Catalogue description Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: Sugar Divisions: Registered Files, Sugar and Sugar Beet (SUG Series)

Government interest in the sugar beet industry began with a subsidy introduced for a ten-year period in 1925. Under the Sugar Industry (Reorganisation) Act 1936 the subsidy was made permanent and the sugar beet companies were amalgamated to form a state-aided British Sugar Corporation. The Act also established a Sugar Commission, set up on 27 May 1936. This body was charged with the duty of keeping under review the growing of sugar beet and the manufacture, refining, marketing and consumption of sugar, and also had important advisory duties. Its main functions were suspended in September 1939 and under the Sugar Industry Act 1942 all of them were transferred to the Ministry of Food.

In 1955, the new Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food took over the Sugar Division. Since then, responsibility for beet and cane sugar (and also artificial sweeteners and isoglucose) has lain with the following divisions: Sugar (1955-1957); Sugar and Crop Production (1957-1959); Sugar and Manufactured Foods (1959-1963); Sugar, Tropical and Manufactured Foodstuffs (1963-1969); Sugar and Tropical Foodstuffs (1969-1972); Sugar (1972-1982); Sugar, Oils and Fats (1982-1990); Sugar, Tobacco, Oils and Fats (1990-1991); and, Sugar, Tobacco, Oilseeds and Proteins (1991-).

In addition, the Ministry of Food's Finance Department Sugar Division came across to the United Ministry as the Sugar (Finance) Division, in which form it remained until 1959 when it was absorbed into the Finance Department. Direct trading in sugar was now carried on by the British Sugar Corporation, over which, under the Sugar Act 1956, the ministry had certain powers of direction and control.

That act also set up a Sugar Board to regulate the marketing of sugar produced in the Commonwealth and imported into Britain, and to take over from the Ministry responsibility for deficiency payments to the corporation. The Sugar Board was dissolved in February 1977, and its property, rights and liabilities transferred to the ministry.