Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations 2025

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, given my experience with polling, I wish to focus on one particular statement made by Defra which underpins this Statutory Instrument. In the de minimis impact assessment, it says that polling commissioned by Defra, from YouGov in 2022, found that

“over half (57%) of respondents thought the use of gene editing in crops/plants for food production was acceptable, 16% were undecided, while 27% thought the use was unacceptable”.

It is a little unfortunate that, as well as initially not having published the impact assessment online but only making it available on request, the department also initially seemed reluctant to share further details of that polling. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report on this noted:

“Defra has not published the survey”,


and that remained the case even after the committee asked for information about it.

As a result, I contacted the pollster directly and pointed out that, under its own industry regulation, it appeared to be required to publish the poll, which I am glad to say that it did—and to be fair I note that Defra has since added a link to the details of the poll to the impact assessment. But this sequence suggests an unfortunate reluctance to be as transparent as possible about the evidence being used for decision-making. Why should the details of a poll, paid for by the taxpayer and being used to justify legislation being put to Parliament, be obscured in that way?

Now that we have the details of the poll, they pose further questions. In the poll, a full 52% said that they had not even heard of this technology. Moreover, of the 48% who had heard of it, only 3% said they were “very well informed” about it. As that is 3% of the 48%, it means that overall only 1.5% said that they were very well informed about the topic that they were being asked to give their views on.

The specific question which Defra cited, whose wording we now know despite that earlier reluctance, is not an awful question, by any means, but its wording is problematic, given how Defra has chosen to use its results. The question wording provides positives about PBOs without providing any mention of possible drawbacks. There is an obvious and clear risk of skewing answers, if you ask a question on a topic about which only 1.5% say they are well informed and in that question provide only benefits and mention no possible drawbacks.

I hope, therefore, that the Minister will address both these points. First, why was there the initial reluctance to publish full details of the poll? Secondly, can I press the Minister on whether a question in a poll where only 1.5% of people say that they are well informed of the topic, and with wording that provides only positives for the policy, really provides the solid evidence that the impact assessment presents it as being?

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I would briefly like to support the statutory instrument before us. There have been very many good speeches and some that I disagree with, which are fighting battles that we have already fought, discussed at length and voted on—and here we are still raising them—and then people bring in the red herring of genetically modified foods, which is not what we are talking about at all.

There has been quite a lot about labelling. I repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said. All the food that we eat now has been genetically altered. It is not labelled—there was no labelling on Golden Promise, that wonderful barley in the 1950s. That started life in a nuclear reactor subjected to gamma rays; there has been no labelling about that. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, by the time it gets into the food chain, it is a very different plant from what originally happened.

I believe that the Government have absolutely got it right and have struck the right balance. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, says that she wants healthy foods; we all want healthy foods. But the food that we are eating, which is healthy, is all genetically modified. If the noble Baroness wants really healthy food, she should go back to basics, when mankind first appeared on the planet—she would be dead of starvation. She would not have a hope.

I wish also to support the noble Lord, Lord Trees, in asking the Government to move forward on the animal front, too. These regulations are hugely important for farmers and consumers and for feeding the world’s population in the years to come.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly just to agree with my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I will not repeat their points, but I think it is important for us to ask the question of whether it is right to use a debate on statutory instruments to try to revisit arguments that were, as far as I am concerned, thoroughly discussed during the passage of the originating legislation. Likewise, perhaps the Secondary Legislation Committee should not have treated people raising concerns with the committee as a basis for asking questions to the Minister. The committee should have examined some of those questions itself.