House of Commons Hansard Debates for 21 Jun 1999 (pt 23)

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman's time is up. I call Mr. Gill.

7.33 pm

Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) because it gives me an opportunity to express the gratitude of the House for the work that his Select Committee has done on this important issue. It has been a good example to the House of how a Select Committee can be used constructively in advance of a Bill coming before the House and then proceeding to Committee. We should all be grateful to the Select Committee for that.

I preface my remarks by declaring my interest in the food industry, as listed in the Register of Members' Interests. I recall almost 10 years ago welcoming the Food Safety Act 1990. I was rash enough to go on record as saying that there was nothing in that Act to which any bona fide trader could possibly take exception. I had underestimated the scale of the powers that the Government had taken in that Act, which enabled them to do all sorts of things which many Back Benchers had not envisaged at the time. Therefore, I approach this debate having been once bitten; I am now twice shy.

Had I known that the immediate consequence of the 1990 Act was that enforcement officers would descend on the kitchens of so many farmers' wives in my constituency, forcing them completely to revamp their kitchens, unnecessarily in many cases, so that they could be permitted to continue to take bed and breakfast guests, I would have taken a different attitude and spoken up against the Bill. I am concerned about this Bill because, once again, the Government are taking extremely wide powers.

None the less, the Bill has the potential to do some good. Many aspects of it appear benign, but others are seriously worrying. Those include the power to enable the Food Standards Agency to become an enforcement agency, thereby potentially creating a food hygiene enforcement agency. Perhaps that is the forerunner of what the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) called the hygiene police.

My concerns are twofold: I am concerned, first, that the Government are taking powers that they do not need and, secondly, that they are compromising some of the potential to do good by getting involved in enforcement. On my first concern, one is reminded, even today on the radio, of the need that the Government have defined to cut down on regulation. The Minister will be well aware of what the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has said on that subject. The Government also say that they do not intend to centralise--indeed, they say that they want to decentralise--but that argues against the Food Standards Agency taking enforcement powers that should remain with local authorities.

I am not alone in expressing concern that an unelected agency will have potentially huge powers over elected local authorities. Clause 21 says:

21 Jun 1999 : Column 826

"The Agency has power to do anything".

It is extraordinary to state in a Bill that the Government give themselves powers to do anything. The Minister will doubtless come to the Dispatch Box later and justify that statement, but it is a pretty tall order. When he does so, will he explain why the Government think that they have to take all those powers at this stage to deal with the perceived problem?

This is where we get ourselves into a terrible tangle. It is no good the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry complaining about over-regulation, too much legislation and so on if Ministers of State take such draconian powers, for which there is no justification. Clause 32 permits changes of functions, powers and the constitution of the Food Standards Agency, not by coming to this House with a new Bill, but simply by Orders in Council. Again, one questions why the Government feel that it is so important to take all those powers without feeling it necessary to come to the House and formally seek extra powers through an additional Bill.

As an aside, may I suggest to the Minister that the civil servants may be harnessing the public concern that undoubtedly exists about food safety to take powers that they would like to see because it is administratively convenient to them to have a whole galaxy of powers, used or unused, to which they can resort at some stage in the future? It is always open to the Government to come back for additional powers. What is more to the point, it is no part of my function as a Back Bencher and it is not the role of Parliament to give the Executive carte blanche on this or any other subject.

My other concern is that the potential of the Bill to do good is compromised. Clause 7 gives the Food Standards Agency powers to advise, inform and help; clause 8 gives it powers to obtain, compile and keep information;clause 10 enables it to carry out observations; and clause 12 allows it to monitor the performance of enforcement authorities. That sounds innocuous, and I do not think that any hon. Member would take objection to that. However, when we come to schedule 3 the mask falls, and we see that the Government are increasing their powers over and above what many of us believe is necessary. We have to read page 37 of the explanatory notes to discover that the Meat Hygiene Service, which is an enforcement agency, will become part of the Food Standards Agency.

I shall be a little critical of the Minister, because it was disingenuous of him to make so much of the motherhood and apple pie aspects of the Bill in his opening remarks. It was only after questioning by me that he revealed that the FSA will be in the business of enforcement. He confessed that the Meat Hygiene Service will come under the direct aegis of the FSA.

I shall make a few important points about bringing the enforcement agency inside the FSA, which most of us would have preferred to be a monitoring and advisory body without enforcement responsibilities. In carrying out its enforcement responsibilities, the Meat Hygiene service has taken several cases to court that it has lost--that is a matter or fact, and is on the record. Many people in the industry felt that those cases were bogus, but nevertheless the Meat Hygiene Service, in a rather high-handed manner, took various traders to court, and in many cases it lost. That brings the MHS into disrepute, and I shall show how I believe embodying or embracing that

21 Jun 1999 : Column 827

enforcement agency in the FSA risks bringing theFSA into disrepute. There is a real danger that the credibility of the new body will be compromised even before it has hardly started.

Yesterday, by coincidence I met and talked to the owner of an abattoir in Shropshire. The vet had made various criticisms of the operation of the abattoir. He had thought that two carcases were bovine when they were in fact porcine. The vet had examined two pig carcases and castigated the abattoir owner for not having split the carcases so that the spinal column could be removed. I believe my informant, because I have known this man all my life, and I know that he was telling me the truth. We have all heard that story from other sources anyway.

I fear that, if the Meat Hygiene Service becomes closely connected with the Food Standards Agency, as the Bill proposes, the FSA will become the focus for the opprobrium and ridicule that currently accompanies the MHS.

There is a catalogue of enforcement agency failures above and beyond those for which the Meat Hygiene Service is responsible. I particularly instance the E. coli outbreak in Lanarkshire, where the sheriff concluded that the enforcement authorities had failed to do their bit. The question that hangs in the air is whether that outbreak would have occurred had the enforcement authorities been doing their job as they should have been. That begs the question whether we need a Food Standards Agency as well as the enforcement authorities if there is a dramatic improvement in certain aspects of their actions.

I believe that taking powers to act as an enforcement agency, as the Bill proposes, will undermine the impartiality and the integrity of the FSA. It should confine itself to setting and monitoring standards. Furthermore, how can local authorities trust an agency that is setting and monitoring standards, and can take over from local authorities those same duties and responsibilities? The proposal for the FSA to be the enforcement agency is contrary to the Government's stated aims and objectives. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will seek to remedy those deficiencies by tabling appropriate, sensible, practical and well-informed amendments in Committee.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) warned of the risk of failure because expectations of what the FSA can achieve are being raised. He was right that no one, not even the scientists, will say that anything and everything is safe. It is hypocritical of the Government to say that, if the risk is infinitesimal, genetically modified foods should be allowed on to the market, whereas when they were in opposition they pilloried the Conservative Government, who would not say that beef was 100 per cent. safe. The Conservative Government could not have said that, and the Government know that. It is total hypocrisy for the Government to go on raking over the coals of BSE when they know that their criticism and their continued insistence on beef being proved to be 100 per cent. safe had an adverse effect.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border is right that there is a real risk that expectations are being built up too high. I urge the Government to accept amendments in Committee to improve the FSA's prospects of success.

21 Jun 1999 : Column 828

7.48 pm

Mr. Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw): I welcome the Bill, and I am glad to be able to take part in this important debate. The Bill is of significance to the people of the United Kingdom, but more importantly, the people whom I represent have looked forward to it with great emotion.

On Sunday 17 November 1996, a frightening blight descended on the town of Wishaw when 85 elderly people attended a lunch in Wishaw old parish church hall. It is an ordinary church hall in an ordinary town, and the lunch was attended by ordinary men and women. Nothing remained ordinary in Wishaw in the following harrowing days, weeks and months. For many families, nothing would be the same again.

A well-known and respected butcher supplied two bags of beef stew, some pastry tops and raw meat for soup to the church hall the day before the lunch. In the following days, 45 of the 87 luncheon guests suffered severe symptoms of gastric disorder. The bacterium E. coli0157 claimed the lives of eight of the elderly church-goers, and the outbreak spread throughout the towns and villages in central Scotland to which a small, family-run Wishaw butcher supplied cooked and raw meats.

A batch of the meat became cross-contaminated and, whenever it was served as a main hot meal or in sandwiches, cut down elderly people who were too frail to fight the deadly bacterium. In Bankview nursing home, in Bonnyrigg in central Scotland, five elderly residents were infected with, and died of, E. coli 0157. The strain of the organism that attacked the nursing home was the same as the strain that was allowed to manifest itself in the Wishaw butcher's shop in Lanarkshire.

The outbreak would eventually leave 22 people dead. Two of them--Mary Smith, aged 90, and Anthony Smith, aged 95--were my near neighbours, living in the same street as me. They were a lovely old couple, who did not deserve the excruciating death that befell them and left their family traumatised. Mrs. Smith was already dying in Monklands hospital in Airdrie as a result of the outbreak when Mr. Smith was diagnosed as having pneumonia, but he had eaten the same food as his wife, and he died 10 days before her. To this day, the family have no doubt that he was the unaccounted-for 22nd victim.

E. coli 0157 left 13 people with permanent kidney damage and 151 people hospitalised; 373 cases were confirmed, and more than 500 people were affected in Lanarkshire and central Scotland. The ordinary church lunch, the ordinary nursing home snack, the ordinary 18th birthday party buffet and the ordinary weekly shopping--all of them contained a dark bacterium, ready to strike the fragile, the elderly and the young alike. Once that bacterium took hold, there was little warning that could help many of its victims.

There are other reasons to welcome the establishment of this truly independent Food Standards Agency. As our eating, cooking and food-purchasing habits change, so does the scale of food poisoning throughout the United Kingdom. From remarkable figures obtained from the House of Commons Library, I note that in Scotland, 4,525 cases of food poisoning were notified by GPs in 1982. By 1998, the figure had risen by 100 per cent. to 9,054. In England and Wales, the statistics are even more frightening. In 1982, 14,253 cases were reported, and last

21 Jun 1999 : Column 829

year, the figure had risen to 93,366. That is an increase of 555 per cent. More than 100,000 cases of food poisoning have been reported by our GPs in the last 12 months alone. I am sure that all hon. Members agree that those are truly frightening statistics, which urgently need to be addressed.

At this point, I intended to discuss the proposed £90 levy on food retailers that was to fund the Food Standards Agency, but clause 39 now ensures that our Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies will be the paymasters. We have heard a great deal from the food industry about the imposition of a "food poll tax", but a levy of 30p a day would amount to less than the price of two sausages, half a pint of milk or two forkfuls of stewing steak for a family-run butcher's shop in Wishaw. If such a levy is considered excessive, some of those in the food sector have their priorities wrong. E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella do not recognise the size of the profit-and-loss account of a food retailer or caterer.

I am truly sorry that some people consider 30p too high a price for all retailers and caterers to pay to ensure that the products they sell are safe for human consumption. If 30p a day is the difference between some businesses' operating and closing down, I seriously ask where else they may be tempted to cut costs and hygiene practices. Alas, clause 39 ensures that the taxpayer will be responsible for an agency whose establishment has been necessitated by the bad habits that have accumulated in the food sector.

Professor Hugh Pennington, who was commissioned to report on the E. coli 0157 outbreak, gave evidence to the Food Standards Committee at its hearing on 24 February 1999. Interestingly, he opined that the agency

"will achieve the aim of being independent, giving consumer confidence in the food chain".