| Cocoa and Chocolate
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Mr. Rooker: What I want to do is defend what is European--I never thought that I would say that--which includes the enormous variety in the methods of chocolate manufacture. That is the beauty of the industry in the European Community. We want to preserve the common European heritage of different ways of making chocolate. We want citizens of different member states to be able to enjoy other varieties of chocolate. The avantage of our method of chocolate production--using up to 5 per cent. vegetable fat--is that we can manufacture products that cannot be made without vegetable fats. Moreover, those products last longer and are more acceptable in some of our many export markets because they do not melt at such a low temperature as other chocolate products. I cannot comment on Irish coffee beans. Mr. Paice: I would happily be forcibly fed Irish coffee, but may I change the subject slightly? I am sure that the Minister will accept that, whatever happens to the directive, it will obviously have an impact on the industry. It will almost certainly mean that some changes will have to be made; we do not know whether they will be minor or major, as we cannot foresee the outcome of the negotiations. What are the Minister's views on Cocoa Research (UK) Ltd., the research and development body for the cocoa-chocolate industry? The huge tax changes being introduced by the Dept of Trade and Industry will mean that the money that is available to that body for research will be reduced to less than £50,000 a year, which will not go far, even in stable conditions, and certainly not if the directive causes huge changes. What steps have the Minister and his Department taken to persuade the DTI that the tax-exemption status currently enjoyed by Cocoa Research (UK) Ltd. should continue? Mr. Rooker: All that I can say is that the question of tax exemption for all British research institutes is the subject of discussions between Departments. Mr. Bayley: I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Minister's comments on the importance of diversity in consumer choice. One should be against neither the continental nor the British recipe. One should allow consumers to buy what they wish. Is my hon. Friend the Minister aware that the chairman of the European Parliament consumer affairs committee, the Labour MEP Phillip Whitehead, organised a blind tasting of British and continental chocolate products at the end of one of his committee meetings? Committee members could not tell the difference--I should say that they could not tell which product was which; they could obviously tell the difference--because a majority favoured what turned out to be the UK product. If such false and malign arguments about quality crop up at the Council of Ministers, my hon. Friend should remind his fellow Ministers what happened at that committee meeting and warn them that they too risked embarrassment if they had a blind tasting and were unable to decide which product was which. Mr. Rooker: I shall be visiting a large chocolate manufacturer on Friday and meeting representatives of the chocolate industry there. While my hon. Friend was speaking, I was thinking that, although I am not responsible for planning the menus for all the meetings that will take place during our presidency, I have no doubt that we shall force-feed Ministers with the gastronomic delights of the British diet. The British way of doing things will of course include after-dinner mints. We may have some real blind tasting after some of those dinners. Mr. Paice: It is questionable whether there will be any sense of taste left at that stage in the proceedings. Drinking chocolate is mentioned in the directive. It is proposed that drinking chocolate should stay under the heading of chocolate. However, some countries believe that, because of its slightly different composition, it should be listed in section 1 under the heading, ``cocoa and cocoa powders''. What is the Government's view about that designation of drinking chocolate? Mr. Rooker: That is an excellent question. I know nothing about the tradition of drinking chocolate in other European countries, but I know that it is a tradition here. We want to maintain the existing designation of drinking chocolate. It is part of our tradition and we shall certainly not support a change that could alter it. There may or may not be drinking chocolate in other European states--apart from Ireland and Denmark--but it is certainly part of our tradition, and we intend to keep it. Mr. Paice: My final question is about the world trade in chocolate. The directive deals not only with the single market, but seeks to open more opportunities throughout the world. I am concerned that in some parts of the world British chocolate is banned--I think particularly of Saudi Arabia--because of the absurd prospect that the milk could somehow be linked to BSE or to other related health matters. Will the Minister take this opportunity to tell the Committee how much importance the Government attach to those export markets? What steps are the Government taking to persuade those Governments who have banned the import of British milk chocolate that the basis for doing so is wholly fallacious and lacks any scientific evidence? Mr. Rooker: I can answer that. I freely admit that before I entered the Ministry I was unaware of the dairy ban imposed by some countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, based on those spurious reasons. We have spelt out to the Saudis in as clear and friendly terms as possible that there is no scintilla of evidence--scientific or otherwise--of any BSE problem whatever with milk in this country. We have a high-quality herd and a high-quality product, and we take extensive steps to protect the quality of our milk. The Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee has considered the matter in producing its advice on BSE; it has always given milk an absolutely clean bill of health. There are no rumours; our milk is absolutely clean--pasteurised milk, that is; real milk, or ``dirty milk'', as some call it, is a separate issue on which we are consulting. We have spelt out those facts to the Saudis during ministerial visits in this country and in Saudi Arabia and through diplomatic channels. The ban is a major problem; the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it; it prevents the export of quality British products to what is a friendly country, to which we export many other products. We want to get the issue settled as quickly as possible. The Chairman: If no other hon. Members wish to ask questions, we shall now proceed to the debate on the motion. Motion made, and Question proposed,
11.22 amMr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire): I shall not be quite as brief as the Minister, but he may well want to respond. Drafting of the directive began during the previous Government's time in office; indeed some of the explanatory memorandums were signed by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) when she held the office of Parliamentary Secretary. We recognise the need to move forward from the rather unsatisfactory present situation, although we have for a long time held the exemptions that we needed for our chocolate. I am slightly concerned by some of the compromises that appear to be in prospect on the issue of labelling. Obviously, I welcome the Minister's objection to double labelling; it is clearly sensible to remove that proposal. As the progenitor of the single market, the objective of the British Government should be to work towards a single definition and single labels for different forms of chocolate. It would be a barrier to trade that we should resist if British milk chocolate had to be called something else or given a qualifying term, whatever that might be, for export outside Britain. There is huge scope for further expansion of the chocolate market--for both milk chocolate and the other forms of chocolate from other European countries. The countries that are taking a different attitude from us have perhaps not taken on board the fact that any expansion of the world trade in chocolate and cocoa products is good for the primary producers of cocoa beans, and for other African states who are producers of vegetable beans. Whether or not chocolate contains 5 per cent. vegetable fat, any expansion of the market will still require more chocolate, which must be beneficial. I welcome the Minister's comments about the need to promote consumer choice; I know that he would agree that informed choice is required. As he says, labelling needs to be perfectly readable, but we should not place too onerous a burden on producers by making them produce different labelling for many different market places. I congratulate the Commission on the 5 per cent. vegetable fat proposal, although I am slightly reserved about the subsidiarity issue because it carries risks of market interference. However, in principle the proposal is a clear step forward. On the Minister's response to my question about the meetings and discussions he may have had with foreign Ministers, I accept his word that the European Members of Parliament who voted for the amendments were cross-party and cross-national, but there is no doubt--I am sure that the Minister will agree--that the focus of opposition to some of the amendments is from several countries that object to the use of any vegetable fat and to too much milk in chocolate. I was concerned that the Minister seemed to suggest that, because we support the Commission, that is sufficient. During the six months of the British presidency, it is the Government's responsibility to try to broker an agreement with those countries. I therefore hope that the Minister will make the effort to speak to Ministers from the countries that are in the van of opposition to some aspects to persuade them that their fears are ill-founded. I made it clear that we should press for a single definition of milk chocolate, taking a maxima or a minima approach so that we did not have the two different approaches in regard to the qualifying term, whether or not it is derogatory--although obviously it is unacceptable that it should be derogatory--by changing the documentation that covers those two issues. I am also concerned about the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) about the next world trade talks and the pressure to cut export refunds. I hope that the Minister will honour his undertaking to respond to my hon. Friend on the Government's policies on those issues; perhaps he would send a copy to me. The Minister will know that the export of chocolate and confectionary, and of many other food products outside the EU, is viable only if the extra costs incurred by buying CAP-supported European commodities are refunded at the point of export to enable them to compete with non-EU products. The Opposition support the Government's general approach, which is generally the line that we took when we were in office. However, the Government need to be more pro-active in making sure that they take the lead in brokering an agreement among the countries that are less happy than we about the Commission's draft directive. The sooner we get the directive cleared, the better. From my experience, I accept that those things take time but the Government have a vital role, particularly given our presidency, in taking a strong lead in getting that resolution.
11.27 am
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 1998 | Prepared 14 January 1998 |
