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Bananas

My Lords, I should begin by apologising on behalf of my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, who I understand is, as we speak, pulling into Paddington Station, believing that this debate was going to take place somewhat later in the evening. However, I am delighted to be able to step metaphorically into her shoes in that I initiated the previous debate on this issue a while ago. I also declare an interest as a former adviser to the Caribbean Banana Exporters Association. Therefore, the noble Viscount will not be surprised to know that I, too, disagree with his basic thesis on bananas. The debate raises a number of general issues and I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner and Lord Foulkes, for having filled in many of the details, unsurprisingly none of which I have to my fingertips just at the moment. It seems to me that the issues are as follows. First, will the new proposed banana regime have a serious, deleterious effect on the Caribbean banana market? It seems to me, that for all the reasons that have been given, the answer is unambiguously, yes, it will. Secondly, does that matter to any significant extent to either those Caribbean economies affected or to the UK? We have already heard why it matters to those economies. The islands that we are talking about—particularly the Windward Islands—are very small. Their population is barely the size of a London borough. They have been encouraged by this country over a long period to grow bananas. Interestingly enough, the Caribbean banana business was begun by a subsidy from Joe Chamberlain when he was in one of his more exuberant pro-Empire modes. It is funny how things change. But there is no doubt that for those countries which still grow bananas, the effect on the economy will be very serious indeed. The choices open to them are, in the short term, relatively small. Take a country like St Lucia. It cannot grow any other commercial crop, virtually at all, and never will be able to, for reasons which have been given. The terrain and the regular hurricanes mean that most crops are impossible to grow. While St Lucia is doing a tremendous amount in terms of developing its tourist industry, this takes a long time and it is by no means clear that a monoculture of tourism is going to be an entirely satisfactory outcome for the island either, given that most of the income generated by tourism rapidly leaves the island and does not filter down to people who are not working in the tourist industry. The effect on the economy will be serious. Another effect which has been mentioned is what will happen to people who are now growing bananas? Will they turn to growing drugs? The noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, observed that they could have been growing drugs anyway because it is more profitable. That assumes that the banana growers are amoral and that they would equally grow drugs as grow bananas. That is grossly unfair to the population of the Caribbean, who are not amoral and who do not want to be growing drugs—they know the effects of drugs just as well as we do. But some of these people will be desperate. They are poor people already; they will become poorer and will turn to desperate measures—both in my view and in the view of many other independent commentators, not just here but from the US. The effect therefore on the Caribbean economies will be serious and the social effects, both there and here, will be serious. Does that matter to us? It matters on two grounds. First, there is the question of moral obligation, which has already been mentioned, and which we cannot wash away. But it also raises a broader issue about the way the WTO acts, particularly in relation to small, vulnerable states. Whatever we do for Caribbean bananas, in terms of their access to the EU market, will have a marginal effect on the overall, global banana market. As we have already heard, the percentage of the European market that in any foreseeable future will be taken up by Caribbean bananas will be small—single digits and reducing. The key issue that the WTO should address and has not addressed and our Government could urge it to address, is whether—in cases where there are small states who are not wealthy and which, for various historical reasons, have a special monoculture or a small group of products which form a small part of the market, the withdrawal of which would form a collapse in the economies—there is room for a waiver of normal WTO rules, at least on a limited basis and possibly on a diminishing basis, over an agreed period of years. Undoubtedly, the complainants in the WTO case, who have won their case and in doing so will destroy the Caribbean banana trade, have played by the book. I am sorry to say to the noble Viscount that they are immensely wealthy, extraordinarily effective and unscrupulous lobbyists in the States and elsewhere, which is, in one sense, neither here nor there. They have played, and won, by the book. The trouble is that the book is wrong in that respect. We should look at the book to see whether it can be amended, because we are now going into the ludicrous situation which noble Lords have mentioned. I am not sure how readily the geography comes to mind. But, thinking of the Windward Islands as a string of pearls, they are a French colony, a former British colony, a French colony and a former British colony. The French colonies get continuing protection: the British colonies get virtually none. Even going down the Windward Islands, the effect is discriminatory, bizarre or irrational and defies all logic. The one slight glimmer of hope, which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, is that some of these countries are growing organic and fair trade bananas. They are not the only ones who are doing it, and they should possibly have done that rather earlier. It was considered, but it did not happen. As we are always telling ourselves we must do, it gives them the chance to go up the value chain slightly. The real problem is that, without a more or less guaranteed volume of trade, particularly from the smaller islands, there will simply not be the shipping to deal with a slowly declining volume. The whole thing tends to fall off the edge, probably at a level of exports which is not much less than we have today. This is an important issue, which bears heavily on our responsibilities. It raises broader issues on how world trade will be carried forward. I look forward, as do other noble Lords, to the Minister’s reply.