine food, farming and tourism, we are talking about a huge sector of the British economy. At the centre of that are the dairy farmers and the farming community, so we should not look at this problem in isolation, but it is a special issue.

The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) is just leaving the Chamber. I started my working life on a farm. When machinery broke down I milked cows by hand, so I have some grass-roots experience—and some other experiences from the end of a cow—to bring to this debate. The serious point, however, is that I understand how special dairy farming is, because dairy production cannot be turned on and off at a tap when there are volatile prices and exterior factors across the world. Unlike sheep farmers and others that can diversify into other areas, dairy farmers cannot do that so easily, and I want to highlight that point.

I agree with the 12 or 13-point plan suggested by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley. We need a specific plan. In Wales, the issue is devolved and a dairy plan is coming into being, which concentrates on many of the issues that have been mentioned today. It is not an isolated issue for each Assembly and Parliament to deal with. It is a UK and global problem, and we need a UK response. That is why DEFRA needs to co-ordinate a plan of that nature to get the fairness that we all want for dairy producers.

For my final minute, I want to turn to the Groceries Code Adjudicator. I am hearing good noises about it in this morning’s debate, but in this Parliament the House was given an opportunity to water down the supermarket ombudsman’s powers, and unfortunately they were watered down. When that went through the House, we warned that if there were a toothless referee, it would not be able to make an impact. A referee must be able to come down on both sides in the game—not that I am saying it is a game—so we need to strengthen it. We need to name and shame. We have been calling for that, but it has been resisted.

I have been hearing that there is internal strife between the two parties of the coalition Government, but let us put that aside. Let us ensure that we get—[Interruption.] It is not “nonsense”. The ability to fine early on is needed. We need an ombudsman that has teeth. We need the referee to be able to put forward strong recommendations and have a proper inquiry. As the EFRA Committee said, this is a UK problem. British goods and produce are the best in the world; let us make sure we provide fairness for those best producers.

[Several hon. Members]

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