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Rural Communities (Recession)

I wish to make a short contribution to today's timely and welcome debate. In doing so, I am wearing two hats. I wear my first hat as the MP representing Stapeley, where the farmers' milk co-operative Dairy Farmers of Britain is based; sadly, the company went into receivership on 3 June this year. I wear my second hat as the secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on dairy farmers, who make up a sector of British agriculture that is very important not only to my constituency and the rural areas of Cheshire, but to the United Kingdom as a whole. Let me deal first with Dairy Farmers of Britain. I thank the Minister for the update he gave us earlier about the circumstances in which the company finds itself. It is one of the dairy flagships of Crewe and Nantwich and it deserves as much support as possible, and I shall explain what exactly needs to happen in that regard. The fact that it has hit upon such hard times has sent shockwaves through my constituency's agricultural community and provides no relief to the people working there. We must remember that the community affected is made up of not just farmers, but non-agricultural staff as well. You may be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the agricultural community in Cheshire and across the whole of the UK relies heavily on the dairy industry to remain healthy through very difficult times. The DFOB's Stapeley headquarters employs some 40 permanent staff, plus field-based staff outside the Stapeley offices. These staff have no representative body to speak of, and a number of them have contacted me personally to express their concerns about how long they are going to hold on to their jobs and how much information they are going to receive through the process. I hope that the Minister will take that into account when he goes back to the Secretary of State and explains the position of my constituents who are suffering as a result of the current recession. On the basis of discussions from my office, the receivers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, seem to be following correctly laid down procedures, but that does not necessarily help those going home on Friday who do not know whether they will still have a job to come back to on Monday, particularly when they have seen the DFOB dairies at Bridgend and Blaydon simply closed, rather than sold on as an alternative. We hope that the position will be looked at further, but that is the current state of affairs and it is extremely worrying.