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Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I should also like to sympathise with him for having to repeat such a pathetic Statement. It really does not tackle the problem in any shape or form. It is stated that carcasses must be individually stamped by Meat
Hygiene Service inspectors as fit for human consumption. That is not much consolation to those who suffer from E.coli and their relations in many areas of Scotland. The whole point is that this has not been effective. We have an epidemic, or near epidemic, and certainly serious cases, and nothing is really being done to tackle that.I note that the MHS was set a target of increasing by 10 points the scores of some plants. Surely any inspector should know what is a well run slaughterhouse, and what is clean and what is dirty without needing to increase the scores in order to reduce the number of bad abattoirs. That is not tackling the problem as it should be tackled. We are told that 450 additional staff have been recruited. It has already been pointed out that the number of state veterinary surgeons has been cut by 300. Can the noble Lord tell us whether all the 450 additional staff are in place and what training they have received? That is important and it is something that we should know. Perhaps he can also tell us the total number of abattoirs in England, Scotland and Wales which the 450 extra staff must look after? The Statement mentions additional training in hygiene methods and that the State Veterinary Service will intensify its audit activity. I should have thought it should intensify the supervision of the abattoirs which are at fault.
The essence of the whole question is completely ignored in the Statement; namely, that the public are concerned about the way the Ministry of Agriculture is run. That is the essential point. The story of the Swann Report is quite pathetic. Authoritative journals--the FT and others--have given accounts which have not been denied. Mr. Swann produced his report and was told to take it away and rewrite it. He refused to do so, so someone else was asked, obeyed, and rewrote it. Mr. Swann had 81 points of concern which he illustrated with strong language. He was concerned about faecal contamination and faecal matter all over the place. He was concerned about dirty beasts entering abattoirs which had every chance of spreading infection.
The 81 points were whittled down to 11 and the circulation of the report was restricted. Professor Pennington, as already noted, was not informed that even such a slimmed down report existed. The Minister of Agriculture said that it was not his fault. If his officials were at fault, what has been done about them? Did his officials think so little of the Minister that they thought they could hide an essential report such as this? These are extremely serious matters which are not referred to in the Statement in any shape or form. The report that the Secretary of State for Scotland, Mr. Forsyth, was incandescent with rage--a fine phrase which quite rightly struck the headlines--turned out to be absolutely true. He was rightly angry that he was kept in ignorance of the matter. These are indictments of the Ministry of Agriculture which everyone knows to be true. All we are told is that a target was set for improving scores by 10 points, and that further training will be undertaken. There is something seriously wrong.
As regards overseeing abattoirs, in many cases that was done a great deal better under local authorities than it has been done under the new body. The Ministry of
Agriculture is no longer a fit body to oversee the standards of hygiene which the public depend upon. It is all very well to have a poacher turned gamekeeper, but what does not work is to have someone who is both a poacher and a gamekeeper. The sooner a separate overseeing body is set up, the better. For the present, this account means nothing.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Mackie of Benshie, for asking me such a difficult and challenging set of questions on a subject where I think I can give a number of good answers. It is always a pleasure to show the Ministry of Agriculture in the good light in which it deserves to be shown, and not the rather gruesome green colour in which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, chooses to paint it.
First, I shall answer the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Carter. He asked whether the people disciplined by the Meat Hygiene Service had been disciplined in respect of SBO controls. That is correct. Disciplinary offences have been announced regularly in the BSE enforcement bulletin. The figures made public yesterday are merely the cumulative total. There is nothing new about them. The noble Lord asked why there was a need to make the remark in the Statement about the need not to present carcasses with faecal contamination. It has always been and remains a heavily emphasised part of the meat hygiene inspectors' manual that they should not pass for human consumption any carcass which has faecal contamination on it. We feel that some abattoirs have continued to present carcasses in such condition to the Meat Hygiene Service for its approval. We wish to work back up the chain to make sure that abattoirs have quality controls in place and this does not happen and that they identify and remove those carcasses before that point in the MHS inspection is reached.
On the subject of the enforcement bulletin, I think the noble Lord, Lord Carter, described graphically the information he would like to have on slaughterhouses. That is something which we are, and have been, working towards. We have developed a system known as the HAS, the hygiene assessment score, which is intended to perform that role and to encapsulate the quality of a slaughterhouse in one figure. However, to do that requires the system to be developed and proven. It also requires that the people making the assessments--carried out monthly in every slaughterhouse--are consistent as between slaughterhouses so that different inspectors in different slaughterhouses give the same quality assessment for the same quality of slaughterhouse. That takes, and continues to take, some time to get right. As my right honourable friend said, it is something that we are determined to do in the near future. As noble Lords opposite will know, we encourage the production of league tables. We believe that that sort of information reaching the public is a spur to better performance. I do not think that abattoirs have any reason to think that the position should be otherwise. I am delighted at the conversion of the parties opposite to that as a principle and as a method of improving performance perhaps throughout the public service.
The noble Lord referred to the Opposition documents, as my right honourable friend called them, that have been produced. There were some rather odd reports of leaked memos of meetings which Mrs. Browning had held which are public documents. There was some expansion of the concept of leaked documents to include ones that the newspaper had discovered for the first time in its files rather than ones that were leaked. But a number were leaked. They appear to have been leaked by Mr. Comrie, general secretary of the Association of Meat Inspectors. Most of what he says in those documents amounts to a criticism of his own members--that they are not enforcing the controls in the way they should. That point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carter. He referred to the mind set of those officials, having come from local authorities, being rather more towards protecting the abattoirs than the customers. We recognised that problem as part of the existing situation which had to be tackled.
I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, that the situation under local authorities was acceptable or in any way better than the current situation. There was a substantial problem to be dealt with. Some individual cases would have been good, but in general there was a problem. Lack of training and the attitude of the inspectors were part of that problem. Since the individuals are still with us, it is a matter that we continue to work at improving.
Mr. Comrie made some strange remarks. He has between 1,500 and perhaps 2,000 members. He has been quoted in The Times as saying that he received hundreds of unsolicited letters on the subject from his members. Neither we nor the Meat Hygiene Service has seen a single one of those letters. Some of the statements made by Mr. Comrie are specifically disowned by his colleagues on the board. I think that it would be wise for us all to take what he said with a pinch of salt. Clearly he has a position in the industry, but I do not think that what he says should be treated as veracious without being confirmed. We should be delighted to see any of the letters he received. Certainly, if the number amounted to hundreds, it would be a serious matter. However, I have a great deal of doubt about whether those letters exist.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, asked about the number of unsatisfactory abattoirs. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, asked how many abattoirs were in existence. The latest figure I have, as of January 1997, is 557 abattoirs. Of those 116 fall below the 65 mark, almost all of them by a relatively small amount. That is an enormous improvement. When the benchmark was established something of the order of 380 fell below the 65 cut-off point at which we aimed as a first stage in improving abattoirs. The score runs to 100 which I would describe as excellent and very hard to achieve. It is the three Michelin stars of the abattoir world. But 65 is achievable by all abattoirs. We are determined that they should reach that standard as swiftly as is reasonably possible.
Both noble Lords raised the subject of Professor Pennington. I find this aspect of the past few days rather puzzling; probably my officials in MAFF do too. We were involved at an early stage in discussions with Professor Pennington and his team. We pressed our case that we had much experience within the State Veterinary Service and within the Meat Hygiene Service which would be relevant to the investigations he was making. We received explicitly, and with feeling, the impression that we were pushing too hard: that his was an independent inquiry; that he should be allowed to proceed in his own way and make his own choices as to what evidence he took; and that we were in danger of acting in a way which might be seen as putting improper pressure on him or in some way seeking to influence the results. So we took a step back and waited to hear from him. We waited with some reasonable confidence that he would come back to us. Clearly, we had much information that would be useful to him; his group includes a lady who is on the Meat Hygiene Service ownership board. What the Meat Hygiene Service is and does is therefore well known to the group. His reference to lack of knowledge of the report a few days ago rather surprised us. I have no explanation for what has gone on. It is a pleasure to us that at last he is asking for information from us. We were concerned from a parochial point of view that he was proceeding without the benefit of much available information and expertise. So whatever the consequences as regards what has appeared in the media, we are glad that the lines of communication are open, irrespective of why they were closed in the past.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, went rather further than the noble Lord, Lord Carter, in criticising MAFF. He said that nothing was being done and seemed to imply that we should have done a lot more and faster. I do not think that that is true. We have pushed this matter through in a sensible and effective way. Yes, there is a lot further to go. There was a great deal to do when we started out on this track. We have proceeded on the basis that we should proceed in conjunction and in co-operation with the industry wherever possible, that we should bring it along with us and that we should not take a big stick to it and close down everything that was unsatisfactory. Had we done so, we would have closed down two-thirds of the industry on day one. That is the principle on which one proceeds with, say, schools which are unsatisfactory or in many other circumstances where one wishes to improve a situation which has been tolerated for a long time. I am sure that that was the right way for us to go about it. We have been going about it effectively. Although there is a great deal left to do, we are confident that we are doing the right things in the right way.
5 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of us find his reply very reassuring because of its innate good sense? It is appreciated, I think, on all sides of the House, that this difficult problem faces the Government with complex
issues. Following, as one does fairly closely, what the Government have done there is every reason for confidence that the matter is being dealt with as sensibly, calmly and steadily as possible. We are grateful for that.
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