I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I might press on now and not take quite so many interventions, because I will cover many of the points that are being made. I fully accept, however, that people will wish to write their press releases soon, so I will try to be as generous as I can.
The industry recognises that overproduction is a problem and affects price. That is a given. The industry also recognises reduced demand as a result of changing buying habits in China and of Russian sanctions. As a consequence, we are in for what one newspaper described as a long period of low prices, without any indication of what those low prices might bottom out at or of how long is “long”. Analysts are already pointing to considerable uncertainty.
There are those, although not—I am glad to say—many of them, who think that all of that can be dealt with through efficiencies in farmers’ production methods. As we have touched on, however, the short notice that people get about their milk prices cannot necessarily be offset by instant cost reduction measures or alterations to milk production methods. Some such alterations might take one, two, three or even more years to take effect, while the price reduction has an instant effect, so that is a simplistic way of addressing the problem.
An additional problem, which I suspect many Members who represent more isolated parts of the UK feel, is that there are limits to the diversification programmes that farmers can enter into. It is not always possible for people to open a suite of holiday units or a farm shop, because they might be two or three miles off the beaten track, have significant planning problems to overcome or be on a tenanted holding, the landlord of which may have a different view of the sort of developments that can be undertaken.