Orders of the Day — Agriculture and Prices

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 March 1974.

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Photo of Mrs Shirley Williams Mrs Shirley Williams , Hertford and Stevenage 12:00, 14 March 1974

I, too, begin by referring to the many maiden speeches we have heard today.

I am sorry that I cannot reply in any detail to the very moving contribution of the right hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. West), who, we hope, will make further contributions to our debates about agriculture and prices in the light of his very long experience of these subjects in Northern Ireland. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker). I think that all of us had brought home to us the terrible scale of the situation in Northern Ireland as it affects all communities by the indications he gave of what this would have meant had the same proportion of terror, murder and death been applied to the rest of the United Kingdom.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mrs. Colquhoun), whose felicitous description of Ministers of Agriculture gave me great pleasure. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Howells), who expressed a great deal of concern about the position of young farmers and farm workers in his constituency. I congratulate also the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Ancram), who indicated a number of questions which require answers but which, as he will appreciate, should be addressed to some of my colleagues rather than to me. He particularly raised the question of rural transport. I will ensure that this is brought to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport. We appreciated the hon. Gentleman's kind remarks about his predecessor at Berwick and East Lothian.

We all of us miss Douglas Houghton, who used to represent Sowerby, but we give a strong and great welcome to his successor as Member for Sowerby (Mr. Madden) and share his enthusiasm for helping consumers.

The hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas), the hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Watt) and others referred to the special problems with regard to feeding stuffs. A number of hon. Members on both sides of the House also referred to concern about the ending of the lime and fertiliser subsidies. I remind them that they must look to the last Government for responsibility in that matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Rodgers) said something with which I agree very much—that the members of the boards of new towns should be elected and not appointed. I can assure him of the sympathy of the Government with that sentiment.

The hon. Member for Banff said that his constituency was distinguished by having a great many distilleries. I assure him that one of these days I shall go there to drown my sorrows in view of the rather difficult post I hold.

I suppose that, since he is not quite a maiden, we can describe by hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Roberts) as a sort of experienced maiden, which is a rather trendy thing to be these days. I think he satisfactorily fulfils that rôle.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Park) has, of course, the arduous task of succeeding, in Richard Crossman, one of the most eloquent and controversial Members of this House. I am sure that his very courteous and well-turned speech makes him a worthy successor.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Selby) said some very moving things about housing. I was also very struck by his combination of cleanliness and godliness in his concern for bread and soap. We shall take his concerns very seriously.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) spoke of housing and presented some striking statistics Many hon. Members will share his experience of seeing speculators taking away the possibility of owner-occupation for more and more of our people. Those of us in the southern half of the country are very much aware of the scale of the problem we face in this respect.

The hon. Member for Gravesend (Mr. Ovenden) referred to another matter of deep concern to us all—particularly to Members on the Government side of the House—the effect of prices on the standard of living of pensioners.

The right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym) has taken over a difficult pair of jobs. We recognise that he had a difficult task as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. He is now not only shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland but, I understand, also the shadow Minister of Agriculture. He began his speech in a serious manner reflecting his concern for agriculture. We appreciated that. I am bound to say that as he moved towards the end of his speech I began to feel that we were witnessing the drama of Hamlet without the Prince.

I remind the right hon. Gentleman that this debate is supposed to be about agriculture and prices. It was striking that the right hon. Gentleman spoke exclusively about agriculture and said virtually nothing about prices, which showed, if I may say so, a suitable degree of reticence on his part. Perhaps 35,000 prices on after the promise of "at a stroke" is a good time to be silent. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not feel obliged to be silent in future and will explain the record of his own Government.

His speech was a serious one and had to be taken seriously, which I cannot say for the speech of his right hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior). It was what I think is sometimes known in the House as "good knockabout stuff". The right hon. Gentleman now shadows the Home Office. Perhaps as a man for all seasons he feels he can make the same speech about any Department he happens to shadow. His speech certainly had little to do with the extremely serious situation the country faces.

He described me as the Mary Poppins of this administration. He will recall that he was the Marie Antoinette of the last one. He will further recall that the fate of Mary Poppins was rather less serious than the fate of Marie Antoinette. The right hon. Gentleman took up a peculiarly silly and ill-founded story by saying that the Labour Party had purchased the food for our television broadcast at Fortnum and Masons.