Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640-659)
LORD WHITTY,
MR BILL
SCRIVEN AND
MR IAN
NEWTON
20 JULY 2004
Q640 Mr Mitchell: So you are sponsoring
both the producers and the manufacturers?
Lord Whitty: Yes.
Q641 Mr Mitchell: The food service sector
as well as the food chain? The whole lot?
Lord Whitty: Yes.
Q642 Mr Jack: Can I just tell you why
I have been pursuing my line of inquiry about what your department's
actual views are on some of this? For example, in your evidence
under the paragraph that talks about EU marketing standards, you
quite rightly describe at the retail stage: "This information
must include the nature of produce, its quality and whether it
is Class 1 or 2". However, part of this great plan for Food
and Health Action will, no doubt, deal with nutrition and ingredient
contents. I would have thought that you might have had a view,
for example, with the marketing of fresh produce, as to whether
it would enhance the sales of those items in the context of this
plan if consumers were better informed about, for example, what
the nutritional content of the banana, the apple, the beef, the
pork, etc, was, but you are neutral in your views about these
issues in your evidence. Why?
Lord Whitty: I do not think we
are neutral about them in our evidence or in practice. We are
clear that part of the responsibility of the food industry in
all its manifestations is to deliver a wide range of choice, certainly,
and the option of pursuing a healthy diet, but the balance of
that healthy diet is primarily a matter for health ministers and,
to some extent, the FSA. We want to ensure that the British industry
can supply the healthy elements—
Q643 Mr Jack: I know that, but if you
take, for example, lettuce, which is high in folic acid and good
for pregnant mothers I understand, I would have thought Defra
might have had a view as to whether that piece of information
ought to be given by retailers, for example, to customers in addition
to the fact of describing whether it is a Class 1 or 2 lettuce
or what its weight was. Yet you do not seem to have a view.
Lord Whitty: I think you are mixing
up the issue of what is regulated and what is not.
Q644 Mr Jack: Do you want to go beyond
regulation then?
Lord Whitty: Yes.
Q645 Mr Jack: How?
Lord Whitty: There are bits of
regulation which after the removal of the FSA from the old MAFF
stayed with what is now Defra. One of those bits is the bit you
picked up here under marketing standards for fresh fruit and vegetables.
That has remained, perhaps slightly anomalously but it has remained,
with Defra. We are therefore responsible for carrying out the
EU regulations in that area. However, over and above that, as
part of our overall food policy in the Sustainable Food and Farming
Strategy adopted following the Curry report, we are party to cross-government
commitments on diet and a balanced diet, which includes, for example,
the Five-a-day, the fresh fruit in schools and various elements
which promote fresh produce. If you are saying do I want to go
beyond that and persuade retailers and others to advertise the
specific benefits of specific fresh products then that is probably
going a bit far, but the general message that fresh food, fresh
fruit and fresh vegetables—which includes lettuces and salads—are
of benefit, then, yes, we would wish to encourage those who purvey
them whether they are restaurants or retailers, so to do. That
should benefit elements of the primary producers as well.
Q646 Mr Jack: We have talked about health
and we have talked about your position. North of the border there
is a Scottish Food and Health Co-ordinator who manages to bridge
these gaps. Have you given any thought to the appointment of such
a person south of the border?
Lord Whitty: My understanding
of the Scottish position is that there is somebody within the
Scottish Executive who is, if you like, the point of contact so
that there is a one-stop-shop for food policy issues, but she
is not, as I understand it, the executive responsible in all the
areas of the Scottish Executive; the health department, the agriculture
department, the education department—they have a similar
structure to us. Of course, the FSA, which is the main regulator
in the industry, is a national, UK body; therefore, it is not
an analogous position. It is certainly not a co-ordinator in the
sense of a superstructure over all the departments and agencies
which have bits of responsibility for food. If you are saying
should there be more of a one-stop-shop for information, well,
that is something that we could certainly look at. At the moment
we are focusing strongly on the health element and there may be
recommendations in relation to how you get information on food
health coming out of the Public Health White Paper. I think it
is wrong to say (as I have seen this position in Scotland described)
it is a Food Tsar; it is nothing of the sort, it is a co-ordicator
of information—or least a focal point for information—not
an executive job.
Chairman: There was a particular issue
regarding the industry/government interface that I think Joan
Ruddock wanted to pursue.
Q647 Joan Ruddock: I think the Minister
is saying that there is going to be a White Paper, that there
are clearly discussions going on and we will know in due course,
but some things have already come to our attention, namely the
initiative on salt and the way in which the Minister for Health
has named companies and said that there would be a need to take
some stronger action. To what extent has Defra been in discussions
with the Department of Health over that particular initiative,
which is on-going at the moment?
Lord Whitty: The issue of salt
in food is quite a long-running one in which MAFF, and then Defra,
have been involved with the Department of Health for some time.
The particular initiative on naming the companies we are not directly
involved in but, clearly, that was an initiative in which the
Department of Health were trying to ratchet up the pressure on
some of the manufacturers they felt were not delivering enough
on that front. However, the basic policy we have been involved
in.
Q648 Joan Ruddock: Given that that has
been publicly stated, is Defra then working with the industry
in any sense to reinforce those messages? Or do you say "That's
them, and they did that and it is nothing to do with us, really"?
Lord Whitty: No, we are not; we
are keeping in close touch with the Department of Health on all
these things, but it is their initiative to actually pick out
salt as one of the principal areas. We have had a salt reduction
policy which is a Defra, and before that MAFF, policy as well
as a Department of Health policy for some considerable time, and
certainly quite a lot has been achieved on the bakery side, for
example.
Q649 Joan Ruddock: Should it not be a
joint policy? Should you not be jointly tackling this issue?
Lord Whitty: We are a joint party
to it but the setters of the targets are those who are responsible
for health, in effect, and that is why the Department of Health
set the targets and monitors against those targets. So they are,
therefore, best placed to say if companies and products are falling
below those targets.
Q650 Joan Ruddock: Given that we have
had a lot of evidence that suggests that the voluntary initiative
is somewhat faltering, do you think the Government ought to take
a stronger line and, possibly, ought to legislate in this field?
Lord Whitty: In which field?
Q651 Joan Ruddock: In terms of quantities.
Lord Whitty: We are still on salt?
Q652 Joan Ruddock: We all know that sugar
and fat is the same issue, really, but it is about the levels
that are healthy or unhealthy and about the information that ought
to be given to people to try to make an assessment to do what
is best for them diet-wise.
Lord Whitty: I think there are
two separate issues. On the question of whether, in effect, some
heavily-salted products should be eliminated from the market by
regulation if the voluntary system does not do it, the voluntary
system has eliminated quite a lot of heavily-salted food but some
other, particularly highly-processed, products have come in, so
that there is a highly-salted processed thing where bread has
reduced its salt content. So if the direction was faltering entirely
then I think the option of looking at regulation in these and
other fields might be appropriate. The issue of information is,
of course, one which is under active consideration, principally
with the FSA and the Department of Health, but I suspect that
the issue of information on salt, fat and sugar will form part
of the consideration of the Public Health White Paper, and maybe
regulation on what information should be given. There is, of course,
some dispute as to what information is useful and what is not,
which may make actual regulation more difficult, but we are still
generally at the point where, product-by-product, salt is being
reduced by, largely, voluntary action. We need to take that faster.
If it fails to speed up then I suppose there may become a case
for actual bans, but I think we are not at that point at this
point.
Q653 Joan Ruddock: Might not regulation
of that kind, that could ultimately be a ban, create a level playing
field? Some of the evidence given to us has been suggesting that
people like the taste of salty food and, therefore, those who
continue to market salty foods could gain market advantage over
others who have been more responsible?
Lord Whitty: Yes, although that
has not been the economic effect of the reduction in salt in bread.
Q654 Joan Ruddock: It has not?
Lord Whitty: It has not, in that
it has not been the saltier breads which have prevailed. Certainly,
to some extent, the less-salty breads have had a bigger market
share. However, that could happen; I appreciate it could happen.
One of the problems in all this—and I am not saying anything
different, I do not think, from what the Department of Health
or the FSA would say—is that if you focus on one aspect
of unhealthy food then, clearly, if you have a couple of bags
of crisps a week, however salty they are, if you also eat lots
of fresh fruit and vegetables and have a reasonably healthy lifestyle
it is not going to do you much harm, but if you only eat highly-salted
food and sit in front of the television all the time, then, by
and large, you are going to end up in a pretty poor condition
by the time you are my age—if you should get that far. So
there is this question of whether banning particular foods is
the appropriate response except in extreme circumstances or whether
the overall message, which I think does need to be the overall
message, of a more balanced diet is the more appropriate way forward.
Q655 Mr Drew: In terms of the relationship
with the FSA, I do not want to keep going over old ground but
in a sense, in setting up Defra—which was quite a radical
thing to do and to actually give food its own ministry—it
does seem rather bizarre that the key agency that reports through
to government is actually reporting to another department. Is
it not about time that the Government actually did what it said
it was going to do, which is treat food as an important issue
and not relegate it to health, which clearly it has to be in terms
of all the other panoply of things that health does?
Lord Whitty: I do not think the
term "relegation" is the appropriate one. Food is, clearly,
a huge aspect of health and one that is most appropriately dealt
with in the health context.
Q656 Mr Drew: Why?
Lord Whitty: Because the public
interest in what food you eat is how healthy it is. There are
other public interests, like does it cause environmental damage
in its production or how much does it produce into the balance
of payments, which may be more appropriate for departments dealing
with economics—as sponsors for the environment as we do
through environmental legislation. The health and diet elements
seem to be the most important public concern about food, and it
was felt at the time—and I think I would agree with this—that
having the department which was basically a production department,
which was even more a production-focused department when it was
MAFF, also responsible for the regulation at the consumer end
was a conflict of interest. In a sense, that is no different from
saying that the DTI is the sponsor for the chemicals industry
but the Department for the Environment regulates its environmental
effect. That is probably beneficial. There are indeed problems,
as you know, in the transport sector, which I used to be familiar
with, where if you have, within the Department of Transport, also
the responsibility for health and safety in transport then there
are potential conflicts of interest. Now, you cannot resolve all
these conflicts of interest by drawing different lines across
government, but it seems to me quite a consistent line that the
producer department and the main regulator ought probably to be
separated. Whether you just do that by hiving it off into an agency
or whether you do it by having an agency which is responsible
to another ministry is a matter of the Prime Minister of the day's
decision, in a sense, but it does seem to me you do have to separate
the two somehow. It was not considered, historically, that MAFF
did separate them sufficiently.
Q657 Mr Drew: I wonder if the Treasury
has quite the same qualms about having that degree of accountability
through some of its agencies. I just think—
Lord Whitty: I am not answering
for the Treasury.
Q658 Mr Drew: I am not going to ask you
to speak for the Treasury, I am just posing that as a dilemma.
I am just thinking that, really, the Government actually, as I
said, it is very radical—it actually gave food its own ministry.
It may be seen as a producer oriented agency of government initially
but it could have, obviously, then been able to do some of the
things that, if you like, many of us would want to see happen,
which is make these connections. There is a danger that we have
now ended up with a bit of a hotch-potch which means that an area
like labelling, which we obviously cannot take today, falls down
between a numbers of different stools.
Lord Whitty: I do not think it
falls down. There is a separation and there is a separation of
the consumer information responsibility and the sponsorship of
the industry. Part of the sponsorship of the industry is to ensure
that the industry at all levels from primary agriculture right
through to the retailers is upping the quality of its product.
That is consistent with ensuring that the best information goes
to the consumer. There is no falling between two stools; there
are different departments responsible for different sides of the
same coin.
Chairman: Can we now turn to the question
of European food legislation issues and related issues?
Mr Jack: I was just going to say to my
colleague, Mr Drew, with a reshuffle coming up, so I am told,
perhaps you will be the Secretary of State for the balanced diet
in future administrations.
Mr Drew: They would not be eating much,
though, would there? Certainly not fish.
Q659 Mr Jack: Minister, as far as Europe
is concerned, Europe dictates the terms of much of our food labelling
policy. The emphasis seems, at the present time, to be on a labelling
regime which is about what is in food in terms of ingredients,
but there are signs that they are moving away from that towards
recognising the importance of nutritional information. If that
is the way things are going, who within the United Kingdom Government
is determining our policy towards this particular matter? Who
speaks for Britain on these issues?
Lord Whitty: The department that
is primarily responsible for this is still the FSA.
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