Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and...

Files relating to the work of the committees set up again in the 1950s to monitor the operations of the main agricultural marketing boards, in particular the Consumers' Committee for Great Britain and the Committee of Investigation for Great Britain.

Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food , from 1991

Various ministerial committees had been instituted to monitor the procedures of the main marketing boards under the Agricultural Marketing Acts 1931, 1933, 1949 and 1958. Members of these committees were nominated to represent various parts of the agricultural industry, the ministry and consumers. One of the most important organisations was the Consumers' Committee for Great Britain, supported by the English, Welsh and Scottish Committees. Their main function was to assess the effect of the regulations promulgated by marketing boards on the habits/convenience of the product purchasers.

The actual assessment of the force and justice of a complaint, from whatever source, against a marketing board, fell to the Committee of Investigation for Great Britain. Since most of the complaints came from product producers, this committee became regarded as an unofficial arbiter. It had ready access to ministers but it had no means of imposing sanctions.

Although the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) acted as an administrative agent for instituting the committees, providing venues for their meetings, monitoring their work and presenting their reports to the relevant minister, the committees themselves were expected to be completely independent. This led to tensions as to the amount and type of information the ministry should supply to committees, although eventually guide-lines were agreed.

In the immediate post-war period MAFF was interested in the potential and possible growth of co-operatives and several files in this series deal with the setting up, terms of reference and ultimate failure of the Advisory Committee on Training Courses for Staffs of Co-operatives. The proposed courses favoured administrative rather than practical work and, since co-operatives tended to be small units, releasing staff for the periods of time proposed, proved difficult.