Food Labelling Regulations (Amendment) Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is my fourth attempt to bring in a Bill to amend the Food Labelling Regulations 1996 and my first opportunity, after seven years of trying, to get a Second Reading debate. I am therefore very pleased to have this opportunity today. My Bill seeks to amend those regulations to provide for information about the country of origin of food to be made available to consumers. That is it; I am not trying to restrict imports from anywhere.

I am not trying to prevent people who love Spanish chorizo from buying as much of it as they want. I am not trying to prevent people who want genuine German wurst from buying it by the Mercedes Benz truck load and importing it into this country to sell to all the people who want to buy it. I am not trying to prevent those who are partial to kangaroo meat from buying that, either. According to the website of J. M. Danslow, a quality butcher in Gravesend, kangaroo meat is

“used by some of the world’s best restaurants because of its high quality and unique flavour.”

Those who are partial to kangaroo meat have nothing to fear from my Bill. Those who like bison, which is

“the most flavoured red meat available to today’s consumer …nutritious, tender and easy to prepare”,

can also set their minds at rest.

Likewise, no one who likes eating reindeer meat, which according to Danslow is

“fine-fibred, tender and lean”

as well as being

“rich in vitamin A, vitamin E and all vitamins B”,

has any cause for concern. I might add that there are other concerns about reindeer meat, as the Swedish store Ikea found to its cost a couple of years ago when it started selling salami made from reindeer in its UK stores at Christmas time. The idea that Rudolf’s big thank you for helping Santa to deliver all his presents in double-quick time was to be chopped up and turned into salami for the Christmas dinner table was a little too much for the nation’s children and their parents to bear. But, if there are still any secret reindeer meat eaters out there following that debacle, they have nothing to fear from my Bill.

My Bill seeks to do one thing: I just want consumers to know where meat comes from. I want them to know, not to think or to guess or to hope. If producers say on the label that meat is British, it should actually be British. I have set out this argument in the House on four previous occasions: on 22 March 2004; on 29 October 2008; and in a slightly different Bill on 17 March 2009, which is identical to the Bill that I asked the Leader of the House to introduce on 11 January 2011. So I will not detain the House for very long.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I appreciate that my hon. Friend has set out his arguments in the House before, but I and other Members who are present today were not here on those occasions, and we would very much welcome listening to those arguments in some detail.

[Mr Bacon]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I will set out a précis of the arguments for his benefit and for that of other Members. I do not want to dwell on them at length, however, because I also need to explore the aspects of European law that are unjustifiably held to be fatal to the Bill.

I was saying that the Food Labelling Regulations (Amendment) Bill that I introduced in 2009 is worth some attention, particularly because of its sponsors. I reiterate that that Bill is identical to today’s Bill, save for the names of the sponsors. My 2009 Bill had a range of sponsors from different parties, including my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who I am delighted to see sitting in his place today. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to introduce a Bill that I know has the support of two people who are now Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I do not wish to detain the House by talking about the cheating that goes on, but I will briefly summarise the problem. The current rules do not do the job adequately, and consumers continue to be misled. In the case of certain foodstuffs, no indication need be given that the product is made with imported meat. Examples include the Tesco chicken dinner in its range of children’s meals, which simply states “Produced in the UK”, although the chicken actually comes from Thailand. Sometimes a phrase will be used to imply the country of origin. For example, items from the Bird’s Eye Great British Menu range turn out, on closer inspection, to contain imported meat. At present, producers of imported meat can lawfully use the Union flag on packaging to imply that a product is British, even when it is not, and they do so. They can, and do, import meat from overseas, package it here and say that it has been produced in the UK.

There are not many people out there who disagree with what I am saying about the need to address the problem. An ICM poll for the Honest Food campaign showed that 87% of consumers in the survey believe that the Government should ensure that the country of origin is clearly shown on food products. The survey also showed that 89% believe that when a product such as sausages or bacon is labelled as “British” or “produced in the UK”, it should mean that the sausages or bacon are from an animal reared in Britain.

The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) is a sponsor of the Bill. When he was an Agriculture Minister 12 years ago in 1999, he told us:

“I want to give clear unambiguous information on the real place of origin, not place of processing or place of slicing; I want to clamp down on misleading place of origin descriptions”.—[Official Report, 28 October 1999; Vol. 366, c. 1126.]

In the last Labour Administration, the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said:

“A pork pie made in Britain from Danish pork can legitimately be labelled as a British pork pie”.

He added:

“That’s nonsense, and it needs to change.”

I agree, and so did the farming Minister at the time, Jane Kennedy, who was then the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree—and she is, I might add, very much missed. She appeared on the excellent Channel 4 programme, “Jamie Saves our Bacon”, and told Jamie Oliver that misleading labelling was “a disgrace”. Once again, I agree.

Some progress has been made with voluntary codes, but they are voluntary. As I said in seeking leave to bring in this Bill, significant concerns persist about the effectiveness of voluntary agreements, while the demand for mandatory country-of-origin labelling continues to grow. Helen Ferrier, the chief science and regulatory affairs officer for the National Farmers Union said of the guidance from the British Retail Consortium:

“Unless all companies sign up and then consistently stick to their promises, some consumers will still be misled.”

Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance also welcomed the guidance and urged food organisations to sign up to its standards, but she also lamented:

“The code is not mandatory, which would offer further protection still.”

At the annual general meeting of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes in 2010, a resolution calling for the mandatory, clear labelling of food with its true country of origin was passed unanimously. The Minister might like to reflect that this is an organisation not to be trifled with, as a former Prime Minister found out to his cost. The chair of the Women’s Institute, Ruth Bond said:

“We know that consumers want to make informed choices, and surely it is not right that consumers remain dependent on the goodwill of retailers signing up to a voluntary scheme. Without legislation there is no guarantee that consumers will get the choice and information they are demanding.”

Let me turn to deal briefly with the Bill. It is a very short Bill of two clauses, including the “Short title and commencement”, so I suppose it is what most of us would call a one-clause Bill. It provides definitions of meat products under the rubric of “Country of origin labelling”. More extended provisions explain in more detail the definition of “Meat component” and the circumstances in which the word “British” can be used—or where it cannot:

“No meat product may be labelled ‘British’ unless the animal from which the meat was derived was born, reared and slaughtered in the United Kingdom.”

The key issue I want to devote most of my time to exploring is whether there are fatal flaws in the Bill because of European Union law. Some people believe that to be the case, but I am not sure that it is. Let me start by pointing out the terms of the EC directive—the original directive 2000/13/EC. It states in paragraph (6) of the preamble:

“The prime consideration for any rules on the labelling of foodstuffs should be the need to inform and protect the consumer.”

Paragraph (8) continues:

“Detailed labelling, in particular giving the exact nature and characteristics of the product, which enables the consumer to make his choice in full knowledge of the facts is the most appropriate”—

and now we come to the most interesting bit—

“since it creates the fewest obstacles to free trade.”

More detailed labelling means fewer obstacles to free trade. Paragraph (14) of the preamble continues:

“The rules on labelling should also prohibit the use of information that would mislead the purchaser”.

Moving on from the preamble to the articles, article 2 states quite clearly in the first paragraph:

“The labelling and methods used must not…be such as could mislead the purchaser to a material degree”.

All over the directive, it is perfectly clear that the purpose is to protect the interests of consumers.

It is not at all obvious therefore that what I am doing—it could easily be argued that I am simply trying to transpose into UK law, albeit more effectively than hitherto, the requirements of this directive—is in any sense contrary to European law. However, I accept that there is an argument to be had. My contention is that this is about consumer choice, not about restricting markets in any way.

In order to make the point in more detail, let me turn to the leading text on the free movement of goods. It is the fourth edition of “Free Movement of Goods in the European Community: under Articles 28 to 30 of the EC Treaty”, by Mr Peter Oliver. As it makes clear, an extant jurisprudence offers a considerable opportunity for complex discussion. It states:

“Article 28 (formerly article 30) provides: ‘Quantitative restrictions on imports and exports and all measures having equivalent effect shall…be prohibited between Member States…the concept of measures of equivalent effect to quantitative restrictions differs from quantitative restrictions themselves in that it is considerably wider and more complex.”

In other words, it is quite possible that even if someone was not trying—as I am not trying—to restrict the imports of goods by providing that meat sold here must be accurately labelled, that could be the equivalent effect although it was not the intention, and article 28 prohibits measures that have the effect of quantitative restrictions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I must intervene on that point. The best quality rain, if that is what I heard my hon. Friend say, must surely fall in Manchester, in particular that part of Greater Manchester which comprises my constituency, Bury North.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

There are occasions during a test match at Old Trafford when the rain falling can be the best possible rain, when it saves England from a notable defeat, but the rain that falls on the edge of the Mendips is the finest rain. That, as it happens, is why Joseph of Arimathea visited. He just wanted to see quite what high quality the rain was.

I was talking about the high quality of the beef in Somerset. When one looks at a piece of meat in a farm shop, like the farm shop that I used to live next door to, it has a quality that makes one look forward to one’s Sunday lunch. With some Yorkshire pudding—I know that is not meat, but it would be most upsetting to think that one’s Yorkshire pudding came from the continentals. I am sure that they have no clue how to make it. Where their eggs would come from would be not quite the thing. I know that I am going on to other food products that are not mentioned in the Bill.

I want to say a few words about one detailed concern—perhaps a pedantic concern—that I have about the Bill. That is the reference to the Union flag. Many of our most favoured nations, countries with which we have a great fellow feeling, use the Union flag as a jack. I am slightly worried that we might stop our friends in Australia and New Zealand putting their flag on because of the Union flag being used as a jack, with the stars in the fly. We want to be entirely clear—this may be a point to be discussed in Committee—that flags that incorporate the Union flag should be permissible as a representation of the country of origin when the item comes from that country.

That is a particularly welcome thing to do, because those tend to be countries that share a sovereign with us. We should have a particularly favourable attitude towards them, rather than countries such as France, which of course used to share a sovereign with us—I think of Henry VI, crowned king of France in Paris some time in the 1420s; Mr Deputy Speaker, you will know better than I the precise date—but no longer do so and have therefore lost out in the development of European history. One can only have sympathy for them in lacking such a wise and benign system of government as we have here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I will be brief because I am sure that the House wants to hear from the Minister. I begin by declaring an interest: I have eaten both crocodile and kangaroo meat at various times in my life and I am still here to tell the tale. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who reassured me that I had not offended my faith—I did not think that I had—on the many occasions that I shared halal meat with my many Muslim friends.

Not only the Germans are capable of producing spicy sausages. My butcher in the village where I live, Tottington, produces a “Hot Totty” sausage, which is delicious and spicy.

I find myself in what some people might consider an unusual position, although I do not think it is, in that I wholly support the Bill and its aim of introducing honesty in food labelling. That objective was clearly stated in the Conservative manifesto at the general election:

“We will introduce honesty in food labelling.”

Not only that, those very words are repeated in the “Programme for Government”, which states:

“We will introduce honesty in food labelling so that consumers can be confident about where their food comes from”.

That is the aim of the sensible Bill.

The British public want to be sure, when they go to their local butcher to buy meat, that the animal was born and reared in this country; that it was fed British grass in Britain. When they see the flag or the symbol, they do not want to be misled. They want to be assured that the meat is genuinely British.

I am reassured about my view of the Bill because one of its sponsors is my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), no less, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary. I am therefore in good company in believing that the Bill’s aims are entirely laudable.

As with so many good ideas that the House wants to promote, however, the problem is Europe and Brussels. That was mentioned by my right hon. Friend—sorry, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset; I am sure he will soon be “right honourable”. No matter how much we pontificate today about what a good idea the Bill is, food labelling is, sadly, tackled through EU legislation. In my view, that is no reason for not trying to change the regulations, if we are so minded. I am not one for introducing more and more rules and regulations—far from it. I believe that we should have as little regulation as possible. However, when it comes to food, the British people are entitled to know what is in it and where it comes from.

I am not talking about imposing new regulations and extra burdensome bureaucracy, because the rules already exist. Food must be labelled under existing labelling rules. In January 2010, the Food Standards Agency produced a report on “country of origin” labelling. Its main findings were that consumers were aware of “country of origin” labels, although that was perhaps not their main concern. It found that meat products were the food types that consumers would most like to be labelled clearly. The Bill therefore hits the nail on the head and deals with the British public’s concern.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

We know that the Bill is supported by the Prime Minister, so does my hon. Friend agree that it would be a good idea to get the Minister’s comments on the record, in the hope that it can go into Committee?

[Mr Nuttall]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I do not wish to continue my remarks for too long this afternoon. The whole House will benefit from hearing the Minister’s comments on the Bill, and the Government’s view of how we should deal with what is, in fact, a very simple matter. It can be summed up simply: we want to give the British public honesty in labelling, which is what Conservatives said we would do in our manifesto, what millions of British people voted for, and what was agreed in the coalition document, under which Government Members now operate.

For all those reasons—there is much to commend the idea of honesty in food labelling—it is about time that such a Bill received Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) is to be commended for his determination and perseverance in introducing such Bills so many times. The fact that he has done so proves that the measure is worth while, and I wholly commend it to the House. I hope it receives widespread support, and look forward to hearing from the Minister.