Biscuit Industry
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
10:34 am
Gordon Prentice (Pendle, Labour)
What steps she is taking to support the biscuit industry in relation to the new EU sugar regime.
Margaret Beckett (Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Derby South, Labour)
The UK biscuit industry needs to be able to buy its raw materials at similar prices to others on the world market. We will therefore be looking for substantial price cuts and increased competition as key elements in an EU sugar reform agreement.
Gordon Prentice (Pendle, Labour)
My right hon. Friend will know that in Pendle we have a celebrated biscuit maker, Farmhouse Biscuits, which exports its tasty biscuits throughout the world. It does so, however, with one hand tied behind its back, as it has to pay £450 a tonne for EU sugar, while it could buy world sugar at £150 a tonne. Even with the proposed changes in the EU sugar regime, Farmhouse Biscuits will still be paying more for EU sugar than it could get on the world market. I press my right hon. Friend to do something about this matter, because we are now importing more biscuits, cakes and confectionary into the United Kingdom than we are exporting—and that is not very good.
Margaret Beckett (Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Derby South, Labour)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he not only makes a very powerful point, but gives a perfect example of why the issue of sugar reform is important much more widely than among groups that are usually quoted in respect of their views and understandable concern about the impacts of potential reform. He is right that even if the reforms went through entirely as proposed by the Commission, EU sugar prices would still be twice the world price. That gives a clear picture of why the regime is unsustainable and has to be reformed. I realise that it will be only a crumb of comfort to him to know that the price comes down by a third.
Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove, Conservative)
I entirely endorse what the Secretary of State has just said and I welcome very much the reform of the EU sugar regime. Can she guarantee to the House that that reform will include, at the very least, an end to the export subsidies on sugar, so that where we do export sugar, it is not putting third world farmers out of business?
Margaret Beckett (Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Derby South, Labour)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. It is very much part of our goal and our wish to see export subsidies as a whole phased out. She is right to identify that one of the areas of concern is the impact of long-needed reform on growers in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the least-developed countries. She will probably know that, alongside proposals for the sugar regime, there were proposals for an action plan to help those countries. During our presidency of the European Union, discussions on sugar reform will be on the agenda of every meeting of the Agriculture Council. One of those meetings will indeed hear from ACP and other such producers that are affected.