Public Bodies (Abolition of Food from Britain) Order 2014

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Grantchester

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Grand 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.