I beg to move, That the Scheme under the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, for regulating the marketing of pigs, a draft of which was presented to the House on the 22nd day of June, 1933, be approved. I have to commend to the House this afternoon two schemes under the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, which we lay before the House for its approval. The two schemes will be found in the Vote Office, with a report upon them by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and myself, and I think it will be clear from the report that we are fulfilling the statutory duty laid upon us by the Act of 1931 to ensure that the subject of these schemes is specifically brought before each House of Parliament. But the House should not assume that we shall be, by an affirma- tive vote, imposing these schemes upon the industry. The vote which I hope the House will shortly give is an enabling vote. It will enable these schemes to be laid before each industry—the pig rearing industry and the bacon curing industry—in order that they themselves may determine whether they will accept the schemes. The real point, and I think the only point, which it is necessary for the House to decide, is whether the schemes are suitable, under the provisions of the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, to be put before the industries for decision. I speak of the industries, but it is really one industry. The bacon industry is composed of the pig rearing industry and the bacon curing industry, and I am sure the House will agree that, it is desirable to treat these two schemes as one.

We ask the House to assent to the proposition that it is desirable that these schemes should be put to the industry, affording it the opportunity of reorganising, and giving it powers of self-discipline and power to improve its efficiency both in production and in marketing. I do not think it can be contended that the powers given by the schemes will protect an inefficient industry. The quantities coming into the United Kingdom mar- ket from abroad will, of course, be regulated, but there will still be the competition, and the very real competition, of quality. The home industry will not make progress unless it takes care to ensure that the quality of the bacon it produces is at least equal to that of the foreign bacon which is displaced, and the pig producer as well as the bacon curer will have to play his part by providing the right types of pigs. I am sure we shall agree that too much must not be expected immediately of the home industry, but the public are entitled to expect a sincere and sustained effort to attain the maximum efficiency as rapidly as possible; and only if that sincere and sustained effort is being proceeded with will the public be satisfied.

These schemes are designed to set up boards whose powers with respect to pigs and bacon respectively will be mainly powers of regulation. The primary functions of the boards will be to enforce throughout the home bacon industry the principle of contract—of, a contract supply of pigs going to a factory, and, by estimating, in conjunction with the other bacon factories, the sum total of these contracts, to make to the Ministry, and through the Ministry to the nation, an estimate of what the home supply will be, and thereby enable us to dovetail that into the supply which we shall expect to obtain from overseas. When this element of stability has been brought into the bacon industry, we hope that the home bacon industry will be able to expand, provided that it is efficient; and to ensure the necessary efficiency, in the direction, for instance, of quality, the boards' powers in addition to those which directly concern supply regulation will be exercised.

It will be desirable in the future that the keystone of the arch should be supplied by the Development Board, which will form the junction between the Pigs Board on the one side and the Bacon Board on the other. We have offered, if necessary, to set up a reorganisation commission which should draft such a scheme, because, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) knows, for he has given much time and attention to the drafting of another scheme in connection with the milk industry, the working out of such proposals is a task which requires the highest skill in draftsmanship and the closest attention for many weeks of the most skilful people who can be obtained, and it will be often the case that farmers or bacon curers will not be able readily to draw upon such technical skill. So far, however, the Development Board has not been set up, and I merely indicate to the House that it still remains to be brought in to complete the picture which I am laying before the House this afternoon.

The schemes which we have before us are further of interest in that for the first time a Great Britain scheme has come before the House of Commons. We have had Debates, and interesting Debates, upon other schemes which have been submitted and which have been passed by the House. There was a Debate of considerable interest, in the course of which diversity of opinion was expressed, upon the Scottish scheme with respect to raspberries, and there was also, of course, the very much more important Scottish scheme with respect to milk, which also was sanctioned by the House. There is in existence an English scheme as regards hops, but that also is confined to one nation—in this case the nation South of the Border.

The interest of a Great Britain scheme lies in the fact that it is an example of schemes which, increasingly, we shall have to adopt in the future. The difficulty of dovetailing the Scottish milk scheme into the English milk scheme will be very considerable. There is a large flow of milk across the Border—a flow estimated at some 2,000,000 gallons per month; and the absorption of this into the English liquid milk market will require the highest skill on the part of both the boards. I hope that the Scottish Board will proceed with the examination of the problem forthwith, and that the promoters of the English scheme will also proceed with the examination of this problem, because, when and if the public inquiry, to which I shall refer in a moment, is completed, little enough time will be left for that scheme to come into operation, even supposing that all goes smoothly, if grave injury to the liquid milk market in the autumn is to be averted.

As it is a Great Britain scheme that we are placing before the House, perhaps I may be allowed for a moment to refer to affairs with which I have no direct concern, namely, affairs North of the Border, which are more specifically the care of the Secretary of State for Scotland and of the Under-Secretary of State, who is here to deal if necessary with any specifically Scottish questions. Certain Scottish points have been considered in the framing of this Great Britain scheme. It has been arranged that the board under the Pig Marketing Scheme is to have an office in Scotland, and thereby it will be brought, as far as Scottish affairs are concerned, under Scots jurisdiction. The publication of notices and so on will be in the Scottish newspaper, the "Scotsman," as well as in the London "Times"; provision for the inclusion of technical officers, such as a Scottish chartered accountant among those eligible to audit the accounts, will also be made; and, more particularly, the arbitrations to be held in Scotland will be conducted according to Scots law which, in these matters as in many others, differs from the law of England. As far as the Bacon Marketing Scheme is concerned, these points are also safeguarded. On the Bacon Board the Scottish representation has been increased from one to two members, and specific provision has been made for Scottish representation on the committees.

Turning to the scheme itself, "it was brought into existence after the inquiry of the Lane Pox Commission. It was set up, as the House will remember, by my right hon. Friend who is now Home Secretary, and by the right hon. Gentleman who is unfortunately no longer officially with us, but who was then Secretary of State for Scotland—the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir A. Sinclair). It was brought into existence to deal with a situation in which the average value of the pig meat consumed in this country was £83,000,000 a year, while the value of the imports was about £59,000,000. It was thought to be not unreasonable that a somewhat larger proportion of this enormous total should be produced in this country, which is in no way unsuitable for the production of bacon and pigs. We do at present produce these to such an extent that the annual value of pigs sold off farms in Great Britain is £22,500,000, so that it is a market which is already of importance to our country; but, of the vast total of 1,000,000 tons of pig meat consumed in these Islands, two-thirds is imported at the present date. I do not think it will be denied on any line of argument that a plan to produce a larger proportion of this processed animal food at home might very reasonably be undertaken in this country. But that was not the position with which we were faced when the Lane Fox Commission was set up. We were faced with a position in which, as the Commission itself reported, there were indications that even those producers in Great Britain who had pursued a steady production policy in good times and bad for a number of years were beginning to lose heart. We were not really in a position in which we desired to expand; we were in a position where it was essential, if we desired to maintain even those agricultural producers that we had in active operation, that we should take some steps to deal with an admittedly very difficult and, indeed, a critical situation.

The Commission reported, among other things, upon the weaknesses of the bacon industry in this country. I do not need to detail them to the House; they are known to many of us; but I think it is fair to say that the Commission pointed out that it would be unfair to assume, from these weaknesses, that tie industry was inefficient. They pointed out that it was merely an absence of organisation that had brought about and maintained these conditions; but they also pointed out that the prices of bacon pigs had dropped from 60 per cent. above pre-War in 1929 to 13 per cent. below pre-War at the time of the Commission's investigations, and the Commission felt that it would be useless to initiate the development of the home bacon industry unless the violent competition from abroad was regulated.

We bring forward these proposals first of all under an Act which was placed on the Statute Book under a previous Administration, in which Dr. Addison was Minister of Agriculture, and in pursuance of proposals specifically recommended by a Commission jointly appointed by a Conservative and a Liberal Minister, whom one might describe in the political jargon of the day as a Samuelite Minister. Therefore, no party question of any kind arises in the consideration of these proposals. They are to be considered as arising out of an agricultural policy which has been sanctioned, and indeed pressed forward, by representatives of all the great parties at present in the House. The Commission's report was to try to introduce stability, and the machinery for carrying the plan into effect was the machinery which we commend to the House to-day, a pig marketing board and a bacon marketing board. The powers are provided under the Marketing Act, 1931, and the regulation of supplies, which they said was in their view an essential part of the proposal, will be provided under the Marketing Act of 1933.

Draft schemes were prepared by the Lane Fox Commission. They were brought before the industry for the consideration of bacon producers and curers, and it was open to the producers to submit the schemes to the Minister, as they stood, or with alterations. They were, in fact submitted to the Secretary of State for Scotland and myself substantially in the form prepared by the Commission. The pig scheme was submitted on behalf of the National Farmers' Union of England and the National Farmers' Union for Scotland, and the bacon scheme by the bacon section of the Food Manufacturers' Federation. Notice of the schemes had to be published in accordance with the requirements of the Act. Then a public inquiry had to be held into the objections that were made. The inquiry lasted for eight days and each objector had a full and patient hearing. The scheme as a whole is to be presented to each House of Parliament, so that Parliament retains full control.

I will now say a word or two upon the actual provisions of the scheme. Pigs for pork are outside the scope of the scheme. Producers who desire to sell pigs to curers must be registered with the Board. No producer who is not so registered will be allowed to sell pigs for bacon. The Board will have power to regulate the sales of pigs of registered producers, including the determination of prices, and to prescribe the terms and form of the contract upon which the producer shall sell his pigs to the curers. The operation hinges on contract, and any sanctions that are imposed under this are not imposed by any sort of criminal procedure but by the old and well known procedure of the enforcement of the terms of a contract. The bacon scheme exempts sales by small producers curing less than 40 cwts. of bacon in a consecutive period of two months. Therefore the fears expressed by some that this might interfere with the power, let us say, of a shepherd or a cottager, to keep a pig for his own consumption and kill and cure it or, having killed and cured it, to sell home-cured ham or bacon to his neighbours or friends, are groundless. The scheme provides for a levy for the purpose of financing the Board. The maximum levy under the pig scheme is Is. 6d. per pig, plus a registration fee of 2s. 6d., and, under the bacon scheme, 6d. per cwt. I do not think that these are excessive sums which will lead to any hardship upon the producer. The further proposals which I think should be examined are those relating to procedure, for procedure is the thing with which I am most concerned at the moment.

If we get the consent of the House we are about to submit these schemes for approval by the industry. That is a matter which involves considerable difficulty and hazard. All of us have been subject to the process of ballot, and we know how difficult it is, first of all, to convince anyone that any ballot is actually taking place, and, secondly, to convince them that we and not others are the proper persons who should be returned as the result of that ballot. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds have been expended in elections directly by Members of the House on propaganda for this purpose. I tremble to think how many millions are expended by organisations which are specially interested, such as the newspaper Press of the country. If the schemes are approved by Parliament, the Secretary of State for Scotland and I must formally make an order approving them in the terms of these drafts, and fixing a. date upon which they are to come into-force, but they will not immediately come into full operation. The principal' powers of the Board will remain in-abeyance during the suspensory period, which will last for about two months and will allow time for registration and for a poll to be taken on the question; whether the scheme shall remain in force. Unless the results of the poll show that two-thirds of the registered producers voting are in favour of the continuance of the scheme, it will lapse, so that the final decision whether the schemes are to come into actual being or not rests with the industry itself.

I hope that Members in all parts of the House who are interested in agricultural marketing will take the opportunity of speaking in their constituencies and bringing to the notice of the agricultural community the fact that the schemes are in existence, and that on the decision of the producers will rest the life or death of the scheme. The only thing that I fear is that those whose business life is concerned with the success or failure of the schemes may be so taken up with the difficult and delicate business of making a living that they may not have time either to read any of the literature or even take the trouble to fill up the form that will be sent to them, and that, consequently, the necessary two-thirds majority may not be secured. I am certain that, if we could get the producers into a single hall and take a show of hands, we should have their sanction but, considering that they are scattered throughout Great Britain, that they are all busy men who are not actively engaged in the reading of literature or the canvassing of the importance or otherwise of the scheme, I beg the co-operation of the House as a whole in ensuring that people understand that a decision has to be taken. Interim boards are set up to administer affairs during those two months. They are, of course, nominated by the Minister and they will have very heavy tasks in front of them. It is our desire to appoint persons possessing some commercial and financial experience, as I think their advice and assistance will be of great value to the boards and I hope that their membership will be continued after the board itself has come into operation.

They will be financed by short-term loans from the Agricultural Marketing Fund. If the polls are favourable, the loans will be repaid by the industry itself. If they are unfavourable, only the unexpended portion of the loans will be repayable. There are adequate safeguards against abuse of the powers given by the scheme. The safeguards are provided in the 1931 Act. Any producer of a regulated product who is aggrieved by any act or omission of the Marketing Board has a right to refer his grievance to arbitration and, to protect the interests of consumers, a Consumers Committee will be appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland and myself.

These are briefly the proposals which I commend now to the House. They are of great interest and they are of considerable technicality. We are asking the House to decide to-day whether these schemes are suitable for submission to the industry. I hold that they are, and I would ask those who have devoted many years of their life to the popularising of the conception of agricultural marketing to realise that here and now the opportunity comes of putting into effect the proposals which for so long we have discussed. It is no small thing that we are discussing. It is a great industry which has been neglected in the past and which holds great possibilities of development. On these schemes and on the polls taken under them the whole future of the industry depends, and if the schemes, having been passed by the House, are rejected by the industry a chaotic situation will supervene. I hope there will be no opposition to them, and that we shall send them forward to the industry with the approval of an enthusiastic House of Commons behind them.