MEMORANDUM 5
Submitted by the British Hospitality Association
1. The British Hospitality Association is the
national trade association for over 25,000 hotel, restaurant and
catering establishments in the United Kingdom. We are responding
to the invitation to comment on the draft legislation for establishing
a Food Standards Agency, and the proposed scheme for recovering
some of the associated costs via a levy.
DRAFT LEGISLATION
2. We welcome the creation of an independent
body, which we see as an important step towards improving food
safety through better education and enforcement of existing legislation
throughout the food chain, thereby restoring public confidence
in food offered for sale by both caterers and retailers.
3. We strongly support the decision not to license
catering premises; we have always contended that current food
safety regulations, where correctly and consistently enforced,
are sufficient to ensure the provision of safe food and a consequent
reduction in the incidence of food poisoning.
4. We support the guiding principles and the
proposed scope of the Agency in providing high standards from
"plough to plate". As end users of the final product,
caterers have often been held responsible for shortcomings in
food safety which occur earlier in the food chain, and over which
they have little or no control. The existence of salmonella in
poultry is one example.
5. We would wish the Agency to act transparently
and the Government should act promptly on the advice given by
it. The Agency should consult with the food service industry which,
like the general public, requires clearly presented information
to make informed choices. We believe that co-ordination of the
Public Health Laboratory Service should be brought under the direct
control of the Agency.
6. We are concerned that there is no mention
of the functions currently covered by the Local Authorities Co-ordinating
Body on Food and Trading Standards, which fulfils an important
role in relation to food safety policy in local authorities, making
a significant contribution to consistent and even handed enforcement
of legislation on a national basis. In this context, we also have
some concern about future enforcement in the devolved administrations
in Scotland and Wales. It would be an unfortunate outcome if catering
businesses operating in, say, both England and Scotland had to
comply with two different food safety regimes, with different
requirements for staff training.
7. We would wish to see an equitable balance
of representation in the Agency's membership, with the inclusion
of people with practical and experienced knowledge of the food
industry.
PROPOSALS FOR
A LEVY
SCHEME
8. We recognise that the Agency will attract
additional costs, but, since it will be carrying out public health
functions, these should be funded out of general taxation. Certainly,
the capital (start up) costs, at the very least, should be funded
from that source. We do not believe that it is ethical to require
private sector businesses to bear the cost associated with property,
IT systems or redundancies resulting from duplication. We also
have reservations about the accuracy of the estimate of £90,
rounded up from £84, since this has been calculated on the
basis of there being 340,000 registered catering outlets in the
UK. In our view the real number may be 300,000, many of which
may be exempt for various reasons, so that the £90 would,
in practice, be significantly increased.
9. Should it be decided however, contrary to
our submission, to make direct charges, we firmly believe that
these should be shared "plough to plate", and not by
the catering and retail sectors alone, particularly since the
Agency's remit includes the disposal of radio active waste, waste
at sea and animal feed standards, none of which have a direct
connection with the food service sector. If there is to be a levy,
the costs should be equitably shared by those industries which
will benefit from the functions to be carried out by the Agency.
It is not only the catering and retail sectors which are required
to be licensed and/or registered, thus the collection of a proportion
of the Agency's running costs from producers, manufacturers, importers
and wholesalers could just as easily be effected through Uniform
Business Rates.
10. We propose that finance allocated to local
authorities for food safety enforcement should be ring-fenced
and demonstrably used to improve and maintain such safety at the
point of production, as well as at retail and catering premises.
11. If a levy were to be introduced and applied
to catering businesses, we believe that in the interests of creating
a level playing field, it should also apply to small hotels and
guest houses with less than four letting bedrooms, which are currently
exempt from registration. We would however, be opposed to complicating
matters further by applying different rates of levy according
to the size of the business; this would considerably increase
bureaucracy.
12. In the longer term, we are concerned that
the Government's undertaking to recover no more than £50
million from the levy will cease to apply leaving the catering
and retail sectors to bear an even greater share of the costs
of food safety enforcement. Given that the reasoning for applying
any levy is highly questionable, we would strongly urge that the
levy proposal is withdrawn.
March 1999
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