Horsemeat and Food Fraud

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, it is right that industry should be responsible for the safety and authenticity of the food it produces and sells, which is why the Government work with it to maintain confidence in the food chain. All systems of standards and quality control depend to a certain extent on self-regulation and due diligence. While the Government have a role in checking and monitoring industry, particularly where there are public health issues, non-regulatory approaches and agreements can be just as effective and can be achieved faster than legislation. This can be seen in our approach over recent days, where government and industry have come together with a joint aim of maintaining consumer confidence in the food chain.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I return to the question of the contamination of halal meat, which got a brief reference in the Statement and has real implications for faith communities and faith relationships. This may not have been a matter of deliberate fraud but it must have been dangerously careless. Can the Minister give us more reassurance on the action taken by the food industry as regards finding non-halal traces in allegedly halal food, including in food supplied by government contracts such as prison suppliers?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with the right reverend Prelate that it is essential that people can have confidence that what they are eating is what it is made out to be. There is responsibility throughout the food chain. Suppliers are responsible for what they supply onwards to other organisations and businesses. We are reminding public bodies of their responsibility for their own food contracts. We expect them to have rigorous procurement procedures in place with reputable suppliers. We expect caterers and suppliers to public institutions to have appropriate controls, including testing and sampling regimes, in place to ensure the authenticity of their products. If caterers have any doubts about the provenance of their product, they should seek assurance from their suppliers.

Agriculture: Regulation

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I too am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for pressing this question and enabling us to have time to discuss it. I want to make two points.

First, I know from my contacts just how pressurised an industry farming is. Clergy in the dales area of Ripon and Leeds—Swaledale, Wensleydale, Nidderdale and so on—report consistently on the pressure, sometimes desperation, felt by farmers, and mental illness has become a significant factor in the life of many agricultural communities. I pay tribute to the work done by clergy and ministers in helping to speak to farmers and to share the real pastoral concerns of farmers in those areas. Farm Crisis Network in particular helps those in difficulties and tries to give advice to those who have become entangled in the regulatory process.

No one doubts that regulation and inspection are needed in the farming industry as elsewhere, but the experience of inspection can often appear punitive rather than encouraging. How will the Government ensure that the inspectorate is helpful rather than punitive in its approach? There is a widespread feeling that the inspection regime is not proportionate or consistent, and this damages the health and well-being of the whole rural community. There is a need for better training of the inspectorate.

Secondly, can the Minister tell us how the independent role of the rural advocate is going to be expressed, given the abolition of that post? For more than a century a rural advocate in one form or another has been part of the countryside scene. I have heard nothing but praise for the way in which Dr Stuart Burgess has been able to express the voice of our rural communities. It remains crucial that there should be an independent way of informing policy-making, because the agricultural industry is particularly complex. The pressures are distinctive; the rural communities are very far from the concerns of London, or Leeds for that matter.

I have two questions. What do the Government have in mind to reduce stress on farmers by better training for inspectors, and how is the independent voice of the rural advocate going to be expressed in the future?

Queen's Speech

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I first acknowledge the need so well expressed in the coalition document and the gracious Speech to reduce our national deficit and, alongside that, the moral dilemma faced by the Government in just how to do that. I want to explore that.

The most basic principle needs to be that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden. There is much more in the gracious Speech and its notes about cuts than there is about taxation, although there is a reference to fairer taxation, and I look forward to discovering just what that means. I hope that the Government will acknowledge that fiscal adjustments are also there to be used as a part of the economic proposals. Our taxes are not simply a way of purchasing public services; they are also the charge that we pay for the opportunities and security that go with a nation where social bonds are strong. Mutual responsibility must be recognised as the key to our social fabric. Those who have done best out of the boom years should be at the forefront of the desire for generosity in a more astringent economy.

Some of us are old enough to have been brought up on that oft repeated cartoon from an earlier period of austerity in which a row of men—I fear that they are all men—are on a ladder rising from a flood, with the rich man at the top, the middle-class man below him, then the worker and then the unemployed at the bottom, his head barely clear of the water. The rich man is saying, “Equality of sacrifice. That’s the spirit. Let’s all take one step down”. It is that sort of inequality dressed up as equality that we need to avoid in our society.

Does the Minister accept the thesis of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level, which has been cited several times in this House, that it is disparity of wealth that is most deeply damaging to society? Material inequality is harmful not only to those who are poor but also to those who find themselves having to protect themselves from resentment and discord. The last thing that we want is a gated society.

The notes in the reports that accompany the gracious Speech speak of the importance of mutuals and co-operatives in delivering public sector service. I welcome that emphasis, but I look to hear more about how that principle of mutuality is to be exercised in the economic sphere. What encouragement will there be of mutuals, from building societies to credit unions, to take a much more prominent place in the financial sector? Will the Government consider mutualisation as a way forward for the Royal Mail, with its unique loyalty to the Crown, and therefore to the whole of our society? Will its commitment to serving the whole of the population be preserved and nurtured? That will be one test for the concept of a big society, ensuring that that is more than a fig leaf for getting volunteers to deliver the state’s welfare obligations.

Welfare is in danger of following asylum as a term of abuse rather than of mutual generosity. The Government need to affirm and to celebrate welfare. One of the most distinguished previous occupants of these Benches, William Temple, coined the phrase “welfare state” in order to distinguish it from the “power state”, where those with wealth and power exercised coercive control over the citizens. The need for welfare at the heart of the state is as dramatic now as it was 60 or 70 years ago.

Finally, I highlight the needs of the third sector—not much referred to so far in this debate—because the third sector provides so much to enhance our mutual responsibility. Work in Leeds to enhance the learning of English, to encourage integration and to support children is holding its breath. Money destined for that work now appears to be threatened as departments assess their priorities. It is important for the Minister to reaffirm today the Government’s support for local initiatives—both by local authorities and by the third sector—which do so much to create that mutual dependence on which we rely for a flourishing culture, whether in times of affluence or in times of austerity.