The dairy industry has questioned the value of a newly launched inquiry into the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain.
Leading industry figures claim the inquiry by the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Committee, announced last week, will not provide any meaningful insight to those dairy companies that are still in business.
The inquiry was simply an attempt at giving a degree of closure to those farmers affected by the collapse of the dairy co-op, according to one source.
"Will it result in any sensible piece of guidance or advice for the future? Probably not, because businesses do fail," he said.
The launch of the inquiry follows an Early Day Motion tabled at the beginning of last month by Lindsay Hoyle MP, which called for the government to instigate an official inquiry.
The committee's terms of reference include the impact of DFB's collapse on dairy farmers, the governance structure of DFB, Defra's response to the collapse and the lessons to be learned from its demise.
Although the NFU has welcomed the launch of the inquiry, it has queried MPs' ability to do a rigorous job in carrying out the inquiry. "I just hope this time they get it right. They need to do a better job than they did when they produced the retail report," said NFU Dairy Board chairman Gwyn Jones. "It's very important, if the committee does carry out this investigation, it does it thoroughly."
The issue of DFB going into receivership was a highly emotive one for the industry because of the large numbers of farmers who had lost money, he added.
DFB's receivers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, are due to publish their own report at the beginning of next month. The Efra committee claims it does not intend to cover the issues that will be considered by Pricewater-house Coopers.
The committee is asking for views from interested parties to be submitted by Monday 31 August.

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