House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Mar 1990

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better codes of practice, better training for enforcement officers and, in some local authorities, more enforcement officers. That will involve more expenditure by local authorities. The Secretary of State for the Environment has agreed that £30 million will be taken into account in next year's rate support grant settlement, enabling us to let local authorities have the necessary resources to do the job properly.

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop (Tiverton) : What does that mean? Does it mean that £30 million will be coming from central Government to cover those costs, or will additional sums have to be raised through the community charge? If the latter, how much of that £30 million will have to be raised in that way?

Mr. Gummer : The money will come from central Government, but, because of the block grant, it is not possible to direct that particular part of the money directly for spending in each local authority. Local authorities will have that extra resource, but they will have to use it and we will seek to make sure, by the codes of practice, that it is used. So the answer to my hon. Friend's question is that it will be an additional resource from central Government.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop : All £30 million?

Mr. Gummer : Yes, the £30 million will be taken into account from central Government provision by way of the RSG settlement. Mr. Conal Gregory (York) rose --

Mr. Gummer : I will give way to my hon. Friend shortly. What I have described will be paralleled by providing tougher powers for enforcement officers. We must achieve a balance between having the required additional powers to enable local authorities properly to protect the public and avoiding the temptation of having all sorts of fiddling rules being enforced on ordinary business men who are trying to run a reasonable service in a cafe, restaurant or small shop outlet.

The balance between those two is important. The priority must be the safety of the public. We seek to ensure that safety in as unonerous a way as possible, for it would be wrong to encourage the view that every action and movement of people who are trying to provide a public service and earn a living should be monitored in a way which they would find oppressive and which would be counter-productive.

Mr. Gregory : My right hon. Friend is right to refer to the need for environmental health officers to have adequate powers to enforce the law. Has he had discussions recently with the Secretary of State for Education and Science about the inadequacy of environmental health places at polytechnics? If we could overcome that difficulty, the vacancies for environmental health officers in many parts of the country would be filled and the vital piece of legislation that we are considering would be properly enforced.

Mr. Gummer : I have had discussions with the Secretary of State for Education and Science covering a range of matters, including not only the training of enforcement officers but, equally important, how best to ensure that the training of youngsters in the use of food in the home can

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adequately be provided within the schools system. All such matters are under review and I hope that that meets the concerns of my hon. Friend.

Mrs. Audrey Wise (Preston) rose --

Mr. Gummer : I will give way to the hon. Lady when I have given more details concerning enforcement officers.

Up to now we have been able to take from the shelf, technically speaking, only the product that has been proven to be dangerous, and no other product from the same batch. Happily, that has not caused real problems because in almost every case--as far as I know, in every case--the companies concerned have willingly removed from their shelves any product about which there has been concern.

But that might not always be the case. There may be circumstances in which a company would be unwilling voluntarily to do that. So I feel that I should have power, and give enforcement officers the ability, to insist on the removal of the whole of a batch from the shelves, and of goods that are ready to go on the shelves. There are a number of places in which we have not had those powers. While we have not needed them, because there has been voluntary compliance, we should have them lest such voluntary compliance is not forthcoming. It is also important to have improvement and prohibition notices. The environmental health officer should be able to demand necessary improvements for the protection of the health of the public and, in severe cases, to say that where there is real danger to public health, a premises must cease trading.

We must, of course, protect individuals from the misuse of such powers. It is of little help to say that it will take us a week or two before we can stop somebody poisoning his customers. So we must have an emergency system, to be used only when utterly necessary. That will be part of the tougher powers that the Bill will provide for enforcement officers.

Mrs. Wise : May I take the right hon. Gentleman back to his reference to the £30 million and ask on what basis the Government arrived at that figure?

Mr. Gummer : The hon. Lady is right to ask that question. It was a difficult matter. As she may know, environmental health officers are concerned with housing conditions, noise pollution and a whole range of other matters. So we had first to try to estimate the amount of time and resources necessary for the part of their work that is concerned with food safety. We had also to consider the wide discrepancies in the importance that different local authorities place on food safety and the amount of resources that they already devote to it. We then had to bring into account the money already allowed for.

After that process, and following consultation with various authorities and experts, we decided on the figure of £30 million, which was widely considered to be not unreasonable. I was pleased to discover that that decision had support from all sorts of sources and from bodies that do not normally support the Government. It seems to me that the figure is not far out and it is pretty widely felt that we have tried to meet the requirements. We intend the Bill to work effectively and it will enable us to involve some local authorities that do not use enough resources--even out of block grant resources--for this important job.

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Then there is the question of emergency control orders. Suppose that there is a serious danger--the possibility that an outbreak may reach epidemic proportions. That is not necessarily as frightening as it sounds ; it could mean circumstances in which a succession of people might be affected by contaminated food. In such circumstances, we need a simpler, clearer, more comprehensive form of emergency control orders, and that is provided in the Bill.

It is vital that we should continue and elaborate the conditions that apply to labelling and to misleading claims. The House knows that extensive work is already taking place in the European Community. We have asked the Food Advisory Committee to consider labelling generally. We also want to ensure that labels provide information that is necessary to protect health. When I deal with irradiation, I shall point to the important part that labelling must play.

Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gummer : If it is about irradiation, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will wait until I deal with it in my speech.

Mr. Cohen : It is about labelling. Why have the Government dragged their feet for a decade on the labelling of fat, sugar, salt and protein? Will there be measures to ensure that those items, which are crucial for health and diet, are listed on labels?

Mr. Gummer : The Government have done nothing of the sort. We have spent a great deal of time trying to reach an agreement in Brussels--that agreement was finally concluded on 23 February--to ensure that there is comprehensive labelling. It is all very well for the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) to attack the Government, but he would be the first to complain if food manufacturing firms in his constituency had to label their products, when imported, competing, products were not labelled. The hon. Gentleman should aim his darts at the right target, and not attack the Government, who have taken the lead in trying to improve labelling and give the public more information.

Enormous changes are taking place in the scientific and technological world. We need to be able to deal with questions arising from genetic manipulation and with the emerging obligations of our membership of the European Community. If we are to do that, we need flexible regulation- making powers so that we can make changes as soon as they are necessary and so that we do not find ourselves lagging behind others. Contrary to the view of the hon. Member for Leyton, we have been in the forefront of food safety and we intend to remain there. The Bill will give us the opportunity.

Mr. Churchill (Davyhulme) : Before my right hon. Friend leaves that point, and in view of the great change that would be involved in lifting the ban on the sale of irradiated foodstuffs, will he consider amending the Bill to require at least an affirmative resolution of the House before irradiation can be permitted? At present, the Bill provides for the negative procedure to be used.

Mr. Gummer : I am sure that my hon. Friend would like to hear what I have to say about irradiation. I do not agree with him about the enormity of the change ; it merely puts us in line with a large number of major countries. Every piece of irradiated material will be clearly marked, and if

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my hon. Friend does not want to buy it, he need not. I do not see why we should be too concerned about irradiation. The question is clear, and I hope to deal with it clearly.

First, though, let me deal with the registration of individual companies. I am concerned that in some cases local authorities have been unable properly to protect the public's health because they have not known of the existence of some food outlets. That is a major problem. On the other hand, we must be careful to place only the necessary burdens on industry because otherwise it will not have the flexibility to provide what the customer wants. We need to strike a balance. We are therefore introducing a straightforward procedure whereby food businesses will give their local authorities a few key details on a standard form. They will not have to pay to register. The register will assist enforcement authorities to assess their task and set their priorities, and under clause 27(2)(c) we have powers to make such registers open to the public. We hope that that will enable us to ensure that a person wishing to open, for example, a sandwich bar will give the authority notice at a reasonable time in advance of its opening--perhaps at the same time as making arrangements for building or planning permission. That will give local authorities the opportunity to take such action as they wish. Where there is a need for an especially tight control, a licensing system can be used. We have already made it clear that this will apply to dairies and dairy farms, which have licensing -type controls at present, and to premises where the irradiation of food is to be carried out.

The Bill allows us properly to control the irradiation of those foods for which treatment could bring benefit to consumers. It does not, however, usher in irradiation ; there is no question of that. That will be achieved by detailed regulations put out to public consultation and laid before Parliament. The regulations will ensure that food irradiation will be allowed only under strictly controlled conditions, which will include the labelling of food both in retail outlets and in restaurants to give the consumer genuine choice. We are already consulting on how that should be done.

Irradiation is a valuable adjunct to our armoury in the fight against food poisoning. It has been confirmed as safe by the World Health Organisation and numerous expert committees around the world. The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities' report on the irradiation of foodstuffs says at paragraph 143 : "Irradiation could serve as a useful means of raising the margins of food safety by reducing the contamination of some food by certain organisms".

If people do not want irradiated food, they need not buy it. I am not in the business of forcing or chasing people to buy irradiated food. But, if they want it, they ought not to be prevented from buying it because somebody decides that they ought not to. I want these decisions to be made by the consumers, not the Consumers Association. It is the right of the consumer to decide. Therefore, irradiated food must be properly labelled.

This advantage is already being enjoyed in more than 20 countries. Consumers in France, Belgium, Italy, the United States, Japan and the Netherlands are all able to make a choice, although in many of those countries it is not as clearly defined as we will make it. I believe that our consumers should be permitted the same opportunities.

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Irradiated food will be labelled and people will be able to choose. It is not for me, as the Minister, to choose ; it is for them to do so.

Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : The Minister cited the World Health Organisation in his support, yet the European Parliament working documents say that the WHO expressly stated that the committee of experts had not considered the general safety aspects of the food irradiation process, nor had it claimed that food irradiation was safe or that it had no harmful effects on human health. And, of course, the British Medical Association board of science has objected to the food irradiation process.

Mr. Gummer : WHO not only says that food irradiation is safe but is actually encouraging it ; it says that it wants more of it. The hon. Gentleman belongs to a party which used to rejoice in the name "Liberal" and liberal means giving other people choices, not arrogantly asserting that one's own prejudice must be enforced by the law. I am sad that his party of all parties is not going round the country saying that we should give the consumer the choice.

Sir Nicholas Bonsor (Upminster) : I am certainly not against irradiated food, but I am concerned, as is my right hon. Friend, that people should know when they are eating it, because many people will have fears, whether they are justified or not. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend could explain what safeguards he will give so that people do not eat irradiated food in restaurants and public places, where they may not have an opportunity of seeing a label.

Mr. Gummer : When we produce the regulations it will be necessary for shops and restaurants serving finished food, if I may put it like that, where the label will not be obvious, to state that they are using irradiated food, and the customer will therefore be able to decide. That seems to me to be not in any way unreasonable. In a world in which more and more people are seeking to make decisions for themselves, it would be a great pity if we decided, in the very important area of food, to take away their right to decide, when it is perfectly safe for them to decide.

I think that it would be extremely difficult not to come to the conclusion that there is no danger to health. I shall certainly buy and eat irradiated food myself and so will my family. Those who do not want it need not buy it.

Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen) : I think that there is an enormous loophole here. How would this work in practice in, say, fish and chip shops, restaurants or dining rooms in the House of Commons? Does it mean that when I order chicken and chips I shall be given a choice of irradiated or non-irradiated chicken? There will not be labels on the food in a cafe ; food cannot be advertised in the menu as irradiated or not irradiated. It is completely impracticable.

Mr. Gummer : The hon. Gentleman will know, because the law will say that that information has to be made available in a satisfactory manner, and we shall quite properly be consulting the various bodies and people interested in the matter, including the hon. Gentleman, if he so wishes, on the best way of providing the public with a choice. It is difficult to understand how people can say that, because some people do not want irradiated food, nobody shall have it ; because some people happen to be

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wholly opposed to the scientific evidence, everybody else must give way to them. It is the Jehovah's Witness approach to science--that no matter how preposterous a proposal everybody has to accept it because a small number of people take that particular view.

Mrs. Wise rose --

Mr. Gordon Oakes (Halton) rose --

Mr. Alan W. Williams rose --

Mr. Thomas McAvoy (Glasgow, Rutherglen) rose

Mr. Gummer : No, I cannot give way ; I really must move on at this point.

Circumstances change as our knowledge improves. If we had taken the view that some people are taking now, milk would never have been pasteurised. Every argument we hear about irradiation was used against pasteurisation. Yet nowadays we mark only those products that are not pasteurised. I am suggesting that we should mark every product that is irradiated.

There are some areas where those who care most about food safety--and I am one of them--are very concerned that we should have irradiation. At the moment we make safe the herbs and spices that we use by a mechanism which is dangerous and which we have sought to ban but have not been able to ban because there is no alternative method that renders those herbs and spices safe. I am not prepared to continue to endanger operatives and, to some extent, consumers by persisting in the unsafe system. I seek to ban that system once it is possible for people to choose an alternative. This is the only way to meet the changing technology ; not to say no to newness from fear of novelty, but to say yes to what is safe and allow others to choose for themselves.

Mr. Gregory : My right hon. Friend says that there is no distinction between a product that is pasteurised and one that is irradiated. I fully take his point about labelling and the importance of that, but scientists are able to undertake a test to show that a product has been pasteurised. How can he, with hand on heart, promote irradiated foods when, in the event of a court case, there will be no test to show whether the product has been irradiated? That invalidates the fundamentals of his argument.

Mr. Gummer : I am afraid that my hon. Friend is not right about that, for these three reasons.

First, if one irradiates food one does something much less to it than if one pasteurises it. It always seems to me to be an amazing argument that, on the one hand, irradiation does so little to food that it cannot be detected and, on the other, what it does to food is so dangerous that it cannot be allowed.

Secondly, there is irradiated food around now. Many countries irradiate food and, because it is illegal to irradiate food in this country, it is much more likely that irradiated food will come into this country, because there is no way that it can legally be controlled. I should much prefer to ensure that if food is irradiated it is done under the very strict conditions that we will lay down, rather than have food irradiated elsewhere sneak in in the way that Opposition Members tend to suggest has been happening.

The third reason why I think that the argument is nonsense is that if I had a scintilla of doubt about whether irradiation was dangerous I would not allow it. But, as there is no doubt that irradiation is safe, I am allowing it.

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We will have the tight controls under the Bill to make sure that, where the benefit is clear, irradiation is properly carried out. But there are some other areas in which I would want to move in the opposite direction. With irradiation, I want to make legal something that is at the moment illegal.

There are other areas where I am especially concerned about mechanisms for dealing with food, which I do not think are properly controlled. That is why I have already announced that we shall be issuing draft regulations. The Bill provides the flexibility to introduce the most appropriate controls in all such cases. One of the areas of which I have spoken in the past, and on which hon. Members on both sides of the House agree, involves mechanisms for preserving food such as sous-vide, where I believe that we must have much tougher regulations. The need for a constant temperature in the entire chain is such that I do not think it is a satisfactory procedure to be used without the strictest of controls, and that is why we shall introduce them.

The involvement of consumers is the most important matter with which my Ministry deals. It is important that consumers should not feel that food safety matters are left to technicians in white coats and bureaucrats in bowler hats. We should not have a society in which the public feel that it is only experts who make decisions and that the people have no part to play. That is why I decided, first, that it was necessary to involve in food safety an organisation that clearly covered all aspects of food safety in the Ministry. That is why we set up the food safety directorate.

Secondly, I decided that we should bring into the directorate the expert scientific panels that advise Ministers, the officials who spend so much time and expertise in advising Ministers, and a consumers panel. I have already announced that there would be such a panel, and today I am able to tell the House that the list of members of the panel will be placed in the Library. The members of the panel will have been selected or chosen by outside consumer organisations, not by myself, so there is no question of their having been hand-picked.

Mr. McAvoy : Of course!

Mr. Gummer : I knew that Labour Members would think that I would do it in that way, so I was careful not to do so. I asked only that the members of the panel should be normal consumers. Most of us want to have the advice of real consumers and not that of those who are becoming professional advisers to all sorts of organisations. I approached a range of organisations, and I am happy to say that all of them have provided me with names, every one of which I am happy to have accepted. There will be coverage of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, we shall have geographical coverage. Organisations including the Consumers Association and the National Consumer Council have been asked to submit nominations.

Mr. Oakes : How many people will be on the food safety directorate? What will be the total number?

Mr. Gummer : There will be nine representatives from outside organisations, and they will sit regularly with the food Minister, who will listen to their views and put them forward. I hope very much that this system will work effectively.

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There is a wider consumer concern to which I attach a great deal of importance. I believe that too often and for too long many of the decisions made, especially in the European Community, are not informed by the views of consumers. Therefore, I have established a regular meeting with the leaders of the major consumer groups. They will meet me and consider the changes that are recommended by the Agricultural Council of the Community and in the GATT round, for example. I do not believe that the consumer voice has been listened to properly and regularly on major issues and matters of real priority.

Successive Ministers have met the major consumer groups. Indeed, the first meeting that I had when I was appointed Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was with the chairman of the National Consumer Council. I met him before I met anyone else. I have since met the new chairman of the council. I have met also the chairman and senior members of the Consumers Association. I have sought to set an example in that way.

I do not believe that ad hoc meetings are sufficient. It is important to have regular consultation with the leaders of consumer opinion on the major matters that face the industry and consumers generally. I speak of matters of general food safety as well as issues that arise in the Community and in the GATT round negotiations. I hope that the first meeting of the panel of the food safety directorate will take place on Monday 12 March. I am grateful to the members of the panel for accepting membership, and I look forward to a fruitful and open dialogue.

I have written to the leaders of the consumer groups inviting them to attend the first meeting of the wider sort, of which I have spoken, on 3 April. The aim is for Ministers and consumer bodies to discuss constructively and regularly a wide range of complex policy issues that are not restricted to food safety. I hope that in this way we shall find it possible at two levels in the Ministry to have a much more regular association with consumer bodies to ensure that we are making decisions with those organisations' views fully in mind. It is true that Ministers draw heavily already on independent expert advice, which would never be available to them unless they were part of the body responsible for the entire food chain. For that reason, I end on the point with which I began. There is no point in the Bill, or in any food safety legislation, unless it reflects the food chain from before the seed right through to the finished product on the plate of the consumer. That is why only a Ministry that is integrated--the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food--can do the job properly.

The Bill will ensure, with the Ministry working at local level with the environmental health officers and at national level with territorial Departments and the Department of Health, that Britain has food that is safe and which meets all the new requirements that international legislation will demand. It will enable us to face new challenges such as the different sorts of salmonella which now concern us and finding better ways of discovering the presence of disease. We need to have the resources and the ability to take action rapidly in the few cases where there is a real danger to the health of the individual or of groups of people.

I pay tribute to the fact that Britain is, and has been for some years, the leader in food safety in the European

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Community. I am the only Minister among the current Agriculture Ministers who puts food safety at the top of his priority list. Anyone who suggests otherwise should sit in on some of our debates. In so doing he will learn that often I am the only Minister who raises the matter. I hope that anyone who speaks in opposition to the Bill will bear in mind the fact that Britain is leading the world in food safety. Our job is to put the matter at the top of our priorities in Britain and to ensure that fellow members of the Community put it at the top of their priorities, so that food that is imported from the rest of the Community will be as safe as food that is produced in Britain.

5.18 pm

Dr. David Clark (South Shields) : The Bill has the stated aims of improving the safety of food and protecting the consumer's interest. The Labour party identifies itself wholeheartedly with those laudable aspirations, but we have serious doubts about whether the Bill can meet those desirable aims and we question whether the present Government, of all Governments, have the commitment or the determination to protect all of us as consumers of food. I concede that this afternoon the Minister made a somewhat more conciliatory speech than we are used to hearing from him, and I hope that that marks a U-turn in Government policy. If it does, he will have the Opposition support.

I was somewhat astounded to hear the Minister say that Britain has the best record on food safety. In the light of the position in which we find ourselves today, that is a staggering claim. How can the Minister make that claim when we are in the middle of the worst food poisoning epidemic since the war? In the past 10 years, food poisoning incidents in Britain have quadrupled to more than 54,000 reported cases in 1989. It is not logical to say that Britain has the best safety record in the world. That reeks of complacency, which has been the Government's record throughout.

The Government's handling of food safety is a classic example of crisis management. They have stumbled from one crisis to another. I hope that the Bill is an admission that they will try to address that problem seriously and come up with a coherent strategy for dealing with food safety issues.

The Government have a lamentable record. They have managed to achieve the almost impossible : they have alienated the consumers and the farmers at the same time, which is an unusual achievement. I was staggered to see that the Cumberland News, the Parliamentary Secretary's county paper and not exactly a red-hot Socialist paper, highlighted that fact last week. The article starts with the headline :

"Farmers hit rock bottom. Biggest crisis for 50 years." That is the opinion of the principal newspaper of the county of Cumbria which is represented by the Parliamentary Secretary. That is a recognition of the position in which the Government have got themselves. The Cumberland News has printed that because it knows the difficulties that the Government have got themselves into. The Labour party will not oppose the Bill at this stage because, as I have said, we hope that the Bill will be improved, and we hope that the Government have changed their course. However, it is unrealistic to attempt to enhance food safety without reforming the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I agree that we need a

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food safety policy which stretches from the plough to the plate. That is the Labour party's philosophy. It is our view, and I think that it is a generally held view, that the Ministery has been producer-led for too long and it is time that we had a consumer-led "Ministry of Food and Agriculture". That is the only way to move forward.

I also welcome the Minister's half announcement today of what he calls a food safety directorate. Why does he not go the whole hog, accept the Labour party's policy and have an independent food standards agency? That policy is now supported by a wide range of organisations--environmental health organisations, consumer associations, trading standards officers, and so on. Almost every organisation involved in food health and consumer protection is in favour of an independent food standards agency, at arm's length from the Government. The Minister seems to want change, but he does not want to do anything for the first time. I urge him on this occasion to go the whole hog and to create an independent food standards agency.

Mr. Gummer : How does the hon. Gentleman square that with his statement in "Rural Socialism" that what we need is a Ministry which deals with everything ? He said :

"from the pre-seed stage right to the plate, there is the risk of contamination, and every one of those points of risk must be blocked up, so it is important to keep food and agriculture together." If it is the Ministry that is to block those up and if it is the Ministry that is to stop the risk of contamination, how will it deal with an independent body outside?

The hon. Gentleman is trying to do two things. As usual, he is trying to lead people outside to think that they have an independent body, but he would have a Ministry which was in charge of it because he knows that it has to be answerable to the House. It cannot be independent, because in the end the Minister is the independent person answerable to the House and to him, and he would not have it otherwise.

Dr. Clark : The Minister read his intervention, prepared by civil servants, amazingly well, and I congratulate him on his diction. [ Hon. Members-- : "Answer."] I will answer, but the Minister's contrived intervention does not make sense. The Minister rightly said that we have a plough-to-plate policy, but at the end of the day the Minister is responsible for regulations. However, the advice on which the Minister acts will be from an independent body on the lines of the Health and Safety Executive, which is independent of Parliament and which makes recommendations and carries out certain executive functions while being answerable to the House. That is the way to obtain independent advice, not by regarding the Minister as independent. Only a few people in Britain would regard the right hon. Gentleman as an independent person.

Mr. Gummer : What independent advice that I receive from civil servants or independent bodies does the hon. Gentleman claim is biased? Which of the scientists and independent bodies from whom we receive advice is not honest in that advice? I am sure that the professors and scientists who give us such advice would like to know whom the hon. Gentleman is accusing of giving other than independent advice.

Dr. Clark : It is remarkable how easily the Minister gets worked up. He did quite well in his speech, but he has got

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worked up very quickly since I have started my speech and the weakness of his case is beginning to show. I thought that towards the end of his speech he had made some progress. He spoke of the need to bring consumers in and made the point that there was another dimension to advice which was not necessarily scientific. In criticising me for wanting more independent advisers, he suggests that I am saying that scientists are dishonest. I am not saying that, but different scientists take different views on the same issue. At the end of the day, the Minister may have to make the decision and sometimes he will have to take into account consumer opinion. I will give an example. I understand that there are to be 15 members of the Food Advisory Committee and that only two are consumers. That is an advance, because in the past there have been fewer than two. Even the Minister occasionally listens to non-professional advice. In saying that he wants to take the decisions and to be independent, the Minister is beginning to show that his commitment to consumer power is thin. Few people would regard the Minister as independent.

I will move on, as I may be able to get the Minister worked up again later. The Government's record during the past 10 years shows that the Minister has sided with the producers over and over again. The time has come to emphasise the role of the consumer. Chernobyl is an issue close to the Minister's heart--he always likes to get involved in a discussion on that-- but it was seven weeks after the Government first learned of the dangerous levels of radioactivity that they actually took action. In those seven weeks, tens of thousands of sheep from contaminated areas went into the food chain. That is the sort of inaction that we have become accustomed to from the Government.

The litany continues. Food poisoning has been a cause of concern throughout the 1980s. Figures for different types of salmonella poisoning--the main cause of food poisoning--show that in the eight years to 1989 salmonella cases doubled. Salmonella enteritidis cases have more than doubled in three years and cases of salmonella enteritidis phase 4, which is associated mainly with eggs, have quadrupled in four years. That has resulted in many deaths. We are not talking about food scares, but about incidents in which people have died. Two hundred people died from salmonella in 1988. In November 1987, the Government knew that there was a problem with salmonella enteritidis in eggs, but no warnings were issued to hospitals--where outbreaks of food poisoning had been linked to raw eggs--for nine months until July 1988, and the Government did not bother to warn consumers about the possible hazards of eating undercooked eggs for 10 months, until August 1988. Again, there were many months of delay.

On the subject of listeria, documents that we are discussing today in conjunction with the debate, such as the Select Committee on Social Services report on food poisoning, mention that public concern about the presence of listeria in food and its health consequences was aroused in February 1989. The number of cases of listeriosis trebled between 1978 and 1980. The Government knew about the problems of listeria in ready-cooked poultry and in some cheeses as long ago as 1987, but no action was taken until the public were warned of the problem in February 1989, which put pregnant women and other vulnerable groups of people at risk. Again, there was a long delay.

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Lead in milk is still a problem in the south-west of England. Early in November 1987 the Government were warned about cattle feed entering Britain, but they waited five days until 6 November before imposing restrictions and, most critical of all, they waited four days before notifying the Milk Marketing Board, which visits every dairy farm every day of the week, so the information was withheld from farmers for four days. For those four days, lead-contaminated feed was fed unnecessarily to cattle due to ministerial indecision and lack of progress.

Mr. Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare) : Representing a constituency in the south-west I must rebut any accusation of incompetence by the Government on the lead incident. They reacted with remarkable alacrity to a serious and widespread emergency. Even the farmers most affected--one farm in my constituency suffered--will give the Ministry full marks for the way in which it acted. No affected milk reached the public.

Earlier, the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) said that sheep affected by the Chernobyl incident had reached the public. He has obviously not read the Select Committee on Agriculture report, because that is not the case. He cannot go on repeating half-truths as truths. What he says is not true. We are well protected by our Government.

Dr. Clark : The hon. Gentleman does well to try to defend the Government, but he does it without great success. He says that no lead- contaminated milk entered the food chain. In the four days that the Ministry withheld information from the Milk Marketing Board, tankers visited the farms and collected the milk, and the milk went into bottles and was sent to London, Birmingham and other parts of Britain.

The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) said that no lambs from the radioactive area went into the food chain. I can tell him which abattoirs they went to because 37,598 sheep from those areas entered the key auction mart in Cumbria in that seven-week period. That irrefutable proof has been collected by the Government's statisticians.

Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) : I am surprised that the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) did not realise that the Select Committee on Agriculture concluded that it was most likely that sheepmeat contaminated by radiation from Chernobyl had got into the food chain as that was in the Committee's report.

Dr. Clark : My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) clearly has a better memory than the hon. Member for

Weston-super-Mare, as I too know that that is in the report. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare should double-check the work of the Committee, on which he does so much good work.

Mr. Gummer rose --

Dr. Clark : I did not intervene during the Minister's speech. Last time I spoke, he intervened seven times. He has already not been able to contain himself for most of my speech today. I ask him to keep his cool for a little longer and to let us make a little more progress. The other burning issue of the day is mad cow disease. The Government have shown considerable complacency

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in their handling of that disease. The latest figure is more than 460 notified cases each and every week. Yet the Southwood report stated that between 300 and 400 cases per week was the expected peak. There is clearly a major problem and I wish the Minister to take it seriously. We know that he has been hesitant about taking action. We know that it took him 18 months to make it a notifiable disease and 20 months to introduce a compulsory slaughter scheme.

We also know that it took him two and a half years to announce a ban on cattle offal for human consumption, and it was a further five months before he implemented the ban. Twenty months after making bovine spongiform encephalopathy a notifiable disease, the Minister has only just announced increased compensation to 100 per cent. of the value of the cow. If he had listened to the Labour party, the Liberal party or almost any other group and acted earlier, he would have been helping to tackle the problem.

We realise that this is a serious issue, and my final plea to the Minister is to try to get a more accurate estimate of the amount of BSE in our cattle by using random sampling of cattle slaughtered at abattoirs so that we can see how serious the problem is. The Minister may not regard it as serious, but the majority of British farmers and a large number of consumers do, and the Opposition believe that the Minister should be more responsible about this.

I do not criticise the Government only for inaction. Problems have been made worse by cuts in staff made by the Government [Interruption.] The Minister may grunt, but let us consider the actual figures. The Minister rightly says that the main thrust of his food safety policy is being carried out by local authorities through environmental health officers and trading standards officers. We think that that is a sensible approach and we endorse it, but that approach is not made easier--I think that the hon. Member for York (Mr. Gregory) mentioned this--when there are more than 400 vacancies for environmental health officers even before they have to cope with the extra demands of the Food Safety Bill and the Environmental Protection Bill.

As the hon. Member for York rightly said, insufficient numbers of new EHOs are being trained, let alone retrained. That situation has been brought about by the pressure that the Government have put on higher education institutions to cut back training courses. I hope that the Government will do something about that, and that the Minister will talk to his colleagues and get them to break the log jam. It is a similar story for trading standards officers--there is a shortfall of 350 at present, before the new demands of the Act are placed upon them.

How does the Minister intend to make up that shortfall? Members on both sides of the House would like to know. He cannot keep giving more duties to local authorities if he will not give them the wherewithal to carry out those duties.

There is also a drastic shortage of trained veterinarians. Although their role in ensuring that animal diseases are kept in check and not transmitted to humans is increasingly crucial, education arrangements--yet again--have not kept pace with demand. It is ludicrous that only six months ago the Government were actually proposing to close two of our veterinary colleges, at Glasgow and Cambridge.

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