Orders of the Day — Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 19 January 1954.

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Photo of Mr Edward Mallalieu Mr Edward Mallalieu , Brigg 12:00, 19 January 1954

The hon. Member did not say that; and even at ploughing time that would not happen. Whenever it is necessary to work, the # agricultural worker will work provided he is given a fair deal.

Some of my hon. Friends and I have had a good deal of quiet fun in noting that the first Bill that we are asked to discuss on returning from the Christmas Recess deals with agriculture. I hope this shows the Government's realisation of the extent to which it is necessary to restore confidence in our great agricultural industry after all that the Government have done or have left undone during the last two years. The Government have, partially at least, forced farmers to abandon their rightful rôle of being specialists in food production and have obliged them to divert their energy and time to the totally different task of trying to dispose of their goods, whether by hawking them round to individuals or by going to chancy and not always honest markets. I should have thought that farmers might have been forgiven for believing that henceforth the Government have no real interest in increasing food production.

Most of us have been rather sorry for the Minister in view of the position in which he has found himself, for he has obviously been forced by doctrinaire and big business considerations to dam the prosperous flow of the stream of agriculture, which the Government found on coming into office, causing it to overflow its banks, leave its orderly channels and eventually form separate streams all over the countryside going it knows not whither and sometimes stagnating in swampy places.

So eager were the barons of town industry and finance to get rid of their own fetters—which have hitherto forced them to take some notice of the national interest as well as to their own profit-making—that they were determined to use their influence to force the party opposite to a certain extent to weaken agriculture's healthy discipline. They did this because they feared that if they did not the contrast between their own rather unseemly scramble after profit and the orderly progress of agriculture in the nation's interest would become too obvious.

We know, as I hinted just now, that the many condemnations of farmers in widely separated parts of the country, from Yorkshire to Suffolk and from Essex to Wiltshire, have been against not the Minister himself but the Government, and are a measure of the lack of confidence felt by the agricultural industry in the present town-conscious Government of the party opposite. I am sure it is the Minister's warmest wish to be allowed amiably to preside over a prosperous agriculture. The only element of criticism of the Minister himself which has crept into the condemnations of the Government by farmers arises from the fact that they wonder why it is that he has remained in office and allowed the sabotaging of the agricultural industry to continue.

After all, there are in his party magnates of City finance, of town industries, who would very admirably conduct his office, openly, in his place, instead of doing it from the back rooms of the party. I quite understand that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) could hardly be spared from his urgent task of sabotaging the nation's efforts in the colonial field in order to be put into the office of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. But there are plenty of others in the party which abounds in City magnates who could do the job just as disastrously. Then the Minister himself might be allowed to go back to his fields and countryside, and be regarded properly by all as the true friend of farming and the countryside.

Now, we have this Bill—a very small matter. I do not think there is any particular part of it to which I take vigorous objection, but I think we can all congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, at any rate, on having been allowed to save this little thing from the wreck of British agriculture. He has made a slight contribution, as it seems to me, towards increased food production, in that Clauses 1 and 2 provide for an extension of the grants for water supplies to farms and liming. To that extent, we ought to congratulate the Minister.

Whatever the party opposite may think, we on this side of the House still believe that it is necessary that there should be increased food production in this country. At any moment, we might and ourselves in a position in which we are unable to find the dollars, or possibly even less scarce currency, necessary to buy the food we need, and then, of course, the City financiers and the industrial barons will turn, with the whole nation, in an appeal to the farming community to produce more food.

It seems to me that the success of the cry of the nation to the farming community will not depend, unfortunately, solely upon the good will of that community. In my opinion, that good will is unbounded. It will depend upon the extent to which these country folk have been enabled to keep their land in good heart, and the extent to which they have not been forced to abandon their land in the pursuit of the amenities of civilisation even in conditions most uncongenial to most of them, namely, in the towns.

We in the Labour Party believe that it is necessary to increase our production of food at this time, even though the prophets of a slump in America, with its consequent disasters here, are proved to be wrong. We believe that we should increase food production even though we do not come into a period of catastrophic international strife in the near future, as I for one have never thought that we should; and we believe that it is necessary to increase food production here even though, at the present moment, there may be food surpluses in certain parts of the world, for instance, in North America.

The trouble is that there are still enormous areas of the earth's surface where food surpluses are very far from being in evidence, and where, indeed, there is actual want. The trouble is that those areas where want is greatest are the very areas where food production lags behind most. I know that increased food production in areas of surplus or even of sufficiency is by no means a complete answer to this problem of food supplies in the underdeveloped areas, or areas less developed than those of North America; but, at any rate, it is the first part of the answer and a necessary part of the answer, to be followed later by the encouragement in the backward areas themselves of means of production of food which will supply their own needs.

It is because I believe that this Bill makes a very small contribution towards increased food production that I support it. We must increase food production, because it is only by better distribution of the surpluses of the more fortunate parts of the world among the peoples of the less fortunate parts of the world that we can have greater justice, and, therefore, greater peace among all peoples.