Agriculture and Horticulture

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Clark. He may not be a friend in the political sense but he was born, bred and lives in the depths of my old constituency. Indeed, he once wrote a book about the Labour Party in that constituency in which he referred to me as “wily”. I am sure he did that as a friend but I was really rather flattered to be described in those terms.

Like him, I must begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord De Mauley on instigating this debate, which is extremely timely. I have seldom participated in debates in this building on agriculture. I think I am right that this is only about the third time I have participated since, 29 years ago, I ceased to be Minister for Agriculture. However, this is a good time to come back to the topic. Of course, I must begin—like my noble friend—by declaring an interest as a farmer and being in receipt of funds from the common agricultural policy.

Like others, I must concentrate my remarks this afternoon on Brexit. I was very surprised that so many farmers supported Brexit. My noble friend Lord De Mauley referred to a whole lot of the nonsenses that have emanated from Brussels. Nobody is more aware of those than I because I had to put up with some of them in my time. However, I am old enough to remember the days of the annual price review—to which the noble Lord, Lord Clark, referred—and of guaranteed prices and deficiency payments. It was a horror squeezing money for the agricultural industry out of the British Treasury. It was annual horse work, if I can put it that way. I can remember very well—perhaps not many noble Lords remember this—that in the 1966 general election, and again in the 1970 general election, before we joined the Common Market, as it was then, the manifesto policy of the Conservative Party was to break away from guaranteed prices and deficiency payments and to move to a system of protection based on tariffs on imported foodstuffs. I think that a lot of people have forgotten that. In the 1960s, I happened to be a member of a study group chaired by Lord Prior, who subsequently became a Minister, which led to that policy in those two elections. It is unfortunate that so many farmers seem to have thought that they would obtain a similar level of generosity from the British Treasury as they have had over all these years from the mandarins of Brussels and the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers, on which I had the privilege and pleasure of serving for four years, was much more sympathetic to the position of farmers and agriculture than one ever sees in the British Treasury.

However, today I want to refer to the problems of the dairy industry. My noble friend Lord De Mauley quite rightly referred in passing to the current crisis in the dairy industry. I have never been involved in that industry. The closest I ever got to it was when I was the Minister who introduced milk quotas in 1984, which led to me being widely and nationally vilified. Unlike the German Minister, I was never burnt in effigy as a result of that—I think he was five times. That measure made me extremely unpopular, until farmers discovered that quotas were worth a great deal of money and it was much easier to talk to their bank managers on the back of the value of their quotas. Then they started to ask me, “You won’t scrap milk quotas, will you?” I always said, “I wish you had told me that at the time”.

Going back to the UK’s dairy industry today, it is really in a fearful state. Receipts in many cases are well below the cost of production, and many small and medium-sized milk producers are going out of business. Of course, one of the underlying reasons that the dairy industry is in such crisis in the UK leads, I believe, directly from the scrapping of the Milk Marketing Board, which happened after I left the department. I think it is no secret that the Commission in Brussels pressed me very hard indeed to abolish the Milk Marketing Board, as did some people here at home. I absolutely refused to do that, to the extent that I threatened to resign if I had to do so. However, it was scrapped because of the intense pressure from Brussels.

It is as well to recall that the Milk Marketing Board was set up between the wars because of the fate of small and medium-sized milk producers who were situated away from the big conurbations and being driven to bankruptcy by the attitude and behaviour of the large dairy manufacturers at that time. There are many parallels between what happened back in the 1920s and 1930s with what is happening today in the milk industry. The situation today is not helped by the actions of some of our supermarkets, which have caused the dairy industry to be in such difficulty through the use of their buying power. Therefore, if we are to leave the European Union and the common agricultural policy, I ask the Government to ensure that in future there will be nothing to prevent us trying to find new devices to support not only small and medium-sized dairy farmers but also small and medium-sized farmers right across the spectrum.

The noble Lord, Lord Clark, and my noble friend referred to the importance of the rural economy. It would be tragic if we were to move to a situation where we drove medium and small-sized farming interests out of business altogether. I am not necessarily saying that we should create a new Milk Marketing Board; I do not think we could face that at this moment. However, there are other ways, and other organisations, which could be created to help the whole agricultural industry, although I am thinking of milk in particular.

In the old days, there were other organisations which had far fewer powers than the milk board. The milk board had the almost monopolistic power of being the sole first buyer of milk from producers. Other organisations were set up such as the Cereals Marketing Board, which had a reserve buying power. I made my maiden speech down the Corridor on that. There was also the meat and livestock authority and the potato marketing boards. There were other organisations of this sort which we ought to give some thought to reviving in some form to protect and support our industry because, as I said earlier, our agricultural industry will not be able to rely for very long on the generosity of the British Treasury. If we are to leave the European Union, and now that we are likely to be free of CAP regulations, I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that thought will be given to determining whether plans can be prepared to establish new organisations to provide backing for the agricultural industry in the years ahead.