Cable and Chancellor Clash Over Twickenham Bees

12.38.31pm GMT Fri 12th Mar 2004

In an exchange with the Chancellor of the Exchequer's during Treasury questions last this week, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, attacked local MP Vincent Cable for having undertaken to support more funding for research into beekeeping!

It followed a question by Vincent Cable in his capacity as Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor on the growing budget deficit. Gordon Brown reacted by saying he had studied Vincent Cable's website to find examples of new Liberal Democrat spending commitments. The item he came up with was Vincent Cable's commitment to encourage beekeeping, based on his support for the Twickenham apiary in Whitton.

Vincent Cable said: "this was basically light hearted banter. But there is a serious point. As it happens bees are probably the most economically useful creatures on earth because of the role they play in crop pollination. Under our crazy system billions of pounds of tax-payers money are poured, wastefully, into production subsidies and chemically intensive agriculture (which incidentally kills off the bee population). Yet a few thousand pounds in bee disease research could save millions. While the Chancellor was trying to be amusing I worry that he doesn't begin to understand basic environmental economics".

Vincent Cable credited local beekeepers in Twickenham with firing his enthusiasm for the subject: "an immensely useful hobby which deserves more official support".

Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD): First, I apologise to the Chancellor and to the shadow Chancellor because I must leave early in order to present the Liberal Democrat alternative Budget, which is based on sound finance, tough choices in spending and fairer taxes. I am sure the Chancellor will endorse those principles and even draw inspiration from them.

On Government debt, the Government have apparently identified large savings as a result of the Gershon review. Will those savings be banked, as I hope, in order to cut Government debt and the growing deficit, or will the Chancellor use them to fund additional spending commitments?

Mr. Brown: If, as the hon. Gentleman says, the Liberals are announcing hard choices today, it will be the first time in all my years in the House of Commons. When he examines his spending commitments, which he says he has reduced, he might examine his own website, www.vincentcable.com, where he states:

"Benefits from bees' natural pollination activities are enormous, worth billions of pounds . . . I have pressed the Ministry of Agriculture for a bigger research commitment."

We will take the Liberal Democrats seriously when they reduce their spending commitments, which they continue to make. As regards national debt, I think he will agree with me that the decisions that we made in 1997, including the sale of spectrum, our new fiscal rules and the manner in which we made the Bank of England independent, were the right decisions to keep debt low, and the Conservative party opposed all of them.