Lieut.-Colonel Geoffrey Clifton-Brown:

asked the Minister of Food what proportion of the weekly meat ration is composed of categories of meat which all butchers were not used to selling in prewar days; and when he hopes to be able to use such categories of meat only for manufacture.

None of the rationed meat is of types not sold by butchers for domestic use prewar. Butchers then sold what their customers could afford; some stocked only the cheaper sorts, and some only the better types of meat. Our aim at present is to distribute all quantities of meat as fairly as possible. When the supply improves, I shall certainly divert some of the plainer types of meat to manufacture, as was done for a time in 1946.

Lieut.-Colonel Clifton-Brown:

Why could not the right hon. Gentleman have notified the public that they were having to take third-grade meat from butchers, instead of leaving it to the butchers, who have to stand all the racket from dissatisfied customers?

The hon. and gallant Member is misinformed. Twice, at Press conferences, I made a statement to that effect.

asked the Minister of Food if he is aware that the quality of the meat distributed to butchers in some areas of East Dorsetshire has lately been of a low grade; and if he will take steps to see that this does not occur in future.

asked the Minister of Food on what system allocations of the various grades of meat are made to all parts of the country.

We try to give every district a share of all the various types of meat which go to make up the ration. This has not always been possible during the last few weeks, because of distribution difficulties resulting from the weather. These difficulties have now largely ceased.

Is the Minister aware that this meat is only fit for manufacture, and that the issue of low quality meat puts retail butchers, especially in the rural areas, in a very difficult position?

No, Sir. There is no meat which has been issued of a kind which has not been issued before the war, and during the war, at one time or another, on the ration.

Can the Minister say why we cannot keep our own meat in Aberdeen. If the problem is one of transport, why cannot we keep our own grown beef at home? We do not ask for privilege, but for our share, and we are not getting it.

The hon. Member would be the first to say that Aberdeenshire would have a privilege if it had nothing but its own meat, compared with the rest of the country.

Is the Minister aware that Danish and Dutch carcase meat, during the past three weeks, has been bony and lean, and the average retailer cannot make up the ration by reason of the type of carcase, to which we have not been accustomed in the prewar years, and will he look into the matter?

indicated assent.

Is the Minister aware that housewives will not eat this meat?

I cannot agree.