Agriculture and Food.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 28 July 1942.

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Mr. Robertson:

I could not support the hon. Member in his plea for a combined Minister of Food and Agriculture. In my view each of these jobs is almost too big for any one human being, and, if there are faults, it is mainly due to the fact that they have too much to do, too much responsibility and too little time for planning ahead. I was interested in the speech of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot), but I should like to make a brief comment on the brickbat that he threw with regard to potatoes. In my view it is a very cheap insurance to pay to get through in the way we have done. With a bountiful Providence producing all manner of crops in unknown quantity, because of the weather, and with almost equally unknown consumption, should we have been justified in running the risk of wheat ships being sunk to a greater extent? Wheat and potatoes have a strong similarity, and I feel that the insurance premium was well worth paying.

The hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. O. Evans) referred to the small attendance here. I think he hit the nail on the head when he said the reason was the satisfaction that Members on all sides felt with the success of our agricultural policy. I think that goes without saying. I recollect earlier Debates, when I came into the House two and a half years ago, when these benches were crowded, because things wanted doing to repair the neglect of so many years, in the excessive importation of food from overseas and the consequent wastage. The Minister had no comment to make in regard to the home production of fish. I am sure, if he had time, he would have paid a great tribute to the very small but resolute fishing industry, which is carrying on with old craft, and frequently old men, and producing so much fish food under dangerous conditions. The House owes that tribute to these men. I should like to ask what has been done to increase fish production from Canada, Newfoundland and Iceland. I am wondering if the Ministry has really done very much to increase the patriotic efforts of the four firms who started the importation of frozen fish from these countries before the war. My impression is that they have done very little. They have just carried on these contracts, and a great opportunity has been lost. Very large quantities of salt cod from Iceland were imported last year. What has been imported this year?' We have sent much coal to Iceland to provide the trawlers with fuel and I am wondering if they caught the cod, because it has not appeared here. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will deal with that point, too.

A good many questions have been asked in the last month or two in regard to salmon production, the shortage and the high price, but is not the basic fact that the industry has been deprived of labour, and is not that a short-sighted policy? When salmon come back to the rivers of their birth, we cannot spare the men to catch them. On the Tweed we have one crew where there used to be ten. On the Tay it is very little better, and on the Forth, which has the finest salmon trout fishing in the country, there are only one or two old men. One man who has been employed in the industry for 38 years—an experience which means a lot in an industry where so much skill is required—is now employed wheeling a barrow in an agricultural warehouse. That is a misuse of man-power which we cannot afford. I hope that before next season comes round there will be better cooperation between the four Departments concerned with this problem—Fisheries, Scottish Office, Ministry of Food and Ministry of Labour. In that connection it will be within the recollection of the Committee that my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Fuel when Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food told us that the Government deemed salmon of so much importance that they had paid 4s. 6d. per lb. for the whole of the Eire catch up to 15th May and 2s. 6d. thereafter. If that food is so valuable to the nation that these high prices have to be paid, it is worth while sparing the hundreds of men who are required—not thousands—to ensure that the home salmon will be caught, because once the fish have passed the estuary they have gone, and probably their potential successors, too, owing to the lack of accommodation on the spawning beds. A certain proportion of fish must be caught to ensure that the fishing goes on.

I would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary one or two questions with regard to fish distribution. Is it a fact that nothing has been done other than to control fish prices? Has nothing been done to control distribution? Is there an equitable distribution of fish, or does it go to the highest bidders? I am inclined to think that a good deal of it does because of the cash transactions which are common in the industry. It is almost five years ago since the Government began to make plans with regard to fish. They set up the Food Defence Plans Department at the Board of Trade and it worked for almost two years before the war broke out. Then it became the Ministry of Food. I used to be in this industry, but I retired after I came here, and, as far as I know, the only thing that has been done in regard to the great fish distribution industry in Great Britain is to control prices, thus enabling thousands of wholesalers and retailers to keep going the whole fabric of peace-time distribution except for the lame ducks who fell in the first months of the war. It has been kept going at the expense of the consumer and taxpayer. There is only one economic way of compensating for a loss of turnover and that is by a high rate of gross profit. Another point arises in regard to fish distribution which has a tremendous bearing on the war situation. All the evils of allowing fish to be carted from Aberdeen to London and back to Birmingham or Grimsby, or from Milford Haven to Paisley still go on. Every individual person or wholesaler in this scramble to sell food to a hungry population, which is a most profitable job, can telephone and telegraph anywhere. If he is successful he can bring a load of fish by road or rail to his place. When he gets it he can send it anywhere.

There is no control over distribution between the port of landing and consumption. We have tried to do so much with all other commodities; is it so difficult to do it with fish? When my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Fuel was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food 18 months ago I urged the control of prices but he said how difficult a problem it was. He brought it in, however, and it has worked smoothly. That control is not a complete machine. It is not enough to control prices. Distribution also must be controlled if the population are to get a fair share. One can go to Billingsgate any day and see private individuals with cars waiting for fish. What roots have they there? Who are they? I do not know them and none of my old colleagues know them.