---

Welsh Affairs

The hon. Lady makes a good point, and I hope that farmers will get actively involved in that consultation process. However, I should add that on many occasions farmers have constructively engaged in Government consultations but have been rewarded with no improvement in the proposals being debated. I also lament the continuous apparent efforts of the Government to weaken the milk suppliers’ power in the marketplace, stretching all the way back to the destruction of the Milk Marketing Board. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the hon. Lady’s sensible suggestion and the concerns that I have raised, not least because they affect associated industries as well. Hence the announcement of the likely closure of the Aeron valley creamery in Ceredigion, with the potential loss of 44 jobs. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) planned to attend today’s debate, but he has had to travel to that creamery to consider the crisis with management and the very concerned work force. The staff have worked hard to establish well known brands, and the decision that has been made was a bolt from the blue. Our priority must be to protect that factory and similar factories as going concerns, and to establish why yet another firm in the dairy sector has pulled its operations only two years after setting up. Sadly, despite all their fine words, the Government have done little to support farming. They cut Tir Mynydd payments to hill farmers and ignored the threat posed by new European Union rules on electronic identity for sheep farmers. They also refused to give farmers more bargaining power against the supermarkets. Instead of strengthening the relatively toothless code of practice they have let the balance of power lie with the massive supermarket chains, and instead of introducing a food trade inspector with strong investigative powers they have just sat on their hands. My colleague, Mick Bates, the Assembly Member for Montgomeryshire, has called for a fair trade Welsh milk co-operative so that farmers can get a fair return for their product. Happily, I hear that there has been some movement on that. It seems that Waitrose is prepared to introduce some form of transparent labelling system that shows the profits of the producer, the processor and the retailer. Does the Wales Office back that scheme, and will it encourage others to follow suit? I very much back the scheme, and Liberal Democrats feel that Waitrose is showing that major outlets have nothing to fear from working more in partnership with the suppliers, on whom they depend for the produce that makes them their profits. It appears that similar kinds of pressures are applying in respect of the Wales post office network. In many isolated settlements post offices are the social hub, yet Government Departments and agencies have this year cut contracts with post offices, draining support from the network. In the Assembly, Labour failed to back Liberal Democrat proposals to reinstate the post office development fund, which helped to keep more than 100 post offices open between 2002 and 2004. The Government consultation on closing 2,500 post offices ends next Wednesday. On 6 February, we gave the Minister notice that individual sub-postmasters had not been sent a copy of the consultation document. That might explain why only 15 responses have so far been received from Wales. Why did the Wales Office not make sure that the document was circulated by the Department of Trade and Industry? Is the Wales Office willing to provide more time for reasonable consultation opportunities with the sub-postmasters, who would be happy to make a contribution, and who would have done so if only they had known that they were expected to do so?