Bread and Flour Regulations: Folic Acid

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Perhaps I have not made it clear enough that we are proceeding with this; there is no stopping the process or review. We are clear that the scientific debate should not hold up progress, so we want to launch the consultation in August/early September. The closing date will be 12 weeks after that, and we should have a government response on the final position in Q1 2023. We would then notify the WTO and European Commission, and once that is all cleared, it should result in legislation being ready to be laid in Q4 2023, and the transition period for the industry would be discussed after that. When I spoke to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—I hope he would acknowledge this—he believed that I was one of the few Ministers who is very intent on progressing this.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has said, the scientific evidence is readily available and evidenced across the world. Can the Minister tell us what, on this new timeline, he thinks the new consultation and process might reveal that we have not seen so far?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The reason we have a consultation is so that we are aware of unforeseen circumstances and that, hopefully, we deal with unintended consequences before they occur. It is all very well saying that the science is settled; we have reached a level of consensus where both sides can agree, and that is what we are progressing from. Once it is implemented, we can start reviewing whether it should be a higher level and whether there are unintended consequences. The history of contestation in science goes back a long way; think of the heliocentrism versus geocentrism debate. People thought that the universe revolved around the earth, but Aristarchus of Samos, al-Battani, Islamic philosophers and others challenged that, and Copernicus proved that heliocentrism was right.