Ex-minister shunned aid ideas for dairy farmers, says Shropshire MP

Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski said Mr Miliband dismissed out of hand his calls for a badger cull and supermarket regulator when he raised his concerns in 2007.

Mr Kawczynski, who founded the All Party Parliamentary Group on Dairy Farming, was speaking during a special Commons debate on the crisis in the industry.

MPs were told that poverty and hardship were rife among dairy farmers, who in many cases were losing £5,000 a month.

"We formed the all-party group because in Shropshire, almost a decade ago, we realised the crisis dairy farmers faced," said Mr Kawczynski.

Export

"After a year of taking evidence, the group came up with two recommendations: a limited cull of badgers to prevent the spread of bovine TB, and a grocery adjudicator to do something to regulate the supermarkets and their conduct towards milk producers and dairy farmers.

"We took those to David Miliband who laughed us out of his office."

Mr Kawczynski called for the Government to do more to promote the export of British produce and also to make more use of EU subsidies. He said: "I'm told there are EU subsidies available for children under five to make sure they have milk and apparently we are not claiming all the subsidies we are entitled to."

Mr Kawczynski also called on Agriculture Minister George Eustice to step up efforts to promote British milk abroad particularly in Russia which has now lifted a ban on British beef, worth "£150 million a year to our cattle industry".

Montgomeryshire MP Glyn Davies also called for an export drive, saying: " China is a huge growing market and we need to go there and to other parts of the world."