Doctors warning
Doctors warning
is cold comfort
at unions agm…
By Shelley Wright
FARM minister Jack Cunningham was given a decidedly cool reception when he spoke at the NFU annual meeting in London on Wednesday.
Sir David Naish, who retired as union president this week, pleaded with the minister to show angry and frightened farmers that the government was committed to the agriculture industry. "We need to know if the government understands and cares."
But the minister, although insisting that government understood the problems facing the industry, immediately angered the audience by insisting that there would be no blank cheques and that farmers had to accept the challenge of change without relying on "ever increasing subsidies from the taxpayer". And, much to Sir Davids disgust, Dr Cunningham said: "Farmers need to be good business people as well as good farmers."
He said he could have come to the meeting with a cheque. That would have made people happy, but only for a month or so because the industrys problems were not short-term. What a responsible government had to do was to address the fundamental problems, such as the long-term downward trend in farm incomes, oversupply of beef throughout the EU, and the large number of UK farmers that were surviving only because of subsidies.
"The NFU has a role to play in developing policy for the new millennium. The challenge to you is to accept that role. The choice is yours," Dr Cunningham said. But he warned that the government would respond to dialogue, but never to threats. And he added that blocking ports and interfering with trade were totally unproductive activities that would alienate other EU member states at a time when the UK needed support to get the beef ban lifted.
The consistent theme throughout the two-day conference was the overwhelming need for UK farmers to be allowed to compete on equal terms with the rest of Europe.
The minister said he agreed with the principle. "If society calls upon you to be a competitive industry, you have the right to ask for fair conditions of competition." But he immediately countered that with: "That does not mean that the UK government should match every last ecu that other EU governments give to their farmers." Offering no promises, he said he would keep the agrimonetary compensation issue under consideration.
Speaking later, Sir David, in an emotional speech that marked the end of his seven-year presidency, said there was obviously a great deal of work to be done to make the government realise that farmers were bleeding to death. The only way that could be done was through unity.
"Most of you will be as disgruntled, dissatisfied and disillusioned as am I following the ministers presence here today. I cannot believe that a minister could disregard our legitimate request for equality with such a lack of interest and concern.
"We want nothing more than this, nothing less is acceptable. We seek and must be granted equality of treatment," Sir David said.
Outgoing NFUpresident Sir David Naish called for unity in his last speech.