---

Milk (Pricing)

I beg to move,"That leave be given to bring in a Bill to confer further powers on the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission to investigate the prices of milk paid by retailers to producers; and for connected purposes." I am still reeling over the issue of unitary authorities, but I shall endeavour to calm myself and introduce my ten-minute Bill on milk pricing. It is an appropriate time to do so, as the front page of The Daily Telegraph says that the price of milk and food is set to soar over the summer—and not just because of the flooding, but on account of the tremendous crisis in the dairy industry. It is so bad that many of our dairy farmers are going out of business, which will ultimately affect the consumer. At the moment, many of my Shropshire farmers are paid as little as 16p a litre for the milk that goes to supermarkets. Today, I spoke to Tesco and found that it charges 58p a litre to its customers. I would like Parliament to think for a moment about the huge margin between 16p and 58p a litre. Any hon. Member representing a rural constituency will know how hard dairy farmers work. They face an unsustainable price for their milk: 16p a litre is simply not enough. That is why hundreds of dairy farmers have gone out of business and lost their livelihoods. In addition, dairy farmers face huge levels of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs red tape and bureaucracy. To cap it all, there is the tremendous crisis of bovine tuberculosis. I asked the relevant Minister about the number of cases of bovine TB in Shropshire in the year 2000 and was given the figure of 39. In 2006, however, the number had increased to 147. We have seen a massive increase in the number of cases of bovine TB in Shropshire and, in my estimation, the Government are doing very little to tackle it. When I first became an MP, I was lobbied by my Shrewsbury farmers on many occasions to do something about the problem and to take up their cause. I started to speak out on these issues two years ago as an individual MP. I had extensive meetings with various chief executives from various supermarkets. The first one I met was the chief executive of ASDA—and it got me absolutely nowhere. People like him were simply not prepared to acknowledge that there was a problem. They simply refused to consider the long-term ramifications for the indigenous production of milk in this country. They simply were not prepared to acknowledge the crisis. That explains why I decided to set up the all-party group for dairy farmers—and I am very pleased to see some of its members in their places here today. In fact, we have become one of the largest such groups in Parliament. As of today, we number 157 Members from all parties. That shows the extent of feeling on this issue among all political parties; we all want to do something to ensure that the UK continues to have a dairy industry. One group that has greatly helped me and the all-party group is the women’s institute, which had adopted this issue as one of its main areas of campaigning. It organised a major petition up and down the country, securing hundreds of thousands of signatures, which was presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman). The WI also had a series of national debates throughout the country, where it brought supermarket chief executives together with farmers and other interested parties. I participated in two of those national debates: one in the west mid show in my constituency of Shrewsbury, the other close to Parliament where I debated with Mr. Justin King, the Sainsbury chief executive. The greatest publicity came not just from we politicians, but from a single individual WI member from Gloucestershire who came on a very cold January morning wearing nothing but a bikini. They were pouring bottles of milk all over her as she sat in a bath just outside the House of Commons. That went down very well, I have to say, and got us a great deal of publicity. I applaud her for doing that on such a cold day and for being prepared to be photographed in a bikini with all that milk being poured all over her. The all-party group listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of evidence. We have had many meetings with various interested parties. We met the Office of Fair Trading and many farming organisations, including the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. Supermarket bosses were called as well as many consumer organisations. We have even led a cross-party delegation to Brussels to lobby the Commissioner for Agriculture, Mrs. Fischer Boel. For an arch Eurosceptic like myself, the idea of going to Brussels to ask the EU to intervene to help save the British dairy industry was quite difficult. However, I had to do so, in desperation at the lack of action by the Labour Government. That activity and the national campaign had some results, as the supermarkets have started to feel embarrassed about this issue. I know that Tesco is leading the way in increasing the prices paid to farmers. On some occasions, it pays 22p a litre, but that affects only 450 local farmers, so we need to increase that number significantly. I shall place the all-party dairy farmers group report in the Library. It may not be a very Conservative thing to do, but I desperately wanted to call for a regulator for supermarkets. Regrettably, there was no consensus in the group about that matter. As a Conservative, I usually do not like to interfere in market forces; it is quite an unusual thing for a Conservative to want to regulate in that way, yet we have regulators in all our major industries. On my way to Parliament earlier today, I passed the offices of Ofgem, and then there is Ofwat and Ofgas, for example. Everything is regulated apart from the supermarkets. I would like a regulator, but I cannot get the support of my group on this issue. What we can achieve, what my Bill sets out to achieve and what we can agree upon, I believe, is more powers for the Office of Fair Trading to investigate what supermarkets pay for milk. When the OFT came before the all-party group, it said—this is set out in all our notes—that it would very much like to be able to investigate supermarkets and shine more of a spotlight on them, but that regrettably its hands were tied and it did not have the power to do so. The Bill will enable the OFT to scrutinise the supermarkets in a much better way. Tesco has announced an extra £25 million of investment to increase the price for milk. It is also getting local brands and offering its customers the opportunity to pay more for local milk such as Dorset milk in supermarkets in Dorset. I am negotiating with Tesco to try to get Shropshire milk to be sold in Shropshire supermarkets. I urge all MPs to negotiate and lobby with Tesco to get local milk in their supermarkets from their own counties. This is a very good first step and I applaud Tesco for this measure. I will not rest until I can go to Tesco and buy Shropshire milk from my local Shropshire dairy farmers. This Bill will place some extra pressure on the supermarkets. I commend the Bill to the House. Question put and agreed to. Bill ordered to be brought in by Daniel Kawczynski, Tim Farron, Mr. Stephen Crabb, Ann Winterton, Sir Nicholas Winterton, Lembit Opik, Mr. Roger Williams, Mr. Christopher Fraser, David T.C. Davies, Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger and Mr. Soames.