Draft Food and Feed Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022

Edward Argar Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 General Committees

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Draft Food and Feed Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022.

It is a pleasure once again to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. It is also a pleasure to serve opposite the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge. Over a number of months, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) and I regularly debated European Union-related statutory instruments in Committee, to the extent that we could almost finish off each other’s speeches by the end of it. I suspect the same was true for the hon. Member for Cambridge and the Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), in a similar context. It is a pleasure to serve opposite him today.

This draft instrument, which concerns food and feed law, is made under powers in the Food Safety Act 1990 and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. It follows on from the 18 EU exit instruments on food and feed safety made during 2019 and 2020—probably many of them etched on the hon. Gentleman’s mind. The Government’s priority is, as always, to ensure that the high standard of food safety and consumer protection we enjoy in this country continues to be maintained now that the UK has left the European Union.

The draft instrument is technical in nature. None the less, I am sure that hon. Members will welcome a brief summary of the regulations and the changes that we are making. The measure serves three key functions. First, it will ensure that emergency powers can be applied equally to all food and feed entering Great Britain. Retained EU regulation 178/2002 on the general principles of food law provides Ministers with emergency powers to suspend or restrict the placing of food or feed on the market. That can be used where food or feed presents a threat to human health. Legal analysis of article 53 of that regulation identified that, as worded at present, it is not possible for a Minister to exercise those emergency powers over third-country food and feed entering Great Britain via Northern Ireland.

I emphasise that that operability issue is confined only to third-country goods entering Great Britain via Northern Ireland. Emergency powers to restrict third-country products that present a risk to health having access to the Northern Ireland market are already in place. To correct that identified issue, the draft regulations include a technical amendment that will enable all Ministers to apply, equally, the same emergency controls to all food and feed destined for our market, regardless of their place of origin or route of consignment. The amendment does not extend the remit or gravity of the controls that may be introduced, but will ensure that emergency controls are exercisable equally across all parts of the United Kingdom.

Secondly, the draft instrument ensures that authorising provisions for feed additives and for genetically modified food and feed authorisations will be made by legislation. Again, legal analysis of fixed and retained EU law identified that retained EU regulation 1831/2003 on feed additives and retained EU regulation 1829/2003 on GM food and feed contained a number of omissions. The regulations did not sufficiently make it clear that the authorisation decisions for those products must be prescribed in legislation. While that does not prevent Ministers from taking decisions to authorise those products, provision for those decisions to be implemented through legislation makes certain their enforceability in law and, of course, the role of this House. The proposed amendment therefore clarifies the fact that decisions on authorisations for feed additives and for genetically modified food and feed will be prescribed through legislation, thus ensuring consistency with other retained EU law in this area.

Thirdly and finally, the draft instrument provides a period of adjustment for changes to labelling requirements made necessary by EU exit legislation. In preparation for EU exit, changes were made to the legislation on extraction solvents and quick-frozen foods to reflect the fact that the UK would no longer be part of the EU. As a result, relevant food placed on the market on or after 1 January 2021 is required to be labelled with the name and UK address of the legal person responsible for it, rather than an EU contact and address.

The draft instrument provides for a period of adjustment in those sectors, allowing for the continued use of labels with an EU contact and address until 30 September this year. The adjustment applies to England only. The Food Standards Agency has worked with its counterparts in Wales and Scotland to ensure a co-ordinated approach, and similar measures are already in place in those Administrations. Through the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, I put on the record my gratitude to all the devolved Administrations for the constructive engagement that we have had with them on these matters. The regulations will support food businesses in England that source products from the EU, or from outside the EU, through an EU distributor. They are also in line with the approach being taken by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to labelling changes within its remit.

Let me make it clear that the SI does not introduce any changes that will impact on the day-to-day operation of food businesses; nor does it introduce any new regulatory burden. The essence of the legislation is unchanged, but it provides benefit for certain businesses by enabling a period of grace in the introduction of the labelling changes.

To the point that I just made to the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, it is important to note that Scotland and Wales have provided their consent for the SI. The Northern Ireland Department of Health has been briefed on the amendments, and we have engaged positively with the DAs. I welcome their engagement on that and the constructive relationships that officials of the Scottish Government and others have with my officials and officials in DEFRA.

I want to take the opportunity to reassure hon. Members that the overarching aim of the regulations is to provide continuity for business and to ensure that high standards of safety and quality for food and feed regulation continue across the UK. As I said, the changes do not affect the essence of existing legislation. They are simply technical in nature and ensure that emergency provisions that allow for controls on food or feed identified as presenting a serious risk to health may be applied equally to any goods destined for the market. They will ensure that appropriate legislative provision is in place to enable decisions taken to authorise feed additives and GM food or feed to be enacted through legislation. Finally, they will provide for a smooth transition through the transition period, to allow businesses to adjust to the new labelling requirements.

Having effective and functional law in this area is key to ensuring that the high standards of food safety and consumer protection that we enjoy in this country are maintained in the immediate and longer term. I therefore ask hon. Members to support the SI before us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

I will be brief, but will endeavour to respond to the shadow Minister and to the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill.

If I may, I will turn first to the SNP spokesman’s comments and then come to the shadow Minister’s comments. At the risk of creating a challenge for us in respect of GM—I know that that issue attracts considerable attention across the House—I say, with slight hesitancy, that of course it is open to the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill to choose it for an Opposition day debate. I am sure that the relevant Minister would be delighted to respond. That is obviously a matter for the hon. Gentleman and his party, but there are and will continue to be opportunities in the House for an issue of that public interest to be debated.

More broadly, the hon. Gentleman made the point about the relationship between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government. I have worked throughout the pandemic and through the Brexit period, leading on a number of issues in the relationship with the Scottish Government and others, and I am certainly grateful for the constructive approach. There will be times when we have political differences of opinion. That is in the nature of a democracy and of the stances that we are all elected to espouse. But I certainly have found the relationship to be constructive and open, particularly in the context of the current legislation on health that we are putting through, and I look forward to continuing that open and constructive relationship, at both official and ministerial level, on issues such as this and more broadly.

Turning to the shadow Minister’s comments, I am, as ever, grateful both for his support and for his tone and his reasonable questions. I am always happy to give credit where it is due, and quite rightly he highlighted the creation of the FSA under a Labour Government. That is a matter of fact, and I am certainly happy to give him, on behalf of his party, the credit for that achievement and for what he did there.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted the paragraphs in the explanatory memorandum that set out the Northern Ireland protocol, and the impacts on how the current system or the previous, EU-led system works and how that will transition. I, perhaps like him, always ensure that I read through explanatory memorandums before taking part in a delegated legislation debate. Indeed, I make a point, when it is in my policy area, of actually reading them, given that it is my signature as a Minister on the bottom of them. In this case, it is the signature of the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), who sadly is not able to be here today, but I know that she takes the same approach. I will take this opportunity, if I may, to thank all the exceptionally talented and hard-working officials who have worked on this statutory instrument, got it to this stage and done the due diligence to ensure that we can have this debate and that we have the right materials to make it an informed debate. I am always grateful for the work of incredibly talented officials, who serve not just me as the Minister but this country, whoever is in government.

We continue to maintain the high standards of food and feed safety that the hon. Member for Cambridge highlighted, as set out in the explanatory memorandum. He touched on paragraphs 7.7 and 7.9. I am not aware of any practical events that have been a cause; I think that this is about tidying up and making the legislation fit for purpose. I am not aware of any specific ones. However, should I be informed that I am incorrect, I will of course write to the hon. Gentleman to correct what I have said. But I am not aware of any. The hon. Gentleman asked what procedure would be used. It would be the negative procedure for delegated legislation, in respect of that.

On labelling and the timescale, I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, both about the challenges faced by the sector overall—in recent months, we have seen that manifesting itself in a variety of ways—and about the challenges, potentially challenges we do not yet fully know, coming out of the international situation. But I believe that the labelling deadline, the grace period till September 2022, provides a proportionate and reasonable amount of time to enable industry to adapt. I am very conscious, through my work on the Northern Ireland protocol in the context of medicines and medical devices, of the different lead times that industry needs, depending on the nature of what it has to do to its logistics networks, supply chains or compliance regimes, but in this context I believe that the six-month period is reasonable.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that of course in 2018 we were in a very different place—I think that is something on which he and I would agree. We may disagree about what has happened since and whether it is for the best or not, but I cannot disagree with his statement of fact that 2018 was a very different place and certainly felt like it.

A common thread running through all the work that we are doing in this space is that we seek to make the relevant regulations and put in place the relevant compliance regime, to protect safety, to protect the consumer and to protect high standards, but, at the same time, to ensure that that is proportionate and does not place an undue burden on business. I believe that with these technical amendments and what they pertain to more broadly, we have struck an appropriate balance.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the NFU. I suspect I share his view. I have a good relationship with my local branch of the NFU and I pay tribute to the work that it does and that nationally the NFU does to highlight issues relevant to our agriculture and food production industry in this country. We always carefully consider any representations that they or others in this space make.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman talked about the relationship with EFSA. We have no plans to deviate from the current relationship, and that relationship is broadly characterised by close collegiate working. We recognise the importance of data sharing and working in a co-ordinated and, as I said, collegiate way in this space.

As I said, these are technical amendments, but I hope that we have also had the opportunity to explore a little more widely some of what sits behind them. With that, I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.