Food Industry Competitiveness

That is absolutely astonishing nonsense. We have done exactly what I said at that time. We have said that we will appoint an independent ombudsman, not in a separate office with all the paraphernalia—a reception and a new set of office rates and so on—but within the OFT. We want an independent, discrete unit within the OFT in order to keep the costs of providing an ombudsman down, but he would none the less be independent. I would be interested know whether the hon. Gentleman supports the principal spokesman for the Liberal Democrats on such matters. The latter says that we should have not an ombudsman but a price regulator who would fix prices, which would be totally contrary to European Union and World Trade Organisation law. The hon. Gentleman is completely deceiving farmers in this country if he believes that a Liberal Government—God forbid that one should ever exist—could actually fix the prices that supermarkets paid farmers for their milk or anything else. I look forward to his response to that. The "Food 2030" document refers to the need for better and more friendly regulation. That from a Government who introduced national muck-spreading day and put in statute the date when farmers may go and spread their muck! The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has a target to reduce its administrative burden by 25 per cent. by May, but it will not hit it. The expectation is that at best it will reach 20 per cent., but even so, that is 20 per cent. of the wrong target, because targeting administration costs completely ignores the capital costs on businesses of meeting DEFRA regulations. The nitrate-vulnerable zone storage regulations cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to each and every livestock farmer in the country. The cost of regulation is still huge. Even if the Department declares in a few months' time that it has decreased the administrative burden by 20 per cent., I do not expect many farmers to have noticed the difference.