Tied Cottages
Slit,—Coming at a time when it is so important to keep up agricultural production at home, the Government's decision to bring to an end the agricultural cottage certificate procedure has come as an unpleasant shock to farmers. No valid argument can be brought against the certificate system. Indeed, three.days after Dr. Dalton's announcement,• the County Agricultural Committees were defended by the Government in the House of Commons during the adjournment debate on tied cottages in Scotland. Then Mr. Thomas Fraser, Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, said that the committees were doing the job properly, because they only issued certificates in case of a real agricultural need.
The procedure for deciding applications for certificates is simple. The County Agricultural Executive Committee appoints a panel to hear the case. This consists of a worker, a farmer and an independent chairman. Until recently I used to sit as a farmer representative on the panel in this county. Everything was perfectly fair. Both sides were usually repre- sented by a solicitor, and the only deciding factor was the question of agricultural need. I cannot imagine a fairer way of doing it.
The County Agricultural Committee has to confirm the panel's decision, and this is perhaps where the system has been abused. I have found, and I believe this may be fairly general in the country, that if the panel refuses to grant a certificate of need to a big and influential farmer, he is apt to try to lobby the farmers and landowner members on the committee to vote against the decision. But, even if this abuse exists, it is no reason for abolishing the whole-certificate procedure. It would be quite sufficient to delegate full powers to the panel, so that their findings did not have to be subject to confirmation by the committee. If the Government had proposed to do this, they would have been quite justified. However, to pretend, as Dr. Dalton does, that farmers do not need more cottages on their farms for workers at the moment is a completely unrealistic approach to the agricultural 'expansion programme.
—Yours truly, RICHARD LAMB. Stone House, Hayton, How Mill, Carlisle.
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