LONDON, Feb. 21 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued text of the following speech:
Minette, thank you. It is the greatest possible pleasure to be here.
I must say not many peoplehave had the privilege of being set up for this discussion both by your president and by the Prime Minister in union this morning, and I'm sure that will give you opportunity for some challenging questions as we go along, as they both encouraged.
I regret to say that I'm not a farmer. But my father was. My father was a dairy farmer. And all my grandparents and great grandparents were farmers on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. And my uncle Charlie was farming on Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary in 1953. You can take it that I get farming and I get f...