Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 26 Gorffennaf 1935.
I expect that my hon. Friend the Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) will put me right in this matter. Suppose a man, because of financial or family trouble, should not produce the same number of pigs next year as he produced this: what is going to happen to his percentage of pigs? Is it to be lost? What are the Board going to do about it? Is that man going to his neighbour, to say: "I am entitled to produce 50 pigs next month, but I do not want to produce 50 pigs. I would rather do something else. You are entitled to produce 40 pigs. If you like to buy my right to produce 50 pigs, I will take so much for it." I see an hon. Member shaking his head, but I am sure that that is what will happen. We shall see wholesale transactions going on everywhere. People will be selling rights not to produce pigs, and the same absurdity will arise as has already sprung up in the United States. It is not a sensible way of dealing with the matter.
We want to enter a protest against this method of doing it, without in any way wishing to raise a protest against building up a system of orderly marketing, which must have proper reasonable statistics. There is also the case of the co-operative societies. I do not speak for one society or another society. I am not holding a brief for anyone in particular. Suppose they say, "We are more efficent in this business than any one else. Next year we shall produce 500 pigs instead of 100." Several other people will have to produce a smaller number. It means a permanent handicap upon efficiency if you stereotype the expansion to five per cent., or whatever the percentage may be, whilst behind the scenes the producer can go to somebody else and give them something for not producing. He may not otherwise be able to obtain the expansion which he, as an efficient producer, is able to make use of. You are stereotyping inefficiency while you are prejudicing efficiency by this method. All that is wanted is that your board should be informed of the supplies likely to be coming forward. They can be informed, quarterly or monthly, or whatever it is. I have no doubt that the supplies likely to be forthcoming will increase. They may increase five per cent. or ten per cent.
Another reason why this method is adopted is that those concerned have not yet made up their minds to approach the only rational way of dealing with the import question, which is our socialist method. I am sure that the arbitrary reduction of quantities is not right. You should have an import board, working as to quantities, regulated by the needs of the market in alliance with your home market, and supplied with the proper statistics so that they may be able to provide accordingly. If the statistics are a quarter in advance, let them be a quarter in advance, or whatever may be the time necessary for a businesslike way of doing it. The association, in feeding the market, between two organisations of that kind is all that is required as far as this side of the question is concerned.
In this case there is a better reason that in any other field why that method should be adopted. We import about five times as much as we produce, so that there is immense room for expansion, and, therefore, there is no reason why any part of the country that is particularly flourishing should be limited in its expansion to 5 per cent., or 10 per cent. for that matter, whereas there may be another part of the country which is not prepared to go in for expansion, or may even want to go back; and it is absurd to impose upon a part of the country which is efficient and doing well the necessity for going behind the scenes and buying quotas from somebody else who is inefficient and cannot do the job. We ought to give elbow-room to efficiency. If any part of the country is prepared to send to the Board in advance details showing that its supplies during the next quarter will be so much more, I should be very glad; that is what we ought to encourage; and it would be perfectly possible, with a decent statistical department, to arrange for market supplies in conjunction with an import organisation. In my submission, too, that is the only proper way in which we shall ever arrive at a reasonable price arrangement.
This method has one other vice. Necessarily it cannot take any account of the consumer's end, and nobody knows better