Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-344)
LORD WHITTY
AND MR
ANDREW SLADE
19 JUNE 2003
Q340 Chairman: Would it make it more
effective simply by making it mandatory and extending it beyond
the big four?
Lord Whitty: I think some sort
of Code should apply beyond the big four but the big four are
the major players in the game and if you cannot get it right for
the big four you are not going to get it right for the chain as
a whole. The balance of power is significantly greater if you
are dealing with somebody who has 20% of the market than if you
are dealing with somebody who has 3% of the market.
Q341 Chairman: We believe you are
the experts on the Integrated Pollution and Prevention and Control
system and I am going to ask Bill to test that theory.
Lord Whitty: I do not know who
told you that!
Q342 Mr Wiggin: All new livestock
producers must apply for a permit by 31 January. The BPC reported
that difficulties have arisen in obtaining the IPPC permit for
new poultry operations and that despite collaboration with the
Environment Agency, it knows of four applications and reports
that "Each application has taken on average the equivalent
of one person four months full time work estimated at approximately
£11,500. In addition, for each site there have been costs
of £10,000 for testing and surveys required by the Environment
Agency. A site nitrate survey alone costs £5,000. On top
of these costs there has been an application fee of £3,024
and an annual subsistence fee of £2,537, provided that the
farm is complying with Standard Farming Rules. The total costs
so far per IPPC application are estimated at a staggering £27,000."
How satisfied are you with the initial operation of the Standard
Rules for IPPC?
Lord Whitty: There are two points.
I am very satisfied with the rules of the IPPC. They set minimum
standards for large operations. In terms of poultry we are only
talking about operations those who are dealing with more than
40,000 places, which will be regulated in about four years' time.
The registration process does of course apply to new plants ahead
of that but it is something that has to be negotiated with the
Environment Agency. Within the United Kingdom, of course, we are
not gold-plating the IPPC Directive whereas a number of other
European countries are in that their thresholds for operation
in the poultry field are considerably lower—and I see from
this that France is 20,000, Finland 10,000, Sweden 10,000—so
there is some gold-plating going on which the UK government is
not engaging in.
Q343 Mr Wiggin: That must be a first.
Lord Whitty: Not at all, and we
have just talked about it. If I can digress into a general attack
on the alleged fact that the UK Government is always gold-plating.
When you examine these issues, whether in this field or others,
you often quite find a) that is not the case and b) some other
countries are gold-plating in certain respects far more than we
are. There is a second point however in what you are saying which
is why is the cost of this on the applicant? The answer to that
is that in general we think that the costs of regulation should
be internalised and there are areas of agriculture where that
is not yet by any means the case, but in the case of the Environment
Agency, as with non-agricultural applicants, they do charge the
cost to those whom they regulate in almost all areas of their
operation. I do not recognise the particular figures to which
you referred but I have no doubt that that reflects that overall
approach to which the EA and many other regulators are subject.
I agree that is not always the case in other countries.
Q344 Mr Wiggin: Given all the environmental,
animal welfare and food safety regulations faced by the poultry
industry, at what point does government say: "The industry
is being regulated enough"?
Lord Whitty: There is no answer
to that question. It is undoubtedly true that with environmental
concerns, public health safety concerns and animal welfare concerns,
there is an increasing societal requirement that we need to achieve
higher standards in all of those fields. Whether one needs to
achieve them through the type of regulation we in Europe currently
engage in is entirely another matter. I think that much of the
European regulation in this and other areas has been too prescriptive
in the past and has related to methodology and production methods
rather than outcomes. I think therefore there is a serious question
which we in the European Union have to face which is what the
nature of regulation. I think the need for some form of regulation
or other form of control of these externalities of production
is not likely to diminish but is likely to grow and we have to
find better ways and less onerous and less distorting ways of
delivering those objectives, which is why we are engaged in discussion
on whole farm plans where we are trying to gear Europe more to
outcome-related regulation and why we are trying to insist that
Europe always engages in regulatory impact assessments in the
way we do here and we are trying improve the quality of ours here.
There are lots of questions about the quality and delivery of
regulation but I do not think the demand for regulation is going
to go away.
Chairman: The question and the answer
summarise the whole theme of what this inquiry has been about.
We are now at the end of the final evidence session. I am grateful
to colleagues for their time and energy and involving themselves
in this inquiry, to our advisers and particularly to those who
have given evidence and yourself, Lord Whitty and Mr Slade. Thank
you very much indeed, and you will hear from us further. Thank
you very much.
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