Please contact you MP

Earlier this week I emailed our MP (Tim Farron) about the problems faced by dairy farmers after the collapse of DFoB. Below is a copy of his reply - so please ask your MP (if you're not Westmorland and Lonsdale) to support him.


Dear Kathleen

Thank you very much for your recent email with regard to the plight of dairy farmers after the collapse of DFOB.

I strongly agree with your sentiments and the prospect of the need to import milk is nothing less than a scandal. I fear that the place of the Government’s agricultural policy in history will be seen to have been severely damaging by its neglect.

My views are summarised in the following Early Day Motion that I have put before the House and I am delighted to report that it has already been supported by 30 other MPs: -

EDM 1618 DAIRY FARMERS OF BRITAIN 09.06.2009
Farron, Timothy
That this House is appalled by the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain which went into receivership owing £50 million to its 1,800 members; is deeply concerned that the impact on the UK dairy industry and on individual dairy farmers and their families will be devastating; deplores the banks' deliberate timing of the calling in of the loan to Dairy Farmers of Britain, causing the calling in of the receivers to maximise the benefit to secured creditors at the expense of those member farmers' May milk cheques; calls on the Government to underwrite the payments that Dairy Farmers of Britain were due to pay to dairy farmers for milk supplied in May or to force Dairy Farmers of Britain's bankers to pay the May milk cheques; also calls on the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Prime Minister to intervene to ensure that buyers do not exploit stricken dairy farmers by paying sub-market prices; and endorses the Farmers Guardian petition which urges the dairy industry's biggest customers to both buy British and to ensure that dairy farmers receive a fair return for their produce.
I think that this must be the EDM to which you were referring.
With best wishes

Yours sincerely

TIM FARRON MP