Food, Farming and the Environment

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate briefly in this extremely important debate. First, may I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to other hon. Members for the fact that duties elsewhere in the House have meant that I have missed portions of this debate? As has been noted, this is the first debate in Government time on food and farming in five or six years, so it is long overdue. There are some serious issues facing our food producers and our farming industry, and they have not been addressed sufficiently in Government time or in Opposition time on the Floor of this House in recent years. I genuinely welcome the new Minister to his post. He has an opportunity to recalibrate things and demonstrate again that this Government are committed to the UK's agricultural industry. Personally I could not care less whether he is a vegetarian—that has nothing to do with the issue; what matters is his commitment, and that of his Department and his ministerial colleagues. He has a fresh opportunity to show that. I wish to focus on two particular issues in the time available to me. The first is bovine TB, which has been mentioned this afternoon. Hon. Members should be in no doubt about what a disaster bovine TB is for many farmers up and down the country. It has hugely damaging consequences. I have sat with a farmer who has just lost his herd and seen his business subjected to huge movement restrictions, and that tough, practical man was reduced to tears—a very sad thing to see. The disease is spreading, as the most recent map of the disease zone shows. Farming representatives come here every year to lobby Members of Parliament and to speak to Ministers and officials. They can be forgiven for thinking that it is like "Groundhog Day", as they keep making the arguments and providing the evidence, but see precious little real action. Given that the evidence base from which Ministers are working is the same in England as it is in Wales, why is it that the Welsh Assembly Government have adopted a different—and far more progressive—approach to tackling the disease? I am not known as someone who lavishes praise on the Welsh Assembly, but they have got it right in this regard. I want a clearer explanation from the Government of why a targeted cull is still out of the question. Is it just because the politics are too difficult? That answer will not cut it with the farming community, which is sick of the issue and wants some real action and solutions. I encourage the Minister to address that question and to liaise closely with the Welsh Assembly Government to see what lessons can be learned. The second issue, which has been referred to several times by hon. Members, is the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain and, more generally, the state of the UK dairy industry. My first Adjournment debate, which I secured shortly after becoming a Member of Parliament in 2005, was on the state of the dairy industry, which is hugely important to my constituency. Dairy farming is woven into the very fabric of life in Pembrokeshire, but it lurches from crisis to glimmers of hope—so farmers start investing again—back to crisis. Just in the last few days, I have received six or seven e-mails and letters from farmers in my constituency who have supplied Dairy Farmers of Britain and are under considerable financial pressure as a result of the collapse of that co-operative. One of those letters was from a medium-sized dairy farmer in my constituency, and it tells me of his membership arrangements with the co-operative. He says:""I am a dairy farmer milking 110 dairy cows, and was a member of, and supplied our milk to DFOB."" He says that his membership investment over the past seven years has seen""£32,000 deducted from our monthly milk cheque—this figure was calculated based on our milk production figures."" He continues:""In October 2008, DFOB failed to pay the interest on our Membership Investment, stating that the global financial crisis meant that it was not prudent to pay the interest. This set alarm bells ringing"—" as it did for other farmers in the area supplying that co-operative. His story goes on:""From 1 November 2008, DFOB introduced a price cut of 2p per litre—this money was supposedly used to close down two of their factories…and put the company back on its feet. We estimate that this price drop cost us £10,000 from November to May.""On 3 June 2009, DFOB went into Receivership, calling in PWC to administer the Receivership."" He also says that between 3 and 10 June, PWC—PricewaterhouseCoopers—will pay him a nominal fee for his milk, rumoured to be about 10p per litre, but what really concerns him is what will happen to his main milk cheque, which should be more than £14,000. That will be lost, and other farmers in my constituency are in the same position of losing payment for a whole month's worth of milk production. Those farmers are in no position to lose that kind of money. They have been operating on a knife edge for some years, they have been trying to invest where they can and cash flow has been very difficult. To lose such sums of money—an entire month's worth of milk payment—is very severe. I do not expect the Minister to be able to wave a magic wand, but will he inform the House what discussions he is having with his colleagues and the industry about how they can support farmers affected by the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain? I appreciate the financial constraints that he and his colleagues are under, and I do not think that anybody expects him to start writing cheques to bail out farmers who have been hit, but farmers want to see that the Minister is alive to the issue and is taking it seriously. In particular, I would welcome his thoughts on the behaviour of the banks in this case. One concern that several farmers have raised with me is the timing—the calling in of Dairy Farmers of Britain's loans in such a way that suppliers would lose that entire May milk cheque. I would welcome the Minister's response on that point.