Food Fraud

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

Indeed. I wish to record how pleased I am that Professor Elliott has agreed in principle to come to discuss his final report findings with us.

It is a matter of regret that no prosecutions leading to conviction have been brought—one might say that the horse has already bolted.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I fully support some of the proposals the hon. Lady has mentioned, and I think there should be criminal prosecutions in this area and more inspections. Have there been any more incidents of horsemeat finding its way into the food chain?

[Miss McIntosh]

Not to my knowledge, but the Minister will be better placed to answer that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire said, there have been instances—I believe this was in part of Yorkshire, but, thankfully, not in North Yorkshire—where kebabs and other takeaway foods were found not to have been what they were reported to be; we are talking not about processed food there but about other retail outlets. So we must be ever vigilant and the level of testing must remain high. The point raised earlier is key: consumers must now be at the heart of this process, as Professor Elliott has said and the Government and DEFRA have accepted. However, the second note of regret is that we still do not know at which point the adulteration or contamination, whichever we want to call it—my hon. Friend gave some eloquent definitions—entered into the food chain. This was a multimillion-pound business and, as Professor Elliott concluded, these events crossed 26 out of 28 EU member states, which is why it is so important that we must find out where the adulteration took place. Perhaps we will never know that, but if we do not, how can we say to consumers, in all honesty, that we can prevent it from happening again?

Importantly, Professor Elliott’s interim report identified two weak links—two particularly vulnerable areas—in respect of the horsemeat scandal. The first was slabs of cold meat held in cold storage. The second was raw products, and ingredients of processed foods or processed foods, travelling the long distances that we now know they did. I will be honest and say that I have not had chance to go through Professor Elliott’s report line by line, but it is extremely important that the Minister reassures us this evening on the Europol aspect, where there has been wilful criminal acts. It is also important that he reassures us that the rest of Europe has tightened up its act. This is not just about Europol and Interpol. I go to markets regularly in my constituency—I tend not to go to abattoirs—and if someone were to string up a cow carcase and a horse carcase, I would be hard-pressed, ignorant as I am, to tell the difference between them. Professor Elliott did us a great favour by spelling out in his interim report, and repeating in his final report, the two most vulnerable aspects in this country. I do not think that he was being in any way alarmist, so we must not lose sight of the fact that he did say that we are still vulnerable to such adulteration in future. The purpose of the Which? report is probably to say that the criminals will move on, and they have moved on from the meat, slab or carcase form—the processed form—to other retail outlets selling kebabs and other takeaways.

The Committee’s report and Professor Elliott’s conclusions show the concerns about the reduced capacity for testing, which has been alluded to by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse. The Committee report stressed the need—we took powerful evidence in the Select Committee—for more public analysts to do the testing. The hon. Gentleman made the point well that it must not be the innocent party—the farmers—who should pay for that. Obviously, the closer to home it is produced and the shorter the supply chain, the more confidence we can have in our food and in our meat. I am a meat eater who represents a large livestock producing —meat producing—area. I want to make sure that we have absolute confidence in the production in this country, and I believe it is second to none.

Professor Elliott’s final recommendations are on the national laboratory service and the drawing together of the nine—I believe it is—public laboratory services. He specifically says that public laboratory services need to be protected, that they are in “a fragile position” and that the review should be seen as

“an opportunity to develop a sustainable national asset.”

A lot can be done through DEFRA, the Food and Environment Research Agency, which is in my constituency, and LGC, a major science service company, to develop these centres of excellence—that would be pleasing indeed. He goes on to say that the Government should:

“Work in partnership with Public Health England and local authorities with their own laboratories to consider…options for an integrated shared scientific service around food standards”.

The Minister must grasp that point and reassure us—whether it is the labs, the food analysts or the police—that they will be given a specific target and resources to do that. It is important that the Government address the potentially reduced capacity for testing arising from the stranglehold on local authority budgets. Will the Minister use his good offices to speak to the relevant Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government to see whether this money for public testing and public analysts could be ring-fenced? That would put a lot of people’s minds at rest. So we need the national laboratory service and we need to ensure that the level of food testing by local authorities remains high. These unannounced audits and tests by the food industry will be a very positive development. Perhaps we need to be reassured again that shorter supply chains are in place and will not be jeopardised in the future.

Briefly, the food crime unit will go to the heart of preventing food adulteration incidents in the future. We need to see real leadership. The fact that the new unit will be placed within the FSA is pleasing. There was some criticism of the FSA in the Pat Troop report and in our own report. It was felt that perhaps the agency needed to co-operate more with local authorities and with other FSAs across the European Union. I hope that the Minister will tell us that that will be a top priority.

The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) rightly touched on the matter of crisis management. The Government must clarify the roles and responsibilities of the various agencies before another incident occurs—it could be an incident of food safety rather than food adulteration—and ensure that all incidents are regarded as a risk to public health until there is evidence to the contrary. That was in the Troop report in June 2013. Will the Minister assure us tonight that NHS England will make that matter a top priority?

The Secretary of State set out in her written statement that she would like to see the food crime unit set up by the end of the year, which is pleasing. Will the Minister assure the House that the resources will follow the responsibilities and set out who will pay? I was very taken by the two models set out in Professor Elliott’s report. The Danish model was found to be slightly less adequate than the Dutch one, but if we look at the costings on page 138 of the report, we find that they are very high for the Dutch model. The population of Denmark is 5.5 million, and the population of Holland is between 10 million and 11 million Obviously, the costs will increase incrementally; one figure that is mentioned is between £2.8 million and £36 million. Can the Minister explain how those costings have been reached and promise that the money will match the responsibilities? How does he think the money will be raised and who will pay?

Importantly, will the police have the ability to make arrests? Apparently, police in Denmark do not have that power, but they do in Holland. Under the Elliott model, the police will have the powers to swoop and investigate. Presumably, they will then be able to make an arrest. As concerns on that matter have been expressed this evening, it is extremely important that the Minister clarifies whether arrests can be made. Furthermore, will the Minister set up a detailed timetable for implementing the recommendation, confirm that the food crime unit will be in place by December, provide an update on labelling and traceability and tell us whether the police will have the right powers in this regard?

Finally, in November 2012, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland alerted the FSA in England to a potential food adulteration problem, as meat was being sourced from the same suppliers. No testing took place in England until we had the horsemeat adulteration confirmed in January 2013. What reassurance can the Minister give the House tonight that we will not find ourselves in that situation again in a year, two years’ or three years’ time?