---

Gregory Barker: Does my hon. Friend also agree that the benchmark against which such GM crops were judged was conventional farming, which over recent years has been bad for biodiversity? We ought to be aiming for a much higher benchmark of biodiversity in the British countryside than the low level to which it has fallen in recent years.

Mr. Ainsworth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and he will find that I am coming to exactly that point.

When the Environmental Audit Committee published its report on the farm-scale evaluations on 5 March, we asked the Government—politely, I hope—to consider it carefully before using the trials as a basis for allowing commercial growing of GM crops. The Secretary of State's answer to that request was to make her statement four days later, as we have heard. The Government then justified ignoring our advice on the grounds that our report contained nothing new. They repeated that claim in their response to the Committee's report published today, and the Minister repeated it again in the Chamber. That is the first of many specious and misleading claims made by the Government about that report.

The report and its contents were only not new in the sense that hardly any Select Committee reports contain new information. We set out not to create new science, as the Minister seems to want to imply, but to analyse existing science, to take evidence from those who had been involved in that work, to draw conclusions, and to make recommendations as a Select Committee. Our recommendations were new, of course, and it was discourteous to the House that the Government brushed them aside with such haste. That raises much bigger questions about the relationship between the Government and Select Committees, but now is not the time to debate that.

I must also say, although the Minister rejected the claim earlier, that the Government have been guilty in their response to the report of either wilfully or carelessly misinterpreting the advice offered by my Committee. I will give him some examples. In their response, the Government seek to imply that we recommended that the benchmark for better biodiversity, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) just mentioned, should be set higher for GM crops than for conventional crops. We did not. What we said was that if we are to halt the years of disastrous decline in biodiversity in this country, the benchmark for all agriculture should be higher.

The Government go on to say that we failed to take oral evidence from the research consortium that did the groundwork on the trials, and that that constitutes a "serious weakness". First, the consortium could have submitted more than one and a half sides of un-illuminating A4 material in written evidence; secondly, the research consortium was not in charge of the design of the trials—the scientific steering committee was. Of
 
5 May 2004 : Column 1448
 
course we took evidence from its chairman, and based some of our conclusions on that evidence. Later, incidentally, we learned from an article in The Guardian that the chairman of the scientific steering committee was a passionate proponent of GM technology. That might raise questions in some people's minds about his appropriateness for the job, and about the independence that he brought to it.

Next, the Government take us to task for taking evidence from the Canadian National Farmers Union, because it has such a small membership. That is a trivial point, given that the ecological problems caused by GM crops in north America are so well documented and so well known. We have heard this afternoon about the problems caused by super-weeds, extra herbicide applications and so forth.

The Government then assert that the high proportion of GM maize and rape grown in north America, relative to conventional maize and rape growing, suggests that there are commercial benefits. I suggest that it might mean something completely different. It might reflect the fact that, as the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton and others have pointed out, this technology gets everywhere. It might reflect the fact that it is no longer possible to grow some organic crops in this environment because the GM technology has got out of control.

Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Ainsworth: I do not have enough time.

In any case, we were not concerned with commercial benefits at that stage of our discussions. We were concerned with the ecological damage that was being witnessed in north America. Either deliberately or otherwise, the Government missed the point of that argument. I hope that the House is beginning to understand what I meant when I used the phrase "wilfully or carelessly misinterpreting".

There are also sins of omission. The Committee was particularly anxious for a robust regime to be established to cover liability. The Government's response ignores that altogether. I know that the Minister has said things about it today, but why did he not take the opportunity, when responding to our report, to make the Government's position clear? He did not refer to it at all.

The present situation is this: the industry has said that it will not pay, and the Government have said that they will not finance compensation if things go wrong. Organic and conventional farmers, and distributors and food manufacturers, will be left completely exposed if the technology is commercialised and if anything goes wrong with it. Fortunately, because of the delay—because the industry has temporarily thrown in the towel—there is still time to put this right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle has suggested.

It is true that I am personally disappointed that what I hope can be seen as a thoughtful and serious report, running to 250 pages, has been met by a nine-page wonder of tendentious denial and evasion; but I am not motivated by sour grapes, or by a sense of hurt pride on behalf of the EAC. I have raised these criticisms and concerns, and will continue to do so, because I believe
 
5 May 2004 : Column 1449
 
that the curious Government response to the GM debate is symptomatic of a wider attitude in some powerful quarters of the scientific establishment, which—alas—appears to include the Royal Society. That attitude is unscientifically based on the ruling hypothesis that GM crops are an unequivocal benefit to mankind. The Minister may not believe that, but it seems to me that people in government in very senior positions are approaching the debate from that angle.

There is no evidence that that hypothesis is correct. Significant doubts remain. Much more work needs to be done. The public are not satisfied. The debate will go on, however hard the Government try to close it down and however many genetically modified raspberries they, the Royal Society or anyone else may blow at public opinion.

7.4 pm

Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North) (Lab): It is a delight to be back in the bear garden with my right hon. and hon. Friends to discuss this issue. I do not know how many times we have discussed it, but it certainly does not go away. Nothing will take away the euphoria that I feel today, not only because of the Government's attitude to this thorny problem but because Norwich City has reached premier status again and will stay there. That makes me feel good.

We have in Norwich the John Innes institute, a world-class centre not only for GM technology but for conventional plant breeding. I should declare an interest, although I have not worked in the GM field, because I worked with those technologies in the cancer field. Of course we collaborated and talked about technologies, and I knew of the institute's good work in developing vaccines in plants and its studies in the rice genome, which I think will help plant breeding in the developing world. I should also declare that I am a non-remunerated—not even in GM carrots—board member of the Institute of Food Research, which does excellent work in examining the effects on people's health and on food.

The point has often been made here that genetically modified crops are being grown extensively in north and south America and in China, although not in Europe. They have in a sense become part of the normal diet in those places, if not in Europe, where there is still contention, despite the fact that 300 million US citizens continue to eat GM soya without any ill effects in a very litigious society, and many Europeans, including people here, have eaten it while in the US, with no adverse consequences.

Joan Ruddock: I wonder how my hon. Friend thinks it would be possible for Americans to know whether they had a health problem related to GM food, when GM and non-GM foods are completely mixed and those people are not conscious of what they are eating.

Dr. Gibson: The epidemiology studies carried out in every major centre, including universities in the United States and elsewhere, into the effects of the food, and some experiments in that field, have shown no effects whatever that correlate with the food—although I understand how difficult that is to prove. I do not think that it is incumbent on me to prove that GM food is safe;
 
5 May 2004 : Column 1450
 
the people who say that it is unsafe have to prove that. The benefits that GM has given to people, such as the provision of cheap GM soya, have been to the great advantage of the food industry and the people who live in those countries.

Our Government, too, have done study after study, with chief scientific advisers and others examining the issue. The scientific, social and ethical issues have also been examined by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which has said that

"there is an ethical obligation to explore these potential benefits responsibly, in order to contribute to the reduction of poverty and to improve food security and profitable agriculture in developing countries."

That council says that GM food might not be the entire answer—it does not pretend that it is—but that it cannot be ruled out as part and parcel of our support for a developing world in which people are starving, and need food and help with their agricultural development.

The British Medical Association, too, has made robust submissions that there is no evidence that the foods are unsafe. It seems to me that the evidence is piling up to say that the food is, indeed, safe. I should like to see the real evidence from the other side. Although I do not have the time to do so now, I am quite prepared to take my right hon. and hon. Friends for a GM-free lunch to discuss the evidence that they put forward. I think that I can decimate it. I think that I can make arguments against every single, little experiment that they put forward and give another explanation, although I agree that more work needs to be done.

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has made it quite clear:

"There is no scientific case for a blanket approval of all the uses of GM",

but

"Equally, there is no scientific case for a blanket ban on the use of GM."—[Official Report, 9 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 1383.]

Recognising that people believe that the use of genetic modification should be approached with caution, the Government want regulation and monitoring. Some people want a framework of rules for the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops, and many want a clear regime of traceability and labelling so that they can make their own choices. The Minister offered us all that earlier today, which would seem to meet the demands of the public. Even while the Minister and the Secretary of State were saying that, The Mail on Sunday was publishing an article under the headline, "How I proved that GM crops poisoned an entire village", in which a so-called leading expert in GM crops, Professor Traavik,

"warned of potential catastrophe if GM crops are used in Britain and claimed an entire village in the Philippines was poisoned by American GM crops."

My hon. Friends will know that that has been seriously disputed.

Let us consider some of the other things that the media have said throughout this tortuous debate—nearly every newspaper has made some comment. Headlines include, "Are we at risk from mutant make-up?", "GM crops linked to meningitis", "Lifting the lid on the horror of GM foods", "Mutant porkies on the menu", "GM risk in daily food of millions", "GM food
 
5 May 2004 : Column 1451
 
'threatens the planet'", "Meat may be tainted by Frankenstein food", "M&S sells genetically modified Frankenpants"—that was from that classic newspaper, The Independent on Sunday—"Is GM the new thalidomide?", and so on. There has been a concerted media campaign to convey such a view of GM foods, and it obviously has an effect on people.

Mention has been made of Professor Pusztai, who gave evidence to the Select Committee that I now chair and of which I was a member of in the previous Parliament. He told us that feeding rats with genetically modified potatoes caused them damage. His work eventually appeared in a peer review journal, which is fine, but it first appeared in newspapers and television shows. There is no evidence that his results can be repeated. I can cite times and places where people have tried to repeat the experiments and have not had the same results. The essence of science is to be able to repeat experiments in different labs at different times, perhaps under different conditions, and get the same results.

The scientific community is almost unanimous in support, but the public debate reflects uncertainty. We must ask why the British public are sceptical. I do not want to go into all the questionnaires and so on. Even for someone who is a member of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science and has worked with the Royal Society and others, it is very difficult to find out what the public, or different publics, really think. In fact, the activism has not been public-led; it has been provoked by newspapers, and people have responded by becoming sceptical. People take a precautionary approach because it is the easiest route to take when there are suspicions around.

The scientists have not been brilliant; their arrogance sometimes shines through. I have no support for the arrogance of establishment scientists. We must admit it when we are wrong or when we do not know, and we must consider what we need to do to find out. It is ironic that, over 50 or 60 years, plant breeders have used chemical and radiation mutagenesis to create new varieties, with new modifications and genes leaping about and joining together, with no protest. We must ask why there was no protest then, but there is protest now.

---