1 Aug 2007
Totnes Pounds Raised in the House!
I was fascinated to see that Totnes MP Anthony Steen raised both Transition Town Totnes and the Totnes Pound in a question in the House of Commons a couple of weeks ago. This is in the wake of the piece he wrote in the local papers, waxing lyrical about TTT. In Questions on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the subject of local food production, he managed, in one question, to cover peak oil, the fragility of import dependency, the role of local currencies and the Transition concept, not bad! The exchange ran as follows;
**House of Commons debates. Thursday, 19 July 2007**
**Anthony Steen** (Totnes, Conservative)
Does the Minister agree that increasing oil prices will push up the cost of buying produce from abroad? The Totnes pound, with which she might be familiar, offers a 5 per cent. discount on locally produced goods, and 70 local producers are offering it. Does not that initiative provide a good way of proceeding? There will be a stick and a local carrot; the stick will be rising oil prices and the local carrot will be an inducement to people to buy local goods. Is the Minister familiar with the Transition Town Totnes project?
**Joan Ruddock** (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
I think that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not yet being familiar with that project, but I intend to become familiar with it very soon. Consumers want to know where their food comes from, how it was grown and the circumstances of the people who produce it. It is good for both business and consumers if more local produce is made available, if it is appropriately described, and if, as is the case where there are markets, people can meet the producers. If the product is right, it is good for our health, too.
You can see the rest of the debate here.