Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
LORD WHITTY,
DR MARION
WOOLDRIDGE AND
MS JILL
WORDLEY
TUESDAY 2 JULY 2002
180. A good politician can spot the problems.
(Lord Whitty) I think it was recognised it was important
that we did start taking action on this front and what we have
done is bring together the various parties who are involved in
this, both private and public sector, to try and have a more co-ordinated
approach to it. We started that with the direct enforcement agencies
during the course of the disease but from earlier this year we
put together them, the airlines, the port authorities, the shipping
companies and so on to get everybody involved in facing up to
the problem. Amongst the stakeholders I think it has been received
quite well, and there has been a recognition that there is a shared
responsibility for dealing with it. If I can put this delicately
and following on from my opening remarks, dealing with the disease
internally in terms of stopping items getting into the food chain
and stopping the spread has led to pretty tight internal movements
and a biosecurity regime relating principally to the farming sector,
and they have felt that the parallel responsibilities of government
in relation to the position at the border has not been as strong
or effective as it might be, and they have been pretty effective
in drawing that to our attention and the attention of the general
public. From their perspective that is a valid comment but we
do have to proceed in co-operation with these other bodies and,
if we are to make any major shift in policy, including allocation
of substantial resources, that needs to be on the basis of sound
science and that is where the risk assessment fits in. On the
rest of the action plan, there is a greater visibility: there
is substantially greater co-ordination and greater intelligence
sharing amongst the agencies. We need another notch-raising of
awareness and we are intending before the big summer holiday rush,
probably next week, to announce a further stage in the public
awareness programme which involves both information at the airports,
with travel agencies, with airlines and at the point of embarkation.
So there will be another significant notching-up of that effort
which I think hitherto has not achieved the level of awareness
I would have liked
Mr Curry
181. Minister, I do not want to put words in
your mouth but I want to be clear I understand what you have just
said. We had classical swine fever and we all said it was due
to imported food—in fact, it was some mythical Chinese ham
sandwich at some stage which was blamed for it. We then said foot
and mouth disease had to be caused by imported product because
we did not have the disease, therefore it could only have come
in from outside. Now, you have just said I think that the first
priority of the government was not, in fact, to address imports,
even though you agreed that it was the government who made that
diagnosis that it was caused by imports, but it was to deal with
it once it had got here. Is that what you said: that we needed
to deal with it when it got in the food chain?
(Lord Whitty) No. What I said is that the first priority
was to stop it getting into the food chain. However draconian
the border control, our first priority is to ensure that, if anything
does get through, it does not get into the food chain and the
second priority is, if it does get into the food chain and we
are in a disease situation, to stop the disease spreading, and
that was certainly our major priority for most of last year in
terms of containing the disease.
182. You quoted the example of the pig swill
and you said that the priority was to stop it getting into the
food chain, assuming it had got across the frontier. The implication
I had understood was that it was not your priority to stop it
getting here. It was to cope with it once it is here, not to stop
it getting here.
(Lord Whitty) The Chairman did ask me what the balance
of risk was.
183. Yes. I am going to pursue that; do not
worry. First of all, I know that the Department is strapped for
cash because it always has been and still is but I do not quite
understand why these two operations could not be carried out simultaneously.
Immediately in the aftermath of foot and mouth disease, what steps
were taken?
(Lord Whitty) It is not an either/or situation. The
burden of effort from the outbreak of the disease was clearly
in containing the disease. The immediate regulatory change which
that brought was to stop it getting into the food chain through
the most obvious and direct route which is the pig swill route,
but we did from before and the very early stages of the disease
start taking steps to co-ordinate amongst the various enforcement
authorities to reduce the risk of it getting in and from before
my time raising the regulatory dimension of import controls and
import checks with the European Union from a very early stage
in the outbreak. From memory my colleague Joyce Quin was raising
this issue in March of last year with the European Union and we
have pursued that, so it is not an either/or position. I was saying
that the burden of effort must have been, and there was no alternative,
during last year to stop the spread of the disease, to contain
it and eventually to eradicate it. The lessons from that relate
to stopping things getting into the food chain and minimising
the risk of it getting into the country.
184. Let us agree that neither of us would argue
that you should not have devoted your efforts to stamping out
foot and mouth disease: it is not a proposition that you should
not have been doing that. The point I was making is that it did
seem possible that some other work might have been going on at
the same time. But you said that the NFU had raised the profile
of this and had argued that the government had not been proactive
enough, and you said, "From their point of view I can see
why they did it", but at some stage you are going to have
to turn round to the NFU and say, "We have got this one fettled,
sorted". What degree of checks, what intensity, do you think
would enable you to turn round to the NFU and say, "Given
that we do not wish to bring every airport and port to a halt
and that trade has to carry on, we think we have just about got
actuarily the level of checks to give maximum assurance for an
acceptable degree of disruption"?
(Lord Whitty) I do not know that there is a straight
answer to that. As far as we can get close to it that would follow
on the risk assessment. What I think is not very much in the consciousness
of the public in general and farmers in general is the level of
checks which goes on at the moment, particularly in relation to
the commercial trade, because most meat comes into the country
and most trade comes in through commercial activities, and although
there is a lot of attention on the passenger, and rightly so,
probably the most likely entry is through the commercial trade
one way or another. In that respect there is already a check,
a 1:5 (20 per cent) minimum check, on all meat products that come
into this country and higher for certain species. It is higher
for poultry at the moment. That is partly an EU arrangement and
partly our own enforcement priority so there is a pretty high
level of checking where the bulk of the meat comes in. Where I
think the public and the farmers are conscious of a lack of the
appearance of a high level of checking is in relation to the passenger
traffic, and I think there it is as much a matter of deterrence
as of the actual level of detection that is likely to be achieved
by a high level of checking. Personally, although I need the risk
assessment to prove this to me, I think there should be a higher
level of checking. There is already a higher level of co-ordination
achieved amongst the various agencies since the outbreak, and
I think that if we were simply to move across without proper scientific
base to a different form of checking then it might well have a
minimum impact on the problem.
185. Did you ever in your most private thoughts,
when you were shaving in the morning or whatever, say to yourself,
"There has been a hell of a song and dance about this, the
NFU has gone on about it ad infinitum, yet we have been disease-free
despite all the trade for decades; we have tried to make sure
if anything does happen we have dealt with it at the point of
entry into the food chain; in terms of good old government and
treasury value for money and public expenditure, whatever the
pressures upon us there may not be value for money in simply multiplying
the checks at airports compared with spending the money on R&D"?
(Lord Whitty) Yes. In my more logical private moments
I think there is no point in simply throwing money and resources
at it because you get reducing returns, but what I do think is
that it is quite important to change the atmospherics and the
feeling of both importers and individual passengers, if they come
in, that there is a problem if they are carrying food and that
is why I think a public awareness campaign is very important and
the visibility of checks, which of course is constantly urged
on us by the farming unions and others, is probably an issue and
one that I would wish to tackle. But I wish to tackle it on the
basis of as sound a science as we can establish in this area.
Chairman
186. We will come to that in a moment but let
us stick with the perception just for now, because some of the
more sexy parts of the action plan lie around sniffer dogs and
X-rays and disposal bins, honesty bins. Where have we got to on
those three measures?
(Lord Whitty) To take sniffer dogs first, clearly
there are some countries which I think relatively recently have
relied quite heavily on sniffer dogs in this area, and we have
in other areas—drugs and explosives—which have hitherto
had a higher priority at the point of enforcement. We are now
embarked on an experiment of using sniffer dogs: we have just
started an exercise of training those dogs which will last for
eight weeks and, before the end of the summer, we will have a
presence of sniffer dogs. That will be a pilot and we will have
to see how it works and how effective it is as detection, and
how effective it is in terms of deterrence. On X-rays, there is
of course some degree of X-ray activity already but the normal
X-ray machinery, even with an expert person looking at the screen,
is not very effective at picking out meat as distinct from other
things. There are suggestions that combining earlier forms of
technology can change that but we do not have a validated machine
which could do that. In terms of X-raying whole containers, this
would be an enormous job and one which could only be done on a
fairly limited random basis, even if we were to make the capital
investment without completely disrupting the four million container
consignments that come into the country. I think, therefore, although
there is a role for more X-ray, it is a limited one, one we are
looking at and which we may well wish to take a bit further. I
think the idea that X-rays are going to be a panacea for this
is probably not as valid as some people claim.
187. And honesty bins and discarding your stuff
and boarding cards on aeroplanes may not achieve anything but
they would respond to the kind of cry, "Something must be
done", and the balancing act is what the something is because
it is never going to be one hundred per cent. What is the necessary
deterrent, as it were?
(Lord Whitty) The issue of honesty bins is one where
the jury is still out and we are still discussing it with other
authorities. Hitherto both the airport authorities and Customs
& Excise have not been particularly keen on honesty bins and
I think the reality is they would be symbolic but may be part
of the public awareness campaign. They are unlikely to have huge
effects on the real amount that is coming in but I would not dismiss
their use as part of an overall package. In relation to landing
cards, what we have to recognise as distinct from the situation
in America or New Zealand is that the vast bulk of the incoming
traffic is European-based or has come from a European airport
and is therefore subject to the single market and this does not
apply. With landing cards, once you start discussing what should
be on the landing cards which are there solely at the moment for
immigration purposes, there may well be other questions which
government departments and others would wish to put on the landing
cards. Again, we are still in discussion on that. More directly,
and something which I think we can probably pursue more effectively,
is to persuade the airlines to do as they do in other countries
to make announcements themselves. Part of the next stage of our
public awareness campaign will be to provide in-flight messages.
We will have to get legal authority to enforce it on airlines
but we are hoping they will co-operate on this, and to produce
a video which could be used on long-haul flights, and in travel
agents and in the rather long hours that many passengers spend
waiting in UK airports on the way out. So getting the consciousness
of the incoming passenger raised is important, and that we can
do without necessarily changing the rules on landing cards or
immigration requirements.
188. All these things are fraught with difficulties,
and posters have not been easy either because airports are good
advertising venues and you are competing against others?
(Lord Whitty) Yes. I think there is more we can do
on posters as well. Part of the next campaign will involve posters
on the outgoers because we are particularly aiming at holidaymakers.
On incoming flights, of course, we have not yet but we are about
to put the posters on to the carousels at the main airports. There
is a commercial implication of that for the airport, for us and
for Customs & Excise. This shows I do not travel very much:
I am told by my colleague they have been on the carousels for
a few days now.
Mr Curry
189. But what is the commercial implication,
because there is nothing else on the carousel at the moment. If
one is sitting at the airport, there is a big carousel which is
60 yards long, and there is absolutely nothing in the middle of
it. Instead there is a poster, in extraordinarily complicated
language, English only, revolving around the end of the carousel,
so it is competing with two other messages because it is a triangular
poster. What is to stop a bloody great message sitting along the
length of the carousel like it is in Los Angeles to tell people
what they cannot do? What is so offensive about that?
(Lord Whitty) It is not offensive—
190. BA is not advertising anything else at
all at the moment. There is nothing there.
(Lord Whitty) I do not think that is true, with respect.
I think there are mainly BAA or Customs & Excise announcements
on that carousel.
191. No, there is nothing there. I looked at
it. We watched it going round. It was fascinating—just like
old times!
(Lord Whitty) In any case, it is our determination
to get the message on the carousel but there is a cost to the
airport authorities in doing that.
192. Why? What is the cost? What is the cost
of having stiff cardboard—
(Lord Whitty) You would have to do that through the
Customs & Excise arrangements that they have with BAA so I
cannot give you a fee. If I can give you more information I will
do it in writing.
Chairman
193. Yes, please. Let us just locate to Heathrow
because we have been to Heathrow and we have seen the triangular
sign that goes round and it is quite right that on one of them
there is a poster, but we would be interested to know why you
cannot do more on the David Curry model, and what the cost implications
would be.
(Lord Whitty) Yes.
(Ms Wordley) I think it is fair to say that is not
one of the options that we have explored previously so we can
certainly look into whether there is any scope for that.
Mr Curry: That just shows how creative select
committees can be!
Mr Martlew
194. You said the question of deterrent was
important. We have just had a witness before us who said that
they checked 30 airlines at Gatwick and they found well over a
ton of illegal product but there was no prosecution whatsoever
of any of those people. Where is the deterrent in that?
(Lord Whitty) There are two channels. In the commercial
channel the deterrent is confiscation of the whole load, so there
is a deterrent in that respect. There are, of course, sanctions
in relation to individual travellers as well but there are very
few prosecutions and this is something that we need to address.
There are sanctions in relation to bringing in anything that is
above the legally entitled minimum, or bringing anything that
is illegal through CITES or anything else. But there have been
very few prosecutions, you are quite right.
195. So the reality is the worst that is going
to happen is it will be confiscated?
(Lord Whitty) For most people it has been that.
196. That is the message we send out, is it?
(Lord Whitty) Not on the posters because that says
you are going to be fined £5,000, so we are trying to up
the deterrent effect of prosecutions. However, DEFRA is not an
enforcing agency on the floor but what the enforcement agencies
will say is that catching the people and enforcing the fine is
a diversion of resources, whereas confiscation and deterrence
will be more effective. Now, I have heard this argument in other
contexts and I do not always agree with it, and I do think the
level of prosecutions is rather strangely low and certainly if
we raise the profile and the awareness nobody can say that they
did not know and, even if ignorance is not normally a mitigation
in law, in practice a lot of people will say they did not know
that was the situation and they would be let off. I think that
is the presumption of the prosecuting authorities. I think we
ought to change that presumption by raising the profile in-flight,
on the point of embarkation and when you land, and I think that
we could increase the number of prosecutions that are likely to
be successful.
197. Obviously we are sitting round doing this
investigation today and you are here because of foot and mouth
disease—that is the essence of it, is it not—and very
soon after the outbreak the feeding of swill was banned. If my
memory serves me right, we were considering banning swill before
but there was representation from the industry that stopped it.
(Lord Whitty) Yes.
198. Now it seemed a very easy thing to do to
ban swill, and perhaps you could ask Mr Curry why he did not do
it when he was Minister, but it never was done. Now that we have
stopped that particular way of getting waste product into the
food chain, what is happening to the product that would have gone
to swill? Is there not a danger that it could still illegally
get into the food chain or be put on landfill and be carried across
and still contaminate farm animals?
(Lord Whitty) Yes, there is, but it is a much lesser
danger than if perfectly legal and normal channels of feeding
certain animals were based on catering and food waste which was
the case up until we banned swill, although it had to be treated,
and as you will know the farm where the origin probably occurred
in the original case would have been illegal because they had
not treated the swill and it would have been illegal under pre-existing
rules. So all rules can be broken but we have stopped in legal
terms the most obvious and substantial way in which potentially
diseased food got into the animal food chain.
199. So you considered doing this before, or
the government did, and there was representation from the farming
industry to say that you should not ban swill, is that correct?
(Lord Whitty) Yes. Although by the end most representational
elements of the farming industry had accepted that something needed
to be done and there were European developments in parallel. But
it is still a matter of some resentment in parts of the farming
sector
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