Dairy Industry

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is great to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Roger—I accept your strictures and will try to get in under four minutes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) on securing the debate; obviously, Lancashire leads the way, as per usual, on this issue. In Lancashire, according to figures from the National Farmers Union, we lost 28 dairy farmers last year. That still leaves over 500 firms—mainly family firms—such as the prize-winning Whitlow dairy herd in Preesall. As my hon. Friend pointed out, many of those families’ tenancy or ownership of small-scale farms goes back hundreds of years and they often have 50 to 500 cows.

I shall try not to repeat what others have said, but the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) spoke about scale, and in these debates, we need to point out that this is not some minor rural issue. It is a major British industry. We are the third biggest producer of milk in Europe, and the 10th biggest in the world, with nearly £4.5 billion of product. That is what we need to mention to break down some of the barriers that people who are perhaps not from rural areas have in understanding what we are trying to do.

The recent price volatility is complex. There is almost another cold war, with Russia cutting back on dairy imports. Since 2010, Members have seen this extremely volatile market going up and down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) pointed out in a very important Select Committee report.

On the slashing of milk prices in supermarkets, rather than focusing on the retail price, perhaps we need to focus on what the supermarkets are paying the milk producers. That is where the issue lies, not in whether supermarkets run a loss leader at the front end. We should not tar all supermarkets with the same brush. I add my praise for Booths supermarkets in the north-west, and Edwin Booth, for maintaining the highest prices paid to producers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley said.

However, there are no quick fixes. We have gone through the general agreement that the EU intervention price is set too low to be helpful, and that needs to be reviewed. We all agree on the Groceries Code Adjudicator. Some farmers still do not see what that means and how it will have an impact on their lives; we need to do something about that, and I am grateful for the Select Committee’s support on that issue.

The labelling pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) is absolutely key. We need to get the labels right, so that people are able to buy what is made and produced in Britain—which actually tastes like cheese, unlike some of the competitors one finds abroad. I want to mention Garstang blue, made near to me at the Dewlay cheese production, just below my constituency.

We need producer organisations, such as Bowland Fresh, which has been mentioned. I understand that Yew Tree Dairy in Skelmersdale has now introduced a milk drying plant, which might help prevent volatility over time. The NFU’s suggestion for a futures market in dairy—again, to smooth out the price—has not been mentioned so far today, and it seems to be a practical way forward. All these bits and pieces have been suggested, but what we want to see from the Minister is those bits and pieces starting to come together in a policy to save a vital part of British agriculture.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—