Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I met Northern Ireland representatives from Dairy UK when I was in Brussels last week and they raised that point with me. The European Commission is looking at the intervention price, and our officials are working on what the appropriate price would be. Generally, an increase in that intervention price would tend to benefit other countries that have lower prices before it benefits UK farmers, but we are considering the issue.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

The dairy price of 25p and falling means that farmers are producing at a loss. The dairy trade adjudicator can look at parts of the trade, but are there more ways to deal with the price, especially of processed cheese in the supermarket sector? The price of milk is dealt with by supermarkets, but processed cheese is not.

[George Eustice]

I have considered those issues, which I discussed last week when I appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. My view is that our grocery code, together with the adjudicator, adequately covers retailers, and the Competition and Markets Authority has powers to consider issues further up the supply chain. Our dairy supply chain code is working successfully—the recent review by Alex Fergusson confirmed that—but we must focus on making it work better.