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Mr. Rooker: I will explain now. Most research projects are on a three-year rolling programme, which is
reviewed from time to time. A few weeks ago, the joint food safety and standards group, which is the embryo of the agency--we are not working on a green-field site--published the programme for the bids for food research that will start next year. We agreed that programme with the group; it is its programme. In effect, that is the embryo of the Food Standards Agency making its first decision. We said that those would be the first research projects under the aegis of the agency--assuming that the legislation is passed. I ask the House not to divorce the agency--as a body that does not exist in any shape or form--from current practice. It does have control over the beginning of the research programme.
Mr. Tyler: I appreciate the Minister's point. All I am saying is that I hope that, as soon as the agency is up and running, if it is as good as we think that it will be, it will be realised that its authority depends on being able to feed into that research programme as soon as possible. I hope that it will respond to some of the new information that will be available.
In the Prime Minister's statement earlier, he referred to the views expressed at the Cologne summit about the role that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development might play in respect of genetically modified organisms. In the past, the Minister of State has pointed out that the Government were not in the driving seat in relation to the surveillance, monitoring and development of GMOs. I hope that the agency will enable Ministers to be in the driving seat in future.
However, at the end of the day, the FSA will be judged by its actions--how quickly it reacts to the first food crisis or how it responds to media scares.
Mr. Paterson:
What is the Liberal Democrat party's position on the Government's refusal to adopt the recommendation of the Food Standards Committee that the Meat Hygiene Service's executive direction should be set aside from the Food Standards Agency, so that, when the first meat scare occurs, the FSA's independence and integrity will be upheld?
Mr. Tyler:
The hon. Gentleman comes rather late to the discussion. Perhaps he does not realise that, in the previous Parliament, it was the Conservatives who insisted on--
Mr. Paterson:
I was not a Member of the House then.
Mr. Tyler:
That is why the hon. Gentleman does not realise what happened. Perhaps he should wait until he has done so before he makes a contribution to the debate. The MHS was extensively opposed by Labour and Liberal Democrat spokesmen--including me--for reasons similar to those given by the hon. Gentleman. Unfortunately, the service has been shown to be a rather expensive and ineffective instrument of Government policy. I very much regret the apparent conflict that may well occur; I hope that we shall examine that matter in Committee.
Ms Keeble:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Tyler:
I am trying to come to a conclusion. I am sure that the hon. Lady will be successful in contributing to the debate later.
The quickness of the FSA's response to that first crisis--which will undoubtedly occur--will be extremely important. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating--especially regarding the FSA's response to the problems of imports from countries with quite different standards of supervision, regulation and welfare in production. That will be a test for the agency at an early stage.
We should be aiming to create a comparatively small strategic organisation that has great clarity of purpose and principle. Obviously, the local inspector will have to be the first point of contact for producers and processors. The industry must have confidence that such inspectors, whether from the Meat Hygiene Service or any other part of the new regime, will bring a high degree of professionalism, discretion and common sense to their work. As we all know, in the abattoirs at the moment, that is far from so. The inspectors are grossly overloading the operators.
Mr. Nigel Griffiths (Edinburgh, South):
I am delighted that the Government are establishing a Food Standards Agency. I pay tribute to the dedicated staff in my constituency who work on the difficult problems of BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The Bill is very welcome. It should silence the critics who said that such legislation would be buried or neutered. The key reason for establishing the Food Standards Agency is to rebuild consumer confidence in our farmers' produce and the food that we buy in our shops and markets.
I praise my right hon. Friend the Minister and my hon. Friend the Minister of State for their decision not to impose a levy to pay for this vital public service. They said that they would listen, and they have listened. The BSE crisis drove many retailers to the wall. For the excellent butchers in my constituency--many of the businesses have been in the family for generations--a levy would have been, not financially but certainly psychologically, the last straw.
Some items of the Bill require clarification. On several occasions, Ministers have said that they appreciate the importance of ensuring that the FSA board is independent from commercial vested interests, but that is not explicit in the Bill--welcome though clause 2 is. Some argue that the board ought to include representatives from a wide spectrum of interests, including consumers, farmers, the processing and retailing industry and, of course, science; but there is public concern that, when commercial interests intrude on policy making on food safety and standards, there is always a risk that the interests of the consumer will be subordinated to those of industry.
That is why there is a strong case for not putting direct representatives of the food industry on the board of the FSA. The Government of Ireland have adopted such a
model for their new food safety authority, which they want to earn widespread public support and trust. If the board includes people from industry, the clear principle that such representatives can never be in the majority must be established. Nothing less will restore public confidence in Government food policy.
The consultation document refers to nutrition, but the Bill does not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) said. Surely, whenever the terms "food safety" or "food standards" are used in the Bill, the words "and nutrition" should be inserted. That would ensure that the FSA undertakes a balanced approach to food policy--a vision suggested, indeed, in clause 6. Although nutrition will be part of the FSA's remit, the Bill fails to make clear exactly what is meant by "nutrition". The Bill should therefore be modified to clarify the sense in which the term "nutrition" is used and the FSA's responsibilities in respect of it.
Mr. Rooker:
I am reluctant to intervene on my hon. Friend, but I might help to clarify the debate. In "The Food Standards Agency: a Force for Change", published in January 1998, about three dozen aspects of nutrition were set out. Some of them were designated as the exclusive remit of the Department of Health, some of the Food Standards Agency, and some of both. That remains the position. It is set out in substantial detail in three columns of the White Paper. That is exactly the way things will operate; there has been no change since the publication of the White Paper.
Mr. Griffiths:
I greatly welcome the assurance that my hon. Friend has given me and the House. It will be widely welcomed elsewhere.
The House will be aware of important changes in recent months to the research capacities of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Central Science Laboratory in Norwich and the agricultural laboratory have been merged and are now based in York. I welcome the new agency's ability to commission research, as it can under clause 8, but it must have a substantial research budget in order to develop commissioning procedures different from those already used in MAFF.
As I understand it, the proposals envisage a research budget for the FSA of £25 million in the first year. However, that figure appears to have been derived from the portion of MAFF spending that has been ascribed to "food", rather than from an assessment of the requirements with which the FSA will be confronted. Obviously, we must wait and see what demands will be made on the new body, although I hope that that matter will be taken into account. The board of the FSA must have sufficient resources to enable it, if it wishes, to establish its own dedicated research facility.
The role of board members in directing and assessing the FSA's research agenda should be clarified in the Bill--certainly in Committee. I am worried that the FSA's integrity could be compromised by including the Meat Hygiene Service in its remit. If the FSA must set, monitor and enforce meat hygiene standards, there is a danger of undesirable compromises. In the face of the possible high costs of monitoring and enforcement, the new agency might be accused--probably unfairly--of watering down the standards that it sets in order to trim its budget. The responsibility for those two types of decision should
be separated. If I heard my right hon. Friend the Minister correctly, he identified another body--the Audit Commission--that would monitor such capacity. That is a welcome concession to concerns expressed in the Special Select Committee.
The Government could take advice from other Governments who have been through some of the same pain or who have avoided it by setting up their own agencies at an earlier stage. I think of the Swedish national food administration and, more recently, the Irish food safety authority. The Government should examine their entirely different methods of separating auditing and enforcement. The Swedes accomplish it through different local and national meat hygiene services; the Irish have retained their authority's integrity by making it responsible for setting standards, but have assigned responsibility for enforcement to local authorities. It is important that we learn the lessons from food agencies in other European Union countries and member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, such as Sweden, the United States of America, Germany, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand.
We must not forget the limitations on our freedom to set standards that the World Trade Organisation and the EU have imposed. Following completion of the general agreement on tariffs and trade round, which is to be launched in November, there are likely to be new WTO-GATT rules in the area of food standards. It is therefore vital that the Government clarify the FSA's competencies and powers with regard to bodies such as the EU and the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
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