Exiting the European Union (Food and Agriculture)

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I rise in support of all four statutory instruments. While this House, in its wisdom, has decided to send our Prime Minister on her hands and knees to beg for an extension to our leaving the European Union, we do not yet know what the EU’s counter-offer will be or whether the terms of that extension will be palatable and acceptable to the House. It therefore remains imperative that we continue to ensure that we have an operable lawbook for day one should we still be required to leave at the end of this month without an agreement.

The vast majority of the provisions in all the statutory instruments relate to the transfer of functions, principally from the European Commission to the food safety authority, which means Food Standards Scotland or the Food Standards Agency in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or in other instances to the appropriate authority, which largely means the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

There is something of an irony in our having a debate on the Floor of the House about whether, in all these statutory instruments, it is acceptable to replace “Commission” with “Food Safety Authority”, yet the original powers to which every one of these statutory instruments relates were imposed on us directly by the European Union, typically through implementing Acts or delegated Acts. There would have been little or no scrutiny in this House, and probably the best that could have been expected is a letter to the European Scrutiny Committee or, in some instances, the tabling of an explanatory memorandum before Parliament. The truth is that the most pernicious Henry VIII power we have seen in this country in modern times is section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, which has led to widespread changes in primary legislation.

Today I will focus on a specific point that is relevant to all four statutory instruments, which is the respective roles of the Food Standards Agency, on the one hand, and Ministers, on the other. The hon. Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for Stroud (Dr Drew) both mentioned the role of DEFRA, as the Department in which much of the technical expertise rests. Having experienced it for five and a half years as a Minister, I know there is something of an issue around our current food standards architecture in this country.

The Food Standards Agency was established in the wake of the BSE crisis, and it was made independent in a very special way, through statute, to be entirely insulated from the Government and Ministers. Although the Department of Health and Social Care is its sponsoring Department, Health Ministers seldom show direct policy interest in the FSA’s decisions, rightly recognising that it was established to be entirely independent.

However, there is an issue in how the FSA was set up, because the events that preceded its formation mean that, first, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and, latterly, DEFRA have been more divorced from its work than they ought to have been, as DEFRA is the Whitehall Department with the vast majority of technical and policy knowledge in this area.

I have always had very good relations with Heather Hancock, the chair of the FSA. However, I have always sensed that the FSA board, collectively, is sometimes prone to being somewhat supercilious in its denial of the expertise in DEFRA and, worse, is prone to making rather unfair assumptions about DEFRA’s motives in advancing issues or concerns on particular policy fronts. That is, of course, until something goes wrong.

In 2013, when we faced the horsemeat scandal, Health Ministers did not want to get involved, the FSA sat on its hands and it was left to the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), to step into the breach. DEFRA took control of the crisis and took ownership of events by setting up a review of food crime and crafting a policy that resulted in a new food crime unit.

When these regulations were originally considered, some on the FSA board sought significantly to extend the FSA’s powers by taking direct decision-making responsibility in some of these areas, which would have gone a long way beyond its current remit. The Minister’s predecessor and I resisted that approach, and I am pleased to see that the approach we recommended is reflected in all these statutory instruments. We proposed, first, that the FSA should give independent advice to Ministers and that that advice should be public for all to see. Secondly, we recommended that Ministers should have regard to that advice. Thirdly, we recommended that if Ministers choose not to follow the advice, they should have to publish their reasons for not doing so. Those points are reflected variously in regulation 17 of the animal feed regulations, regulation 23 of the novel food regulations and regulation 23 of the genetically modified food and feed regulations.

This is important because, as a holding pattern, we need to ensure there is a presumption for following the advice of the Food Standards Agency. Until we have established a long-term settlement on which decisions should be taken independently by the FSA and which decisions should be taken by Ministers, subject to clear advice from the FSA, this sensible holding pattern makes absolute sense.

In the longer term, although I would not do anything to undermine the independence of the FSA—it was set up in the way it was for good reason—there is a case for trying to increase some of its democratic accountability, and there may be things we could learn, for instance, from the model we have for the Health and Safety Executive. It has now been several decades since the BSE crisis, and it is perhaps time to consider what the food safety architecture should look like, but that is a debate for another time. I fully support all four of these statutory instruments.