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6.4 pm
Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay): We seem to have been around this course many times before, as different products and developments affect our food supplies. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food should have learned some lessons by now. It always seems to react after the event, with the result that scorn is poured on the biotech industry. That is an important and developing sector in our economy, as it is in the United States. It also drives our farmers mad. If they are not ploughing up their crops, they must tearing out their hair, and many of them are being put out of business. There have been dozens of different scares, such as BSE, salmonella, listeria, irradiated food, aldrin and spraying apples for scab. Given the number of times that the House has debated matters of this sort, we have to ask ourselves whether we have learned anything.
Has the Minister bothered to read the very excellent reports produced by our own House organisation, POST--the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. It wrote excellent and very clear papers on this subject in May 1998 and October 1999, producing excellent, simple, sensible and scientifically sound documents. That information would have informed the Minister and his Ministry so that he could have stepped in to the argument before we reached this point.
The idea that the public might get is that people working in science and the commercial development of agricultural products have no concern for their consumer market, and that they are trying to shove into the market things that are dangerous to human health, almost regardless of whether or not those products are sound. That is an absurd proposition. Any business that behaved so irresponsibly would not last five minutes, because every user of the product--and goodness knows, we live in a litigious society--would sue the company. There would be no point in taking such a risk.
We are all concerned about the relationship between society and science, but the scientist must be allowed to experiment. Trial and error is an important part of
scientific progress. At some stage, the product will be tested on people. In the past, scientists often tested products on themselves. I do not suppose that they ate mountains of soya, or whatever. However, we learned about vaccines and other products that improved human health by that means. It is inevitable that we must have trials--yet immediately such trials become known, pressure groups seek to frighten the public about them, because they have their own agenda. They believe that nature is as it is and should never be adapted or altered, yet hardly anything in our environment has not been altered over a period of time.Historically, almost every new scientific development has been challenged. Astronomy, medicine, development of the understanding of the workings of the human body and Darwinian science have all, in their time, been treated in much the same way as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace treat this issue and have treated issues in the past.
Much of the science that is cobbled together and presented to the Minister--and much of that which was presented to the previous Government on BSE--is highly challengeable. However, because it is all done at the last minute to deal with the challenges made by these pressure groups, it is often bad science, badly thought out. I am making a plea for us to take a logical and sensible attitude to the industry and the people producing the seeds, who have just been given a tongue lashing by the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), which I think was hardly justified.
We make no progress unless we treat our scientists and those in other countries--in this case, most of the research was done in the United States--as sensible human beings.
Mr. Hayes: I do not claim to have my hon. Friend's expertise in this field. I know that she has carried out academic research into the history of science. Surely she would acknowledge that the difference with this particular challenge is its pace and scale, as I said earlier. She talks about evolutionary change in science, the many historical changes that have taken place and the suspicion that was felt at the time. However, this change is so fundamental. It does not build on what has gone before in a simple way. It is a giant leap into the unknown, is it not?
Mrs. Gorman: If Conservative Members are a family, there is probably the same latitude between my hon. Friend and me as exists in some other prominent families. I consider the trial of these products essential. The trials are being conducted discreetly and monitored carefully. To try to repress them or to distort or discredit the findings is a reactionary, almost atavistic, attitude to science.
I make my plea because when politicians consider such matters, we often know little about the science, but we criticise scientists and their motives. Let us remind ourselves that what they are trying to do is to reduce the need for the use of herbicides, such as Round-up, on crops. Those herbicides have been shown to have most undesirable effects on human health. Sensible and progressive attempts are being made to modify the seed so that we can reduce the use of some of those potentially toxic products.
All that scientists are trying to do is to produce a seed that will need less herbicide to produce a crop or one that will be resistant to the organisms that prey on it. That too
would give a more successful crop. If the effect of the organisms that destroy crops is reduced, there will be less need to use toxic substances.That is the motivation. There is no sinister plot to bring half the population to its knees. Science and industry are trying to improve human progress--to make life better by making more food available.
One argument that has not been advanced in the debate relates to ethnic farmers. It is said that they will be forced to buy GM seeds and that, as the seeds are not fertile, they will have to be replaced regularly. Of course, that is a silly argument. Farmers anywhere in the world can continue to use the seed they already have if they want to do so.
Not enough is made of the fact that we in this House are extremely ill-informed by scientists--often it is at the last minute. I welcome the new organisation that the Government will be able to consult. I wish the Government had taken more notice of POST and hope that they will make more use of that excellent organisation; it is on-hand and can be consulted. The Government should not wait until public hysteria has been generated, largely by pressure groups that have their own agenda. The leaders of such organisations, for example, Lord Melchett, Mr. Secrett and others, have all sorts of sub-plots--not least their opposition to the world of commerce.
We must be well prepared to deal with public concerns when they are raised. In a few years time, we shall wonder what the debate was all about and why we made such a fuss. We have not had the opportunity to undertake proper trials in this country. We should do so, because it would be irresponsible not to do so.
Meanwhile, we must accept that the Canadians, who have these products, are not out to poison their population--nor is the United States. There is an element of anti-Americanism in some of the literature attacking ideas on these matters. Of course, American farmers see advantages in these products; as they use them, they realise that they do not need so many herbicides and that they can grow food more cheaply.
The British public do not yet see much advantage in GM products. Most people do not buy soya oil; it occurs only in small quantities in a wide range of foods. As people see little advantage, they decide that they may as well join in the hue and cry created by the pressure groups. Ultimately, those groups will have to eat if not a large slice of humble pie, a large jar of GM-treated soya oil. I wish them joy.
Although my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) was right to take the Government to task for coming forward yet again with an ill-prepared and ill-digested agenda, it is time that the House took a more tolerant and more sensitive view of scientific events. What progress would have been made if politicians in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries had taken such an interest in scientific matters? I can think of many elements of progress that we would not have today if they had taken the approach that has been suggested. It is likely that if we had had our way, many of the progressive moves for the production of better quality and cheaper food would not have happened.
6.15 pm
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): I represent an area that has many biotech companies and I used to work at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, which is the national plant testing authority for most agricultural varieties of seed. Like most Members, I have many constituents who are concerned about the dangers to health and to the environment of GM crops and the food from them.
I listened carefully to the opening speeches. The opportunism of the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) knows no bounds. The Conservative party, when in government, refused to contemplate any labelling scheme. Those of us who fought for such a scheme well remember the opposition to the idea from the previous Conservative Government. The Conservative party in government approved GM foods for sale in this country and it saw no problem in promoting GM crops and GM food.
In contrast, the Labour party in government has strengthened the regulatory environment. We have introduced the labelling of GM ingredients in food so that people can make informed choices about what they eat. We have also promoted debate so that people are fully informed of the issues. The hon. Gentleman now chooses to take advantage of a commercial error and tries to turn it to his political advantage, instead of debating sensitively and constructively what we can do to avoid such accidents in future.
I believe that the genetic modification of crops can bring many advantages. It will be easier to produce drought-resistant crops, crops that do well in hostile environments, crops that have medicinal properties and crops that are high in protein and vitamins. However, I agree that it is necessary to proceed cautiously. We do not yet know how many of the crops will react to the environment and we do not know whether there might be future long-term health risks. There is a case for proceeding sensibly with the research.
We need to examine how best we can grow such crops in the field and examine the likelihood of them spreading beyond the immediate location. We also need to know--this area of research could prove to be extremely interesting--what will happen when farmers make the occasional mistake and when they do not follow the protocols exactly. We need to know what will happen when seed companies make mistakes, because we are beginning to find out that they do.
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