Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, it is wonderful to see my noble friend Lord Rooker when he is angry. When he is really angry he is even more frightening than this, as he was years ago, as I reminded him just now, over bees, when he was in the department.

Amendment 47 is very straightforward; I suggest that we replace the word “may” with “must”. The reason for this is very straightforward; it will not take a moment or two. My noble friend Lord Rooker reminded me of what happened when this was looked at by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and by the Constitution Committee. Again and again, they found the memorandum associated with the Bill and the Bill itself to be quite imperfect. This is a very good example. My noble friend has addressed that so I will not do any more. However, the question of inspection of premises is not one of “may” but one of “must”. This is something we clearly could regard now. If the Minister feels diffident about it then no doubt we will bring this matter back again when we discuss the Bill on Report.

This follows perfectly normal practice. For example, it is interesting that the idea of Home Office inspectors, which the noble Lord mentioned during his speech earlier—or maybe it was on Monday; I forget now—is not in the Bill, but it probably ought to be, because this is clearly a very different area of regulation but for the same purposes. The Home Office generally is looking only at experimental stuff. This is interesting because the Bill covers experimental stuff, but it is seen as a livestock or farming issue in the main.

That is one of the problems that we have: there are certain things that are not in the Bill but should be, such as, as the Minister pointed out, the fact that there is no intention of using farmyards to do this research. That is fine. It is nice to have that said by the Minister but it really should be in the Bill. It is not something we can leave off. We will come to an amendment on it in due course.

It is vitally important that your premises are inspected, because so many minor things can make a very big difference to the work. That brings me to the sort of situation that I am in as a licence holder with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. I had my inspection about 10 days ago to look at my embryo lab; the requirement is that it can be used only for embryos because of the risk of contamination. It wanted to look, for example, at the detailed reports that I have on every single experiment that we have done there, as is proper. That is a mandatory requirement made by law, just as it should be in this Bill as well— because it is the same problem.

We have to say very clearly that inspections on this matter should not be a matter of discretion for the Secretary of State but “must” be seen to happen, and those reports should go back to the Secretary of State and be available. Certainly, in my own case with embryos—and this would apply to my animal work, for example, although the noble Lord may not know this, because it came up under a previous amendment—if we modify a mouse, for example, in its genome, we are required to notify the modification to the Home Office after we have done it as part of our report. It is clear that those sorts of things are already well established in law, in laboratories of this kind, and the laboratories being suggested by the Bill would clearly be required to follow the same kind of process in law. I hope that that can be sorted out on Report, but for the moment I shall not pursue the amendment.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not know whether the rules of the House allow me to intervene briefly to say that I congratulate the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on having identified this discrepancy, and I commend my noble friend Lord Rooker for having brought it to the Committee’s attention. We are discussing this in the context of this particular Bill, but if we allow discrepancies like this through, it will have effects on other Bills—and for that reason I strongly recommend my noble friend’s amendment. We may not divide on it today, but it is an issue that the House should consider later.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the Committee for long on this group of amendments, except to say that we support the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Winston, in their arguments, and the DPRRC has flagged up these issues. This is a vital Bill which could make a significant difference to the resilience of crops and plants; it is therefore necessary for it to be effectively and transparently regulated. Leaving some of these decisions to the whim of the Secretary of State is unwise; the Secretary of State “may” do as the Bill indicates, but they also may not. If they do not, what recourse will Parliament have to call them to account and ask about what advice or information they received not to implement the clauses under discussion? The Minister earlier referred to praying against regulations, but that is a fairly catastrophic step for anybody to take.

This is not to say that there is no trust in the ability of the Secretary of State to make the right decisions; it is more about having the reassurance in the Bill that the considerations “must” be carried out, not “may” be. Again, ensuring that farmers, producers and the public have confidence in precision-engineering products is vital, and these amendments help that to happen.