Orders of the Day — Livestock Rearing Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 11 December 1950.

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Photo of Mr Colin Thornton-Kemsley Mr Colin Thornton-Kemsley , North Angus and Mearns 12:00, 11 December 1950

First, I should like to say how wise I think it was of the Government to have grafted this Bill on to the Hill Farming Act. Those in charge of the administration of that Act have had a great deal of valuable experience since the time it was brought into force. At first the scheme was slow off the mark, and one hopes that the experience gained of the administration of that Act by the Agricultural Departments and the agricultural executive committees will enable this extension of policy, which has been welcomed on all sides this afternoon, to get under way with the minimum of delay.

I see that Scotland's share of the assistance actually paid under the Hill Farming Act up to 31st October of this year—the latest date for which I have been able to get figures—amounted to about 63 per cent. This evening hon. Members have been canvassing the claims of their constituencies under this Bill. It has been asked whether the Breck lands of East Anglia, Bodmin Moor and Exmoor, Devon and so on, will qualify. Whatever view there may be about that, there can be no doubt whatever that Scotland has a vast area of marginal uplands which will, of course, qualify under this Bill. Not very long ago the Department of Agriculture for Scotland made a survey from which it was found that there were 7,000 marginal farms in Scotland which would qualify, and that of those 5,000 could not be described as hill farms. There is, therefore, not the slightest doubt about the need in Scotland for assistance of this kind.

Almost every other hon. Member who has spoken has pointed out that the farmer's financial contribution by no means ends with his 50 per cent. share of the initial cost. After that he has the very heavy cost of stocking the land which has been improved. There is no doubt that the largest contribution to the success of schemes under this Bill must come from the industry itself. That means that upland farmers—and they are not amongst the most wealthy of the clan—are bound to think very seriously whether they will be able to afford to take assistance under this Bill. They are bound to ask themselves, "What inducement have we to undertake this heavy expenditure, not only of the initial 50 per cent. on improving the land, but the stocking of the land which has got to follow?"

By definition, grants under the Bill will not be available for fattening land. The real potentiality of the upland areas is to act as reservoirs for the fattening areas of the lowlands, and to help the lowlands—as I think my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Dugdale,) said—by summering some of their young stock. In a sense, the real purpose of the Bill is to expand our resources in store cattle and sheep. The inducement must, therefore, lie in the price of the end product—the price of meat. What is the prospect for meat? I am sure that every upland farmer of marginal land who contemplates putting in a scheme under this Bill will say to himself, "What are my prospects if I try to raise products which in the end must sell as meat? If I raise stores, which will eventually have to be finished on the lowlands, they will go as beef and mutton. What is the prospect of growing more meat at home?"

We have not yet reached our pre-war production of carcase meat. This is hardly surprising, since in 1938 we were able to turn into meat something like 8,600,000 tons of imported feedingstuffs as compared with 3,300,000 tons of imported feedingstuffs in 1949—a drop of 5½ million tons. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture warned us the other day that we were going to get even less feedingstuffs. Well, in spite of that, I believe that it is very much to the credit of British agriculture that we are as near as we are to the 1939 output of carcase meat. In the 12 months to the end of June last—which, I think, is the last period for which figures are available—our cattle population, taking cattle at two years' old and over, increased by 100,000; sheep by 900,000, and pigs by 176,000. That seems to me to be a remarkable achievement judged by any standard.

We can see from the size of our own meagre meat ration, and from the fact that we are getting on that miserable "take-it-or-leave-it" ration inedible ewe mutton and no less edible cow beef, the fact that the ration of carcase meat has been reduced recently from 1s. 7d. a week to 1s. 3d. per week, and the fact that we are getting and have been getting fat pork in summer and corned beef in winter, that there is the greatest possible scope for the production of more good meat from our own land.

May I conclude with three self-evident propositions? The first is that the increase in the area and the productivity of agricultural land throughout the world is not commensurate with the annual increase—which is of the order of something like 20 million a year—in the world's population; secondly, that in these islands we can rely no longer upon an expanding industrial production to provide the coin in which we pay for imported meat supplies; and thirdly, if I may use the words used last week by the President of the National Farmers' Union, there is no better meat than British-bred mutton and beef. For these three reasons, I warmly support the Bill.