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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That intervention is too long.
Mr. Brown: My days as a Government business manager have ceased, and I have moved on to a happier billet. I am therefore afraid that I am not able to respond as I might otherwise have done to the hon. Gentleman's request. Hon. Members will be aware that Ministers are not supposed to interpret the law inside or outside the House.
I have been working to try to find a reasonable way through the matter which is fair to the company, mitigates the losses and means that farmers who are innocent victims do not suffer resultant financial hardship.
Mr. Paterson: The Minister admitted to the Select Committee on Agriculture that he was responsible only for the seed aspects of genetically modified crops. Environmental matters are dealt with by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, food matters by the Food Standards Agency, and presentation, I believe, rests in the hands of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who in May told "Today" that she was not happy with the presentation in connection with such crops.
Who is in charge? Would it not be sensible to have someone in overall control of all GM matters, to stop those extraordinary muddles involving the Department, its sister Departments and the devolved Assemblies?
Mr. Brown: The delay that is occurring while the issue is fully considered does not mean, as the hon. Gentleman is trying to suggest, that there is a muddle. Such matters are co-ordinated by a Cabinet Committee, of which my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office is in charge.
Mr. Gray: The Minister for the Cabinet Office, whom the Minister has prayed in aid, said on "Today" on 22 May that the Government had made a mistake in not
telling the public about the contamination. Will the Minister respond to that? A moment ago, he dismissed his noble Friend, Baroness Young, when he said that English Nature had nothing to do with the matter because it is concerned with animals. Baroness Young said:
- The UK statutory nature conservation agencies must be consulted
Mr. Brown: I did not dismiss the views of English Nature. Its statutory responsibilities are for nature conservation and it has offered us helpful advice on such matters. I fully agree with the views of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office. I hope that is helpful to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Brown: I would like to make progress, but I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Mr. Williams).
Mr. Alan W. Williams (East Carmarthen and Dinefwr): I suggest that we contrast our debate with the dozen or more debates on the serious problem of BSE that we had in the early 1990s. We are nit-picking about insignificant dates in April and May and about a crop that was not a threat to human health or the environment. Uprooting those crops would cost about £3 million, whereas the problems that occurred in the decade in which the Conservative party was in office involved a cost of £4 billion, and are still with us.
Mr. Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out again to the House that there is no threat to human health or the environment. There are important issues, including legal issues, involving the supply chain, and the Government have been working hard to resolve those so that there is ultimately no economic loss to farmers, and the seed company is treated fairly. We will take steps to make sure that we minimise the possibility of such an incident occurring in future. I give way to the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald).
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire): The Minister was asked whether advice had been given to Advanta not to give information to its customers. His reply was that no instructions had been given to Advanta to tell its customers about the seeds. There is a difference between advice and instructions. Is there no question that the Minister is using weasel words, and that advice, but not an actual instruction, was given to Advanta that it should not tell its customers about the seeds? I hope that there is no question of that, because the Minister is under a duty to be full and frank with the House.
Mr. Brown: I do not think that there is a Minister in this Government who tries harder to be candid with the House, and I could not have been more candid with the explanation that I have given; I handed it to the hon. Member for South Suffolk, who speaks for the Opposition
on such matters. I know of no semantic differentiation of the sort that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire mentions. I cannot be more open than that.
Mr. Brown: I give way to the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key).
Mr. Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is made clear in resolutions of the House that Ministers should be as open as possible. There is a difference between advice and an instruction, and the House needs to know which was given because this is an important point--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have got the gist of what the hon. Gentleman is trying to say, and it is not for the Chair to interpret words or advice that are being debated. This is a matter for the debate, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will find other ways of pursuing the point.
Mr. Brown: I offered to give way to the hon. Member for Salisbury, who is an old sparring partner of mine, although in those days he was the Minister and I was the Back-Bench MP making a nuisance of himself.
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): I am certainly not making a nuisance of myself. If the right hon. Gentleman was convinced that there was no danger in the crop being planted, on what grounds did the French Government instruct farmers in France to destroy their crops?
Mr. Brown: It is not for me to interpret the law in France, but apparently the French Government have the power to do that under their legal code. We have the power to do that under our legal code, but only in very specific circumstances that are defined in the Environmental Protection Act. Like me, the French Agriculture Minister would have had in mind the fact that there is no marketing consent, so the issue for Ministers is to find a way to safeguard arable payments to farmers.
As those who follow such matters will know, the European support mechanism is an important element in growing oilseed rape, so we want to preserve farmers' rights to European aid, but we have to find a way within the law to deal with the lack of marketing consent. That is what we are trying to do here; Jean Glavany is trying to do that in France; Karl-Heinz Funke and Margareta Winberg are doing the same in Germany and Sweden respectively, and the Minister in Luxembourg has the same task. We all face a common problem, and we have, I hope, arrived at a common solution, which will work for farmers and be fair to the industry.
That brings me to compensation for farmers' losses, which is essentially a matter between the farmers affected and the seed company. However, the House will want to know that I have had a constructive meeting with representatives of Advanta Seeds last week, and the Government welcome the company's announcement on 2 June that it will provide a fair and equitable compensation package for the affected farmers.
Opposition Members are trying very hard, and completely unconvincingly, to pin the blame for the incident on the Government and to argue that taxpayers'
money should be used to deal with the consequences. It was not the Government who produced the seed and sold it to farmers; the Government's role in this incident is limited to dealing responsibly and proportionately with the consequences once the company had come forward to notify the Government of the problem. This we have done and will continue to do.The precise circumstances that resulted in the presence of GM seed in the non-GM batches are still being investigated. My officials are in contact with the Canadian authorities and the seed company to establish the details. One of my technical advisers has visited Canada to liaise with the authorities, and one possible factor in the incident may relate to the separation distances used to produce the seed crop. We are investigating that issue.
In line with the response that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) on 18 May, I can tell the House that the Government are undertaking a review of separation distances, including a scientific review of the relationship between separation and crop purity. We shall consult farmers--both conventional and organic producers--and other interested groups and see what lessons may be learned from the Advanta incident.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud): I have made similar points before, but the other matter that must be explored is the importance of every country signing up to the Montreal biodiversity protocol because until all countries do so, segregation will remain a difficult issue, as the Select Committee on Agriculture proved. The very least that we can expect is that each country will police its own production.
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