British Agriculture and Food Labelling

That is absolutely correct, and the hon. Gentleman makes the point well. Ensuring that we have a form of fair trade for British farmers means that we maintain capacity in our farming sector and that we do our bit to ensure that we have food security within our borders and, indeed, that we contribute to production across the world. I will attempt to reach those points very shortly. If I can crave your indulgence, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall cite two great liberals. Adam Smith famously talked about markets reaching equilibrium through the movement of the invisible hand in the marketplace. He suggested that markets will naturally ensure a fair and appropriate outcome, but I am afraid that that works only if we assume that markets are rational and that all the players are equally balanced in power. The increasingly fashionable John Maynard Keynes would, of course, disagree. He said:"““The market is able to remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.””" How many people whose homes have been repossessed, how many unemployed workers and how many British farmers can identify with that statement today? The debate is about British agricultural production and food labelling, but if we are not careful, there will be barely any British agricultural produce left to label. In the past two years, we have lost 900 million tonnes of milk production capacity. That represents a staggering 8 per cent. drop. On a human level, that is two dairy farmers leaving the industry every day. As we have heard, the British pig industry has shrunk by 40 per cent. in a decade. We now import 81 per cent. of our bacon and 45 per cent. of other pork products. Some 70 per cent. of that imported pork was reared in conditions that would have been illegal in this country. Our historical uplands are shedding skilled hill farmers at a rapid rate. I am thinking of valleys such as Longsleddale in my constituency; of the eight working hill farms still there, only one has a possible line of succession. Not since the black death have we seen such a reduction in our food production capacity. Incidentally, given the Government's decision to flout Sir Iain Anderson's recommendations and not upgrade the Pirbright facility, who is to say that the black death might not be back on the agenda some time soon? Of course, the reduction in farming capacity after the black death was a consequence of—how shall I put it?—a reduction in demand for food, but the Government are overseeing a terrifying drop in farming capacity at a time when the world population is set to increase by 50 per cent., and demand for food is set to double in the next 40 years. Is it not madness that because of an inability to make markets work for us, we are allowing ourselves to become dependent on environmentally damaging imports—on the produce of developing countries that ought to be concentrating on feeding their own impoverished populations?