Agriculture: Dairy Farmers

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that the Government are very concerned about this. Indeed, other Ministers and I have been discussing the matter only today. There are a number of things that government can and are doing. We want to promote more exports; we believe that the export of our dairy products is tremendously important, and more British cheese is going abroad. We think that the Middle East and China are very important markets, and we have trade counsellors in Beijing precisely to encourage exports. A lot is going on, but I am very mindful of what the noble Lord has said.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that the Groceries Code Adjudicator cannot adjudicate on prices, and that is the case at the moment. But is not the problem that the Groceries Code Adjudicator does not have sufficient power? I know that a review is going on into her power, but could the Minister clarify whether expanding the power of the Groceries Code Adjudicator is being considered, so that she can intervene in what is clearly an unfair system where people in that sector are being exploited by big business?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, clearly we will be looking at all things. However, the truth is that we are not in a position to start setting prices; that is market driven. We have global overproduction at the moment, and that is the plain economics of it. But we are going to look at all these things and we want to see whether there are ways in which the dairy farmer can be assisted. We think that the dairy farming industry should be more joined up, so that there is strength in its negotiations. Clearly, we want to make sure that supermarkets understand that it is very important to sustain the domestic dairy industry.