Without a division we will never know whether Neil changed his mind, he may not have even been in the chamber for the U-Turn debate. So he may have escaped cleaning out the stables.

Yesterday Neil Parish was at the Commons environment committee where George Eustice, the environment secretary, was giving evidence.

“ The hearing opened with some highly critical questions from Neil Parish, a Conservative, who complained that the visa systems offered by the government were not doing enough to address the serious problems facing farmers. He went on:

All we are doing at the moment is staggering on, as far as I can see. The pig sector is not profitable. Pig prices are on the floor …

A lot of pig farmers will stop keeping pigs, bluntly. Poultry is being reduced. All of these visas are very time limited, and half the time people don’t want to come for a short period.

What gets me so cross is we put in place a system that’s not working. And when the industry doesn’t take it up, you’ll say the industry didn’t take it up, so it’s all the industry’s fault. No, it’s not the industry’s fault.

We’ve got a very good industry which, as far as I can see, we are not actually destroying, but we are actually making it very difficult.

Eustice said he thought the visa scheme should be working for the pig and poultry sector. He also said that pig production had increased by about 7% or 8% this year, and that was part of the reason for the problem of over-supply.”