Intensive Dairy Farming

Debate between Robert Flello and Roger Gale

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing this debate, his measured introduction and balancing clear arguments on welfare and costs. May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), who brings personal expertise to this debate in a way that most hon. Members cannot? It is more than 60 years since I first tried to milk a cow by hand and if I tried it today, I probably would not be good at it.

Anybody who has been brought up in the west country, as I was fortunate enough to be, cannot fail to recognise the importance of the dairy industry to the rural economy and to our countryside environment.

My hon. and learned Friend initially said that super-dairies were a planning issue, although he moved away from that posture. Technically, that is correct, as is the case with the one in his constituency, but I venture to suggest that the issue goes much deeper and is a moral one. Those of us who are sad enough to wake up too early and find ourselves listening to “Farming Today” know only too well, because we hear about it with monotonous regularity, the plight of the dairy industry. Having heard the figures—they were placed on the record again this morning—we understand how dairy farmers are being screwed by the supermarket industry. That may be inelegant, but it is accurate.

The debate so far has concentrated on the obvious economic problems to the detriment, to some extent, of the moral argument. Those of us who have knocked around in this place for a bit—some of us are here today—participated in the campaign to ban veal crates in the United Kingdom. We were highly delighted when we succeeded, and the Government of the day outlawed the use of crates in this country. With glorious hindsight, with which we are blessed, it was a pyrrhic victory, because all we did was to move the problem from A to B, and veal calves that were once reared under relatively humane conditions, albeit not desirable, in the United Kingdom are now reared under infinitely worse conditions on mainland Europe. Not only that, they are first transported to mainland Europe by sea. Far from win-win, we can fairly say with hindsight that it was lose-lose.

My concern is that unless we get the matter right, we are in grave danger of moving the dairy problem from A to B, to the detriment of the British dairy industry and of animal welfare, so again it could be lose-lose. Reference was made to regulations from Brussels being an argument for another day but, with respect, I believe that it is an argument for today. Unless we engineer a situation that overrides European regulations on free trade, and put in place measures that will not allow to be sold in the United Kingdom animal produce that has been reared under conditions that we would not permit in this country, we shall lose.

I detect that no one in the Chamber wants super-dairies to take over from traditional dairy farms, but the danger is that those who fund the super-dairies will take their money to northern France, Belgium, Holland or elsewhere close by on mainland Europe and produce precisely the same quantities of milk under precisely the same undesirable circumstances. We will import it and our British dairy farmers will go out of business.

[Robert Flello]

I am listening with great interest and appreciating the passion of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Will he draw some parallels with what has happened in the pottery industry in my constituency, where the work has gone abroad? Pottery owners drove down prices as much as possible to try to compete with cheap imports until they were no longer competitive. Production moved abroad, goods were produced more cheaply and then imported back, and were passed off as being produced here because they were packaged here. Is not the same thing happening already in the food industry with pork being imported, packaged and sold to unsuspecting British consumers as though it were British pork? I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s line of argument, and perhaps he will draw some parallels.

[Mr Gale]

I will not be tempted down that road, simply because it is probably outside the remit of this debate, and because there is a fundamental difference. Of course, I accept that cheap imports of anything from anywhere can damage our UK producers and, therefore, to some extent our UK economy. Mass production is a feature of the world, and we import goods from all over the world, but we are talking about welfare. We still import veal that has been produced in veal crates, while not allowing veal crates here. That is a welfare issue. We still import chickens and pigmeat that are produced under intensive conditions that we would simply not allow in the United Kingdom. I fail to see how it can be right for us to shackle United Kingdom agricultural producers and to tie one, if not both hands behind their back, while cheerfully allowing European trade regulations to override all those welfare considerations so that our markets are flooded by anything from anywhere, produced under any circumstances. That is morally wrong, and we must stop it.

If the public seriously believe in the moral and welfare issues, they must be prepared to pay. We must be prepared to pay a fair price to farmers for our food—not to the middle man or the supermarket, but at the very beginning to farmers. That is the only way to secure the right to demand high animal welfare standards. But I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that in tandem with that, we must get regulation under control so that we not only pass, but enforce on Europe and the rest of the world the welfare regulations that we apply to ourselves here in the United Kingdom.