Financial Services Bill

Gordon Birtwistle Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

As I have said, this morning I listened to a presentation from the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on global food security. We discussed the matters that the hon. Gentleman mentions, but there was strong interest in whether the trading of commodity derivatives has played a role or had an impact in increased prices. The hon. Gentleman may suggest that its effect is negligible, and I would be happy to see any evidence he can forward to me. As I try to understand the phenomenon, I am happy to look at numbers and think about the evidence. I am an empiricist if nothing else; we should always consider the evidence. One of the problems to date, however, has been the availability of information, and making it clear and evident for all to see. I have tried to make the point that people looking at the world economy could not, for specific reasons, necessarily see the problems relating to sub-prime mortgages. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East has suggested, we should try to get ahead of the problem and ensure that there are no longer problems that we simply do not see.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a good point, but did the person whom she met this morning give her alternatives to the derivatives and commodities markets? The worldwide food supply is decided by commodities buying. There is a drought in America, so the price of wheat goes up. There is heavy rain in this country, so we have problems ourselves. There are problems in Bangladesh and all around the world that push up the price of food. The same is true for oil; when there is a shortage of oil, the oil price goes up. Did the gentleman whom she spoke to this morning provide an alternative to what we have now? Maybe we could look at it and come up with some suggestions ourselves.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his compliment that he thinks my point is not wholly without merit, but it might test your patience, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I tried to shoehorn into the debate on the amendment possible solutions to the global food crisis and productivity in agriculture.

On derivatives, in agriculture production there is a need to hedge. There needs to be some kind of financial security to take account of unforeseen weather events and so on, so of course there is a need to hedge, but that is not what I am talking about. The question is whether some of the recent high-volume, high-speed forms of speculation and trading have had an impact on the global food price. I suspect that they might have, but it would be nice to have more information.