Public Bodies (Abolition of Food from Britain) Order 2014

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to introduce the Public Bodies (Abolition of Food from Britain) Order 2014. First of all let me explain why the Government have proposed to abolish the public body, Food from Britain. The rationale for this is quite straightforward and I can assure noble Lords that I am not actually abolishing all food from Britain, which might be a little more controversial than this order.

The Government have made a commitment to reduce the number of unnecessary public bodies. In July 2010, my right honourable friend the then Secretary of State for Defra announced proposals to reform a number of departmental public bodies. These included Food from Britain, which—if I can use inverted commas throughout—was set up under the Agricultural Marketing Act 1983. It operated between 1983 and 2009, focusing mainly on the promotion of UK food and drink exports. In 2008, the Food from Britain Council took the decision that the body should be administratively wound down, following a reduction in its grant in aid by the previous Administration. Food from Britain ceased its activities in March 2009. All the staff were made redundant and the body vacated its former offices in 2009. However, Food from Britain was not formally abolished at that time.

Although the legislation which provides for Food from Britain remains in force, the Government continue to have a legal obligation to publish annual reports and accounts. Despite having no activity to report, the cost of preparing and publishing the reports is in the region of £3,000 a year. Formal abolition of Food from Britain will eliminate this unnecessary cost. The Public Bodies Act 2011 provides the legislative mechanism for the Government to carry out reform of public bodies. Food from Britain is listed in Schedule 1 to that Act. This enables the Minister to lay an order under that Act to abolish it. This order, when made, will dissolve Food from Britain in law by repealing the legislation which first established it.

In accordance with the requirements of the Public Bodies Act, a UK-wide consultation was carried out in the autumn of last year. Having carefully considered the consultation responses, it is now proposed to repeal the legislation which provides for Food from Britain by an order under the Public Bodies Act. Ministers in the devolved Administrations have given their consent to the abolition of Food from Britain, as required under the Act. As Food from Britain is effectively defunct, its abolition will have no impact on jobs. However, it will remove an unnecessary public body from the legislative framework and will reduce costs to the taxpayer. Abolition of Food from Britain is a legal tidying-up exercise, but I can assure noble Lords that the Government are firmly committed to strengthening the UK food and drink industry.

The agri food and drink sector is already the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, supporting 3.6 million jobs and adding £97.1 billion to the economy. British food and drink is known throughout the world for having the highest standards of quality, safety and traceability. By increasing food and drink exports, the sector can grow further. My honourable friends the Defra Ministers have made it a priority to promote British food and drink at key international trade shows, and negotiate to remove trade barriers and open up new markets overseas. In 2013, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State at Defra, Owen Paterson, visited China on two occasions to support UK produce and to negotiate market access. Last week, he was in the USA to discuss the opportunities the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership offers for our producers and exporters. My honourable friend the Farming and Food Minister George Eustice also visited the Gulfood trade fair in Dubai, in February, to promote UK food and drink. In 2013 Defra opened 112 new overseas markets for animals and animal products, increasing exports outside the EU by £179 million to £1.35 billion. Some 54 new markets have been opened in 2014.

UK Trade and Investment provides both potential and active food and drink exporters with a range of advice and assistance to help them take advantage of new markets, including providing funding to attend international trade fairs; organising international “meet the buyer” events; running GREAT week events in priority markets worldwide; and offering a range of seminars and advice.

In October 2013 Defra and UK Trade and Investment launched the UK Food and Drink—International Action Plan at the Anuga trade event in Cologne, the world’s largest food and drink fair. The plan sets out how the Government are working closely together with the industry to promote trade, break down barriers, open up new markets and champion what is great about British food and drink. The export action plan outlines, among other goals, an ambitious target jointly agreed by the Government and industry to add £500 million to the UK economy though assisting 1,000 UK food and drink companies with their international growth by October 2015. That is a 400% increase in support for the sector.

I hope that it has been helpful to give this explanation about the rationale for the abolition of the body entitled Food from Britain and the continuing support that the Government are giving to the food and drink sector. I commend this order to the Committee.

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, I remember Food from Britain very well. It appeared just before the introduction of milk quotas and has not quite been able to outlast quotas over the last 25 years. I declare my farming interest in a dairy farm.

I thank the Minister for her introduction and explanation of the order before the Committee. I am very happy to support the order to abolish the organisation Food from Britain. However, it is interesting to put it alongside the quota regime in its timing and duration. Agriculture has an almost universally recognised leadership as an industry for its productivity and efficiency improvements since the Second World War. Farmers are very good at producing, especially when working with science. However, they are somewhat less good at marketing their produce. Food from Britain represents one of the many and continuing ventures into marketing assistance.

As ever thus, as a non-departmental public body Food from Britain was brought to a close by the withdrawal of funding. Can the Minister say whether these organisations ought to have sunset clauses included in their set-up legislation to complete the administrative processes. However, it seems rather extravagant that the Ministry should agree with its order to pay £3,000 a year for a nil return from a defunct organisation.

The Explanatory Memorandum is excellent in explaining the tidying-up operation regarding pensions and the transfer of functions to other bodies. The legacy of Food from Britain is a good one. UK Trade and Investment, together with the Food and Drink Exporters Association, have collaborated to produce the UK Food and Drink—International Action Plan—although the Food and Drink Federation contends in its consultation submission that it was only the desire to tidy up administratively that led to this progress. Once again, sunset clauses would be a catalyst for improvement. The local and regional food marketing organisations also do an excellent job in these times of localism and evolution to local people and local funding.

Regarding the explanations in the memorandum concerning the protected food name scheme, I will ask the Minister one or two questions. Can she clarify Defra’s role under the scheme? Is it devolved? If it has a presence within Defra, is that as a proactive support to companies, regions or organisations in their plans for recognition, or as a certifying body to organisations in their applications for recognition at EU level—or, indeed, something else? Finally, the Explanatory Memorandum underlines that the legal ownership right to the name “Food from Britain” and the domain name, foodfrombritain.com, remain with Defra. That this is retained may signify that Defra recognises that it still has some value. Ministers may well have used the name Food from Britain in championing British food at international trade shows. Does Defra have any plans for the name, Food from Britain? Has it considered licensing the name for a fee or for a length of time, or even considered selling it? Does it intend to add value to UK food by the use of this name in any way?

While agriculture still needs marketing improvements, I am content that Defra has made the case for the abolition of Food from Britain. In conjunction with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I am happy that the abolition of Food from Britain will make a small contribution to improving the exercise of public functions.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I had hoped that I had seen the last of this Room when I left the Government. I find it the most depressing place to work in the whole Palace of Westminster, but I wanted to come today to say a few words and, it turns out, to set the record right.

I am a great believer in Ministers being accountable to Parliament for the decisions that they take. There was never an opportunity to be accountable for this decision, which I personally took early in 2008. Defra was in real trouble. So bad was it that we had to revisit the budget for the year that we were in. The rationale had absolutely nothing to do with food policy. The fact is that I had to find in the area that I was responsible for some £4 million or £5 million of cuts.

I always said that I did not agree with top-slicing to cut budgets, because you end up cutting good things to protect the bad. I was always in favour of saying, “Let’s stop doing something”. I think that I was presented with three or four options—I have not been back to check because this is from memory. There were a couple of serious animal health issues that I had to keep in the budget. This body was a prime candidate for being cut—I did not want to do it, but I could not conjure up £5 million.

We looked at the effectiveness of the body. We have seen from the way in which the Minister has presented the overall issue of food—the phenomenal, record-breaking level of exports—that this is the biggest manufacturing industry that we have. It is very important, although I do not want to go down that road. But if this body appears on a list of quangos cut by the coalition on the basis that “We’re having a bonfire”, that is a lie that would be challenged and I do not want to start a row. As the Minister knows and as the memorandum says, the body ceased activity in 2009. All the staff were made redundant. It had nothing to do with the coalition Government. The fact is that the mechanism for winding it up was not there. I am just amazed that it took five years to get us to this point. In fact, I suspect that the memorandum before us has cost £5,000 to put together, let alone the money that has been spent on accounts for no reason.

This discussion also gives me an opportunity to say that, although I had representations from some of the regional groups, I owed an enormous debt to the chair of Food from Britain, who I recall was the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for the positive way in which she operated in this area. We had discussions about it. She went back to discuss it with the council and got the decision. I put it on record that she made my job a lot easier, because there was no great row about it ceasing activity.

The Explanatory Memorandum mentions that no one wanted to take over the work of Food from Britain because of TUPE. I do not want to make a big thing of it—I rang the office of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, yesterday to give notice of this—but I recall that there was a peculiar arrangement with certain members of staff about their salaries. However, the fact that we were going to abolish the body meant that we did not have to go down that route. The pension payments were substantial—they were a few million pounds—so it probably took a couple of years before the savings started to accrue to Defra.

While this has taken a long time to do, it is good that it is now wrapped up. I do not know what has happened with the rest of the Public Bodies Act and all the big organisations, but it is amazing that this should have happened with such a tiny body. By the way, I freely admit that I do not recall consulting any of my devolved colleagues on this. This was a straightforward matter about Defra running out of money and needing to cut something on the basis that we were not going to top-slice. We got the agreement of the council to wrap itself up.