Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Trees, and to reinforce his concern about gene drive and his desire for a direct answer from the Minister at some point.

The House may not know that the term “genetic engineering” was coined by a pulp science-fiction writer, Jack Williamson, in the novel Dragon’s Island. As you would expect from a 1950s pulp science-fiction novel, it was an extremely lurid, overwritten and overblown expression of concern, but the concerns that arise from gene drives fit within that framework.

Returning to the framework of this Bill, your Lordships’ House is now used to Bills coming before us, from the Commons or directly from the Government, in a dreadful state. However, the Schools Bill was at least about schools. The Procurement Bill was at least about—you guessed it—procurement, however poorly drafted it might have been, as the Government acknowledged. Yet with this Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill we have hit a new low. Experts from across the field, including many in favour of the widespread rollout of gene editing, say that “precision breeding” has no technical or legal meaning. The phrase is a sales slogan, not a definition, making the tabling of this Bill extremely surprising. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, set out many other practical concerns from the Regulatory Policy Committee. I will not repeat them, but the red flags are flying.

Echoing and building on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, coming back to “precision”, how DNA works is far from precise, and the tools with which we manipulate it interact with highly variable genetic material in unpredictable ways. I will venture a little into the depths of the science because it is crucial. As with so many other issues within science, understanding is changing fast. Science often revises itself in deeply fundamental ways. I am afraid that your Lordships’ House as a whole has not truly grasped that. There are few people in politics with a scientific background, though many of them are here in the Chamber today, and some who acquired it many decades ago, while those understandings have since moved on, and sometimes have reversed.

As the noble Lord, Lord Winston, outlined, genes do not operate in a deterministic way how an organism develops. Living beings are complex, ever-changing. They are not machines built to a blueprint. Picking up some of those technical points, copy number variation, the number of instances of a gene, can have widely varying effects. There are epigenetic changes: under different environmental circumstances the code of the genes can be read differently. Even the location of the same gene in a different place can result in widely different outcomes.

What I was taught in a science degree 30 years ago was junk DNA—about 99% of the total—is now titled “non-coding DNA”. We know, as we knew then, that it does not produce proteins, but it has widely varying impacts on the DNA that does produce proteins. I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about exogenous DNA, paraphrasing a little, that we do not really have to worry about it, but his junk DNA can have unknown and variable effects, so we really must think about it. However, I thank the noble Lord for putting “tardigrades” into Hansard, I think, for the second time, since the first time was in my maiden speech.

There is increased scientific understanding of how genetics and the environment interact. It is neatly, if somewhat cryptically, summed up in the phrase “genotype does not determine phenotype”. Plants and animals are products of complex, sophisticated, ever-changing interactions between their genes, the microbiome that, in effect, makes every complex organism in an individual ecosystem—including every Member of your Lordships’ House—the chemical and physical framework around them, and even pure chance. I point noble Lords to a fascinating article in New Scientist on 21 September on fascinating new research showing how there is a large element of chance in the way your brain develops.

The tools used for gene editing are not nearly as precise as has been claimed and there is a practical reality about how these studies are carried out. They often fail to check beyond the intended outcomes; they see if they produce what they wanted, but they do not see what else they have produced. To quote one careful academic analysis from this year,

“very few studies have used ‘unbiased’ methods and a systematic approach to detect genome-wide off-target mutations.”

That is where we look for the driving force, the commercial interests, behind so much of this research. People are very often not paid to find the results that they did not want.

I point noble Lords to an excellent briefing, which covers these issues in far more detail than I have time to, from the Alliance for Food Purity. There is a great deal of very detailed technical work in that briefing. However, the underlying problem is that the Bill is applying the language of engineering to biology, and they are not compatible. The outputs—the food that we might all eat without knowing it, if the Bill is allowed through in its current form—could see the appearance of unexpected allergens or even toxins. With the Bill in its current form, farmers could see genetically edited seeds planted in their neighbours’ fields and changing the genetics of their fields, without their being informed. That is a particularly huge issue for organic farmers.

That issue is played out on a national scale too. Both the Scottish and Welsh Governments have indicated that they do not want gene-edited crops, but there is no way of stopping the seeds or their genes at these borders. The issue extends beyond these islands. The Bill is likely to be in breach of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety—an international agreement that aims to protect biodiversity from the impact of genetic engineering.

The list of problems with this Bill—a familiar set—goes on. There are Henry VIII clauses, step by step, allowing changes by ministerial diktat at virtually every key point. To pick out just one, Clause 1(8) allows the Secretary of State to widen the definition of a precision-bred organism through regulations. That is a crucial part of this Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, set out the issues around labelling and how it could be changed by regulation.

Many noble Lords have already covered the issue of whether animals should be excluded from the scope of the Bill. It has been very widely covered and the Minister, in a debate we had a couple of weeks ago on avian flu, almost made a concession in acknowledging that we have huge problems with pests and diseases in our factory-farmed animal populations, because they are enormous. This inevitably allows one disease to flourish but, if you tackle that one disease while leaving the system in place, another disease will arrive in short order.

I come to my final group of points. Various noble Lords have made implicit or explicit references to food security. If our standard approach is through gene editing, we are aiming for a silver bullet-type approach by continuing as we are now but looking to find magic solutions. But we know what we need to do to feed the world—to use that phrase—and, on occasions, we have heard an acknowledgement of this from the Government Bench opposite. We need agro-ecological approaches that work with the sophisticated complexity of nature, which we are just beginning to grasp, to truly cultivate the systems that have developed over hundreds of millennia, rather than to take to them like a toddler trying to put back together a clock that it has disassembled with a hammer.

In his introduction to the Bill, the Minister said that science must be at the heart of our national recovery. I absolutely agree with that statement. The 21st-century sciences of ecology and systems thinking understand that these complex ecosystems cannot be managed like machines. That is the science that we desperately need to feed ourselves and look after our natural world.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that the green revolution was a miracle that came at a cost. The COP 15 biodiversity talks are coming soon and we are starting to see that that cost has been enormous and unaffordable. We cannot afford to repeat today the same mistakes we made in the 1960s.

I will finally pick up on the Jonathan Swift quote used by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I give the noble Lord credit for making a gender update to it, but I am going to make a speciesist update. Noble Lords will recall that it talked about growing two ears of corn or two blades of grass where previously there had been one. Well, if you want those extra blades of grass or ears of corn, you actually need a healthy soil, with a rich ecosystem of fungi and bacteria working co-operatively with the plant. Then you will get a lot more than two extra ears of corn; you will get healthy, rich food, a healthy environment and security for all of us.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw to the attention of the Committee that in the amendment we are about to discuss, the Marshalled List says,

“leave lines 4 to 6”.

I believe it should say “leave out” and that is what I propose. If I am wrong, I hope somebody will shout.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and, indeed, our very acute Committee chair. I will speak to my Amendments 11 and 86 in this group. It is a great pleasure to follow the House’s acknowledged expert, who set out very clearly the major problems with this Bill and, indirectly, made the arguments for the two amendments I am presenting here. It is perhaps worth starting with my Amendment 86, which amends the Short Title of the Bill, leaving out “Precision Breeding” and inserting “Genome Editing”. I am very happy to debate whether that should be “gene editing” or whatever, but I think the noble Lord, Lord Winston, clearly set out the reasons why we should not be debating a Bill called “Precision Breeding”. As he said, there is no such thing as precision in biology.

There are many areas of science in which “precision” is appropriate and extremely useful. We think about elements of physics and mechanical engineering, say, and talk about going down to millimetres, micrometres, nanometres. We can look at how those might change when the temperature changes, for example. All of those things will be eminently, entirely predictable. That is true of physical properties, but it is not true of biological properties, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, clearly set out.

I covered this issue extensively at Second Reading, so I am not going to go into it at great length, but essentially, precision breeding is an advertising slogan; it is not a legal description. I do not believe that an advertising slogan should have a place in the title of a Bill. Interestingly, when it was put to me that I should seek to amend the Short Title, a technical expert said to me, “You will never get that through the Clerks”. In fact, it went through without a murmur. I think there is a real awareness that this Bill is not properly titled.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

On a point of information, the noble Baroness was a great deal luckier with the Clerks than I was, as I tried the same tactic and was told quite firmly that I could not do that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I do not know how that happened, but I think I might take that as a seconding of my Amendment 86. Noble Lords might say that it is only the title and it does not matter, but it is how people will identify the Bill.

I am going to refer a number of times to a Defra press release, dated 29 September 2021, which, all the way through, refers to “gene editing”. That is what it is telling people the Bill is about, drawing a very clear distinction, as it sees it, between gene editing and genetically modified organisms, an issue I will return to shortly. That is the case for amending the Short Title of the Bill. What we are talking about is not precision; it is not marked by exactness, and there are real problems if the Bill is not named clearly.

I come to something that is arguably very significant and considerably more impactful in the nature of the Bill. This is my Amendment 11, which would exclude the use of exogenous genetic material in the creation of, or remaining in, so-called precision-bred organisms. Here I need to venture into the depths of this a little, I am afraid; I apologise to the Committee for that. If we look at many of the definitions that describe gene editing, we see that they say this is simply removing genes from an organism or adding genes from a different variety of the same organism.

That is different from genetically modified organisms. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, suggested that, 30 years ago, when GMOs were being debated, they got an undeserved bad name. But look at some of the things that have been done with GMOs: for example, a salmon that combines the genes from three different types of fish and grows unnaturally fast, reaching adult size twice as fast as its wild relative, to be released into the environment with obvious and potentially massive impacts; or, perhaps even more indefensible, the transgenic zebrafish, bred with genes from jellyfish or coral, which give them a glowing effect under certain light conditions. These genetically engineered animals were popular in aquariums and have now escaped into the natural environment, with effects we have yet to understand.

We are being reassured that gene editing is not like that; that it is a different kind of thing. Certainly, that is what the Defra press release of 29 September, which I referred to earlier, said in the name of George Eustice, the Minister:

“Gene editing is different from genetic modification, because it does not result in the introduction of DNA from other species”.


That is what the public is being told by the department.

We are going to hear in this debate a great deal about CRISPR, and I shall say this only once: CRISPR stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”. This is the hallmark of a bacterial defence system which forms the basis of genome editing technology. It was first discovered in archaea, a branch of the tree of life that was itself discovered only in 1977—we are talking about very recent science here. The clue is in the description. This is using the bacterial system. The key element of gene editing is the insertion of genetic material from bacteria. That material may or may not be fully removed at some point in the organism’s development, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, set out very clearly, once we put something in, we do not necessarily understand what impact there might be in the current generation, or potentially in future generations.

I am going to borrow and excellent phrase from the joint Soil Association, Friends of the Earth and GM Freeze briefing on the Bill: it says that the genome is

“more like an ecosystem than a codebook.”

Personally, I tend to say that DNA is not a machine blueprint, because that is the metaphor—the idea of animals as machines—that dates back to the philosopher René Descartes, who has a lot to answer for and still dominates far too much of our discussion. We do not have the understanding of how biology and biological systems work. We think about them as machines and they are absolutely, definitively not.

This matters because mixing species, which is what we are doing here with gene editing, is not something that generally happens in nature. Certainly, there is horizontal gene transfer—which is of great concern in the area of antimicrobial resistance, an issue that I do a great deal of work on—but that is a far more limited occurrence and occurs mostly within kingdoms of living things rather than across different kingdoms of living things, which is what we are doing here. My Amendment 11, saying that we cannot introduce genetic material from other species, is doing only what the Government, in their own information about the Bill, say they want to do. That is why I believe we should have Amendment 11.

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I hope that my words have provided some reassurance for noble Lords and that they will not press their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, raised the issue of international compatibility of terminology. I am sure the Minister is aware that the International Organization for Standardization, more commonly known as ISO—and many noble Lords are familiar with ISO numbers applied to all sorts of technical and practical procedures—earlier this year produced a genome-editing vocabulary. It provides a list of internationally agreed terms that will

“improve confidence in and clarity of scientific communication, data reporting and data interpretation in the genome editing field.”

There is no mention of precision breeding in that internationally agreed ISO dictionary of terminology. Picking up the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman: would it not be better if we used internationally acknowledged terminology?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The amount of time we spent in the department working with real experts in this field to get the terminology right means that I hope we can persuade other countries to adopt our definitions. I know that I am not going to find total agreement on this legislation with the noble Baroness, but I can try. As I explained at some length—and I apologise to noble Lords, but I think this is a really important part of this Bill—we have arrived at this definition in a coherent way. Of course, we are constantly looking at how other countries are doing this. We do not want to be left behind, but we want to keep this safe; we want to see what is happening in the EU, but we want to make sure we are giving our scientists and our businesses the right guidelines around which to develop a really exciting new area of technology.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out “or a precision bred animal”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment removes animals from the scope of the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 3, I shall also speak to the rather daunting-looking number of amendments in this group. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, referred in the first group to debate on the Bill in the other place being deficient. It is interesting that, last week, the Institute for Government released a study stressing how much better and stronger scrutiny of Bills needs to be in the other place. The debate we are about to have will perhaps set an example of what the other place could and should have been doing with the Bill, before it came to us.

We already introduced this in the last group with Amendment 2 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, but here we are looking broadly at the wide range of ways in which this Bill might be applied to different groups of plants and animals—or not, as the case may be.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, in responding to the Minister’s comments on the earlier group, said that it appeared that the Government were

“going gung-ho for all markets”.

That is a fair summary of what we are presented with on this issue, which is interesting, because the debates and the presentations we have heard from Defra have all been talking about food, farming, food security and dealing with the climate emergency. In those Defra press releases, we do not see discussions of prettier roses or more colourful plant foliage, yet it appears that that is being proposed. The detail of this Bill, except for in talking about marketing of food and feed, does not really talk about food and farming at all. We will come later to a group focusing on the question of inserting a clause about public good, which is one way that the actual claimed benefits of the Bill could be inserted, at least indirectly.

The single beneficiary of the Bill is—sometimes this sneaks out—the biotech industry. It is written to support the Government’s industrial innovation ambitions, not to support food, farming or the food security of our population. This is among the many faults that were picked up by the Regulatory Policy Committee; the Bill fails to understand where what it is proposing intersects with farming, food production, food businesses and consumer interests. These concerns are also echoed, in somewhat less clear language, by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Constitution Committee.

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[Lord Trees (CB)]

With respect, I say that that could be screened out in the development process. There may be indications, were such a risk likely from genetic linkages and so on, and that could be looked for by whole genome sequencing in the screening process and then perhaps by in vivo challenge experiments. But it could occur in natural breeding processes, too.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Lord referred to the possibility of using gene editing to tackle enteric worms. Would he acknowledge that there is some very successful work being done on using diet—particularly tree crops and more varied pastural swards—to tackle worms? That is a far more agroecological approach that is working very effectively and has lots of other environmental benefits as well.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

I acknowledge that work has been done on that, but it is not in widespread commercial use.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is precisely why we want to have the proper regulatory framework in place, and that requires consultation. We also have a flowchart, available on the Bill webpage, that sets out very clearly the process for applying for an animal marketing authorisation. I will not delay noble Lords by going through each of the six steps in the process, but it is very extensive and exhaustive and clearly sets out how we propose to do this.

It gives the kind of reassurance that a lot of noble Lords talked about regarding the public’s acceptance. To address that point, it is a matter of how you put the question: if you do so in the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Trees, just did, mentioning the benefits of the legislation, I think a huge majority of people will support it. If you ask it in a different way, you will get a different answer—that was the problem 25 to 30 years ago.

The noble Lord is right, of course: the scientific community will move at the pace that the money allows it to, and the market will create demand for the research. But we want to make sure that we have a good, proper regulatory process that reassures the public and is clear to developers of these products, so that they can see how they will be required to sit within that sort of framework.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his answer and thank everyone who contributed to what has been a very rich, full and very informed debate. I am going to deal first with the structural questions just raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Jones of Whitchurch.

We again have this problem that we have to wait for the regulations and trust the Government. I appreciate that the Minister was doing his best to persuade us, and I felt that he really wanted the opportunity to have a PowerPoint presentation here to show us a slide of his flowchart. But this is all about taking it on trust. Almost certainly, in the timeframe the Minister referred to, we are talking of not the same Government implementing this—I am not casting any aspersions on who the next Government might be—and the noble Lord not being in a position to guarantee what will happen in the future. We are left with this uncertainty and it not being clear. We know that tomorrow will test your Lordships’ House on just how much it is prepared to stand up against regulations. We shall see what happens then.

The Minister responded to me on the standards of what I call factory farming. He said that there is already legislation on this, but I say that that legislation is grossly inadequate and that we have huge disease problems because of that. Tightening up animal welfare regulations and regulations for housing animals in this country would greatly reduce the need to deal with problems of disease.

It is interesting that the Minister also said, perhaps a couple of times, that including animals is about making the UK the best place to conduct research. I come back to the point I made on an earlier group about whether this Bill is for animal welfare, food security for farmers, or for our biotechnology industry. It appears that we are hearing that it is for the biotechnology industry.

I am not going to run through all the contributions, because the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Hayman, have already provided us with a good summary, but I will draw together the responses from the Minister and a number of others, including the noble Lords, Lord Trees and Lord Cameron of Dillington. There have been suggestions about tackling disease, but we are talking about ecological niches here. Let us say you produce pigs that are entirely resistant to a particular disease; you are producing resistance to one species or one threat. You are very unlikely to produce widespread resistance, so you are opening up an ecological niche for another disease to come in, if you keep animals in conditions that allow that to happen.

We can take a practical example from what is happening in human society at this moment. Over many centuries, human societies have had conditions that have allowed the spread of a wide range of respiratory diseases.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Does she not agree with me that we have been somewhat dismissive in this debate of the use of vaccines? Surely one of the ways to look at this with more intensity, and perhaps more money, is to look at more vaccines not just for human health but for animal health. At the moment, the research there is nothing like as much as it is for humans.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention and agree, although we know that animals kept in good conditions of husbandry are much less susceptible to disease. My first approach is to keep animals in conditions where they are not susceptible to disease, and then you do not need to go to the expense and effort of developing vaccines or using antibiotics, which have the issues with resistance that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.

I was talking about respiratory viruses. Our population is threatened now by not just Covid-19 but a number of other coronaviruses that have long been causing respiratory diseases in humans. We are threatened by rhinoviruses and by flus, all because of conditions that make us prone to respiratory illnesses spreading. Tackling just one of those, as we have done with the Covid-19 vaccine that the noble Lord just referred to, with great effect, does not mean that we will stop all those other forms of respiratory illness.

That has covered the main points. I want to come back to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, which raises some interesting points on great apes. I would extend this to all simians or monkeys. I ask your Lordships’ House to consider whether we actually want to be gene editing great apes or monkeys.

The point about equines is also very interesting when we think about horseracing and the enormous amount of money and the possibly shady characters involved in it. Whether we really want to see gene-editing in racehorses leads us into the companion animals question. It is a real area of concern. On that, the noble Lord, Lord Trees, referred to brachycephalic breeds that are identified as a problem area. If the breed societies were to say that they were going to create really rigid rules and change their definition of what those breeds are supposed to look like, that would be another way, a kind of husbandry way, of tackling the issue.

I will of course withdraw the amendment at this stage, but before I do that, I want to ask the Minister a question. Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, does he think we should leave open the possibility of gene-editing great apes?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not think that any conversation I have had has considered what our priorities would be. Our priorities would be to look at farmed animals and possibly the benefits for companion animals. We are not a range state when it comes to those sorts of animals, and I cannot see that being a priority.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but I note that the Bill allows that to happen. There is nothing in it to say that it would not. I have no doubt that this is an issue that we will return to on Report, probably at some length, with a number of choices before us. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

12: Clause 1, page 1, line 14, at end insert—
“(2A) For the purposes of subsection (2)(c) an organism’s genome could not have resulted from traditional processes or natural transformation if that organism is, or the processes used to create it are, subject to patent protection.” Member's explanatory statement
This is a probing amendment examining how, where a genetic technology breeding process for any living organism has been granted a patent under international or national law, it can be the result of a traditional process or a natural transformation since novelty is required for granting such a patent.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise that I seem to be dominating; I am sure we will get away from this. Amendment 12 appears in my name. In some ways we are returning to some of the issues that we were discussing in the first group about the definition of “traditional” or “natural”. If a genetic technology breeding process has been granted a patent under international or national law, novelty is a condition of acquiring a patent. Therefore, how can it be traditional or natural? I freely confess to your Lordships’ House that I am not an expert on intellectual property, and Amendment 74 in this group in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others deals with how this interacts with intellectual property law and the issues that were raised by your Lordships’ House’s oversight committees which the Government have insufficiently considered. I am going to leave that entirely to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, because intellectual property is definitely not my area.

However, I think it is worth exploring how something can be both traditional or natural and patented, whether we are using that as the process to create an organism or the organism itself. It is worth thinking about how the words “traditional” and “natural” are used. The idea is that something traditional or natural has been tried or tested for generations. It is associated in the public mind with safety. We know that food, feed and seed labelled as “traditional” or “natural” draw a higher level of consumer trust, so these words are important in their own terms and in terms of the technical understanding.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have to be honest with the noble Lord and say that I will write to him on this. He makes a very good point. I can think of it only in terms of a standard invention. In intellectual property terms, you secure the creation of whatever it is, with whatever characteristic it has, and others may come along and improve it. The line on intellectual property exists until they change it beyond its original purpose, and I quoted the other criteria earlier. I am going to write to both the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, to give more precise answers to those particular points. With that, I hope the noble Baroness is willing to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer and everyone who has contributed to this short but very dense—I think that is the appropriate adjective here—debate. I cannot help feeling that, should we revisit this on Report, as I suspect we may, we will need a couple of IP KC specialists to hand it over to, rather than leaving it to be tangled with by those who are not legal specialists in this area. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, nailed it: it feels like this has not been properly worked through, and it certainly has not been explained to the Committee. That is exactly where we have arrived at.

I will put some more questions to the Minister, because I am wrestling with this. I freely acknowledge that I am not an IP law specialist, by any means, but how can something that is patented be natural and traditional? Those two things are simply incompatible in law, and certainly in public understanding. That is what my amendment addresses, and I do not believe the Minister has dealt with that issue.

More specifically and concretely, and perhaps easier to answer—although I understand if the Minister wants to write to me—he referred to some of the tangles that had occurred previously with GMO technology. Seeds had blown from one field to another, and a farmer who had not even planted the patented crop found themselves in legal difficulty with its owner because they were illegally growing the seeds, even though they did not want them. Some of them may even have been organic farmers, who definitely did not want those seeds. Can the Minister assure me that we will not see this situation arising with so-called precision-bred organisms in the UK, particularly plants in this case—I am not sure we are talking about animals as much? Also, what happens if a genetic trait cross-breeds with or appears in a weed? Who is responsible for that? Is the owner of the intellectual property responsible for what happens with the weed?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That last point would have been dealt with in the process for ACRE’s analysis of its worthiness as a precision-bred organism that can be taken to market, as it clearly does not sit within the intent of the applicant.

All I can say to the noble Baroness, as I said earlier, is that we want to achieve a balance in encouraging the development of this. She was wrong earlier to say that this is just for commercial activity. It is very much not. There are other benefits, public goods, that the Bill achieves in animal welfare, tackling climate change, improving our environment, and reducing the requirement for pesticides and fertilisers. Just as there is a balance between those public goods and encouraging commerce and the ability of organisations to take products to market to be of advantage to the UK economy, the Bill also tries to achieve a balance between securing the intellectual property rights of those who have invested large amounts of money in the development of precision-bred organisms and the importance of making those organisms available to precisely the people who we want to have them. In most cases, that will be producers of food.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for tackling those questions. I feel that it might be best for me to write to the Minister to spell out the details of the questions that I am not sure I am sufficiently equipped in the IP area to formulate now. We are going to revisit this at Report, and I do not think we have heard any kind of argument against Amendment 74 and the idea of a review. In the meantime, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.

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[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, surely the whole point of this Bill is to speed up the process of bringing into being the plants and animals that the world really needs, as a matter of some urgency, to prevent our populations at home and abroad—I mentioned lots of examples in sub-Saharan Africa at Second Reading—starving, and to avoid further destroying our planet. We hope that our scientists will be able to make a difference sooner rather than later and show the world what can be done. We must lead on this and encourage others to follow, hopefully in the EU and sub-Saharan Africa. So why on earth should we as politicians want to delay this process? Surely that is going against everything that this Bill is trying to achieve.

It might be helpful if I gave some examples of how the whole process will work. Let us say a seed-breeding company finds and edits a variety of wheat for a trait of value—such as stronger straw that does not go flat just before harvest, or resistance to drought or Septoria. We then have its in-house testing for off-target characteristics and, above all, for the stability of the crop through the generations. I am advised that this testing takes three or four years, with three or four generations being bred. By the way, EFSA and ACRE would both be informed at a very early stage that this wheat was being bred, and they would be involved. Then you have a further two years—and two generations—of statutory testing. Then, hopefully, your new variety gets a recommended listing. You probably have another one or two years of multiplying up the seed for the farmers’ marketplace. That is six or seven years from the original genetic editing before the crop gets into the market on a commercial basis.

In animals, the same multigenerational gap exists between the original edit and the product being produced—except, in this case, each generation of cattle, for instance, will take an absolute minimum of two years, and I believe a single generation of salmon can take up to four years. So it will be a good 12 to 16 years after the actual gene editing before any such beef or salmon product reaches our plates. Breeding improvements in a species is a very long-term process, even with gene editing, so we cannot afford to wait any longer. I believe that we have to get on with it.

There will be some companies that will hold back on certain products when considering the European market, but it is not for us or Parliament to take a decision for them. If those sorts of business decisions were to be taken by parliamentary legislation—which is what we are doing now—our nation’s economic performance would really be in a pickle.

In any case, it seems to me that the EU is amazingly hypocritical about all this. Who is it that bans all GM products and yet is the second largest importer of GM products in the world? The answer is the EU, which imports 30 million tonnes of GM material every year. It is, of course, quite likely, with the snub of Brexit and the ongoing vexation of the Northern Ireland protocol, that the EU will cut up rough about this. But, as I say, I do not think that we as legislators dealing specifically now with the wording of this Bill should get involved in all that. Leave it to businesses to take their own decisions. It is interesting that Argentina, whose overall national wealth depends hugely on its ability to export agricultural products, has proved willing to adopt this technology. I think that sets us a very good example of how to balance reward versus risk.

If we are going to take a decision to proceed with this legislation, which I hope we are, please allow the many small businesses, which are waiting expectantly for this legislation to pass, to get on with their plans as soon as possible. I say small businesses because, at the moment, only really very big companies can breed seeds and breed different animals because of the time it takes. We are shortening it only by a small amount, so it is the small businesses which will benefit from this legislation. I think we ought to get on with it and not have any more delays.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, but I think the contribution that the noble Lord has just made demonstrates a fundamental difference in approach to, understanding of and belief in systems for—to use the phrase—feeding the world between him and several of us on this side of the House. I am going to take a very practical example of this because, last week, we saw reports emerge in the mainstream media of a new wheat variety called Jabal. The noble Lord spoke about our scientists finding solutions for Africa, and he spoke about leaving it to business. He said that only big companies could now develop new varieties of crops such as wheat. Jabal, which means mountain in Arabic, is a new durum wheat which is extremely tolerant to drought and heat. It was developed for climate resilience through the Crop Trust’s Wild Relatives project. It was developed between 2017 and 2021, so over a period of five years, and by working with farmers on the ground in the communities affected. It is looking to be extremely successful. There is no big business. There are some scientists—I have no doubt that there were some British scientists, but scientists from all round the world were involved in this—but it is grounded in the communities that need these crops and has been done without anyone making huge amounts of money out of it. If we are talking about feeding the world, there is a potential alternative model.

However, I am now going to come back to the detail of these amendments, starting with Amendment 16, already very ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I do not really think that I need to add much to that, having attached my name to amendment, although I will note that Amendments 76 and 77, both of which appear in my name and which the noble Baroness has also kindly signed, have more or less the same intention of inserting in Clause 43 instead of earlier in the Bill. Amendment 77 looks at impacts on UK exports to the EU, as the earlier amendment did. Amendment 76 is broader and looks at exports around the world and what impacts it might have.

Amendment 78 in my name, which the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Hayman, have kindly signed, addresses some of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. It says that regulations under this Act must particularly look at the impact on small and medium enterprises. Here, perhaps we are not thinking so much about enterprises that might be producing those so-called precision-bred organisms, but more the farmers using them and small farmers and the kind of impact we were addressing on the debate about intellectual property and the issues of market dynamics and competition which have been such an area of concern with GMOs.

Finally, I come to Amendment 75 in my name; the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, also kindly signed it. If the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, were here, she would probably be giving me lessons in the structure of Bills and exactly how a five-year review should be constructed. In her absence, I have done my best to propose that there should be a five-year review of how the Bill is working.

The debate on animals and plants provided some powerful ammunition for the discussion. The Minister acknowledged that the Bill will evolve and change according to events, but we also need to note that this is a fast-moving area of both technology and scientific understanding.

I will not go into great depth on what has been roughly described as the new biology but huge, fundamental debates within the science of biology are going on at the moment about the structure of organisms, of life and of ecosystems. In five years, the scientific framework behind this—not just the technology but scientific understanding—may well have moved on significantly. Surely a Bill this controversial, complex, difficult and technical should have a five-year review built in.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I never thought I would be a member of the Green Party, but I clearly am this evening. I must agree with the noble Baroness, because we have to understand that gene editing is a new technique and has been on the books for only about eight or 10 years, which seems a long time but is not at all—in science, that is a very short time.

It was 40 years ago that we genetically modified organisms for the first time. The noble Lord is proposing that we speed this process up when we do not fully understand what is happening with procedures such as CRISPR-Cas9 and other methods. We need much more data before we can be sure about the progeny of these animals. That is one of the problems, and it will not be simple.

Of course, I appreciate that it takes quite a long time to breed an animal. As a human, I understand that quite well—I have dealt with a few humans myself, and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has also had children—but we have to accept that it takes time before you can really work out the status of an animal. It is a complex process.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I appreciate that, as keen as I am to get this right and get something sensible on the statute book. I have a throwaway line before I get into the meat of it. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, talked about this being controversial legislation. Actually, in some of the surveys I have seen, a very small number of people are either very opposed or very in favour, and a large number do not know what this is all about. They want to know more, and we have to tell them more. We have to explain it in an unbiased, unpolitical, factual way, and that is what we are seeking to do. In the other place, the Bill passed by a majority way in excess of the Government’s majority, and I want to reassure many noble Lords here, so that we can pass it with equal fervour.

Smarting from the earlier comment from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I think the Minister tried to suggest that the legislation was uncontroversial. We were before discussing the inclusion of animals in the Bill, and 13 of what I think would be universally agreed to be the premier animal welfare organisations in the UK have said animals should not be in it. That surely is controversy from people who are very informed about its nature.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I accept the point the noble Baroness makes, and of course, there are others who fervently want measures brought in as quickly as possible that deal with animal disease, animal welfare and those sorts of things.

As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, quite rightly upbraided me earlier for boring the House, I will try to be as quick as I can, but there is a lot in this section, and I want to be open with the Committee in my comments.

I will respond first to Amendment 16, which would require the Secretary of State to consult, first, representatives of a number of interested groups and then European partners including but not limited to the EU and its member states. This is to agree on a definition of precision breeding and, if a definition is agreed, to amend the definition of a precision-bred organism in the Bill accordingly, using a Henry VIII power. The amendment could be used to change the key concepts that form the basis on which this legislation has been drafted and debated in both Houses of Parliament.

This summer, the EU conducted a consultation in which 80% of participants agreed that the existing provisions of the EU GMO legislation are not adequate for plants produced by certain new genomic techniques, which largely aligns with our view of precision breeding. As I have previously mentioned, the definition of a precision-bred organism in the Bill aims to cover all plants and animals produced by modern biotechnology that could have occurred through traditional processes or natural transformation. This approach to carving out precision-bred plants and animals from GMO legislation is in line with scientific evidence and advice, because it focuses on the end product rather than the technology used to produce it.

Furthermore, we have continuously engaged with national and international stakeholders and regulators to develop a definition that reflects the key principle of this legislation. Our approach is based on the science. With regulations on precision-bred plants and animals changing around the world, we believe the measures in this Bill will facilitate greater trade.

On the topic of trade, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss how differences in regulation and public perception in other countries will impact on our trade with them. Noble Lords have referred to genetically modified organisms in the amendment we are dealing with, and I want to be clear that there is a scientific distinction between GMOs and precision-bred organisms. Many countries recognise this and have changed, or are in the process of changing, their regulations to reflect it. As the international regulatory landscape evolves, our approach could help facilitate greater trade with countries that have already adopted a similar approach to the regulation of precision-bred organisms, with trading partners such as the USA, Canada, Japan and Argentina.

Currently, there are only a few precision-bred products on the market globally, and none of those are traded internationally. Many of them are still in the early development stage, allowing time to monitor and understand the international regulatory framework as it develops. Britain is an exporter of quality products, and one of the reasons for introducing this new, proportionate regulatory approach is to enable the development of more nutritious, higher-quality products that have been grown more sustainably.

Turning to Amendment 77 and the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, I would like to outline developments that are likely to change the requirements for companies exporting precision-bred products specifically into the EU; we have been following these developments with interest.

As our legislation on genetically modified organisms mirrors the EU’s, it is not surprising that we have the same drivers for change. The timing of the EU’s reform plans means that we are unlikely to be able to consider any new EU legislation while we are drafting our regulations under this Bill. However, we will continue to monitor developments closely and work with the EU, and other countries we trade with, to enable innovation and trade. I hope I have reassured noble Lords on this.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 19 and I very much support the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Hayman. She made a powerful case for why there should be a clear public benefit written into the Bill, which is why her emphasis and the detail in the amendment are important. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that the Minister has already said that he agrees with this. That is fine, but having it written down in the way set out here would be an important addition.

All the examples in the amendment have been cited by Ministers and supporters of the Bill, in various debates, as advantages that could accrue from it. The Minister believes in and is committed to issues such as the environment, climate change mitigation, food safety and animal welfare. As my noble friend said, we have talked many times about the potential to develop a world-class reputation for our science and innovation, and this would be a way of stating, publicly and internationally, what this research is about—so it is not just buried away in Hansard but is in a more public domain. That is very important.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, these preconditions very much reflect those that were spelled out in the Agriculture Act. It is not as though it is not legislative practice to have that amount of detail; it is, as it was done in a different Bill. So why can we not have it in this Bill as well? That would have the great advantage of putting the public good at the heart of the Bill.

It would also ensure that public money for gene-editing research, particularly in public institutions—I am involved in one of them—is firmly anchored and focused on the public good benefits. It would give the funding allocation something to measure against, which is an advantage. I am sure that the vast majority of research institutions in the UK would welcome this clarity; it would fit with the ethos of their operations anyway, and, in a sense, play to their strengths. It would be good to have measures in place on how that money is being spent, much as there are for ELMS funding in the Agriculture Act. We wanted to see what we would get for our investment with the farmers, so it was no longer just a free handout.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made the important point that we need to reassure the public that this is not a backdoor to further environmental damage and exploitation. We come back to the subject we have already debated, which is how we can make sure that we take the public with us. This is certainly one way we can make sure of that. We have to learn the lessons from the GM crop row of over 30 years ago, when one of the main criticisms was that it would allow the multinational seed companies to exploit farmers in developing countries by locking them into seed contracts in which the seeds could not be naturally regenerated for future use. We need to reassure people that that sort of exploitation is not part of our agenda on this occasion, so it is important to write that public benefit and use into the Bill.

It is important that we provide public reassurance. If it is good enough for the Agriculture Act, why can we not adopt a similar policy here? I urge the Minister to think about this; it would provide a great deal of public reassurance on an issue that we know is still quite sensitive. I hope he feels able, if not in my noble friend’s terms then in his own terms, to come back with an amendment that reflects the detail of that amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 19, which noble Lords will see already has a full complement of signatures. I thought the signature of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was far more useful than mine, so I was pleased to leave that space. If the Minister cannot agree to make some commitment such as that which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, of Whitchurch, just asked for, it might well be possible to find a Conservative Back-Bencher to make a complete set on Report, should we get to that stage. I would have attached my name to this and I think it has already very been powerfully argued for, but I want to make two additional points.

Both the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act were built around the idea of public money for public good. Here, surely the Conservative Government would embrace the idea of public good for no public money at all. This is the Government able to make the rules, and they can ensure that there is public good without a penny having to be spent. That would be very much in line with the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act.

I want to highlight a couple of the elements in Amendment 19 that I think are particularly important, including sub-paragraph (x),

“supporting or improving human health and well-being”.

I note that the Government, in promoting the Bill, talk a great deal about sugar beet. Given the massive overconsumption of sugar in the UK diet—if we produced by volume only two-thirds of the sugar we produce in the UK, that would be more than enough for a sufficient, healthy level of diet without importing a single gram of sugar—and the fact that sugar beet is associated with massive loss of fertile topsoil from some of the richest lands in the UK, if we could gene-edit sugar beet to be more productive on less land, it would be ideal to combine that with ensuring that we produce only a healthy amount of sugar and free up the land for other purposes.

I also note that the Minister talked about sub-paragraph (ii), mitigating and adapting to climate change—indeed, he talked about the climate emergency quite a lot this afternoon. Of course, when we are talking about animals, we talk about engineering cattle to release less methane; we are looking at a whole-systems approach here, and having fewer cattle would be by far the easiest way to produce less methane. Further, they would not be consuming grains and proteins, such as soya from the Amazon, which we could be consuming as human food instead. It is a complex issue, but what we are getting at here is trying to deliver, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, what the Minister said is the purpose of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, has not spoken yet, but I will venture to make one comment on his Amendment 21. The wording is not terribly clear, and the noble Lord could answer now or later, or think about this amendment on Report. It says that the genome should be sequenced and the changes recorded and reported to the Secretary of State. My question is whether that should be published and publicly available. We are talking about licensing something that the Government are giving companies the right and the chance to potentially make money out of, so it is perfectly reasonable to demand an increase in public knowledge to make accessible those genomes that would then be available to other researchers for all kinds of possibly very different purposes, not necessarily productivity or seed-producing purposes. The knowledge of all those genome sequences would be a very useful thing. I think that should perhaps be written into the amendment.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

Seeing as my name has been mentioned, perhaps I ought to speak. I thought we were still on the two previous amendments. The difficulty I have with this is that Amendment 21 is really a continuation of Amendment 20, and Amendments 22 and 23 follow logically.

Let me just deal very quickly with this. Basically, what we are talking about here is the release of organisms into the environment, and the proof that we have done to those organisms what we what we said we were going to do. Of course, that particularly means looking at the phenotype of the animal, whether it is a normal animal and therefore not suffering in any kind of way, and at whether the editing has changed the genome in a way that is unexpected. Of course, the Minister mentioned off-target mutations, but that is only one thing that can occur with gene editing. Once the DNA is on a double-stranded split and there is a gap there, you can actually introduce foreign DNA—even human DNA; whatever is floating around in the laboratory. When we are doing very careful work in the lab with genetic material, we have to be scrupulously clean of the flow hoods and so on. Those things need to be considered, because they would be part of what is seemingly a simple procedure, but in reality there are really quite difficult safeguards. What I am really asking is whether the Government intend that there be some form of sequencing to see whether there have been mistakes, or some form of examining the genome of the animals after we have done the work required.

To my mind, there are two issues here. One, of course, is the need to get better data on the effect of the gene editing, wherever it is done, and, in particular, of gene editing in general. That will help the research. If we really want to promote a market, we need to show that we are what we promised to be: a leading scientific organisation in this country, doing this sort of stuff at the top level. That is important. The other issue, of course, is protecting the environment. Clearly, release of organisms that turn out to be not what we expect, and which would have the ability to produce progeny, is risking things further. That is basically the reason for all these amendments, but Amendment 21 expresses my main concern: to ensure that we have done what we promised to do, and if we have not, to find what went wrong so that we can deal with it.

The primary question of privacy of the information has to be discussed by us, but it is deliberately not in this amendment at the moment. There are pros and cons for doing that. There does not necessarily have to be openness, but there must be a proper register of the information. We may well not get the work done if we do not have complete confidentiality, although science is never done best when it is confidential. On the whole, openness has been described, in the general information about the Bill, to be an issue in it, and transparency is a word mentioned by the Government. In the interest of transparency, this amendment may be required.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out “or a precision bred animal”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to remove animals from the scope of the Bill.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I will speak also to Amendment 2 in my name and briefly comment on the other amendments in this group.

Many Peers will no doubt have received overnight the joint briefing on the Bill from Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland; the Landworkers’ Alliance; the Consortium for Labelling for the Environment, Animal Welfare, and Regenerative Farming —known as CLEAR; the Soil Association; GM Freeze; Organic Farmers and Growers; and the Organic Research Centre. The tone of that briefing reflects what I hear from academics and campaigners: they feel let down by your Lordships’ House. In Committee, we had a detailed, informed and productive debate on the contents of this Bill and the science behind it, and I single out the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for his rich and expert contributions and many amendments. Then they saw the list of amendments for Report, before I had tabled the amendments in my name, and it seemed as though all that debate and all the issues raised in Committee—not satisfactorily answered by the Government—had dissolved into a puff of smoke, or perhaps a puff of gene-edited pollen.

Many Members of your Lordships’ House attended a very informative online briefing on Friday and heard from an academic expert, Dr Michael Antoniou from King’s College London, about his concerns, and I think most noble Lords were copied into the subsequent detailed written exchanges that continued that debate. With that in mind, since Hansard does not yet allow footnotes in speeches, I put on the record two articles that I urge every noble Lord and civil servant who will be involved in this Bill and subsequent regulations to read and ponder: in Nature, on 12 January 2022, “Mutation bias reflects natural selection in Arabidopsis thaliana”; and, in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene in March 2021, “Differentiated impacts of human interventions on nature: Scaling the conversation on regulation of gene technologies”.

In short, the first is a substantial debunking of the claim that the mutations occurring in nature are random. This is a subject of continuing scientific debate and a claim relied on heavily by the supporters of the Bill, but it is increasingly evidently incorrect. The second makes the point that even if you were to concede that similar detrimental changes take place through natural means, they are not transmitted around the world at the scale of our globalised industrial agricultural systems, which can spread mistakes before they are recognised. Your Lordships will note the date of those articles. The understanding of genetics and particularly epigenetics is changing fast and the Bill is stuck in the understandings of the 20th century.

All the amendments I have tabled, with one exception, offer a final chance: different routes by which your Lordships’ House could take a pause and allow reflection for the science and the understanding to catch up. I think it is telling that in the last few weeks I have had three major groups of scientists from different fields reach out to me to ask for advice on how they can get through to the Government—in the words of one, “to get the Government to understand our issues”.

There is further evidence for that and I will comment further in the next group on government Amendments 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10. These are amendments to foundational elements of the Bill. This is not mere tidying up—crossing the “t”s and the odd dotting of the “i”s. It is reminiscent of the mess we encountered in Committee on the Procurement Bill and the now gutted and apparently defunct Schools Bill. But here we are at the final stage, the last detailed consideration of the Bill, and the Government are still trying to play around with what it is actually all about.

As I said, my amendments—apart from Amendment 12, which is somewhat different—focus on giving us the chance to go slower, to pause, to look at this somewhat differently. In Committee and in the other place, there was much debate about whether animals should be included in the Bill—to draw a parallel, something that, as far as I am aware, is not even being considered in the yet to be settled debate on gene editing in the European Union. It is an issue of great interest to farmers, growers and food manufacturers in the UK—those who are still managing to export there even after Brexit. Noble Lords will see from the briefings that organic growers and farmers in the UK are very concerned about the Bill.

Amendment 27 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston—and its associated amendments that make up the rest of this group—sets out a very fast timetable of 2026 for farm animals and 2028 for other animals. The best I can say about it is that it is better than nothing. Should it be put to a vote I will support it, but that is still a very short timetable in view of the time it takes for science to get from the lab bench to the peer-reviewed publication, let alone the time it takes to then reach government understanding.

Amendment 1 excludes animals and Amendment 2 in my name would exclude animals and plants not used for food production. We are told again and again by the Government that they want this Bill for food security—they want to be able to produce food—even though it looks a lot like a Bill designed for and by the multinational-dominated biotech sector. But if it is for food, why allow companion animals—or, indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said in Committee, and the Minister admitted, the gene editing of great apes, the species whose closeness to us has been highlighted only this week by research showing we have an embedded understanding of their gestural language?

So, what I have done with my Amendments 1 and 2 is offer the House a final chance to deliver the changes to the Bill that many were expecting. It is not my intention at this point to call a vote on either, unless the House should signal that it does want to reflect, pause and at least proceed more slowly on a major change in our relationship with the natural world—in the natural world—as human animals in an immensely complex system that has developed over hundreds of millions of years.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I understand the point that my noble friend is making. I cited Bos taurus as perhaps the greatest priority in our minds, but I have also mentioned the benefits that would accrue if we could tackle conditions such as PRRS in pigs. He is right that there are other genuses across farm animal species that we must consider.

As I said, we also intend to produce guidance on the animal marketing authorisation process outlined in the Bill. That will include guidance on the evidence that regulations will require to be submitted alongside the animal welfare declaration by the breeder and, if necessary, more specific guidance relevant to particular species. Through that consideration of evidence and clear guidance, we will ensure that the regulatory system works effectively for different species of animals. I hope that the Government’s intended approach, our commitment to phase the introduction of animals under this legislation and the words that I have said from this Dispatch Box are clear and reassuring for noble Lords. I ask noble Lords to consider not pressing their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. I thank everyone who has participated in, as he said, this fascinating, detailed and high-quality debate.

I will start with the small bombshell that the Minister that just dropped. We appear to have had a new outline for the way in which the Bill is to be implemented presented to us at the final stage of Report on the Floor of the House—and, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, pointed out, with some very unclear elements where we suddenly appear to be covering half the cattle but not the other half. I question whether this is the way in which we should be making legislation.

I want to raise a point on something the Minister said which has not been raised before: why is aquaculture here? As the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said, the reality of land animals is that at least you can keep control of them and muster them fairly well. If we include aquaculture in the early stages, we have to realise that once you release something into the sea, as we know from farmed salmon, there will of course be escapes. We have not had a chance to debate all the things the Minister just said.

I want to go back to first principles. I return to the immensely powerful and important speech by the noble Lord, Lord Winston. As he said, he has 40 years’ experience of working with genes. He is your Lordships’ House’s absolute expert. The noble Lord said that we are embarking on a massive experiment with potential global repercussions, but we do not understand what we are doing. Before I go further, I want to put those words to the Minister. My understanding is that the precautionary principle is part of government policy. How does this Bill fit with that principle?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Let me address some of the points that the noble Baroness has made. The Government have always said that our priority for the rollout of this technology will be plants, then animals. I have added to that the reassurance, in frequent meetings that I have held with noble Lords before today, that we can phase that part of it as well. So I do not consider that to be a bombshell.

ACRE, the body that advises the Government on releases into the environment, has recommended that precision-bred organisms pose no greater risk than their traditionally-bred counterparts. Its advice is supported by the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Biology and the Roslin Institute. As for food and feed, consumer safety will be ensured through a case-by-case assessment by the FSA to ensure that products are safe for consumption.

So I hope the noble Baroness feels that his is not a bombshell, that clear processes are involved and that we have been, in every way, precautionary about how we do this. I put it to her that surely it is being precautionary to tackle some of the problems we face. The greatest challenge ever for humanity is to adapt to climate change and to produce food in a way that a modern society, a civilised society, wants—to make sure we address issues such as animal welfare. That is the opportunity of this Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his answer. I will pick up that point about animal welfare, and indeed pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about pigs in the US that have been gene-engineered—or, rather, gene-disrupted— to make them resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome.

This is a case of knocking out one gene in these pigs. We know that any given strain of a virus mutates at a rapid rate—we only need to look at Covid-19. Where we have pigs held in the kind of crowded, dangerous conditions in which we know pigs are held in the US, the virus will mutate very quickly. We have been through this many times. We had it with resistance to pesticides: we got rid of a single disease with one gene and then, of course, it goes. This is the way that biology works, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said. We hold those pigs in the kind of crowded, dangerous conditions where PRRS is a concern. Let us remember that this genetic change is only against that one disease. When swine flu arrives, there is nothing in those pigs that will protect them against it, or prevent it becoming a zoonosis and crossing the species barrier into humans. Yet we continue those farming practices.

I pick up the point from the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who said that this is the only way we will feed the world and the only way to get more production. That is what we were saying in the 20th century. The discussion on Friday that I referred is only a preprint, but it reflects the direction of the new biology. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that there is a centre of gravity, but we also know there are tipping points. The new biology acknowledges that a wheat plant and every other complex organism is a holobiont; it operates as a complex of what we think of as the plant, bacteria and fungi that work together. The preprint showed that when a wheat crop is dealing with drought, the epigenetic changes—the kind of changes that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, was talking about, where the plant adapts to circumstances and has its genes expressed in different ways—were happening overwhelmingly in the bacteria and fungi. It is not the genetics of the wheat plant at all. I do not accept that this is the way to feed the world, without tackling the issues of poverty, inequality, food waste and feeding perfectly good food to animals. We need good management of soils and crop diversity—that is how we feed the world.

I feel a sense of despair at this point; I have no alternative but to withdraw my amendment with great reluctance. I really hope that your Lordships’ House has listened, particularly to the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and that the Government listen to this as we go forward from here.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

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There was another potential hostage to fortune which I think the Minister has dealt with, namely the phrase “artificial modification technique”. As Jonathan Jones and Wendy Harwood pointed out to me, selective breeding by human beings since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago is an artificial technique. It would not have happened naturally; it happened because of the intervention of man. I think that the Minister addressed that on the previous amendment by defining what he meant by artificial technique, but I hope when he comes to respond he will define what he means by “modern biotechnology”.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having spoken a great deal on the last group, I will be extremely brief now. What we have is the Government still trying to define what the Bill is about at this incredibly late stage. We have been through Committee, Report and the other stages in the other place and here, and here we are still trying to find the wording. Neither the science nor the law is stable enough for this to become an Act and we have just seen a very useful demonstration in this short debate of how this is very likely to be a field day for lawyers, so the lawyers in your Lordships’ House can get ready.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for his continuing help in trying to get this right. I hope the eyes of not too many noble Lords glazed over. I had to get on the record, about what is undoubtedly a very technical piece of legislation, what we were seeking to do by the changes that we were putting in.

The noble Lord makes a very good point about “modern biotechnology” as a term. I am at great pains not to throw in new definitions that could one day come back to bite us, but “modern technology” is widely recognised to cover a specific set of technologies for regulatory purposes. In particular, it is used in the UN’s Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The definition of modern biotechnology can be updated—to be probably even more modern technology—subject to the affirmative procedure under powers in the Bill if required.

I hope that the government amendments, which aim to clarify which kinds of genetic features are permissible in a precision-bred organism and the techniques by which they may be introduced, will provide assurance to the noble Lord not to press his amendments. I hope that noble Lords are confident in accepting these government amendments.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

12: Clause 3, page 3, line 30, at end insert—
“(iv) the details of the gene editing event, and the record of the whole genome sequence of the qualifying organism, are recorded in a publicly available register established by regulations,”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 12, I will speak also to Amendment 13 in my name. This is an adaptation and development of the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, in Committee—he is not currently in his place; I hope he will be back in a second—when he put forward the idea of a register. This is my attempt to write that register into the Bill, to establish full transparency and traceability around gene editing.

The drafting is my own, although I thank the Table Office for its help. I will not claim that this is the perfect way to set this in the legislation, but in this legislation it absolutely should be, for the sake of transparency and traceability. We are giving commercial companies the right to mess around with the basis of life on earth. Showing their working and allowing the knowledge to be available to others is a small price to pay.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I had a detailed debate in Committee about whether it is possible to identify gene-edited organisms; some aspects of that debate remain in dispute, but we heard on Friday’s call that, should the nature of the gene-editing event be recorded, as Amendment 12 calls for, there is absolutely no doubt that any gene-edited organism can be identified.

This amendment goes further in calling for the record of the whole-genome sequence of the qualifying organism to be recorded. For the House’s information, I think it is worth going a little further into that, and into an explanation of why the regulations should be covered by the affirmative procedure.

Whole-genome sequencing can accurately identify the full spectrum of unintended mutations at both off-target and on-target editing sites, including the inadvertent insertion of foreign DNA. Given what we heard from the Minister in the last group, I am not sure how we can be sure than an organism is legal if we do not have this. Multiple-reference genomes derived from the whole-genome sequencing of major crop plants are available already in the public domain. That has yielded important information about the unintended effects of gene editing on the genome. For example, in a study on gene-edited rice using CRISPR-Cas, whole-genome sequencing was used to investigate unintended mutations arising from several aspects of the gene-editing procedure. The procedure, which taken as a whole includes tissue culture and Agrobacterium-mediated cell transformation, resulted in several times more unintended mutations than were found in rice propagated through natural pollination. If you do not do the whole-genome sequencing, you simply cannot know that to be the case.

We are sometimes told that this is too complicated, difficult and expensive. We have been talking about how fast this field is moving, and one recent innovation is what is known as long-read DNA sequencing. Unlike many things in this area, its meaning is pretty clear-cut from its self-description. It provides a continuous sequence that reads up to 1.5 million DNA base units and would provide unequivocal understanding of the placement of long stretches of repeat sequences, which some of the older methods that break up the DNA strand do not do so easily. Several companies offer a long-read genome sequencing service, making this technology readily available.

I did not write this into the Bill, and it is another reason why I put in the affirmative procedure, but this register could also include requirements for molecular compositional profiling methods: gene expression-profiling transcriptomics, protein-profiling proteomics and small biochemical molecule-profiling metabolomics—let us call them “omics”. These are now used by thousands of research groups around the world to gain a more comprehensive and deeper insight, not just into the genome but into how an organism functions. It is crucial to understanding the health and disease implications of the genome to see how that genome plays out in the proteins in the cells.

A 2016 research paper published in the extremely prestigious journal Nature used a multi-omics approach to demonstrate that a glyphosate-tolerant GM maize was not substantially equivalent to its non-GM relative. The large-scale protein and metabolite alterations that were detected were unintended consequences of the GM transformation process, with potential downstream health consequences for the consumer in terms of the introduction of toxins and allergens.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is here and I refer Members of your Lordships’ House to his speech in this area and our discussion in Committee. To know what is going on is scientifically and practically essential. That is why I have tabled these amendments. I do not intend to move to a vote, but this is a matter that the Government should commit to. It is interesting that in our discussion on Friday with all the experts one of them said to me, “Yes, there is a public register. At least that’s how it’s going to work”. I do not know whether the Minister can explain this, but my understanding is that there is nothing in the legislation that provides for a public register. If I am wrong, I am happy to be corrected. However, these people are proponents of the Bill and this procedure, and they believe that there will be a public register. If that is what the experts are trusting in and want to be able to use—it is a public resource—and if it is not already there, the Government certainly should introduce it. I beg to move.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for introducing the amendment because it gives me a chance to say two things quickly. One, which she alluded to, is our discussion in Committee about detectability by analytical methods. I asked Wendy Harwood from the John Innes Centre to give me an exact form of words about that, which I shall repeat with her permission. It confirms, in a way, what the noble Baroness has just been saying. Wendy Harwood said:

“If you had details of the exact edit made, then you could detect”


the PBO by polymerase chain reaction,

“followed by sequencing of the PCR product. If you were just presented with a plant, and no audit trail and asked whether it was genome edited, you could not determine whether it was or not.”

One therefore needs an audit trail in order to be able to tell. She continued:

“If exactly the same change had been made by precision breeding as had been made by traditional breeding, and you tested by looking for that precise change, then you would not be able to tell which was which. Again an audit trail would be required. You might however have a case where both PB and traditional breeding had made changes to the same gene, giving the same trait, but these changes were not identical at the DNA level, in this case you could tell the difference.”


That emphasises that if one is serious about knowing which products on the shelves are produced by PB, there needs to be an audit trail.

On whether whole-genome sequencing is of value, one angle is that so much mutation in the genome is going on all the time that it is hard to know what one’s reference material would be. The Royal Society produced in its evidence to the Defra consultation a calculation that in a hectare of wheat there would be at least one mutation for every base pair in the wheat genome. There are 10 billion base pairs in a wheat genome. In a one-hectare field of wheat, there would be a mutation somewhere in every one of those base pairs. So the difficulty with using whole-genome sequencing is what one makes of the information one gets. There will be huge variation and one does not quite know what the value of the information is.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I think we have agreement that some parts of the genome are functionally relevant and have a particular functional significance. We perhaps have points of disagreement about how relatively protected some of those may be from natural mutations. There are lots of mutations that happen naturally in areas that may be beneficial to the plant but only in certain parts of the genome and with certain sorts of functional effects. The parts of the genome that are particularly crucial to the function of the organism are the structural, basic ones, where there are far fewer natural effects. If you read the complete list of the genome, you are going to look at certain bits to see which changes are significant, which ones may be deleterious and which ones are less significant. Does the noble Lord agree?

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer, and everyone who contributed to this debate. Once again, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, gave us the expert nailing of the issues. I thank particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lady Hayman of Ullock, for stressing the importance of transparency, both for scientific and public confidence reasons.

The Minister went over some of the same ground that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I circulated back and forth on in terms of saying “Oh, there are lots of mutations” is not a reason not to do whole-genome sequencing. What we see are the mutations that are of greater importance in particular areas of the genome, et cetera, so the claim that “Oh, there are lots of mutations, so it doesn’t matter” does not scientifically stack up.

We are in a situation of regulations. The Minister said that the regulations will specify that the release notices contain “relevant and necessary” information. I think it is already clear that the detail of what “relevant and necessary” actually means is going to be crucial. We all know the problem with regulation and the way in which we are given it on a take it or leave it basis. Again, I feel great reluctance: I feel that we really should have whole-genome sequencing, and indeed broader omics testing. But I see no option at the present moment but to withdraw the amendment, with great reluctance.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

28: Clause 48, page 30, line 22, leave out subsections (2) to (5) and insert—
“(2) This section comes into force on the day on which this Act is passed.(3) The rest of this Act comes into force on such day as regulations may appoint.(4) Regulations under this section may not be made until the Secretary of State has laid a Priority Setting Partnership Report before both Houses of Parliament.(5) The Priority Setting Partnership Report shall be drafted by a Priority Setting Partnership established and funded by the Secretary of State, and include a response from the Secretary of State.(6) The Priority Setting Partnership shall—(a) identify evidence uncertainties in relation to precision breeding which cannot be answered by existing research,(b) produce a list of research priorities in relation to precision breeding, and(c) make comments on this Act in relation to issues identified in respect of paragraphs (a) and (b).(7) The Priority Setting Partnership shall have a membership comprising—(a) scientists and academics with expertise in the field of genetics, agriculture, and ecology,(b) lay members of the public,(c) representatives of animal welfare organisations, and(d) other interested parties.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require a report to be published identifying gaps in scientific evidence relating to precision breeding before the Act can come into force.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am aware of the time but I have attempted, through this amendment, to find a creative new way of tackling some of the issues that have come up in the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said quite some time ago, early on, that we have to reassure the public. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, said in the last debate that it is essential to take the public with us. The Minister said that it is essential to build confidence. This amendment seeks a positive way forward. For anyone still worrying about their dinner break, I am not intending to put this to a vote, for the avoidance of doubt, but I want to suggest a way forward for what has clearly been a very difficult Bill with a lot of issues that remain of great concern in your Lordships’ House and more broadly.

On the first group, I spoke about the number of people whom I know are watching the debate at this very moment and feeling very disappointed about what has happened—or rather, not happened. I also refer back to what I said at the start about the scientists who were coming to me saying, “How do we get our knowledge through to the Government? We feel we are just not being heard”, and these are experts in a range of different fields. This is a creative suggestion. I might have included the word “consultation” but, as we have heard in debates on various amendments today, the Government did consult the public and stakeholders and then entirely ignored what they said. It might be said with some justice that what result you will get depends on how you ask the question. Indeed, I think the Minister at some stage referred to a survey saying, “If we can get drought-proof wheat with gene editing, should we go ahead with it?” If you phrase the question that way, you will get a positive result; however, that is not listening to the academic—a proponent of the technology—who said to me this week, “You cannot drought-proof wheat with one genetic change. That is a fact.”

What I am suggesting here is a process of deliberative democracy. This is something that has really taken hold in government departments—not, that I know of, in Defra, but in others—and indeed across the world. Some of the classic examples of deliberative democracy are in Ireland, on equal marriage and on abortion, where the public, when allowed a chance to deliberate and carefully consider the issues, showed themselves to be significantly in front of the politicians. We have seen climate assemblies in the UK— that may have been under Defra; I am not sure what department they were under. We have seen a very effective climate assembly in France. Lots of local government organisations have been having climate assemblies. It is a way of getting people together and getting themselves informed, both the general public and stakeholders.

I borrowed the term “priority setting partnerships” from an organisation called the James Lind Alliance; I did not ask first. I have spoken to people who have been involved in this process, and it is of particular relevance here because it has been used in a significant number of cases to look at how to set priorities and make decisions about ways forward in healthcare. It brings together clinicians, patients and carers in those healthcare settings. My Amendment 28 is a commencement amendment, but I am not going to push it on that basis. My constructive suggestion to the Minister is that, to find a way forward among many of the issues that have really not been resolved in your Lordships’ House, and have not been resolved among scientists, the Government should seek a deliberative process looking at how the regulations are constructed for the Bill. That process could actually get public involvement and engagement, because I guarantee him that there will be a great deal of public concern and public anger about where we have got to today, and public resistance to the products.

That issue is particularly going to arise around whether gene-edited products will be labelled. I could very easily have tabled amendments on this; lots of people asked me to. We debated it extensively in Committee, but I could not see a different way forward and I did not simply want to revisit the Committee debate. However, if we are going to talk to the public about labelling and about what is happening to their food, we know how deep the public’s concern is about food safety, the nature of their food and the way it is produced. I do not need to list all the scandals and the concerns, including genuine health concerns, that have arisen in recent years. This is an area of public concern, so I am suggesting that on regulations, issues such as labelling and many of the things that remain unresolved, the Government should bring together scientists, government officials, experts and the public and seek a way forward that works.

While I remain gravely concerned, for all the reasons I have set out previously about the Bill and what it could unleash, I think there is a very significant chance that this will go nowhere, both because of the legal tangles and the public resistance. If the Government want to find a constructive way forward, I have set out here a way in which they could co-create a model with the public and the experts. That is my genuinely constructive suggestion, and I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, if Amendment 28 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 29 and 30 for reasons of pre-emption.

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I thank the noble Baroness for her detailed consideration of this topic, but I hope I have convinced her that this amendment is not needed. I hope that she is reassured and is able to withdraw it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his answer. I will certainly look to take up his offer in the final section of his response. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lady Hayman of Ullock, for acknowledging the reasons why I brought forward the amendment and the continuing issues around the Bill, that, I think, the Minister also acknowledged to some degree.

I make one comment on the Minister’s reliance on ACRE, which has an extremely narrow scientific focus that lacks the sociological and ecological approaches that would give the Government a much broader view. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I were playing with metaphors around centres of gravity and shifting balance. ACRE reflects one part of the scientific community and views, but not perhaps the more, dare I say, modern and newer forms of biology, which are not represented in its membership.

However, we are where we are, and I feel the next debates pressing in on us. We have had a good debate today. I do not think we have got to where we need to go, but I do not think we are finished on this issue by any means. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 28 withdrawn.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

In adding to the noble Baroness’s thanks to noble Lords, I forgot to mention my noble friend Lord Harlech, without whom chaos would have ensued.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for her comment and want briefly to pick up one point from the Minister on Report. He gave the assurance

“that I will be open to any suggestions”

for

“a forum or fora for a wider conversation with the public”.—[Official Report, 25/1/23; col. 278.]

I hope the Minister will confirm that; I am hoping to outreach with him in the coming weeks to do that. The Minister did not refer to the fact that the Welsh and Scottish Governments have both rejected the legislative consent Motions for the Bill to apply to their countries. Can he provide any more information on where the Government are going forward with that?

Two things have happened since we finished Report. The European Patent Office has revoked an EU patent for heme proteins in plant-based meat alternatives, an issue which was also the subject of litigation in the US. In Committee, we talked a lot about patent issues. We did not go back to them on Report but that certainly raises lots of those issues from Committee. Finally, since our debate we have had a statement from the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes on so-called precision-bred organisms. Many people are reaching out to me to say that it does not resolve the issues of labelling and other regulatory issues, so I draw that response to the Minister’s attention.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, this was at times a very complex and sometimes challenging Bill, particularly for a non-scientist such as myself; I think both the Minister and I were on a steep learning curve. I thank everybody who provided detailed information and support during the course of this Bill. It really was invaluable as we moved through its progress.

I also thank all noble Lords who took part in the debate. A lot of people spent a lot of time going into detail and depth on this, which was really important when you consider its nature. In particular, I would like to thank: my noble friends Lord Winston and Lady Jones of Whitchurch; the noble Lords, Lord Krebs, Lord Trees and Lord Cameron; the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Parminter, with whom I worked closely, on the Opposition Benches; and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. There was a lot of very clear insight and knowledge that came through noble Lords’ contributions on this Bill, which is one of the reasons why this House is so good at improving legislation—I think this Bill really demonstrated that.

I would also like to thank the officials for their time and their patience with me and my many questions. It was very much appreciated from the Opposition Benches. Finally, I thank the Minister for his time and the constructive way he worked with those of us on the Opposition Benches. It is very much appreciated.