Dairy Farming

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. However, I agreed to the report with gritted teeth; people know that I am a great compromiser, and I believed it important to have consensus. The biggest problem is that we might give people the illusion that culling will work; if so, we will let them down. We must be honest. It is not going to work. There will be legal challenges in Wales, and it will take years to clear that out of the way. In any case, only a small part of Wales is experimenting with culling. We should not fool ourselves. The idea that it will be imposed on Shropshire, as the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire suggested, is an illusion. Let us be honest, and get on with finding a solution in the vaccination strategy. We should not go along cul-de-sacs that have been tried before and did not work. I shall be careful how I phrase my last point, because the Select Committee is considering Dairy Farmers of Britain. It was wrong to see the failing of that organisation being attributed to its structure, its co-operative nature. Mistakes were made in its management, but its biggest mistake was to try to compete in the liquid market with the wrong production structure. If it had specialised, it would probably have had a greater chance of getting through its deep-seated capital problems. I welcome the ombudsman, who was mentioned earlier. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George), who has driven the idea relentlessly, with some help from my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), myself and others. I pay credit to that campaign. The dairy industry has done badly because supermarkets, in particular, have used milk as a loss leader, playing all sorts of games with processors and especially with farmers.