Dairy Industry

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has spoken a great deal about fairness and equity in this industry. Although I think that we would all welcome the voluntary code, I am reliably informed by certain farmers in the Ceiriog valley that there is a chance that it might not work and that if it does not work Her Majesty’s Government here in Westminster should carefully bear in mind the words of the relevant Minister in the Welsh Government, who said that we might have to take statutory action.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Indeed. I will return to that important point shortly; the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) raised it earlier, too. It is absolutely right that the Welsh Government are already considering what will happen if the code does not work. I will raise the point with the Minister, too, because we need to ensure that a discussion takes place across the UK about having an approach that, if it is not universal, respects both devolution and the fact that we need to work on behalf of all our farmers—not only farmers in the Principality, but right across the nation.

I say to farmers who may be tempted to pause for breath because they think that the summer storm is now passing that they should not do so. I say to them, “Organise yourselves; invest in producer organisations and in the value of the raw product, and do it now. And keep the pressure on us as parliamentarians and on the Government to deliver, as the groceries code adjudicator comes to the House.”

One of the last acts of the former Minister was to sign off on a voluntary code for best practice between milk processors and suppliers. That was good, and the code has been broadly welcomed. However, as night follows day, or in this case—please excuse my pun—as knighthood followed that day, the announcement was welcomed but with some caution. The chairman of the National Farmers Union, Peter Kendall, said that although the announcement

“gave some hope for the long term, it did not solve the dairy farming issues of today”.

So we must keep up the pressure to ensure that those processors that are not paying a fair price announce—as we have heard today—that they are rescinding their former announcements. Peter Kendall went on to say:

“This agreement will give us the architecture we need to make sure that we don’t end up with the same dysfunctional markets that are responsible for the dairy crisis we have today”.

We now have the architecture there in front of us, as long as we can make it work.

Let me make it absolutely clear that Labour supports the voluntary agreement if it can be made to work and once the legal niceties have been ironed out, but we also seek assurances from the Minister that the Government do not rule out additional measures, including legislation, should they prove necessary.

We are not alone in seeking that assurance, as the Minister has already heard today. Conservative parliamentarians—including the hon. Members for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) and for Tiverton and Honiton, who have spoken in this debate, and many others who have spoken elsewhere—have queued up to express caution. As I was saying to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife a moment ago, that does not sound like the party of regulatory bonfires. This must be one of those good bits of regulation that some people talk about, while others jeer at the very idea.

I will express one word of caution to the Minister, to urge him not to rush headlong down the Stalinist end of the spectrum of views on this issue. Such views have been expressed by the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset, who has stated:

“There is no way it”—

the voluntary code—

“is going to work—it is just another rather sad red herring—it has been tried I don’t know how many times and it is always a disaster”.

He says that the code, which the Government support, is “nowhere near sufficient” and that Parliament needs to set a minimum price for

“a strategic resource like milk.”

I urge the new Minister to avoid capitulating to the old, central, statist control-and-command tendency in the Conservative party—next thing he will be arguing for a price set at a European level. Give the voluntary agreement some time to work, but as those in the less red-in-tooth-and-claw tendency of the rural Conservative party argue, keep the legislation ready to hand in case it is needed. Alternatively, as the Minister’s own Liberal Democrat party president, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), has said, although the voluntary code is fine for now, the Government must

“commit to back that up with legislation if needed.”

That point has been made consistently today by many MPs from all parties.