Agriculture (Prices).

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 26 January 1944.

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Mr. Wedderburn:

Now they are saying to each other, "The Navy is getting the upper hand of the U-boats and the Government have now no further use for us. I told you it would be so." I am sure that they are wrong, but it has often been very hard to explain the reluctance and delay on the part of the Government in declaring their future intentions. Throughout all the early part of last Session some of my hon. Friends who have put down their names to a Motion on the Paper together with mine, and other hon. Members in all parts of the House, continually begged the Government to give a day for an agricultural Debate so that we might hear from the Government some rather more precise assurance about their future policy than they had hitherto given. We pressed them to do that continually. It was rather like pressing a camel to walk over a footbridge. The proposal was always rejected with an air of injured disdain. At last, just before the Summer Recess, we were given a day for an agricultural Debate. In the middle of that Debate, the Minister announced that he was under instructions from the Cabinet not to say anything at all about post-war policy. That was about the only thing he said that was of any real interest to the farmers, and it got a far greater publicity than the whole of his speech. This one topic, which has been the sole cause for creating the demand for the Debate, was also the sole topic which the Cabinet decided must not be discussed by the Minister, and the ineptitude of this decision was heightened by the fact that the Government had just welcomed with the greatest warmth the final act of the Hot Springs Conference which lays it down as one of its objects that every signatory country shall immediately prepare for its own agriculture a permanent long-term policy designed to raise wages and to maintain soil fertility, by the practice of mixed rotational farming and the avoidance of single crop production and monoculture. My right hon. Friend was asked whether the Government could not, at least, undertake that this resolution which they had signed would be applied to Great Britain. He replied that he was forbidden by the Cabinet to say anything of that kind. The impression received by the public was that the acceptance of the Hot Springs Resolutions was only one of those international gestures which Governments so often make without any intelligible purpose.

I do not think we have ever had such a good opportunity as we have now for attaining, by agreement among the different parties, a common agricultural policy. It has been suggested that the Cabinet may not be able to agree among themselves about land nationalisation. If land is nationalised the farmer will then be the tenant of the State, to whom he will pay rent, and who will be responsible for keeping his farm in good order. If land is not nationalised, the farmer will be either an owner-occupier, or else the tenant of a landowner, who will be responsible for keeping the farm in good order. I cannot see why our policy with regard to the stability of prices, to the maintenance of fertility and in regard to the importation of foreign food should not be the same in either case. I, myself, believe that nationalisation would entail a great waste of public money and a serious loss of efficiency, but I do not see why any trifling disagreements we may have about this should frustrate the attainment of a common agricultural policy. I must say to my right hon. Friend that it is no use his talking about one year after the war. The farmer has to plan many years ahead and has got to put fertility into the ground in the belief that it will be required by the next generation, and he cannot do these things if our agricultural policy is changed after every general election.

I think there is some reason to hope that a sound agricultural policy may not, in the long run, impose a very heavy burden on the British taxpayer, but if the farmer is to cut down his costs the most essential condition is that he should be informed of what is required from him for long periods in advance. He must know how much food he is expected to grow and what price he is to get for it. The Minister said something in his speech on this subject. He said there was a bigger gap now between British and foreign costs than there had ever been. I agree that owing to the war British costs are higher than they should be, but will not my right hon. Friend acknowledge that the reverse is also true, that foreign prices may be too low, and that the standard of life of the foreign producer is not as high as it should be, if we are to have a balanced world economy. That was one of the points which was firmly emphasised by the Hot Springs Conference.