Food Security

Well, we are a free society and individuals and organisations are perfectly free, by those means, to challenge decisions that the Government have taken. I should be very happy to discuss with the hon. Gentleman the particular context of some of those. We await judgments in those circumstances and we will of course be judged by the courts on the basis of the decisions that have been taken by the Government, but I do not accept the premise that the Government are somehow not trying to provide support. However, if one is talking about regulation, we are operating within a context where a lot of it comes from Europe, and it is indeed society itself that presses for that. Let me turn to the facts and individual products. Coming directly to the point about self-sufficiency, which my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) raised, milk and cereals production is about the same as it was 30 years ago, although it peaked in the early 1980s. It has gone up and down a bit. Self-sufficiency in vegetables has undoubtedly fallen from about three quarters to less than two thirds. Imports from the EU have risen sharply. Self-sufficiency in butter, on the other hand, has risen from just under one third to nearly two thirds over the past 30 years. Of the foods that can be produced in this country, we are about 74 per cent. self-sufficient and yes, it is true that that is higher than it was in the 1950s or, indeed, the 1930s. It is not as high as it was at the height of the CAP, and 60 per cent. of the food that we import comes from the European Union, which is itself about 90 per cent. self-sufficient in the food that it needs. Would it be sensible to make self-sufficiency a policy aim? What about exports, which are very important for the farming industry? If self-sufficiency means protectionism—the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire said that he was not arguing for that—is that a desirable aim? We are a trading nation. We export as well as import food, and there are of course some things that we cannot possibly grow ourselves that we need to buy. What is more, feeding the population of the UK sustains a very large industry, not just agriculture, and some 3.7 million jobs. It accounts for 7 per cent. of gross domestic product, and for one fifth of UK greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, food manufacturing is the largest single manufacturing sector in the UK.