The scheme is one of preparation and development on a large scale. I think it is a good scheme. I do not exclude the Government occasionally doing some good. I was only pointing out the difficulties into which we get in these negotiations with foreign countries and if hon. Members want examples they have only to open their newspapers on any day of the week. This Australian scheme seems to have immense possibilities and I think it would be to all of us a great comfort if we could rely for our meat supplies, particularly beef supplies, on Australian and home production. I should like to know the position about this guarantee for Australia. I saw that a junior Minister speaking in Another place—and I believe statements of policy can be quoted from another place—said: The Australian Government will require from us long term assurances for unrestricted markets at fair prices before embarking on that expenditure. He went on to say: Certainly we can give assurances on these points. I should like to know whether that is so, because no comparable statement has been made in this House and this was only made a little casually in a Debate on land and water resources by a junior Minister in another place. As the issue is of such great importance, we should be told about it here. Is that principle accepted and do the Australian Government know that it is accepted? Personally, I hope the statement of the Minister is correct. I would only say that if it is thought reasonable by the Government to give long-term undertakings of this character to the Australian Government—and I think it is reasonable—it is also reasonable to give some similar long-term undertakings to our own producers at home. Of the remaining overseas markets there is only Africa, and not even the new discoveries in connection with the tsetse fly are likely to make any difference there for years to come.

So, except for Australia, that is the somewhat dismal view I have to inflict on the Committee. The Committee will observe that there does not appear to be any overseas market from which we can expect any substantial increase of meat for the home consumer. I must add that it must be remembered that many of these countries, including Australia, will in the meanwhile be increasing their populations and thereby making greater demands on the supply of meat themselves. All the facts in the survey I have given are available to others and have been available to the Government long since.

This brings me to the most important issue of all, production at home. Here I must trouble the Committee with a few figures. Last year at home our production of meat and bacon totalled only 779,000 tons compared with more than one million tons before the war, yet in that time our population has increased by about two million. This seems a completely fantastic situation at present when we are faced with such grave shortages of foreign exchange and when as a result, we ought to be relying to an increasing extent on home production rather than on imported meat to maintain our level of supplies. We must have a full explanation from the Government about this. We have not had one. The plain fact is that no amount of exhortation can enable farmers to produce more unless they are given more feedingstuffs. On the question of feeding-stuffs the Government's policy has been one of order, counter-order and disorder. Going back to August, 1947, there is the famous quotation from the Lord President of the Council—who I am sorry is not present, because I should like to congratulate him on the wisdom and foresight of the observation—when addressing the chairmen of county agricultural committees. He said: Large increases of feedingstuffs must come from imports, and even scarce dollars will be spent on all that is obtainable, since this operation must lead to ultimate dollar saving. That appeared to us to be Government policy and a policy we could endorse and support. In the Economic Survey for that same year we were told that the import of £1,000 worth of feedingstuffs"— I am sure the Minister of Agriculture will agree, whatever the Minister of Food thinks about it— will save nearly £2,000 worth of livestock products. Again we are in full agreement. In the Survey for 1948 it was stated on the increase of feedingstuff prices: There is momentarily less saving in foreign exchange than had been expected from the policy of producing more livestock in the United Kingdom. This, however, is expected to be a transient problem. We all agree on that. It was a transient problem; it has transited —it has now gone. The price of feedingstuffs reached its peak in January last year. It has since been falling. Yet in July, 1948, the Minister of Food made this astonishing statement: For every £ spent on the importation of coarse grains we get only about a third as much meat… as for £1 spent on importing meat from the Argentine, Australia or New Zealand. In reply to an interjection he added: I am referring to beef and mutton. I cannot give the figures for pork, …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th July, 1948; Vol. 453, c. 880.] I simply cannot understand that statement, and every effort to elicit an explanation has received no response. When my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir T. Dugdale) made a speech containing a detailed refutation of it, no reply was vouchsafed. We were told that it was not a matter concerning the Ministry of Agriculture but the Ministry of Food. Even more extraordinary, is it not a fact that no imported coarse grains are issued for the production of beef and mutton? If that is so, what in the world was the use of the Minister's statement and what was the value of the calculation? It is quite incomprehensible.

I return to the Lord President's pledge. When, some 18 months afterwards my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank) asked if the pledge still held good the Minister of Food gave the rather equivocal answer: Yes, Sir, if necessary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 9th March, 1949; Vol. 462, c. 1190.] But how could the necessity possibly be greater than it is today? How much lower has the meat ration to fall before the necessity arises? Indeed, was it not great when the Lord President gave his very proper pledge? Last year, in 1947–48, we imported about 1½ million tons of coarse grains. Yet the average before the war, in the years 1934–38, was nearly three times that amount annually. What are the words "if necessary" to be taken to mean in that context? Except for about £250,000 spent on whey powder for calf and chick foods there has been no importation of feedingstuffs from the dollar area. Yet they are obtainable. I do not think that there is any dispute about that, or about the fact that world crops of coarse grains are at a record level—far above ordinary levels. The Food and Agriculture Organisation referred to "an indicated surplus of some 2 million tons of coarse grain."

There is no doubt that the feedingstuffs are available. Apparently the Government are not buying them as a matter of deliberate policy. If that is so, they are running exactly counter to the pledge which the Leader of the House gave that they would be bought, even if necessary by using scarce dollar currency. We must know why that pledge, given 18 months ago, has not been fulfilled. It cannot be disputed that if it had been fulfilled there would not be the present drastic cut in the meat ration. Meanwhile, the ration of feedingstuffs to farmers is exactly the same as when the Lord President of the Council made his statement promising all this help.

I turn to the contribution of the Economic Secretary at Question Time last Thursday. He was asked if he would authorise the spending of dollars in the purchase of feedingstuffs. He said that supplies of animal feedingstuffs from non-dollar sources had so far proved sufficient to meet requirements of the livestock rationing scheme at current rationing levels. Surely everyone is agreed that the current ration level is totally inadequate. That is the whole point; it is what the argument is about. If we are to improve our present miserably low level of meat rationing we must obtain more feeding-stuffs for our farmers.

The position seemed to me to be made even worse by the Prime Minister when he in his turn took a hand yesterday. In reply to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Byers) he said: The hon. Member will realise that feeding-stuffs will not provide bacon next week."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th April, 1949; Vol. 463, c. 1700.] What an observation, with all respect to the Prime Minister. No one has ever said that they would. The point is that we should have had these feedingstuffs, if possible when the Lord President said that we were going to buy them, that is to say 18 months ago; if not, at least a year ago or even six months ago. That would have made a great difference, perhaps a fundamental difference to our meat ration at the present time. That is our case in respect of supplies of feeding-stuffs.

The truth is, so far as I can see, that the Lord President's pledge has been completely ignored. I am not surprised that as the result of that, he is not here this afternoon. We say that it is the Government's duty to obtain the greatest possible quantity of feedingstuffs for our farmers. The Government may say, "How is this to be done within our existing dollar resources?" I would reply, that presumably the Government thought all that out before the Lord President gave his pledge that it would be done, even by using dollars. Otherwise he should certainly not have given the undertaking. At all events, that undertaking was given, and I might remind the Committee that the dollar crisis had already burst upon us.

The conclusion seems to me inescapeable that unless the Government are content, and they cannot be content, with the present miserably inadequate meat ration for a period of several years, they must buy more feedingstuffs for our farmers. In doing so they will only be doing what all the other countries in receipt of Marshall aid have for a long time past been doing. I suspect—I hope I am wrong in this—that one of the reasons for the Minister's attitude is that he agrees that it is cheaper for this country to buy meat from abroad than to purchase foodstuffs for use at home. Perhaps he will tell us when he winds up the Debate.

I must put a question to the Minister on another subject which is very important in this connection. What is the present position about the pig population? Is it true, for instance, as I have heard it said, that the number of gilts in pig, which was increasing some months ago, as the Minister rightly told us, has once again begun to decline? Is that so or not? If it is, is it due to lack of feedingstuffs, the larger production having been embarked upon as a result of the pledge of the Lord President which I have already quoted? If these facts are correct, will the Government tell us what they propose to do about this matter? They must realise that production depends upon confidence, and confidence cannot be expected if the Lord President makes one positive statement and an opposite course is then followed. Why is it that these countries which have been overrun, such as Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France, have made further strides in the restoration of their pig population than we have?

I will sum up. Three and a half years after the close of hostilities we have the lowest meat ration ever. In this respect, therefore, the masses of the people are worse off than before the war and worse off than many of their counterparts in other countries of Europe. In this country the restoration of our livestock population has fallen behind that of Continental countries, although many of them were occupied by the Germans.