Orders of the Day — Agricultural Marketing Acts.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 26 Gorffennaf 1935.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Thomas Williams Mr Thomas Williams , Don Valley

The hon. Member puts a perfectly proper question. The Danish people invited the co-operative societies to invest money in bacon-curing factories. The Danish people knew that they themselves had the skill, that they knew how to produce bacon of the quality and kind that the English consumer wants. The co-operative society knew they had 7,000,000 members whose needs must be catered for and felt that the most convenient thing for them to do, in the absence of bacon-curing facilities in Denmark, was to invest co-operative society money in Denmark to cure the bacon which was to hand there. If English producers had produced the right type and the right quality for the needs of our own market the co-operative society would have readily established bacon-curing factories in this country. They only acted as they did because British producers of bacon were indifferent, and never tried to meet the needs of the market here. The Co-operative Wholesale Society went over to Denmark to do what could not be done in this country.

If the right hon. Gentleman is justified in cutting off 107,000 cwt. of bacon previously imported by the co-operative societies and hopes to increase output in this country, clearly the Co-operative Wholesale Society ought to be permitted to produce here the same quantity of bacon as they were importing, but once these Amendments have been made only existing producers at home will be able to expand, and there will be no compensation for the loss of capital invested abroad by co-operative members. These two Amendments go two-thirds of the way to establishing perpetual monopolies in private hands, with no restriction on the profits to be made and no safeguards for the consumers, despite the right hon. Gentleman's investigation committees, and so on. Although we on these benches want to see the pig and bacon side of the agricultural industry as efficient as it can be made, we cannot feel justified in conceding power to bodies of producers to limit production, to fix prices and to settle their own profits—giving them, in short, the right in perpetuity to exploit the community here.