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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
As always in these debates, I have many questions to answer and not a great deal of time, but I will do my best. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) on securing the debate, which has provided us with an excellent opportunity to explore the interim report on the integrity and assurance of food supply networks and for me to update colleagues on activities since the discovery of horsemeat fraud in 2013.
As my hon. Friend pointed out, the horsemeat fraud incident last year inflicted considerable damage on our food industry and undermined confidence in our food. It was damaging to the retailers and processors involved, and that should drive home to all of them the reality that they have more to lose than anyone by cutting corners or allowing the integrity of our food supply chain to be compromised.
Food fraud is completely unacceptable. It is a crime. The competitive pressures of the marketplace, to which my hon. Friend referred, are no excuse for misleading consumers and committing fraud, so lessons must be learned by all involved. The Government take the threat of food fraud very seriously and want to ensure that lessons are learned. That is why we asked Professor Elliott to look into what could be done to protect the food chain and to restore consumer confidence following the horsemeat fraud scandal.
As all hon. Members here know, Professor Elliott published his interim report in December 2013. We should note that, in it, he makes it clear that UK consumers have access to some of the safest food in the world, so it is not all bad. However, there is no room for complacency. Professor Elliott sets out what he has identified as the key features of a national food crime prevention strategy. The interim report includes no fewer than 48 recommendations, which Professor Elliott has been discussing with the industry and the Government as part of the consultation process for the preparation of his final report. The Government have also been discussing the interim report with interested parties. My hon. Friend specifically asked whether we were discussing the issue with retailers and with industry, and I can confirm that we are. Whenever I have meetings with retailers, it is one of the issues on our agenda.
There are 48 recommendations, but we can break down Professor Elliott’s report into three key themes. First, he identifies a package of measures in relation to testing and enforcement. Secondly, a big part of his report is dedicated to responsibilities in the supply chain, both on retailers and on processors. Finally, there are issues relating to the co-ordination of Government efforts, the links between Government agencies and co-ordination between Government agencies and local authorities. Professor Elliott raises important issues relating to all three areas, and we will consider carefully the supporting analysis in his final report before making a formal response.
However, there is much that we are already implementing, and I want to spend a little time highlighting what has already been done. First, the Government have increased their funding to support local authorities’ co-ordinated programme of food sampling from £1.6 million to £2.2 million in 2013-14. The Food Standards Agency and DEFRA are helping to target local authority resources through greater central co-ordination of intelligence, by providing additional support for complex investigations, by making available some of the funding for additional training and through prioritised sampling to target delivery at areas of agreed national importance.
Secondly, an intelligence hub has been established in the FSA to improve its capability to identify and prevent threats to food safety and integrity, based on the approach to intelligence used by the police. City of London police is heavily involved in that. That intelligence hub approach, which brings together local authorities, the police, the FSA and other interested parties, is a key step towards improving co-ordination, the need for which was highlighted in Professor Elliott’s interim report and which many hon. Members have referred to today. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet also talked about the importance of information sharing, particularly with industry. We are working with industry to tackle some of the commercial sensitivities that can act as a barrier to information sharing. The FSA is doing some work to improve its access to industry information.
Thirdly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) pointed out, the food fraud experienced last year was a problem at a European level, so we need action at a European level to tackle it. Despite famously being quite Eurosceptic, I am happy to tell the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) that we recognise the problem to be a European one, and that we need action at a European level. The new European food crime unit, which is being developed by the European Commission, will be an important part of that intelligence network. The FSA is working with the European Commission and with other member states to get the unit up and running as soon as possible.
Several hon. Members have talked about the importance of enforcement, and particularly pursuing convictions for the offences committed last year. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton asked why more had not been done. Action has been taken to try to secure convictions for the offences committed last year. Those investigations are taking a little longer than many people would hope, because they are quite complex and cross many national boundaries. A number of police authorities across Europe are involved: Dutch, Polish, Danish, Italian, French and our own. Because the crimes were committed on a pan-European level across borders, it is taking time to deliver those convictions.
Miss McIntosh
Is it not the case that the horse has bolted, to coin a phrase, and that those who have perpetrated the crimes will be long gone?
George Eustice
I do not accept that. Investigations are continuing at a number of sites across the UK. City of London police is co-ordinating the police forces for all the investigations. Five arrests have been made, and the announcement a couple of weeks ago by the Crown Prosecution Service of two cases being taken to court demonstrates that action is being taken to protect consumers from mislabelling and to tackle food businesses’ failure to ensure the traceability of the products that they supply.
The hon. Member for Ogmore talked about the penalties for committing food fraud crimes. The penalty for food offences can range from giving advice or a formal notice for very trivial breaches, such as if a mistake has been made on labelling, to criminal prosecutions for the most serious offences such as fraud. We should bear in mind that when it comes to fraud, it is possible to implement a prison sentence of 10 years. I think that there are sufficient penalties in our criminal law to tackle the most serious cases.
Several hon. Members have talked about the role of the industry, which is one of the key themes picked up by Professor Elliott. As I said at the outset, the food industry has the most to lose from a decline in confidence in the supply chain, and it has a responsibility to take a leading role. As of today, the industry has submitted more than 45,000 tests of beef products for horsemeat since the horsemeat scandal broke, and no new positives have been reported since the height of the incident. Retailers and processors have taken a thorough approach to testing. The tests are being carried out through the supply chain, not only by retailers but by processors, looking at the ingredients going into products in local convenience stores as well as large national retailers.
Food businesses and trade associations representing the whole food chain are also working with the FSA and Professor Elliott to consider how to make better use of audit and controls. Professor Elliott is keen to develop ways of achieving a more streamlined and effective auditing process.
Laura Sandys
I welcome the Minister’s full response. Is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs working, in its strategy section, on early warning systems when commodity prices are going up but food prices are going up only a little bit, totally disproportionately? That must be an important signal that gives Government the sense that something is not quite right.
George Eustice
I was going to come on to that point, but I will deal with it now because my hon. Friend has raised it. She highlighted passionately in her speech the fact that there has not been as much of an increase in retail food prices as there has been in commodity prices. That can be normal, because commodity prices tend to cover a small number of products, whereas there is a broader range of products in food stores. There has been a 12% rise in food prices in real terms between 2007 and 2012, with the biggest spike in 2008.
In many debates on food banks and the like—I notice that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) is not here—I am told repeatedly that the price of food in the shops is going up. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet highlighted the frozen cottage pie that cost £1 and did not go up in price again, but food prices at the retail end have gone up by 12%, and the fact that certain individual products have stayed the same price may come down to pricing strategies and promotion, so we cannot read too much into such examples. I recognise her point, however. The FSA has reviewed its emerging risks programme, and it is working with DEFRA to identify and assess the economic drivers of food fraud so that those influencing factors are better understood and acted on.
Jim Shannon
In my contribution, I asked how DEFRA would work with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to ensure that there was a co-ordinated plan. Will the Minister comment on that?
George Eustice
Again, that is something that I was going to come on to. Food enforcement is a devolved responsibility. The Elliott review was commissioned by the UK Government, but it is being followed with close interest by the devolved Administrations and we are discussing it with them.
Some hon. Members have suggested that the supply chain is too long and too complex. I should perhaps declare an interest, in that my family run a farm shop and butchery, the slogan of which is “Food yards, not food miles.” I have a clear interest in such issues. It is a valid point that small businesses and small retailers may often have far less complex supply chains, and we can learn from that. The horsemeat fraud incident demonstrated the higher vulnerability of some of the more complex supply chains, and many retailers are learning the lessons from that. One could argue that there has been an over-reliance on the paperwork involved in all the systems for traceability and following products from processor to retailer. The onus is on larger retailers to take much greater interest in where their food comes from.
I want to pick up on a few of the other points that were made. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet that we should not be seen as a soft touch. It is worth remembering that the EU-wide testing programme discovered less than 1% of products in the UK that were affected by the horsemeat scandal, compared with an average of 4% to 5% in other European countries. Although we are not complacent, we had a more robust system than did many other countries. She also highlighted the fact that there are 111 inspectors in Holland, but I point out that Holland has a slightly different approach. In our local authorities in this country, we have more than 2,700 inspectors; it is simply that they are not in a dedicated unit but sit within trading standards.
The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned adverse reports from local authorities that have done their own inspections. It is encouraging that local authorities are stepping up to the mark and carrying out such inspections. As I pointed out, there are two reasons why the figures can look misleadingly high. First, local authorities tended to investigate where there had been complaints, so we would expect them to have found more problems. Secondly, many of the problems that they found were mislabelling, foreign-language labelling or things not being in the right place. Only a small number were food adulteration.
I am afraid that I have run out of time. We welcome this debate, which has been a great opportunity to explore the issues highlighted by Professor Elliott, and we look forward to his final report.