Orders of the Day — Agriculture

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 June 1964.

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Photo of Mr Jeremy Thorpe Mr Jeremy Thorpe , North Devon 12:00, 29 June 1964

May I also add my words of congratulation on the admirable maiden speech of the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Boston). His speech was lucid and interesting. The constituency points were of general application. Above all, his speech contained a humour which, I hope, will sharpen some of the duller moments of the House in the future. I have had the advantage of being produced by the hon. Gentleman in a broadcast by the B.B.C. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman is now no longer in a position to do that, unless we both take advantage of the wide facilities provided by the Postmaster-General for illegal broadcasting.

May I say to the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Ren-ton) that it is hardly fitting of a politician who calls himself a National Liberal and a Conservative to criticise others for what he calls fighting on both sides. I fly a Liberal flag, and I nail it to a Liberal mast. It is not for me a flag of convenience to be put on somebody else's mast because that happens to be taller and on a bigger ship.

I warmly welcome the debate, but I must say that I regret the rarity of the occasions upon which we debate agriculture. I hope that it will be noted in the country that this time has not been provided by the Government. Many of us are getting a little tired of asking the Leader of the House for time merely to be told, "This is an affair for the Opposition. Let them provide a Supply Day". If that is the view of the functions of government, I suggest that the Opposition, and indeed the Liberal Party, are given an increased allocation, because we at least know what to do with Supply Days.

As in the last debate we had on foreign affairs, there are so many issues touching on today's subject for debate which one wants to discuss that it is very difficult to compress them into the compass of one debate. There is the Price Review. There is the standard quantities concept, about which I personally am very uneasy. There is the state of our agreements on imports. There is the meat position. There is the hill cow subsidy review. There is the operation of the Egg Marketing Board and other statutory bodies.

There is, the position of private afforestation schemes, which are artificially forcing up the price of land and which are not subject to the same planning as is the Forestry Commission. There is the problem of rural development generally. There is the development of factory farming. There are other what I call signposts for agriculture.

I had at one time felt tempted, to teach the Leader of the House a lesson, to make a long speech upon each of these subjects in turn, but such was my respect for the House that I felt that I must select a very few. Therefore, I should like briefly to touch on what I might call the signposts for the future for agriculture, the position in regard to meat, how I think that production grants and credit facilities should be extended, and particularly a dispute in egg marketing.

I found the speech of the Secretary of State for Scotland very disturbing. He asked all sorts of questions about commodity commissions—what powers would they have; could they control imports; would they have exclusive monopolistic powers; what position would they have in regard to research. He spoke rather like a man who had never heard of commodity commissions before and to whom they held out the fear of the unknown.

The right hon. Gentleman belongs to an Administration who applied to join the European Common Market—unfortunately, too late in the day. This is an organisation which has a managed market. That managed market is operated by commodity commissions. Those commodity commissions have target prices. Those commodity commissions have power to buy in the market to hold the price. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in the Government went round the country telling the farmers that they had no need to worry about this system. They told the farmers that they were satisfied that it was an excellent system and, even though they had made violent speeches against it in the 1959 election, that violent opposition no longer held true.

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is now somewhat lacking in enthusiasm for this idea and whether the Conservative Party is going back to the position that it adopted in 1959?