New Petitions

Good morning, convener and members of the Public Petitions Committee. My husband and I very much appreciate your invitation to speak to you today regarding our petition and to answer any questions that you might have.

As you will be aware, we were very disappointed when in reply to our initial petition, PE1263, the Government made a number of inaccurate statements. We were also particularly disappointed that others who had been severely affected and who had written to the PPC were not acknowledged by the PPC when the minister appeared before the committee.

This saga has both ruled and ruined our lives for more than 15 years, during which time we and others have regularly sought justice. For those affected, it has been a form of mental cruelty and financial abuse. As we have said before, all that these dairy farmers wanted to do was use their own property—their milk quota—to run their own business, just as the other 99 per cent of dairy farmers in the UK were allowed to do. My husband and others were denied the freedom to run their businesses as they saw fit.

Dairy farming by its very nature consists of long working hours, seven days a week and 365 days a year. Often the farmer works alone and even on a family farm they can feel very isolated. The fact that the farmer’s home is tied to the farm makes any decisions about the farm even more critical. These were all family farms, not large corporations. The farmers were not in a position and should not have been expected to forfeit their property in order to support the community, as the Scottish Government appears to have expected them to do. They were struggling to support themselves and their families. It was a situation in which the weakest were exploited and bullied into not fighting for their legitimate rights. It is devastating for any farmer to be forced out of their farm or to face the prospect of being forced out, through no fault of their own. They feel ashamed and guilty; very often generations of toil are at stake. Their family and social life have been totally disrupted.

It was particularly difficult post 1996 and throughout the years of the BSE crisis, when all cattle over 30 months old had to be destroyed. Although some compensation was paid, it fell well short of the cost of producing the animals, which exacerbated the problem for anyone having to give up or reduce production at that time. That was why it was so critical for the dairy farmers to have access to the UK market for selling or leasing their quota, which at the time had considerable value. They needed the full value, not to squander on holidays or fancy yachts, but to pay overdrafts, maintain their farms and put money towards diversification. I will quote from a book on human rights law:

“It is, in principle, hard to explain a situation in which an individual’s rights can be restricted in order to promote the general wealth of the community since one of the central aims of human rights is to ensure that individuals and minorities are protected as society pursues its collective interests.”

I will give you some of the facts. Government consultations were not done correctly or in accordance with Government criteria. The ring fence was introduced not in 1994, but when quotas were introduced in 1984. There was no guaranteed market for farmers’ milk, certainly post 1994, when the milk marketing boards were forced by the Government to disband.

The rights of the individual were never mentioned in any consultation, neither by the Government nor by anyone working on its behalf. Farmers were advised neither of their rights, nor of the fact that they had any rights. There was nowhere for any dairy farmer to go to assert his rights, and there was nowhere for farmers to go for help or to properly challenge what was being forced upon them.

Sometimes, the only milk buyer stopped uplifting a farmer’s milk, which obviously had a catastrophic effect on his ability to earn a living. What was the farmer supposed to do? He had no income, but he still had all the outgoings. When the milk price dropped below the cost of production, what were dairy farmers to do? When they took ill or had an accident, what were they to do?

The Government did nothing to minimise the devastating impact that was being felt by some farmers. There were several less restrictive alternatives. Only in one year out of the last 30 did the southern isles produce their full quota. That meant that there was a lot of dormant quota, which was of no benefit to farmers, the creamery or the community. Only three farmers in Arran supplied the Arran creamery, not the 30 or 35 that the minister stated at the previous meeting. The single farm payment was available to all farmers in the European Community, not just to those within the ring fence. The Government itself was confiscating quota from the island areas. Alex Salmond, the previous First Minister, told the Leveson inquiry:

“all politicians, like all citizens, have the right to correct ... factual errors”.

We think that we are entitled to have the Government acknowledge that what we have said is factually correct.

It was extremely difficult to understand and forecast contradictory Government policy. As we have said, the Government was confiscating quota from the ring-fenced area, yet producers were not allowed to lease it out, even when it would have come back at the end of the year. The Government acknowledged that producers in Islay needed the full value of their quota to allow them to diversify, yet producers in Kintyre, for example, who had no market for their milk, were deemed not to need the value of their quota.

Hardly a day passes in the Scottish Parliament when we do not hear the words “fairness”, “equality” and “justice”. In this case, we and others feel that we have not been treated fairly. We have not had equality of opportunity, for example, to diversify like the other 99 per cent of dairy farmers in the UK, and we certainly feel that so far there has been no justice.

On 11 September 2014, the previous First Minister, Alex Salmond, said that human rights are guaranteed in Scotland. That has certainly not been the case in this situation, with the result that severe sacrifices have had to be made. Some dairy farmers have been forced to give up their farms, some have been forced into impoverished retirement, some have had to be separated from their families to seek work and others have struggled to keep their farms.

I will make one final point. Despite my quoting Alex Salmond, this is not a party-political issue. There will be farmers affected from all political parties and none.

My husband and I will do our best to answer any questions. Thank you.

That has been the case more or less since 1996. After the milk marketing boards were taken away, the farmers had no power in the market at all. From 1996 onwards, the price went down. That was when a lot of people were forced out, particularly in our area. We had eight or 12 farmers a year going out of business, but they had no option because they were not allowed to sell their quota outside the ring fence or to lease it out. Something like 6,000 dairy farmers in Britain leased out all of their quota in 2000. At least they were able to get in some money, but people in our area were not allowed to do that.

The situation has got worse. For various reasons, the ones who were at the top are now coming nearer the bottom. As you will understand, people might at different times in their life have invested a lot of money in land, stock, buildings and machinery; they might have put up new sheds at the time, and of course they were the first affected when the price went down. Some have survived, but only about 25 per cent of the farmers who were in business when the ring fence started are still in business. A lot have been forced out of our area.

First, we would like the Government to acknowledge that the statements that we have made are factually correct and that they correct the inaccurate statements that were previously made to the Public Petitions Committee.

We are ordinary members of the public, so we are not sure about exactly what it is open to the committee to do. However, we wondered whether it could seek an opinion from a senior advocate. Is that a possibility? Can the Scottish Human Rights Commission give the committee any advice?

In 2004, I think, the Government brought out a consultation document on single farm payment entitlement trading. It was very clear in that consultation document that the Government was being very careful about human rights, the free market and competition law. We wonder why that approach was not mirrored in the milk quota consultations. We believe that the Government did not initially consider human rights in respect of ring fencing. It possibly did so at a later date but decided either that it was too late or that it did not want to do anything about the matter. However, that does not alter the fact that people were put at a severe disadvantage, because the quota at that time was worth a considerable amount of money and people had invested on the basis that they had the value of that quota, just as everybody else in the UK did. Then, of course, they were not allowed to access that value.

Is it possible for me to make a couple of other points? The value of the quota is now virtually nothing. Many people have gone out of milk production—

They have been forced out.

Yes. They have been forced out because of the low milk prices. The important thing is what the value was at that stage. Those people lost out because they should have had the value at that stage. Am I correct in understanding that, if the Human Rights Act 1998 was breached, the Scotland Act 1998 was also breached, as human rights are part of that? Perhaps Mr MacAskill knows more about that.

I suggest that it is not only article 1 of protocol 1 that is involved, although Mr MacAskill will know more about this than I do. The Government appears to have accepted that article 1 is involved, but I suggest that article 8 is involved as well, because of the devastating effect on the farmers and their families.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, convener and members of the Public Petitions Committee.