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World Trade (Doha Development Agenda)

I think it is a matter not of either/or but of both. One is that the west does not sufficiently respect the wishes and needs of the poorest countries and, in addition, when faced with a battery of corporate lawyers lobbying for corporate interests or extremely efficient and well-paid lawyers batting for national Governments or western national interests, they are not at the races. The issue is how we treat people and what respect we have. If we are serious about the development round and lifting the poorest people in Burkina Faso and elsewhere out of poverty, we must talk to them to find out what we are doing that is making their lives so much worse. We should think carefully about that. The dominating issue is food dumping. Several hon. Members referred to the fact that only 3 per cent. of world trade is in agriculture. That is absolutely true and the effect of food dumping on the US or EU economies is not great, but its effect is massive on the poorest countries of the world. I shall give two personal examples. Bringing personal examples to debates such as this often makes the situation more real. Last year, I went to Angola as part of an Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to observe a co-operative farm that had been opened on a former sugar plantation. It was growing fruit and, as far as I could see, it was doing well and the farmers were working hard and making it an enormous success, but the price that they received for the fruit was such a joke that it was not worth picking the fruit off the trees. There was little internal market for it and if the co-operative could raise the capital—it probably could—to convert that fruit into processed fruit, jam, juice and so on, where would it sell the produce? Who would buy it and who would allow it to be sold? Those farmers were trying to improve matters, but were faced with an insurmountable barrier that prevented them from doing so. More recently, in July, I attended the Congolese elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an observer on behalf of a group of NGOs, led by Christian Aid. Before the elections, I spent some time talking to a group of farmers in Bas-Congo in the south at a meeting organised by the local Catholic church and it was interesting talking to them. This is not the poorest area of the Congo by any means, but it is very poor by any stretch of the imagination and certainly in comparison with anything we know. I asked what the farming was like and the farmers immediately raised the issue of EU food dumping. People who tried to develop chicken farms and so on were put out of business because cheap chicken—they said that it was of poor quality, but I do not know because I did not see any of it—was being dumped on their market and virtually given away. What is the chance of their developing any kind of agriculture if no one will buy their produce? They would have to sell it in competition with stuff that is dumped by the USA or western Europe, so what is the point? That is the consequence of our happily voting for enormous subsidies for European farmers to produce an excessive amount of meat and so on that we dump on third-world markets. The USA is doing exactly the same through its agriculture programme. I do not want to ruin the career of the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) or destroy his hopes for the future, but I agree that there is a case for some agricultural subsidies in Britain, particularly for hill farmers and so on. However, there is not a case for dumping food on the poorest people around the world because the consequences are appalling. I hope that in the forthcoming round we can do something about that.