Mr Marshall put at disadvantage by error

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32460, 21 November 1970, Page 1

Mr Marshall put at disadvantage by error

(From GARRY ARTHUR, London correspondent of "The Press")

LONDON, November 20.

An oversight by the British Government has led the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Marshall) into a tactical error which has put New Zealand at a disadvantage in discussing the coming levies on imported food.

When the British Ministers told Mr Marshall last month what form the levies would take, they did not tell him that their proposed levy of 3d a pound on lamb would not be named in the announcement to the House of Commons.

pose the levies at the earliest opportunity. There is clearly no prospect of persuading the British Government to abandon the levy system—which is both a-Conservative Party election promise and a step towards the Common Market system of controls.

land even less time to adjust to the new conditions if Britain enters. So if the commissioners’ document is endorsed by the E.E.C’s council of Ministers on Monday, New Zealand will have slipped successively from the expectation of “a permanent arrangement” to a “continuing arrangement subject to review” to a “diminishing market.” BIG HURDLE The commission’s attitude is that it wants to avoid encouraging New Zealand to perpetuate its dependence on butter production. The question is whether Britain is prepared to accept anything less than access for the same volume of New Zealand’s trade in dairy products during her transitional period. Some are even saying that New Zealand now looms as the biggest hurdle to British entry to the Common Market.

But Mr Marshall has said that he believes the actual level of the lamb levy to be negotiable. If he can bring it down below 3d a pound—or perhaps have a proportion exempted, it will be a major achievement. FIRST SET-BACK

In fact the exact amount was not named in the House, and the first mention of 3d in the pound came from Mt Marshall himself. This has put him in the position of having to try to negotiate a reduction from a figure which he has unwittingly publicly committed the British Government to impose. Progress with this problem will be reported to Mt Marshall when he returns to London from Brussels today. U.K. ADAMANT While Mr Marshall has been in Europe talking to the E.E.C. Governments, New Zealand officials have been battling with Whitehall over the food levies in the face of dogged determination by the British Government to im-

Mr Marshall’s itinerary takes him back to Brussels on Monday, before returning for discussions with the British Government at the highest level. He does so in the wake of the first major set-back to New Zealand’s hopes for sympathetic treatment by the E.E.C. The E.E.C.’s executive committee is reported to have approved a secret document which not only seeks to reduce the transitional period for British Agriculture to five years, but also requires New Zealand gradually to reduce its exports to the enlarged E.E.C. during the transitional period. This flatly rejects the British proposal that New Zealand’s “volume of trade” should be maintained throughout the transitional period, and gives New Zea-

At least the commission’s proposal—if it is accepted by 'the Council of Ministers—will test the point which has so far been nimbly dodged by Mr Rippon: how much of New Zealand’s economic, well-being is he prepared to sacrifice?

Some British politicians accuse him, and Mr Heath, of being prepared to take Britain into the E.E.C. at any cost, in spite of promises that Britain .will go in only if the terms are right.