Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
320-334)
JOAN RUDDOCK
MP, MR BOB
RYDER AND
MR DOMINIC
PATTINSON
23 JANUARY 2008
Q320 Martin Horwood: That is a valid
approach, but one of the problems is that if you have different
markets in different sectors, each establishing their own favourite
labels, sometimes more than one labelling scheme within each market
or each set of criteria, we are beginning to have a proliferation
of labels that you talked about, which is quite confusing. The
EU had the eco-label initiative, trying to create a generic one
that might be available whether you have a bank account or an
egg; why has that not succeeded in the UK, why has it not done
better?
Joan Ruddock: It has not done better
because not enough companies have adopted it. We have, I believe,
about 500 companies that have adopted that particular label across
the EU, some of them quite small, and we regard that as a great
shame because we think it has got great potential and the mechanism
by which the work is done to bring the company, the product or
whatever to the point at which they could receive the label, that
work is incredibly important work. It is very well done, it is
independently assessed and therefore we believe that that is a
way forward and we are very keen that because it has got great
potential it should become more visible and could work much more
directly with other product policies.
Q321 Martin Horwood: Member States
are required by law to promote it, are they not? Have you promoted
it?
Joan Ruddock: I am very sorry to have
to ask my officials, but I am afraid I do have to ask them. Bob.
Mr Ryder: We promote the scheme in the
usual ways through website materials and leaflets but also in—
Q322 Martin Horwood: How many leaflets
have you produced promoting the scheme?
Mr Ryder: Most of them are offprints
from on-line material, but over the last ten years we have produced
a number of small supplements.
Q323 Martin Horwood: What is the
print run?
Mr Ryder: In tens of thousands, it has
not been a large circulation, but the scheme has been advertised
in some of the environmental magazines and business magazines.
It is something we promote occasionally at conferences, events
and road shows and the like. The problem is that it is a hard
campaign to promote when the underlying demand for it is so small,
and there are inherent problems, as the Minister has said, in
the way the scheme is constituted at the moment.
Q324 Martin Horwood: What are the
inherent problems?
Mr Ryder: Basically when the scheme was
created in the early Nineties under European regulation it was
done under a regulation and the whole decision-making process
of the European eco-label is carried out through a regulatory
committee structure which is slow, very bureaucratic and burdensome
and inflexible. It means that decisions are taken a long way away
from where the market currently is.
Q325 Martin Horwood: Why do you not
promote something which has the same objective of being a generic
label that will remove at a stroke a lot of the confusion which
consumers feel? There is Tesco's model, Nature's Choice, why not
have a nice light-footed committee that can look at a range of
criteria very quickly and come to conclusions fast? Why could
you not promote something like that as a government-sponsored
initiative?
Mr Ryder: That is the kind of decision-making
model that we have been advocating quite strongly at an EU level
as the direction that the EU label itself should take, that it
should be taken away from the regulatory structures and made much
more flexible and close to the market, but short of at the national
level devising any sort of ideal scheme that can deliver some
of these things I think the other route we can use is encourage
companies or sectors that are developing schemes for their specific
needs to look at the existing guidance. There are some very clear
cut principles about the need for transparency, of life cycle
assessments, clearly labelling the most significant elements of
the product, and the schemes which we have encouraged to date
have been those that fit that template of the ISO work and, in
future, if further schemes develop along those lines, those are
the ones we would like to see.
Q326 Martin Horwood: You are very
wisely using the resources of BSI and things like that to do the
complex work behind, but are you saying that with all your grandly
named teams in the department you would not have the capability
of developing a generic label if you decided that was the right
course of action?
Joan Ruddock: What we need to do is see
the outcomes in Europe on this because we have made a pitch, as
Bob Ryder has said, we have given advice as to how we think it
needs to be changed to make it work, and that is from work in
this country from our experience. We actually believe the label
itself is worth having, so before we try to find a marketing guru
in the department who can come up with the best labelling scheme
ever devised, I think this potentially still remains a good way
forward, we ought to try to make it work and we want to see the
outcome from the revision that is going on.
Chairman: Given our time constraints
we will have to move to the final section of questions. Joan.
Q327 Joan Walley: Can I say, Minister,
how good it is to have you before our Committee for the first
time, and I am conscious of your time constraints as well, so
I will be brief because some of the issues I wanted to raise have
already been touched upon. If I can try and bring it to a close,
really, a number of witnesses have said to us that they are concerned
about the over-proliferation of labels in the food-labelling market,
and that does raise questions but not necessarily agreement that
there is or there is not. What is your view on that?
Joan Ruddock: We are all agreed that
food is probably the most difficult area in which to produce labelling
that is going to be effective. There is already a great deal of
labelling that is required in terms of the safety of the food,
and obviously the food labelling as such is EU-competent again,
so there are those limitations on anything that is done of a statutory
nature with regard to food. As I touched on earlier, what we now
know is that the voluntary agreements that have been developed
in this country, primarily the traffic light scheme and other
variants of that, can be rather effective, and what the public
have told us is that of course they do want to have just one label
which is essentially the nutritional and health aspects of food
labelling, and that is something that the Government is proposing
now to take action on, and there has just been an announcement
from the health secretary to that effect. We are tackling that,
therefore, but that is food labelling from the aspect of health
rather than the aspect of the environment. On the environment
it is the work with farming methods and with food production where
new work is going to be undertaken to see if we could bring in
some more comprehensive labelling system that could either be
used alongside or instead of the huge proliferation of valid claims,
but different claims, that are already out there.
Q328 Joan Walley: Would that accommodate,
if you like, some kind of regulatory function as well, if Defra
tried going down that route or is that too soon?
Joan Ruddock: It is a bit of how regulation
is. It would be far too premature to suggest that we would end
up in a place where we said there had to be mandatory labelling,
but there is a degree of regulation that comes in terms that if
you try to change practice to a particular end, there may be some
regulation related to some aspect of farming which could occur,
but I do not think in relation to some generic label at this stage,
who knows?
Q329 Joan Walley: Really in respect
of what you have already said about the possibility of a generic
standard, and that is the route that you are going down, what
do you think that would mean for products approved by the standard,
would they carry a recognisable label?
Joan Ruddock: That would be potentially
the case and it is clearly desirable because we know that the
public would like that, but again this argument has been rehearsed
over and over this afternoon. The public only want to have labelling
that actually is very clear and precise and which they can trust,
and the great difficulty in this is how would it be possible to
produce such a label to encompass the many environmental goals
that we have in relation to food or indeed any other products;
that is where the difficulty lies. What the Government is most
concerned about is the environmental goals in themselves so, for
example, if you want to reduce carbon emissions—and that
would be very significant in agriculture—there are many,
many processes, some which could and should possibly be regulated
that would lead to carbon reductions but may not necessarily lead
you to be able to produce a meaningful label. If I might just,
for a second, return to what Mr Horwood said about Marks &
Spencer—and they have got their A-plan—one of the
things that we know if we are working in this area is that the
public could be satisfied, not by a label being on every individual
product, but if for example they believed and it could be proven
that that particular company had all its products reaching a certain
standard, that would be simpler for the consumer, but again arriving
at that point is also extremely complicated, but it could be done.
Martin Horwood: Can I just ask quickly
there, are you not making a bit of a meal of this because Tesco
have effectively done this already with their Nature's Choice
scheme. They have a system which includes pollution, protection
of human health, use of energy, recycling and they have got gold
and silver and bronze levels, they have done it. Why can you not
do it?
Joan Walley: Chairman, we are not into
a Tesco road show here, are we?
Q330 Chairman: We had best move on
because we only have a minute or two until half past.
Joan Ruddock: I will leave that question
to hang in the air; let me address Ms Walley's questions.
Q331 Joan Walley: I just know that
time is so limited because of your other commitments in the House.
When we interviewed the NFU earlier they raised the question whether
or not consumers were ready to pay extra costs which might be
incurred by extra standards, and of course we have had a little
bit of a flavour of that with the Jamie Oliver television shows
just recently. Does Defra have a view on that, do you have a view
on that?
Joan Ruddock: The evidence—and
it has to be evidence rather than my opinions—indicates
that the organics market has grown very dramatically in the last
few years and it has grown on the basis of premium price, so we
know there is a segment of the population prepared to pay and
they will pay and they will change markets and they will create
markets. All of that happens and people have got used in this
country to cheap food and to the price of food being driven down;
if we now, as we must, move both here and throughout Europe into
a low carbon economy, there will be costs associated and where
costs arise they will eventually, no doubt, be passed to the consumer.
But we have to begin to think in the round because at the end
of the day all our lives will be very adversely affected if we
do not tackle climate change, so there may be short term costs
which seem to the consumer to be a million miles away from tackling
climate change, but ultimately those are considerations that will
impact upon most aspects of consumerism, I suspect.
Q332 Joan Walley: Is Defra in discussions
with your counterparts who have responsibility for farming? Do
you have contact there because obviously there is a balance as
well, is there not, about maintaining the farming industry at
a time when there are lots of changes to regulations and the way
that farming practices are actually carried out. Is that something
which is part of the overall culture?
Joan Ruddock: I do not have directly
any responsibility for farming, but I have a responsibility for
public engagement on climate change, and I have already addressed
a number of conferences which have been very well attended by
farmers and by land-owners, and I have to say the response from
them has been very positive in terms of understanding that all
sectors of the economy will have to make adjustments and that
we literally are in this together when it comes to addressing
dangerous climate change. Of course there has to be a balance,
but increasingly with climate change becoming an imperative in
government there is the need and there is the practice to join
up our thinking and to try to work more holistically. Farming
of course is dealt with within Defra, so it is not as though we
are dealing with another government department, and the ministers
certainly share information and discussions on these subjects.
Q333 Joan Walley: Briefly, if I may
ask this very last question, the current carbon labelling proposals
which are currently being promoted by the Carbon Trust, in the
light of the comments we have had from the Sustainable Development
Commission, that maybe we should not just be looking at carbon,
we should be looking at carbon in the round and the whole aspect
of sustainable development, does Defra have a view on that? Is
there a risk that other issues such as chemical or water use could
be marginalised if we just look singularly at a carbon label rather
than at a wider environmental standard label?
Joan Ruddock: They make a very good point,
and again we have had to look at this in terms of the public engagement,
because we started speaking to people just about things that were
essentially about energy consumption. Now we progressively want
to move on to include water. We have done a lot of work on waste,
so we do have an understanding of what sustainability in the round
is within the department. At times there has to be a focus and
there have to be priorities, but at the end of the day these things
are tremendously inter-related. The major issues concerning water
again can be very much related to climate change and to adaptation
to climate change so we do understand those points. As regards
the work of the Carbon Trust, this is very interesting work and
we are looking at it carefully. What we believe is that the work
that is being done to produce the carbon foot-printing of the
whole life cycle of the products is more significant and more
important than any label that might result from it, it is that
work, it is that understanding, which can condition how we make
transformations within our products and services.
Q334 Chairman: In the final remaining
three minutes I wonder if I could ask you about the potential
for green tariffs in the electricity market, because there are
only 200,000 people in the country who have actually chosen to
go onto a green tariff and they may effectively be paying twice
for green electricity, first through their general billing if
you like, and that is the renewable obligations, and then possibly
with some of these tariffs there is an extra burden for that particular
company. Do you think we should have more information for electricity
purchasers to explain this, because actually we need to encourage
them to go on to green tariffs wherever possible. Is that an area
in which Defra might express any view, do you think? I know it
is not really Defra's responsibility, but it is something which
is emerging as an issue.
Joan Ruddock: I agree with you that it
is emerging as an issue. I am also on a green tariff, I am pleased
to say, and my colleague Phil Woolas is certainly working on better
billing and better labelling of fuel bills, so there is work going
on in the department. We know that these matters are an issue
and certainly when we do our Act on CO2 and lead people through
advertisements to our carbon calculator, one of the things we
say is now that you know what your carbon footprint is, if you
would like to reduce it there are things you can do, and obviously
this is one of the ways. So we do promote, to an extent, people
acquiring green electricity, we do think that it is very important
to have better information, and that is on quite a wide front
with regard to billing, I know the work is going on and I will
ask the appropriate officials just to drop the Committee a line
in case there is anything more that they can usefully tell you.
Chairman: Thank you very much for being
with us this afternoon; a very good finish to our inquiry. The
report will be out soon. Thank you very much.
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