Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-45)
16 JULY 2003
RT HON
MARGARET BECKETT
AND MR
DAVID HUNTER
Q40 David Taylor: I understand that
a conclusion has not yet been reached. Is there sufficient time
before January 2004 for that proposal to be implemented, if that
indeed was what ministers thought was desirable? Is it on track
for that sort of timetable?
Margaret Beckett: I would have
thought so, yes. I am not aware that there is a time problem and
that there is not at least the possibility of implementing it.
Obviously it has implications for testing, because we would not
want to make such a change unless it was clear that you had the
testing machinery in place to support a different approach. As
far as I am aware we would anticipate that that would be the case.
Q41 Chairman: Leaving aside market
disturbance, it must be inherently extraordinarily desirable to
get rid of the Over Thirty Month Scheme and at least to demonstrate
that we can have a major animal health crisis and introduce the
necessary emergency measures to deal with it and then, when it
is dealt with, be able to dismantle entirely those emergency measures.
That must be a very important way of sending a message to public
opinion about the competence to deal with these sort of issues
and to get back to normal.
Margaret Beckett: I completely
agree with that and, what is more, I think it has a resonance
and a read through on other issues. I think one of the things
that is very much needed is not only the capacity to deal with
such a crisis and to be able to move away from those emergency
measures but also to get the message that, not least in part as
an aftermath of the very terrible events that hit UK agriculture,
there is a very strong commitment right across the industry to
quality and to meeting consumer demands about safety, to observing
the precautionary principle and so on and that we are committed
and the industry is committed to the kind of regulatory approach
that will enable the re-creation of that kind of confidence.
Q42 Ms Atherton: You will be aware
that in the media and among the public there is a fair amount
of concern about the "GM nation" debate. How satisfied
are you with the conduct of that debate?
Margaret Beckett: I find myself
in something of a difficulty to be honest and it is a difficulty
that will be familiar to all of you as politicians. The recommendation
to the Government from the AEBC was that there should be such
a debate and that that debate should not be conducted by the Government,
because the Commission (who, after all, are our independent advisers
on this issue) believed that there would not be quite the right
degree of faith in the Government's approach and the independence
on these issues that we might all wish to see and so they told
us that they believed that we should facilitate and, not to put
too fine a point on it, pay for such a debate. I believe their
initial proposal was for something of the order of £Ô
million, but they said that we should not run it and we accepted
that advice, we do not run it. There is an independent steering
board. Ever since the debate began I have come under pressure
from people to take control of the debate process and I fear I
am resisting such pressure because the advice was other people
should run it, so we are letting other people run it. They now
have double the budget that was initially suggested as far as
I am aware. I understand that there are people who feel that there
are problems with the debate and I also understand that that is
contested. I think part of the difficulty is that, as ever, there
is a limit to what the steering board can do, but what they are
trying to do is to provide the facility for other people to run
some discussions of their own and maybe that is not working as
perfectly as people would have hoped. I do not feel, having committed
to an independent debate, that I should abandon that commitment
half-way through.
Q43 Mr Lazarowicz: Do you think the
timescale should be extended in light of the criticism that has
been made so that the review board can change the emphasis if
it feels the need to do so?
Margaret Beckett: I do not think
there is either unlimited time or an unlimited budget. I think
it was something of the order of a year after I first gave agreement
the debate should commence that we authorised some of the money
before things got under way. I think there is great merit in having
such a dialogue. I think there is not as much merit in it dragging
on. I think there is merit in giving people information now.
Q44 Mr Lazarowicz: We have obviously
seen reports in the media about how the debate has been doing
in different parts of the country and the reaction that it has
evinced. Have you any feeling as to the main messages emerging
from the debate?
Margaret Beckett: Not massively.
I have had a certain amount of feedback from the chairman of the
steering board, Malcolm Grant, who feels that, although it is
not perfect, a lot of the debate and dialogue has been very constructive
and worthwhile. He does not accept some of the criticisms that
I know have been made in various quarters of how the debate process
has worked. Other than that, there has been little by the way
of detailed feedback at present but, of course, they do not feedback
to me, they feedback to the steering board. The Social Sciences
Research Project is a small group of people who have already been
commissioned by the steering board to follow the process that
they are pursuing and to report back on it, so when this part
of the process is over there will be the steering board's own
report of what came out of the dialogue, there will be whatever
is by then on the web site, there will be the Strategy Unit's
report which was published last weekend, something like that,
and very shortly there will be the report of the Science Review
which is due to be published very soon. I hope all of that will
help to inform the public dialogue and somewhere in and among
that there will be a more specific report back from the "GM
nation" debate as to what that element produced.
Q45 Alan Simpson: Having just taken
part in one of the "GM nation" debates this week, can
I just ask the Secretary of State to look at the principal criticism
that we faced on the panel, which is that we had to run the gauntlet
of public criticisms about the difficulties of getting access
to information from the organisers of the debate about the scientific
case for advocacy and the scientific case for doubt and there
was a lot of anger over what information was publicly available.
Perhaps I could move on to the question that I was lined up to
be asking on the fuel poverty report. As a Government we have
a commitment to eradicate fuel poverty amongst the most needy
households by 2010 and all fuel poverty by 2015. We have just
seen the National Audit Office report which says that we are unlikely
to meet that commitment on existing programmes since we will be
falling short by at least 20% in terms of the most fuel poor and
that the current programme only gets about 14% of its resources
into the most fuel inefficient households. When we had the Permanent
Secretary before the Committee, he agreed that the existing targets
may not have been entirely appropriate, but in terms of Bills
currently going through the House, one of the positions that has
been taken by your officials has been to say maybe it would be
a good idea to have no targets at all. Can you just say how, if
we were to drift into a position of having programmes without
targets, we would ever know what it was we were seeking to achieve
and what we actually delivered and what plans you have for putting
in place clear, identifiable targets that will be the bench marks
for delivering the whole programme and not just part of it?
Margaret Beckett: There are a
number of points there and I hope I will pick up on the main ones.
I think there is a difference. I am not aware anybody has suggested
that we are not on course to meet our present targets. As far
as I am concerned we are. Indeed, I think we are ahead in terms
of meeting our PSA target. However, I accept that if you take
the longer term there is a question about whether the programmes
we now have would take us to our longer-term target. We accept
that and that is an issue we have to look at over time. There
is then the slightly separate issue of whether the kind of targets
that we have had for the programme in the past and the approach
we have had in the programme is the best and, in particular, whether
it is the most effective in reaching the most fuel poor and that
is a concern that we accept and recognise and there is a fresh
consideration under way of what ought to be the shape of future
programmes and what ought to be the shape of future targets. I
do not recall hearing anybody say that we ought to abandon targets
altogether. That might be a misunderstanding. Maybe that is where
someone has said that we recognise there are questions about the
precise targets we have now and that has been taken as meaning
no targets, but I would be quite surprised if there was anybody
saying we ought not to have some kind of means by which we measure
the progress that we are making and I think there is real recognition
that although the Warm Front Programme (or whatever it was called
that it replaced) has met its short-term programme, that has shown
up improvements that one would like to see made and that is something
that is under consideration now.
Chairman: Secretary of State, this is
a much shorter session than we would preferred but we realise
the circumstances. Thank you for coming. We will follow this with
very great interest. May I just say in passing that we welcome
very much the announcement about Horticulture Research International
because that follows three reports by this Committee which has
pushed that along very substantially and I think we are very happy
with the direction which it is now taking, but we will, of course,
continue to keep our eye on it and keep it under close scrutiny.
Thank you both very much indeed for coming. We hope that you have
a good break. Cancu«n is looming. We will follow that very
closely indeed. We look forward to renewing our regular encounters
in the new session.
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