I do not think the possibility of establishing a tea market here in any way makes an argument for supporting this Bill. I think the idea of a tea market here is very largely a pipe dream. Any advantages we will have in that respect are paralleled by advantages which other countries have because other countries have larger populations and are closer to the large centres of population. Most European countries will have advantages in the matter of establishing a tea market that would be greater than anything we could possibly have. Therefore, I think the idea of establishing a tea market here is a dream and does not, in fact, make weight for a Bill of this kind.
I support this Bill for a number of reasons. Frankly, I would prefer if this Bill provided for bulk purchase in which a single organisation could buy all our teas in the country of origin or elsewhere and sell those teas on a non-profit-making basis to everybody engaged in the tea trade in this country.
Notwithstanding what Deputy Sweetman says, I believe the man who goes into a market—whether it is a fair, a shop or whether he is seeking a service—and says: "I have £5,000,000 in my pocket; I want the best possible price I can get" has obviously a much better bargaining power than a fellow who says: "I have £1,000 in my pocket. I want £2,000 worth of tea. If you give me £2,000 worth of tea I will pay you £1,000 now and, one of these days, I will give you the other £1,000." Obviously, the man with the money in his pocket, in the commercial world in which we live, has the bigger bargaining power. That is our everyday experience.
If we have a bulk-buying organisation which would send a buyer to India who could say: "Our requirements are 24,000,000 lb. of tea and we have all the money in our pockets to buy it", surely he must be able to get a better price than a whole flock of relatively impoverished people, small in their own line of business, striving to buy tea at whatever price they can manage to get it on their completely insignificant power so far as the strength of the tea market in India is concerned.
Therefore, frankly, I would prefer if this Bill were to establish a bulk-buying organisation on a non-profit-making basis to get us good quality teas as cheaply as possible and to sell them to the tea merchants here at the lowest possible price consistent with not losing money. This Bill does not do that. If I have any complaint about it, it is the imperfection that it does not provide for the establishment of a bulk-buying organisation of that kind.
At all events, let those who criticise the idea of confining our purchases to the country of origin remember that for 20 years now we have been buying tea in the country of origin. That has been the normal pattern of our buying over the past 20 years; we have been buying only in the country of origin. This Bill is merely continuing what has been there for 20 years. To allow people to go to any market in the world they like or to places where tea is not grown but merely auctioned for the benefit of the auctioneers is going back to a situation which we have not experienced for the past 20 years. I think Tea Importers did a very good job in extremely difficult circumstances during the war years and during, perhaps, the worst post-war years from the point of view of buying tea.
From the point of view of buying tea, I think the bulk buying has shown up to advantage, not merely in war time but in peacetime as well. Frankly, I would prefer personally if this Bill were to enshrine an organisation for buying tea in bulk, but there can be no argument I know of— and certainly those who have the arguments have managed to keep them pretty secretive up to now—against requiring people to buy tea in the country of origin. At present there is only one organisation which can import sugar and in that connection there has been a gain to this country. Now we are paralleling that by establishing an organisation which is to be the only one that can purchase tea. If we were right in regard to the sugar company I cannot understand what argument there is against tea. I think the system makes for order and planning.
The only outstanding question is why registered tea dealers should be confined to buying their tea in the country of origin. The alternative is to let them go to Mincing Lane. One might say they could go to Amsterdam or anywhere else, but the only practical alternative, in our circumstances, to buying in the country of origin is to buy in Mincing Lane. In this country we have large tea selling organisations which have more than a nodding acquaintance with Mincing Lane and, of course, if you allow people to go back to Mincing Lane, these people will be completely unconcerned with the idea of buying in the country of origin. Their parent company does that and regards it as good business to buy in the country of origin, but the offspring established in this country will be required by the parent—who himself already has bought in the country of origin—to buy from the parent where the parent has a depot, and that depot is not far from Mincing Lane. Now, all the big tea importers in England buy in the gardens and in the auctions in India. They would not think of going to Amsterdam to do it; they would not think of coming here to buy it if we had a tea market. They buy in the country of origin and out of the accumulated stocks so bought they will require the commercial offspring here to buy tea.
Deputy Sweetman appears to think it would be possible to keep these advocates of Mincing Lane purchasers from sending packaged tea in here, if we permitted purchases in the Mincing Lane market. I do not think it would. The present package tax is a pretty well fixed package tax and, as the Minister says, it cannot be changed except, if at all, by going through an elaborate process and possibly then you could not even change the tax because of our contractual obligations under the tariff régime. I do not think the present package tax would be a serious obstacle to branches of their companies here buying package tea in London.
The package tax on a packet of tea is about 2d. What is to prevent people packaging 1 lb. of tea in London and sending it to Dublin, even if they have to pay the 2d.? Between the time tea lands in Dublin and gets into the hands of the retailer, there is possibly 1/-, if not more, added to the lb. of tea. What is to prevent a person packaging in London and saying: "All right, we will pay the tax, less the weight of the packet in which the tea is packed, and we will send that across and sell it in Ireland." That can be done; there is no difficulty in doing it, if you can buy in Mincing Lane.
What follows from that? It means that the packaging instead of being done here, is done there; it means that the storage of tea, instead of taking place here, will take place in the London docks; it means that the warehousing of the tea would also take place in London and there will be a regular drip of tea into this country as this country requires it. The breaking of the bond, the blending of the tea, the storage of the tea, the insurance of the cargo of tea, the packaging of the tea and all the other ancillary operations will be done in London, to the detriment of everybody who now gets a living at any one of those operations in this country. For those reasons, it must obviously be more advantageous to us —at least until we are shown there are opposite advantages—to buy our tea in the country of origin and do all these operations in this country.
Deputy Sweetman makes the point that, if we allow people to go back and buy in Mincing Lane, the kindly merchants of that commercial centre will buy all the tea for us in India and they will package it for us, they will insure the cargo coming in and do all these things. Of course they will. Why would they not do so? But they will charge the tea consumer in this country for all those operations. Is it not better, if we have to pay for those operations, that we should pay our own people by arranging that they will engage in those operations in this country?
On the question of Mincing Lane providing the capital, it is true that Mincing Lane provides the capital, but only because we are so intellectually Victorian in the way we handle our own money. The Central Bank lends £70,000,000 to the British Government, which now owes it £70,000,000 in guarantee for this loan. If the Central Bank took even £5,000,000 of what it lends the British Government, it could finance the whole tea trade. It could do that by discounting the tea organisation's bills or by a regular advance from year to year to the tea traders, which would earn more money for the Central Bank than they get on their present lendings to the British Government. It would ensure that there could be no default, because every year our people consume approximately 24,000,000 lb. of tea at a money cost of £5,000,000. The capital problem presents no difficulty, if we have only the sense to adjust our financial methods to enable us to meet any difficulty which arises because of our own folly in the way in which we invest our money elsewhere.
I have heard no argument, no solid argument whatever, against buying in the country of origin. There are many arguments which have been repeated many times in the course of this discussion showing why we should buy in the country of origin. It is because I think there are advantages in buying in that way that we support this section and the Bill in its entirety.
