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 Herbert Williams Mr Herbert Williams , Croydon South

The right hon. Gentleman said that they were represented at the meeting. If they were represented, they must have delegated somebody to represent them. They do that by the usual practice through membership of some organisation. Obviously, the great mass of them took no part, consciously or otherwise, in this scheme. They said to themselves about the scheme: "Well, this country is going to be regimented, so it does not matter what I think." Let me turn now to those who are better organised to do these things. There is the Registered Bacon Curers organisation. There are only 627 of them. They are the big noises. They are the people who buy the pigs and turn them into bacon. They are the really important people, and a journey up to London and a night spent in London would not dissuade them from turning up at the meeting. I find that of them 53 were in favour and 45 against the scheme, which is to close the industry. Then they had a vote. A formal vote was taken.

I do not understand this voting. There are only 627 of them, but the number voting in favour was 2,242 with 536 against. I suppose they said "hands up," and all the pigs put up four legs. There must, of course, be some explanation of this. Probably they voted on a quota basis but, at any rate, it is not very intelligent. And this is how democracy develops! Everyone has such a lot of votes that they do not register a single one, except the bacon curers, who vote early and often apparently. However, there is a certain amount of perturbation among some of my constituents who are afraid that pickled pork is going to be treated as bacon. Of course, pickled pork is not the same thing as bacon. Imagine the prospect of the great political issue which may be raised at the next election, "Will you vote for the policy that pickled pork shall not be regarded as bacon?" I understand that the pickling of pork is something which you can do without going in for mass production, whereas the production of bacon, to be successful and economic, must be done on a mass scale. I am told that a large number of ordinary butchers do a certain amount of pickling pork at the proper season of the year, and that they are rather perturbed with the prospect of having to get a licence. The prospect is not enhanced by the fact that a licence may be refused on the ground: That the production of bacon in the premises in question appears to the Development Board not to be required having regard to the existing or prospective consumption and the existing or prospective sources of supply of bacon, whether produced in Great Britain or elsewhere. Therefore, whenever an ordinary butcher wants to do a bit of pork pickling he will solemnly have to make his application to the Development Board. There will no doubt be a large procession of stout and handsome gentlemen, all belonging to the bacon section of the industry, applying for pickling permits. The queue will be so extensive that the police will have to be on duty to regulate the traffic so that we shall be able to approach this House in accordance with the terms of the Sessional Order. But I hope that the Government now will give up this tariff dodging, all these elaborate boards which do not organise anything. They have not saved a single penny piece of the stretch between wholesale and retail prices. They are an addition, indeed, to the overhead costs of all the branches of the agricultural industry to which they have been applied, and I hope the time will soon come when we shall realise the folly of the Argentine trade agreement and the Danish trade agreement and that in our Empire trade agreements we shall abandon unrestricted entry in favour of preference, so that in 1936 our hands will be free to put this on a proper protection basis without the necessity of these totally unnecessary boards, which spend all their time in interfering with the people in their daily business.