Brexit: Food Standards Agency Debate
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Countess of Mar
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Brexit: Food Standards Agency
Countess of Mar Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord O’Shaughnessy
The Food Standards Agency has the resources, the expertise and the powers it needs to make sure that it can guarantee safety, as the noble Baroness has described.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, the Food Standards Agency is very reliant on local environmental health officers for enforcement. In the light of the poverty of local authorities and the cutting back in the number of environmental health officers, are the Government sure that enforcement can take place as it should?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
In preparing for the Question today, I looked at local authority spending on enforcement. It is stable at around £140 million a year and has been for a number of years, so local authorities are continuing to prioritise this, as indeed is their responsibility. We want to make sure that we bring new forms of assessment into the food standards regime so that we have an even more robust picture of the risks that are involved in food production.