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Sir Patrick Mayhew: We can argue whether it should be one month, six weeks, two months, three months or whatever. It is left at large and one has to make a judgment. Of course I do not intend to consult everyone who appears in appendix 1. I have said that it is right for public representatives and those who lead bodies that are directly interested in the subject to express their views on that aspect of the commission's report. There was a time when most people, not least in the Liberal party, thought that it was rather a good thing to take soundings. That is what I wish to do. I do not wish to incur the additional charge that I am adopting, hook, line and sinker and without even a couple of months of consultation a radical departure that also has certain constitutional connotations. If I did not adopt this course, it would be a charge properly brought.

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Food Safety

4.36 pm

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Douglas Hogg): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on arrangements for handling food safety.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I are announcing today, together with my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Government's intention to create an independent food safety council, whose chairman will be our main adviser on food safety.

The council will advise Ministers on food safety and related matters. Its membership will be drawn from a wide range of fields with an interest in the safety of the food supply. It will include both scientific experts and lay members, including consumers. The council and the food safety adviser will report jointly to my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Health, for Scotland and for Wales, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and myself as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Our intention is that the council and the adviser should be free to advise on any matters related to the safety, quality, labelling and authenticity of food. They should also be available as an authoritative source of advice to the general public. The council will make an annual report to Ministers, which will be laid before Parliament. The conclusions of its meetings will be published, as will any other formal reports that it may make to Ministers.

Those arrangements will strengthen the existing network of advisory committees, but will not detract from the role of the individual expert committees. The food safety adviser will work closely with the chief medical officers. Although reporting to Ministers, he or she will not be a civil servant.

In addition, I have today formally appointed the chief medical officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, as adviser to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on public health matters. That formalises arrangements that, in practice, have applied for many years. That appointment took place today. We will be making all the other appointments to which I referred--the council and the chairman--after the general election.

These measures will provide an important strengthening of the arrangements for handling food safety matters in this country. Our proposals will introduce a valuable new element of independent oversight, while retaining the vital principle that food safety must be a matter on which Ministers are directly accountable to the House. The new arrangements will provide for independent advice, publicly given, from a source that the public can trust and will help to assure consumers that they can be confident in the safety and quality of their food. I commend those arrangements to the House.

Dr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East): Is the Minister aware that there will be widespread agreement with his quite explicit statement today that the general public have lost confidence in the Government on food safety issues? I remind him that, in the face of arguments from bodies

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such as the Consumers Association and the Labour party, he and his predecessors persistently argued that the present arrangements were right and that no change was required. Indeed, less than a year ago, the Prime Minister told my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that our calls for change were "public relations nonsense."

However, I put it to the Minister that the new arrangements he is proposing today are inadequate. As far as the official Opposition are concerned, they are no substitute for an open and independent food standards agency with real authority. A food safety adviser and a part-time council will command neither the resources nor the authority to effectively tackle these important issues.

May I put three short questions to the Minister? First, why have the Government changed their minds and decided that the machinery of government in this area now needs to be changed? Why have they accepted that argument? Secondly, what resources will the council and the food safety adviser control to support them in their tasks? Thirdly, can he confirm that the Government do not intend to implement any of these proposals this side of the general election?

Finally, I put it to the Minister that, while public relations and presentation matter in this area, what is really important is the need to effectively tackle the underlying issues--issues such as avoiding the huge BSE-CJD crisis and preventing the recent tragic loss of life from E. coli in central Scotland. Not only are these belated proposals inadequate, but every day it becomes clearer that neither the Minister nor the Government are up to the task of tackling effectively these desperately important food safety issues.

Mr. Hogg: As I said in my statement, it is our intention to make the appointments, other than that of Sir Kenneth Calman, after the general election.

Let us understand the reasons why we are taking this action. It is perfectly true that the public have become cautious--indeed, sceptical--when Ministers and officials identified with the Departments talk about food safety. There are a variety of reasons for that feeling, and although, in my view, it is quite unfounded, it is a fact, and we have to address facts of that nature. My Department already has access to a range of independent professional advice, but what is important now is to try to set out a set of institutions that make those facts plain and are capable of reassuring the public.

The Labour party's position, as I understand the hon. Gentleman, is to propose an agency; but let us examine what he is talking about. It amounts to this: first, that the agency is to be accountable to Ministers--that is the desire of the House--but, secondly, that it is to be the implementing executive authority. In other words, it would be commenting on policies that it had implemented itself. It would have every reason, therefore, to defend that which it was implementing.

Our proposals are much more imaginative than that, because what we have done is to separate the functions. Ministers remain responsible for the formulation and implementation of policy; they have to explain policy and, when necessary, defend it. The council and the adviser have a different role: they are independent--they are not civil servants--they are free-standing, and they are not responsible for the implementation of policy. They can therefore stand back and, in a public and authoritative

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way, comment on the general issues and then, if they want to, criticise the implementation of policy as done by Ministers. That is done consciously and intentionally to create a rod for our own back. That is what we intend to do.

Dr. Jeremy Bray (Motherwell, South): Has the Minister actually read the Pennington report on the E. coli outbreak in my constituency, which was the immediate trigger for this change of front on the part of the Government? Professor Pennington recommended that the outbreak control team should be independent of the health board and of the local authority, and that it should be headed by a person who can make decisions. If that is true of the agency delivering the service in the event of an outbreak, how much more true is it of the advice and recommendations to Ministers in the planning of the process?

Mr. Hogg: In the first place, the E. coli outbreak is not the trigger for my announcement today. This policy has been in formulation for many months.

One needs to go to the essential reason why we are introducing the proposals; it is to recognise that there is a public scepticism about what Ministers and officials say about food safety. What we want to do is separate the functions so that Ministers remain responsible for policy, its formulation and implementation, and for that they are accountable to the House, which is the proper place for them to be accountable.

At the same time, and separate from that, we are setting up an authoritative, independent and prestigious body which will express views in a public way on the general questions of food safety, and will also, if it so chooses, express views on narrower questions relating to the implementation of policy. By dividing the functions, we have brought about a very high degree of reassurance.

Sir Peter Emery (Honiton): Will my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the majority of hon. Members who look at this matter sensibly will accept that it is right and proper that steps should be taken to ensure that public confidence can, at all times, be restored in the way in which the bodies he announced will set out to do? It does little credit to the Opposition when they attempt to turn this into a political slanging match. Will he give an assurance, however, that it is not the intention that the measures announced should be a criticism of the agriculture industry, whose members have striven so hard to try to rectify the problems in the past?

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