Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fifth sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel Zeichner(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Jo Churchill
I believe that the hon. Lady has tabled amendments on that subject, and we will come on to discuss them. In my view, this is part of our responsibility, alongside that of the scientists, who are at the forefront of what they do. I would gently temper the hon. Lady’s description: this is not unbounded enthusiasm; it is pragmatism. It is about a deep belief in our science and our ability to do good; that is different from enthusiasm. We are building in transparency, and we need to utilise those skills. On my visits to these great institutes around the country, I have met scientists and researchers from across the world, not only Europe. Although I take the hon. Lady’s point about gravity economics, what we do has a broader benefit to people across the world. There are clear benefits.
We need to safeguard welfare, and that is why we have laid down in the Bill a framework for the regulatory system. It is imperative that we get this right. That is why it is important that we work with expert groups, industry and non-governmental organisations on enabling the right regulations to ensure that the system is effective, safe and workable.
All animals are protected by comprehensive and robust legislation, including the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which makes it an offence to cause any captive animal unnecessary suffering and to not provide for their welfare needs. The Bill’s system to protect animal health and welfare will work with those regulations. The Animal Welfare Act is supplemented by detailed regulations on farmed animal welfare. The Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007 include specific requirements to protect animals that are bred or kept. The regulations prohibit breeding procedures that cause or are likely to cause suffering or injury. They state:
“Animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.”
In addition, animals used in scientific research projects, which would be the first stage of developing a breeding line using precision breeding for animals, are protected by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986—ASPA—which was referred to in the evidence we took from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was glad to see that that is the case. This legislation ensures that animals are only ever used in science where the potential harm to animals is limited, there are no alternatives, and where the number of animals is the minimum needed to achieve a scientific benefits, and that includes a harm-benefit analysis.
The measures we are introducing support the regulations by requiring an animal welfare declaration and independent scrutiny by an expert group before an animal can be marketed. We are ensuring that the health and welfare of the animal and its offspring will not be adversely affected by any trait resulting from precision breeding.
If we want to drive innovation and investment in this area while continuing to be at the forefront of animal welfare, we need to move forward and show how the best regulatory systems can work. The Bill provides a clear signal that the UK is the best place to conduct the research and bring products to market. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Cambridge to withdraw his amendment.
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the Minister for her constructive tone. I suspect that the arguments we will pursue over the next few days are already becoming clear. There is considerable agreement. No one disputes that it would be wonderful to be able to tackle bird flu or PRRS. Of course, if we can find a solution, it would be hugely beneficial not just in a financial sense but in terms of welfare as well. The question is how best to achieve that, and I suspect that that is going to be the key part of the debate.
I shall start by admitting my first procedural failure of the day. Contrary to my original suggestion, I am advised by the Clerks that we cannot yet vote on amendment 28 because it does not relate to this clause. Therefore, with your permission, Mr Davies, I would like to reverse my original suggestion and ask that we vote on amendment 29 but not on amendments 28 and 30. Despite spending many hours sitting on Bill Committees, some of us are still learning some of the procedures. I understand that amendment 28 relates to the long title of the Bill.
To go back to the broader issue, some of the points made by our SNP colleague, the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, will come back in our discussions, I am afraid, because where we sit in relation to other jurisdictions and approaches is a complicated question. There is no two ways about that, and I will say more about it in a few moments’ time.
The cost issue raised by the Minister—the £1.75 billion—was interesting. There are potentially huge benefits here, so it is odd, looking at the impact assessment, to see the relatively modest sums that the existing system puts in place. I wonder whether there is a slight mismatch in seeing the current set-up as such a brake on development; it seems to me that there may be other issues as well, although I might be missing something. We are trying to achieve the right regulatory framework to allow investment to take place; the question is whether this the right way to do it. At the moment, I persist in thinking that the measures before us on protection for animals are not sufficiently developed.
Something I have noticed in other Bill Committees I have been involved in is that we home in on the legislation before us and it is quite hard for Members to understand fully the wider landscape in which that legislation sits. It might be assumed that Members are all-knowing and fully understand the entire set-up, but to me, it sometimes feels more like looking at a lump of marble and trying to discern the sculpture within. We need to be pretty imaginative to see exactly where the Bill fits and what consequences it will have.
I am reassured on some of the points about the wider framework for animal protection, but it is also fair to say that there has been a lot of legislation recently. For this, the Government deserve some credit: it is changing the landscape, but it is not entirely clear how it will all fit together. That gives further weight to our view that, on balance, it would be better not to bring the provisions in this part of the Bill into force until further work has been done.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for the intervention—enthusiasm is welcome. The hon. Lady gets to the nub of the point: it is very difficult to describe in law—which is what we as legislators are trying to do—the complexities of the natural world. I suspect that we will probably go around in circles on this, but my point is that the reliance on the notion of something occurring naturally would make the law difficult to interpret—that is key. That is why it is hard for legislators to pin those things down, and I have some sympathy with who have had to capture them in drafting the Bill.
As I am sure the Committee will remember, I pressed Professor Henderson on that point. He said:
“The Bill is designed not to allow exogenous material”.
That is not explicitly coded in the Bill, however. He also said that this is
“something of a grey area.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 15, Q18.]
He was absolutely right about that. He said that transgenesis can occur naturally, and he drew a distinction between intentional and unintentional transfer, which, again, I can understand.
I appreciate that, as the hon. Member for South Ribble implied, the distinction is complicated and messy, but it is important. Unfortunately, although that is the distinction that the Government have presented in the Bill, not only does it not appear in the Bill, but it is contradictory. As we read it, it seems that transgenesis is possible under the Bill, so long as it could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding processes. I appreciate that it is difficult, but I ask the Minister to explain today how her earlier remarks, and the remarks made by others—that gene editing does not involve introducing DNA from one organism into another—are reflected in the Bill. I do not think they are.
The other related point is the general looseness of the definitions in the Bill. I am sure we all recall the striking evidence from Dr Edenborough QC, a distinguished lawyer, who may well end up advising on how disputes in this area might be resolved. That is an important point: we are setting the law, but others will then interpret it. If it is not clear, we will see trouble ahead.
As Dr Edenborough explained in the evidence session,
“‘could have resulted from’ is staggeringly imprecise. Is that ‘likely’? Is that ‘very possible’? What level of probability is it?”—Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 125, Q199.]
In essence, he raised that many things that would be permissible under the Bill and qualify as precision bred organisms would be unclear. The Government need to clarify what they intend here. Without clarity, there is a real risk of challenge. That goes back to my opening point, and I think it will be a thread running through our debates. With the lack of clarity comes uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes a risk to investment, which is exactly opposite to what the Bill is designed to achieve.
That is why we have tabled the amendments—to try to bring the Bill in line with the distinctions the Government have themselves drawn between genetic editing and genetic modification. The amendments would tighten up the Bill, provide clarity of purpose and bring the Bill in line with the Government’s stated aims.
Amendment 1 explicitly rules out transgenesis by adding a new subsection to clause 1, while amendment 2 amends the definition in the subsection (8) definition of “modern biotechnology” to exclude the introduction of “exogenous genetic material”. Both amendments would bring the Bill into line with the stated objectives of the Government. We will seek a division on amendment 1, although I am happy to withdraw amendment 2. We hope the Government can support us on amendment 1.
Jo Churchill
Amendment 1 would exclude from the definition of a precision bred organism any organism that has contained transgenic material during any step of its development. I thank the hon. Member for the amendment, but do not feel that it follows the best scientific advice and evidence and would undermine the purpose of the Bill.
It is important that we follow scientific advice and regulate based on the nature of genetic changes made to organisms, rather than on techniques used to develop them. The scientific advice is clear: if an organism contains genetic changes that could have occurred naturally or by traditional breeding methods, that does not present a greater risk than a traditionally bred counterpart, irrespective of the techniques used to develop it.
No precision bred organism will contain transgenes. Some of its ancestors may have contained them, but those transgenes must have been removed for the organism to be classified as precision bred. That is laid out in the Bill.
The transgenic intermediate stages are important, as they enable the precise changes to be made to the DNA of organisms. The transgenes themselves are then subsequently removed. For example, CRISPR-Cas9 DNA would need to be taken out of precision bred animals and plants.
During the evidence sessions, we heard from Professor Nigel Halford of Rothamsted Research. He is using that approach to develop low-acrylamide wheat—a wheat that can provide public health benefits, as well as broader benefits.
Jo Churchill
During the evidence sessions, we heard from Professor Halford and Professor John Napier, who is developing camelina crops that are high in healthy oils. In both examples that they cited, transgenic DNA introduced during the gene editing process was removed. Under the amendment, both of those examples would fall outside the scope of the Bill, and the plants would be classed as genetically modified organisms, but they are not, because they do not contain any transgenes that are actually part of the process The hon. Member for Cambridge referred to the fact that we can have these little bits of DNA left over in ourselves from viruses and so forth.
We must make sure that we understand what we are looking at. We heard very clearly from Professors Halford and Napier that the techniques are more targeted and therefore very precise, known changes can be made. Therefore we know what we are looking at, and this is stepwise procedure. Some of the narrative infers that the Bill will be passed, and then, tomorrow, the changes will happen. It is not like that; we are talking about the development of science and ensuring that the regulatory framework that we have been working under from 30 years ago, which has been recognised virtually across the world as inadequate, is changed, so that we can keep up with the science.
If we accepted the amendment, it would make the Bill irrelevant. Countries elsewhere with proportionate regulations would be able to exploit the huge potential of the technology as it develops, whereas we would remain impeded by the current legislation. I urge hon. Member for Cambridge to withdraw the amendment relating to the definition of precision bred organisms, although I think he said that he intended to push it to a vote.
Jo Churchill
Yes.
The hon. Gentleman has said that he will not push amendment 2 to a vote. The amendment focuses on the definition of modern biotechnology. The techniques to which he refers were the subject of the European Court of Justice case in 2018, to which he also referred. That finding set us on today’s path. The Court ruled that all organisms produced by the techniques should be regulated as genetically modified organisms, irrespective of whether the end product could have occurred naturally or by traditional breeding.
As we heard from Sam Brooke of the British Society of Plant Breeders in the first evidence session, that ruling resulted in many companies halting their research on gene editing and other precision breeding techniques. Subsequently, the EU has recognised that that finding is not in line with current scientific knowledge or development, and has committed to reviewing its own legislation. That is why I am keen that we share our knowledge with it to help us all move forward.
Under the Bill as currently drafted, organisms produced by the techniques should only be classed as GMOs if the genetic changes they contain could not have occurred naturally, or been produced by traditional breeding methods. That does not mean that we consider that the exogenous DNA must be excluded from the process of producing such organisms altogether, as stated. The key point is that we should focus on the nature of the genetic changes in organisms, which are actually released or marketed, as per the scientific advice from the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment. The broad guidance it produces is very clear. It means that, in order to produce a precision bred organism, developers have to remove exogenous DNA, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 gene used in gene editing, from the organisms. In effect, they are removing the tool they used to make the changes, leaving behind the new trait.
In order to carve out precision bred organisms from the legislation controlling the use of GMOs with the Bill, we have defined the techniques used to produce them as “modern biotechnology”. We are then separating organisms produced by modern biotechnology into GMOs and precision bred organisms in order to ensure that the two regulatory systems dovetail. That term must remain aligned to the GMO legislation, which means continuing to include techniques that introduce exogenous DNA. I am therefore grateful to the hon. Gentleman for withdrawing amendment 2.
Daniel Zeichner
I apologise to Members for detaining them, but I want to speak to the clause because it is a key part of the Bill. We are at this point establishing a new category of a precision bred organism. My worry is that it is not a clear category, not least because only a few months ago another new category was introduced—the higher qualifying plant. The Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022 were discussed in this very Committee room—I remember the Minister and I discussing them—and have come into force, which was an initial step before this Bill was introduced. At the time, I highlighted the warnings from various learned societies that that was not a category that they recognised, and I am afraid the precision bred organism occupies a similarly ill-defined space.
In the Bill, reference is made to other previous SIs, but not to the most recent one. I notice that the SI from 2002 is referenced in subsection 3, where “modern biotechnologies” are defined, but I cannot see any reference to this year’s SI, so perhaps the Minister will tell us what is happening with that. Paragraph 3.2.2.1 of the impact statement makes it clear that the intention is to revoke the SI and reintroduce the provisions in the Bill, but it certainly is not clear to me where in the Bill that is being done, so I hope the Minister will elucidate. Perhaps it is hidden in the secondary legislation provisions, in which case it is quite opaque, which is part of our general concern about the Bill.
The danger is that we could be in a position where we unintentionally have two pieces of law governing this area and laying out two different definitions at the same time—the qualifying higher plant and the precision bred organism. I want to make this point because it is important, given some of the contributions that have already been made. There is a further problem as the European Union has a different term for what looks like an attempt to define much the same thing—an NGT, or a product of new genetic techniques. I do not want to rile Government Members by suggesting that that might be a better name for what we are doing, but it probably captures more accurately what we have discussed so far, because these are indeed new genetic techniques, and will probably go on being new genetic techniques.
Does that matter? I think it might, and that is the problem. It goes back to the points made earlier by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith. The movement of goods and materials across borders is vexed at the best of times, and pretty fraught at the moment. The trade implications are explored in section 6 of the impact assessment, which makes interesting reading with some quite bold assertions. I will refer to them because, although the view of the Government is that this probably will not be a problem, they do to their credit go into what could occur as a consequence of it becoming a problem. It is pretty alarming. Should there be a dispute, the impact assessment states:
“This would have a relatively significant impact on UK producers…UK crop-related food exporters are heavily dependent on EU consumers’ demand. Approximately 55% of all crop-related food exports from the UK are to the EU…And so, it would be difficult to replace EU demand. Therefore, there is a possibility for a portion of the £8.56 billion worth of crop related exports to the EU to decrease, potentially outweighing the scale of direct benefits to business. Nonetheless”—
This is very reassuring—
“this represents only 2.5% of our annual total value of exported goods and 5.4% of our annual value of exported goods to the EU. And so, even if UK crop-related food exports are maximally impacted, the overall impact on the UK balance of trade is minimal.”
Well, I do not think it will come as a great reassurance to those involved in the sector if that is part of the potential risk.
There are big risks here. Not only do we have that issue, but there is also the wider issue of the Cartagena protocol, which governs the movement of these organisms across borders. I suspect that by introducing the precision bred organism, we are introducing a new category, which again leaves us open to challenge. In all these cases, the argument will always be, “Is it in anybody else’s interest to challenge?” What we know from all these trade negotiations is that if there is any possibility of someone picking a fight, they can always use something like this to pursue it.
In conclusion, we are stepping into some tricky territory. We generally hope that other countries will come with us in similar ways and that any differences can be resolved without recourse to challenge, but we should be aware of those risks and proceed with care. Investors will ask themselves a simple question: is there a risk here, and if so, does the potential benefit outweigh the potential disadvantage? It has been suggested—indeed we heard it in the evidence from the Agricultural Industries Confederation—that there is a concern that people will look at the legislation and think, “This is not very certain or clear. We will wait and see what others do first.” Far from speeding things up, we could end up delaying them. The Government need to show that these questions have been addressed and answered. This is a small clause, but it has occupied quite a lot of time and is hugely significant to how we go forward.
Jo Churchill
The approach we have taken to regulating genetically modified organisms has not kept pace with scientific progress. The hon. Gentleman referenced the UN’s Cartagena protocol on biosafety, in which “modern biotechnology” is a term used. Its definition of modern biotechnology aligns with techniques such as those listed in sub-paragraphs 5(1)(a) and 5(1)(b) of the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) Regulations 2002. We are using the same list of techniques in this clause—see subsection (3)—to ensure that the new regime fits neatly alongside the one that regulates GMOs without leaving gaps or overlaps, which I think is the right course of action to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks, and without bringing any organisms that are not currently regulated as GMOs into the new regime regulating PBOs.
Some 30 years ago, modern biotech was used to transfer DNA between very different organisms. It can now be used to introduce changes that could have occurred naturally and through the use of traditional processes. As we have heard, that makes it much more targeted. The legislation controlling organisms produced by modern biotechnology needs to reflect these developments and our increased knowledge. Most notably, the science is telling us that we should not regulate precision bred organisms differently from their traditionally bred counterparts.
Clause 1 describes precision bred organisms, which we are carving out from legislation on the release and marketing of genetically modified organisms. The definitions have been drafted using the latest scientific advice, and they are designed to ensure that this regulatory system can work. We are taking a critical step towards proportionate, science-led regulation of genetic technologies. As highlighted by Sam Brooke in the evidence sessions, the Bill will encourage greater research, innovation and investment in precision bred technologies. In doing so, it will lead to environmental, health and economic benefits for the UK.
It is vital that we add precision breeding to our toolbox to help us address some of the challenges we know we are facing, not only as a country but globally. The hon. Member for Cambridge referred to the SI. This will be revoked when we introduce secondary legislation after the Bill passes. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Meaning of “plant” and “animal”.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Jo Churchill
Clause 2 defines “plant” and “animal” for the purposes of the Bill. The definitions in subsections (1) and (2) cover multicellular plants and animals; they do not cover micro-organisms. The clause expressly excludes humans from the scope of the Bill. Under current legislation, humans and human embryos cannot be classed as genetically modified organisms, and nor will they be classed as precision bred organisms under the Bill. Subsections (3) to (5) establish the developmental stage at which a plant or animal falls into the scope of the Bill, by defining what is meant by an organism.
Daniel Zeichner
I am sure that everyone will be relieved to know that this is going to be a quicker debate than that on the previous clause. The clause appears to be quite straightforward, defining the terms “plant” and “animal”. I have one question. Subsections (3) and (4) mention gametes. Subsection (3)(a) states that references to plants and animals
“include an embryo and all subsequent developmental stages of an organism”.
For plants, references include
“a seed or a vegetative propagule”
but
“do not include a gamete.”
Could the Minister explain why gametes are not included in the definitions and what purpose their mention in the clause serves?
Jo Churchill
Please bear with me as I go through my copious notes. Will the hon. Gentleman repeat what part of the clause he was referring to?
Daniel Zeichner
Subsections (3) and (4). What is the purpose of those subsections, because it is not entirely clear to me?
Jo Churchill
The gamete contains only half of the genetic code required to reproduce a whole organism. A whole functioning plant or animal cannot be generated from a gamete and is therefore not considered an organism for the purposes of the Bill. I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.
Daniel Zeichner
It is certainly an answer to the question—I am not sure it is an answer I fully appreciate and understand, but I will go away and look at it further. I am grateful to her for that answer.
Jo Churchill
I am very grateful for the question. As he and I both know, I have learned an awful lot about all these particular things going over all the details. If there is anything further, I would be happy to answer.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Restrictions on release of precision bred organism in England
Daniel Zeichner
I beg to move amendment 32, in clause 3, page 3, line 35, at end insert—
“(c) the organism has been developed for or in connection with one or more of the following purposes—
(i) producing food in a way that protects or enhances a healthy, resilient and biodiverse natural environment;
(ii) growing and managing plants or animals in a way that mitigates or adapts to climate change;
(iii) producing food in a way that prevents, reduces or protects from environmental hazards;
(iv) protecting or improving the health or welfare of animals;
(v) conserving native animals or genetic resources relating to any such animal;
(vi) protecting or improving the health of plants;
(vii) reducing the use of pesticides and artificial fertiliser;
(viii) conserving plants grown or used in carrying on an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity, their wild relatives or genetic resources relating to any such plant;
(ix) protecting or improving the quality of soil;
(x) supporting or improving human health and well-being;
(xi) supporting or improving the sustainable use of resources.”.
This amendment would require that a precision bred organism has been developed to provide a public benefit, if it is to be released into the environment.
Jo Churchill
I agree very strongly that we should allow our farmers and fishermen to optimise research, with the appropriate checks and balances, to ensure they can bring to market produce that is trusted by the consumer and safe. That is exactly what our system has been set up to deliver. It is really important that they can use cutting-edge science to help them deliver those benefits. I believe we are on the same trajectory; we are just having a worthwhile discussion about whether things should be on the face of the Bill or should be embedded in our systems.
Daniel Zeichner
Will the Minister comment on the point I made about the development of herbicide-resistant varieties? We know there has been an issue with glyphosate and so on. That is not necessarily something that we would all welcome. Is there anything in the Bill that would allow the Government to express a view on whether that is beneficial?
Jo Churchill
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to carry on speaking, I may well get to his point. The research is there to drive forward the ability to grow sustainably. He referred to the altruistic way in which Bill Angus approaches his work. We also heard from Professor Cathie Martin. She had that enthusiasm, but I am sure that many Members heard her contention that if she could get more of the population eating more fruit and vegetables, she would feel that she had really driven things forward and used these technologies to deliver a public good.
Although I understand the intention behind the proposal, I do not think it is necessary because it applies to release into the environment. That is principally covered in field trials, which are crucial to building our understanding of how genetic changes impact organisms under field conditions. They are an integral part of pure research, as well as breeding programmes.
Once again, I come back to the fact that we are at the start of this journey. We already know that the UK is delivering positive research. Professor Martin from the John Innes Centre spoke about the vitamin D tomatoes that her group is developing. We also heard about her commitment to strive towards improving the food we eat for the benefit of our health. It is important that such research proposals, which are often supplemented by money from the public purse, both in Scotland and in England and Wales, go through these assessments. We did not hear from just one person; we heard from many conducting the research. We should be proud of the research and the regulatory framework, which I believe is in place through ACRE, the varieties listing and the animal welfare declaration, for products brought to market—we will discuss that when we come to the provisions in part 3.
We do not think it is necessary to place restrictions on research using these technologies. We have no evidence to suggest that developers are doing anything that would fall outside the purpose of the Bill. The checks and balances, and the fact that ultimately it can be withdrawn if there is a concern over the technology—that is later in the Bill—give us what we need. We are striving to deliver public good.
As can be seen in the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Environment Act 2021, and in the sustainable farming incentive and environmental land management schemes, we are committed to developing a more sustainable and resilient food system, to ensuring and even enhancing animal health and welfare, and to protecting the environment. Recently, we announced the food strategy, which sets out a plan to make sure that we have a food system fit for the future, with sustainability from farm to fork and from catch to plate. We want to seize the opportunities and ensure everyone has access to nutritious and healthy food.
11 am
We are also committed to funding innovation. We have put over £130 million into joint funding with UK Research and Innovation for food systems research and innovation, £100 million into the UK seafood fund, and £270 million into farming innovation. We have invested £11 million to support new research to drive improvements in understanding the relationship between food and health. In total, that is over half a billion pounds, which should show the level of the Government’s commitment. Through the net zero strategy and the national adaptation programme, the Government have as a top priority mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Our commitment to the environment is demonstrated through the 25-year environment plan. The Bill can help with all of that. We see precision breeding as an enabling tool to help us to achieve objectives across these critical areas. Public good is very much embedded in what we are already doing and aligned with the interests of our researchers in the UK, and the checks and balances are there to ensure it.
I will end by restating the principle of the Bill, which is to regulate these technologies more proportionately to their risk. Placing additional regulatory requirements goes against that principle, and against the science and evidence. I ask the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.
Daniel Zeichner
We have had an interesting and wide-ranging exchange, which touched on a series of the broader principles behind the Bill.
To respond to the interventions from Government Back Benchers, my concern is that when we look at the power relationships in the food system, we see that farmers and producers are not always in the strongest position. Quite often, they are under pressure, and they will be under particular pressure given the price issues that they face at the moment. Frankly, the people who are looking to invest in these new technologies, particularly the big players, will look for proper returns. That is perfectly proper; it is exactly what we would expect them to do. From the point of view of the individual producers, whether of crops or animals, people further up the chain may, in essence, be saying, “We’ve now got this tool and we want you to use it.” It is pretty clear that a lot of farmers pretty much have to do what they are instructed to do by people further up the chain. Consequently, the question whether something is in the “public good” or not becomes a very difficult one for people who may well want to do the right thing.
It also goes back to my question, which I am afraid the Minister did not address, about herbicide-resistant traits. That has been an issue previously, and we know that not all the developers of these technologies are looking to achieve the wider public good. Sometimes, all they are seeking to achieve is market domination and a significant return for themselves. That is not surprising, because that is what some of them are in business to do. What are we as legislators to do to protect wider society and our producers from that kind of pressure? I am not saying that will necessarily happen immediately, but the danger will be that if there is not any protection against that kind of thing, it can happen.
That is why I genuinely do not understand why the Government would not want this amendment to the clause, because everything the Minister said, which I think all of us would agree with in terms of the potential benefits and the good things that people are trying to do, would all be captured within a public benefit test like the one we propose, and only the things that we would not want to see would be discouraged by it. There is nothing to fear. Perhaps we should have spent more time on this during the evidence sessions, but my understanding is that other jurisdictions have introduced some kind of public benefit test for exactly the reasons I am outlining.
The issue goes right back—and I think we will keep going back to it—to where we started: what kind of regulatory framework we are setting up. At this point, I have to say that I think there is an ideological divide between the Government and Labour. Essentially, this is a highly deregulatory Bill—essentially it is saying, “Leave it to the market”. The market will do what the market will do: pursue the best possible return. Whether that always delivers the right societal return in environmental benefits and so on is a moot point. I think there is a genuine difference of opinion between us. The Opposition are clear that we would include such a public benefit test, because we are not convinced that the proposed framework will always work for the public good.
I will not waste the Committee’s time by having endless, pointless votes. I will withdraw amendment 32, but the Opposition would like a vote on amendment 10, because we think that it is significant. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Release of precision bred organism: notification requirements
Amendment proposed: 10, in Clause 4, page 4, line 24, leave out “negative” and insert “affirmative”.—[Daniel Zeichner.]
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Daniel Zeichner
Clause 5 concerns restrictions on marketing precision bred organisms in England. I do not have a lot to say about it, other than to explore with the Minister how it will be determined that a precision bred organism is indeed that; this goes back to the earlier, earlier debate.
My understanding is that the determination will be based on the definition, agreed by the Committee, as something edited using modern biotechnology in a way that could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding processes. Can the Minister say more about how it will be determined that the organism could have been produced in that kind of way? What kind of evidence will be sought and how will the whole process work? It is not entirely clear to me from the Bill as written.
Jo Churchill
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the ACRE process and the guidance from the penultimate evidence giver, Nigel Moore. The ACRE guidance lays out how it will be determined, which is part 1 of the PBO assessment. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the guidance notes because they lay out very specifically and clearly how that will be determined.
Daniel Zeichner
I suppose my concern is that this seems to be a very closed world in which a group of eminent and expert people are involved in making judgments. There is no external input. Given that all those people basically work in the same institutes, is it not a rather closed system?
Jo Churchill
I believe nomination to ACRE works to the Nolan principles. Yes, those people are eminent, but they are also held in high esteem and regard and have to work to those Nolan principles when acting in the capacity of their position on that committee. It is difficult to unpick who the hon. Gentleman would see as the most qualified, if it is not those who are elected by their peers and go through an appropriate system. They must have the expertise because it is important that those who are determining know what they are doing; otherwise, with the greatest of respect to the hon. Gentleman, he and I would be a lot less enabled.
Daniel Zeichner
I return to a point I made when we discussed the statutory instrument. I am in no way trying to question the integrity of those who sit on those committees. However, when we look at their declaration of interests, almost all—perhaps inevitably—are linked to some of the major industries in the field.
I ask the question again. Does the Minister genuinely believe that the system and set-up will fill the public with confidence or will they look at it and worry?
Jo Churchill
I think most people will see it as proportionate and want to have those who are expert in the field making judgments. It is they who will say whether the technology is a PBO and can move forward. The hon. Gentleman’s argument slightly falls down because the issue applies to just about every overarching body, in that they have, by definition, some knowledge of the issue on which they are deciding.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Gareth Johnson.)
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Sixth sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerTuesday 5th July 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 View all Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 5 July 2022 - (5 Jul 2022)
Daniel Zeichner
It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair again, Ms McVey, as we continue this interesting discussion. You were part of the evidence sessions.
We come to a series of clauses about precision bred confirmation, and we have a number of amendments that largely relate to how Parliament scrutinises the secondary legislation. As we argued this morning, we think that far too much is being pushed off into secondary legislation. Even within that, too much of the secondary legislation is subject to the negative procedure, so it will go through without any scrutiny. I will not repeat the broad points about why we think that is not the way to do it, as they are familiar to most people.
Clause 6 concerns the applications for precision bred confirmation. The Government will be given powers to make secondary legislation that prescribes the form and content of a marketing notice and the information that is to accompany one. It is really important that the advisory committee, the welfare body and the Secretary of State have all the information they need to come to an informed decision on both the release and the marketing of precision bred organisms. Frankly, I am not comfortable —and I do not think many others will be—giving the Government a blank cheque to determine what information must be provided. I understand that it needs further consideration and thought, but it seems to us to be too significant an issue not to merit proper scrutiny in this House. Amendment 11 simply tweaks it to make the clause subject to the affirmative, rather than the negative, procedure.
Clause 9 allows for the revocation of a precision bred confirmation. Again, that is a very important matter, and I have a series of questions, which I touched on in the discussion before lunch, about how these decisions are arrived at. What triggers them? What is the information? What is the process? As one begins to think it through, one can see that there is really not a lot of detail in the Bill as it stands. It is not clear to me, and I hope the Minister can go through in detail some examples of how all this might work.
If the Government are no longer satisfied that a precision bred organism is indeed precision bred—perhaps it has become apparent through some complaint or some new science that it does utilise genetic modification technologies, which require a higher level of regulation, or perhaps some adverse impacts have come to light—we appreciate that they would need to be able to revoke an authorisation, and we support that, but I cannot quite see in the real world how that situation arises. It would be really helpful for me and, I am sure, others if the Minister could walk us through an actual example. In what circumstances would that happen? Does the Minister anticipate that there will be challenges, and that the Government might lose and therefore have to step back? In that case, it is right to have a procedure for dealing with this. It would be useful to know quite what the thinking was behind it. We need proper scrutiny of some of these powers, and amendment 12 would make the clause subject to the affirmative procedure to ensure proper scrutiny takes place.
When a precision bred confirmation is revoked, even though we cannot entirely envisage how it will work, it is important that the Secretary of State has a process to safeguard the health and welfare of those animals—we are talking about animals in this case—that are no longer deemed to be precision bred. We took advice from Compassion in World Farming on this, which gave evidence in the evidence sessions. It says that where that is the case, it will be because the organism has either been mischaracterised or the genome is no longer stable, which, in their view, may create health and welfare risks. Again, I would welcome the Minister’s comments on whether that is that situation is envisaged. That raises the question of what to do with the creatures that have been created through this process and how to bring the breeding of the line back under the appropriate regulations.
What I am saying about this amendment goes right back to the beginning, when we were nervous about embarking on the animal route without knowing more detail. As one begins to look at the detail in the Bill for dealing with some of these issues, without knowing the wider thinking, wider background and wider regulatory framework, it is quite hard to comment on the potential unintended consequences and how they might be dealt with. The reason that this matters to all of us is that animal welfare matters. I hardly need remind the Minister of her Government’s 2019 manifesto commitment, which I helpfully have before me:
“High standards of animal welfare are one of the hallmarks of a civilised society. We have a long tradition of protecting animals in this country, often many years before others follow. Under a Conservative Government, that will continue”
—well, quite. We fully endorse that. In the spirit of that commitment, I hope that the Government will welcome amendment 31, which would require the regulations that make provision for the procedure to be followed if the Secretary of State proposes to revoke a precision bred confirmation to include provisions to safeguard the health and welfare of any animals that are no longer deemed to be precision bred.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Jo Churchill)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. Amendment 11 would provide for further parliamentary scrutiny on the marketing notice. The amendment is not necessary, as this power cannot be used to deliver a substantive change in policy; it is merely to prescribe details that are technical and administrative in nature, such as the form of the marketing notice or the information that must accompany that notice. I worry that what the hon. Member for Cambridge is seeking is because these regulations are as yet not in place. We have gone over the fact that we will look to work with experts and stakeholders and so on in order to ensure that we have the right guidelines so that we can move forward.
The criteria for defining a precision bred organism is set out in the Bill. We will continue to seek expert, independent advice on the technical details before any regulations are brought before Parliament. It is appropriate for the technical detail which demonstrates how the given organism meets these criteria to be specified in regulations and for such regulations to follow the negative procedure, as there may be an appropriate time for them to be added to.
In amendment 31, the hon. Gentleman proposes placing a duty on the Secretary of State when revoking a precision bred animal confirmation to safeguard the health and welfare of animals. All vertebrate animals are already protected by extensive animal health and welfare legislation, including the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which makes it an offence either to cause any captive animal unnecessary suffering or to fail to provide for the welfare needs of the animal. The Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007 include specific requirements to protect animals when bred or kept, prohibiting breeding procedures that
“cause, or are likely to cause, suffering or injury”.
The regulations further state that:
“Animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.”
The protections provided by these regulations would apply to an animal where a precision bred confirmation relating to that animal had been revoked. Those welfare requirements cover all animals. With those protections already in place, we see no need for anything further and I urge the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.
On amendment 12, I stand by what I have said before on the use of parliamentary time. The key proposition that a precision bred confirmation should be capable of being revoked is set out in the Bill.
Clause 9 sets out a pathway by which a precision bred confirmation may be revoked. It is a criminal offence to market genetically modified organisms without prior consent, and we believe that companies will continue to be incredibly careful to avoid mistakes. However, to provide a belt-and-braces measure, in the unlikely event that a GMO goes through the procedures under this Bill and is marketed as a precision bred organism, the clause establishes a transparent process for dealing with such an eventuality. That is important for consumer confidence and transparency.
Clause 9(4) addresses conferring additional functions on the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment. The ability to seek scientific advice on any relevant new information that comes to light will be an important component part of this process. The clause states that we will need the help of outside experts to ensure that we move forward appropriately.
Daniel Zeichner
I am afraid that I am still not entirely convinced, for a number of reasons, going back to some of the points I made just before we broke for lunch. There seems to be a closed, narrow group of people making these decisions. What ACRE—this group of eminent people—is being asked to do is to make a judgment on whether something that has been submitted to them is a PBO.
Following our discussions on the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022 a few months ago, ACRE released guidance on how the process would be approached. The guidance is quite technical, to put it mildly, and it is thoughtful and nuanced, and has quite a lot of caveats. Obviously, the guidance is not before us today, but it is relevant, because it is what ACRE will consider—there are no additional terms of reference being introduced in these clauses. There will not be a simple, clear-cut process and that probably explains why the Government have introduced this method for revoking confirmations, because more science and more evidence can come to light.
My worry is that it feels like a discussion between a very small group of people. If we are trying to address the question of public confidence, which is key, it does not seem to give the degree of reassurance that people seek. If one were being kind and generous to the Government, as obviously I would be, one way to provide that reassurance might be to bring forward secondary legislation so that it is discussed, rather than just being passed without discussion, as we know many statutory instruments are all the time. We think it is worth looking more closely at the procedure and making the secondary legislation subject to the affirmative, rather than the negative, procedure.
Although the Minister did respond to my invitation to give us an example, I am still not really very clear quite how it would happen. What happens to the animals—we are talking about animals here rather than plants—in those circumstances? I appreciate that there are existing protections, but the question is whether any additional protections are needed given the new set of procedures available, and how that should be handled. That seems to be worthy of further interrogation.
Daniel Zeichner
The amendments in this group are relatively straightforward, the Committee will be glad to hear. We are interested in looking at the relationship between the Bill and the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, which some of us were involved in, discussing it in this very room only a few months ago. To our joint delight, it received Royal Assent in April.
The Act defines “animal” as
“any vertebrate other than homo sapiens…any cephalopod mollusc, and…any decapod crustacean”.
Members may remember the debate about the definition, which was based on a Government amendment, if I recall, after a report commissioned by them to review the scientific evidence for the sentience of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans. The London School of Economics published that review in November last year, after which the Government made their amendment to the animal sentience Bill to reflect the most up-to-date understanding. Despite that, however, clause 10 of this Bill defines animals only as vertebrates.
There are all kinds of exciting jokes that one can make about vertebrates and all the rest of it, but I shall resist that today. We also note that the clause does not exclude homo sapiens explicitly. Basically, our issue is about trying to align the definitions with the most recent piece of legislation to have gone through the House.
The clause also makes provision for the Bill’s definition to be extended to include invertebrates if the Animal Welfare Act 2006 is extended to include them. It therefore seems to pose rather a strange system involving two different definitions of “animal” in law: one from the 2006 legislation and the other from the very recent legislation. We still seem to be waiting to get our definitions in line.
As an aside, given that the Government’s aim of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act was to recognise the sentience of animals in law, we are slightly surprised that the Animal Welfare Act has not been extended to reflect the Government’s latest stance. Regardless of that, it seems that the Bill should use the most up to date definition, that is why we have tabled amendment 33, and we think that amendment 34 is consequential on that, to replace the definition of animal in the Bill to the one from the 2022 Act. It is possible that it was mistake—that happens—or an accidental oversight, which we think could be rectified if the Government were to accept the amendment. If not, it would be useful to hear the Government’s explanation, and I invite the Minister to give it.
Jo Churchill
The hon. Gentleman proposes that we change the substance of the definition of relevant animal from that in 2006 Act to the more recent definition in the 2022 Act. Although we do not feel that the amendment is necessary, I am really grateful for the opportunity to put down on record our reasons for that.
Clause 10 defines relevant animal as a vertebrate for the purpose of welfare protection measures in clauses 11 to 15. That is line with the definition of animal in the 2006 Act—the core legislation that establishes the practical rules for individuals and businesses that handle, keep and care for animals in this country. For that reason, it is the right definition to apply.
It is worth noting that the definition of animal in the 2022 Act sets out what type of animals the animal sentience committee can consider when carrying out its work, but it does automatically not extend the definition of animal in the 2006 Act. We totally accept that it will be more than likely appropriate to broaden that definition so it is important to note that in clause 10 we allow a provision for regulations to be made to extend the definition of relevant animal, if the definition of animal in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 is extended to include invertebrates of any description. Any amending regulations that extend that definition would be subject to the affirmative procedure in the House, and therefore subject to debate and approval by both Houses before being made.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government, like the Opposition, were very pleased that the sentience Bill received Royal Assent, but the next step is to carefully consider the implications of extending the 2006 Act to include cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans because that will include implications for how they are caught and handled, treated and transported. The Government are working constructively with industry and stakeholders on this issue; I assure the hon. Gentleman of that.
I understand the point made by the hon. Gentleman but the appropriate definition of animal is that which sits in the 2006 Act, although I agree that the extension of that definition is in process. It is not correct, however, to say that the definition in the 2022 Act would sit appropriately in this legislation for the reasons I have cited.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for the explanation, although I am not entirely sure that I am convinced by it. It seems to me to be a slightly curious way of proceeding. At the end of it, I am not entirely sure whether it means that cephalopods and decapods are protected under the Bill or not—possibly not, as it stands. I understand why the new regulations have practical implications, particularly for the fishing sector, and why they need to be thought through carefully. I can see why there might be complications, although that is more to do with the animal sentience Act than it is to do with the Bill.
We will come back in a moment to the question of the relationship between the animal sentience Act and the Bill. It is an interesting one, because it goes to the heart of the concern that we on the Labour Benches have: that the various structures that are in place to make decisions, give expert advice, and so on may no longer be quite right. During the evidence session, we heard the suggestion that there may well be people within Departments who are already thinking along those lines and looking at ways in which those structures may be updated. That, of course, creates some difficulties for us, because we are looking at the legislation as it stands today. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but that is the problem with trying to second-guess the thinking of the Government when they are so vague on some of these animal welfare issues.
There is considerable interest in the whole question about cephalopods and decapods, and we think it would be more consistent to have a unified approach. On that basis, I am afraid we will test the opinion of the Committee by pressing amendment 33 to a vote, although we will not feel the need to move amendment 34.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Jo Churchill
As discussed, clause 10 defines a relevant animal as a vertebrate for the purposes of the welfare protection measures in clauses 11 to 15. That is in line with the definition of an animal in the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which is the core legislation that establishes the practical rules for individuals and businesses that keep, handle, or care for animals in this country. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Daniel Zeichner
I will be brief, given that we have just discussed the amendments. I stand by the comments we have already made, but I am grateful that regulations made under subsection (2) of the clause will be subject to the affirmative procedure. We will doubtless be back here on another day, discussing this issue again.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Application for precision bred animal marketing authorisation
Jo Churchill
Clause 14 sets out the reporting obligations that will apply once a precision bred animal marketing authorisation has been issued. Although the provisions in the Bill are intended to prevent adverse welfare outcomes in precision bred animals, we consider it prudent to have a monitoring function in place during the early stages of the marketing of precision bred animals in England. The Bill will provide for the ability to place a time-limited and proportionate duty on breeders and developers to monitor animals and their offspring for any significant adverse health and welfare outcomes that can be linked to the new trait, and to report any such outcome to DEFRA.
The clause sets out that regulations may make provision to require the notifier, or any other specified person, to provide information to the Secretary of State about the welfare of the relevant animal and its qualifying progeny. If the relevant animal is supplied to another person, the notifier may be required to take steps to collect health and welfare information, or enable it to be collected from the other person. Regulations may set requirements on the information that must be collected, including, for example, specific time periods for reporting, and technical requirements for the types of information to be provided.
Daniel Zeichner
We are now getting to the Bill’s more administrative details, about which we have fewer concerns.
Clause 14 concerns the reporting obligations for precision bred animal marketing authorisations. Clause 15 concerns the suspension and revocation of precision bred animal marketing authorisations. In many ways, what I am about to say is similar to what I have said before about those things. I am glad that reporting obligations are included in the Bill, especially those that relate to animal welfare and to potential unintended consequences. It is right that those processes be monitored and reported on.
The suspension and revocation of authorisations concerning animals appears to be an area where greater scrutiny of secondary legislation would be beneficial. The clause confers powers on the Government to introduce secondary legislation, with provisions to suspend or revoke precision bred animal marketing authorisations where the Secretary of State receives information regarding the health and welfare of the animal concerned, and where they believe the health or welfare of an animal is likely to be adversely affected. It also contains provisions for those decisions to be publicly announced and shared. That raises the question of who is doing the monitoring and how, and it would be helpful if the Minister said a little more about that.
At the risk of being endlessly repetitive, it would be better for the secondary legislation to be subject to the affirmative procedure, rather than the negative. That is the force of amendment 14. As we have said frequently, the House should be able to scrutinise the Government’s proposals, especially as they have been decidedly vague so far. These things do matter, because they concern the potential pain and suffering of sentient beings.
Jo Churchill
I thank the hon. Member for tabling the amendment. Clause 15 allows for provision to be made in regulation for the circumstances in which a precision bred animal marketing authorisation may be revoked or suspended, and to set out the procedure to follow in such cases. The affirmative procedure would not be a meaningful use of parliamentary time. The power to make regulations for the circumstances in which an authorisation may be revoked or suspended is, in effect, a power to specify more details of those circumstances, but the circumstances are already set out in the Bill and cannot be changed. Given the content of the regulations made under clause 15, the negative procedure is a better fit.
We, like the Opposition, are committed to animal welfare and want the Bill’s provisions to be backed by proportionate and workable measures to safeguard animal welfare. Clause 15 enables the Secretary of State to make regulations, using the negative procedure, to suspend or revoke a precision bred animal marketing authorisation in certain circumstances. The requirement to provide a welfare declaration before an animal welfare marketing authorisation is granted will ensure the proper evaluation of known risks. The clause provides further reassurance that Government will have the power to act should there be adverse effects.
Daniel Zeichner
I hear the Minister and in some ways I am comforted, but clause 15(3) states:
“Regulations under this section may confer a function on the welfare advisory body.”
What on earth does “may confer a function” mean? That seems extraordinarily wide, and it is not unreasonable that something so wide should come back to this place for a discussion.
Jo Churchill
It is important that the Animal Welfare Committee has the space to look at such things. The clause covers scenarios in which new information shows that animal welfare may be affected contrary to the assessment conducted when the authorisation was issued. In such cases, the welfare declaration no longer holds, so it may be appropriate that the Secretary of State revokes an authorisation in the interests of animal welfare. If the Secretary of State receives new information on animal health or welfare, he may consider it appropriate to suspend the marketing authorisation while information is properly considered. If the Secretary of State has not received the health and welfare information that he needs because the developer has failed to report it under clause 14, it may be appropriate that he suspend the authorisation pending investigation, or revoke it if there are concerns. In both scenarios, we set out to protect animal welfare as strongly as we can.
Clause 15 also sets out that the regulations may allow bespoke reporting requirements in particular cases. That flexibility is essential to ensure that any obligations placed on businesses are minimised proportionately to risk. Good practice indicates that breeders and developers will already carry out health and welfare monitoring as part of their breeding programmes. We want to work with stakeholders to ensure that that element of the new measures works in practice and is proportionate before it is introduced.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Reviews and appeals relating to Part 2
Daniel Zeichner
The clause is about reviews and appeals relating to part 2. We heard about the relative power in the industry from some of the witnesses. There are some very big organisations, and hopefully some smaller enterprises coming forward that are able to operate in the sector. We want a system that is fair to all. We want to make sure that the appeals system does not disproportionately benefit, possibly unintentionally, those who have the most resource to make the system work for them.
The clause begins to lay out what an appeals system under the Bill might look like, but once again the fine detail is left to secondary legislation. We want to be able to see and scrutinise any delegated powers in the area, and that is what amendment 15, which is similar to a number of the other amendments, would do. It is an important clause, and I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it.
Jo Churchill
As the hon. Member laid out, the amendment seeks further parliamentary scrutiny of the reviews and appeals conferred by part 2. He will not be surprised to hear that I do not feel the amendment is necessary. What it proposes would not, in our view, be a meaningful use of time. I want to assure hon. Members that the power does not signal a change in policy, as all key substantive requirements of the review and appeal processes are set out in the Bill. Therefore, it is appropriate for the regulations to be subject to the negative procedure.
We are committed to bringing in appropriate safeguards to ensure that decisions affecting a person’s ability to market a precision bred organism are correct, and to provide for an appropriate and efficient mechanism to challenge decisions. To achieve that, the clause requires regulations to provide for a mechanism for reviews and appeals. That mechanism can be used if the appellant considers that certain decisions made by the Secretary of State were based on an error of fact, wrong in law or unreasonable.
The clause covers decisions not to issue a precision bred confirmation or a precision bred animal marketing authorisation, to revoke a precision bred confirmation, or to revoke or suspend a precision bred animal marketing authorisation. It aims to deal with such issues in a sensible fashion. Having a review mechanism allows the Secretary of State to review the decision and to uphold or reverse it in a quick and cost-effective manner, without the need for legal proceedings. A subsequent right to appeal to the first-tier tribunal ensures that, where the appellant is not satisfied with the outcome of the review, said person can ask an independent tribunal to adjudicate.
Daniel Zeichner
I hear what the Minister says. I am still nervous about this. It is striking that a lot in the Bill is on the appeal and challenge processes, but without the earlier detail—which would make it easier to envisage how things work—to explain how we might get to that point in the process. I worry that that will benefit those with the resources to use the system effectively to make their case in a way that others might not. That is sufficient to say that we would want to see this again, rather than just let it go through under the negative procedure. We will therefore proceed to a vote on this one.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Jo Churchill
Through scientific research.
In amendment 16, the hon. Member for Cambridge proposes to provide for further parliamentary scrutiny of the provisions on environmental risk assessments that may be required before importing a precision bred organisation into England, or acquiring a precision bred organism that is in England. The amendment is not needed because, in the case of clause 17, the affirmative procedure would not be meaningful. I want to reassure all hon. Members that this power does not signal a change in policy, but we think it appropriate to set out the relevant obligations in regulations. The corresponding provision in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 allows for the details of risk assessment to be set out in regulations, together with the exemption provisions. The regulations will be concerned primarily with the details of the nature of the risk assessment to be carried out, which makes them appropriate to be subject to the negative procedure. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to press his amendments.
On whether clause 17 should stand part of the Bill, I remind the Committee of the evidence we heard last week that precision bred plants and animals do not present a greater risk to human health or the environment than their conventional counterparts. As such, the Government do not intend to introduce additional risk assessment requirements for organisms of this type that are imported or acquired when they are released into the environment. Our approach is to maintain the proportionate science-based approach to regulation that has enable the UK’s research community to carry out world-leading science under contained-use conditions, such as in laboratories. I think we all agree that we are exceptionally lucky to have such individuals across the UK. The powers in the clause will enable the Government to make regulations to maintain the risk assessment requirements that currently apply to precision bred organisms imported or acquired for contained use under the genetically modified organism legislation, from which they will be removed.
Daniel Zeichner
How interesting. Once again, it seems to me that the Minister’s explanation says a lot more than is in the Bill. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith raised a good point. As I read the clause, it does not seem to me to say what the Minister has just explained.
Daniel Zeichner
As I made clear on Second Reading, it is absolutely clear that consumers want information about what they are eating and where it has come from. Excellent research by the Food Standards Agency has found that most consumers think it is appropriate to regulate gene edited foods differently from genetically modified foods, but that they want transparent labelling, reassurance about the thoroughness of regulation and safety assessments, and consideration of animal welfare impacts. I suspect that we will talk more about that as we proceed with our consideration of the Bill. We have already discussed the animal welfare impacts, but clause 18 includes some important points on this front.
The clause will establish a publicly available register of precision bred organisms, which we welcome, and lays out the sort of information that the register might include, ranging from release notices to information provided by the welfare advisory body. However, the clause also states that the Secretary of State can disapply those requirements in the interests of commercial confidentiality, requiring only disclosure of the name of the notifier and a general description of the organism. Something tells me that quite of lot of applications will cite commercial confidentiality. Given the importance of transparent information to consumers, and the lack of any explicit labelling requirements in the Bill as it stands, the very least we need is a strong and publicly accessible register.
The importance of nutritional and allergen information was raised several times in our evidence sessions. Despite the Government giving a reassurance on nutritional labelling, these promises are not made in the Bill, so far as we can see, so the register is the only public source of information that is absolutely guaranteed within it. If a plant or animal has been gene edited so that its nutritional content differs from its natural content—we have talked repeatedly about tomatoes with high levels of vitamin D, for example—consumers might need to know about that. My constituent with a vitamin D allergy will need to know if she can no longer buy certain tomatoes. I pursued that with one or two witnesses in evidence, and we will come back to it.
Given that the register might be the only mechanism by which people can find that out, it is important that we consider more closely what it will contain and, in particular, how the commercial confidentiality provisions will work. If every application is subject to commercial confidentiality, the register really will not achieve the purpose that the Government have set out. However, as I tried to pursue with one or two witnesses, when we look at the impact assessment, we see that the purpose of the register is not so much to inform the public as to check whether more registrations are coming forward—in other words, to see whether the deregulatory intent behind the Bill has had an effect. We have not discussed that until now, but it seems rather different from what most of us understand the purpose of the register to be. There are issues with the register that we think will need to be revisited when it is introduced in secondary legislation. I suspect that the Minister will not agree and that the Committee will have to vote on this, but I will listen to her comments with interest.
Jo Churchill
I will not disappoint the hon. Gentleman, because I do not agree. The amendment is not needed, because in the context of clause 18 it would not be meaningful. This power does not warrant a change in policy, as all key substantive requirements in respect of the register are set out in the Bill, so it is appropriate for the regulations to be subject to the negative procedure.
However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will find a little more light when I speak on clause stand part. In line with our commitment to transparency, clause 18 imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to maintain a new public register, which the hon. Gentleman welcomed in his comments. The register will include information on precision bred organisms that have been notified for release into the environment for research and development, as well as for marketing purposes. As we have discussed during the course of the day, those will have passed other frameworks in order to get to that point.
The register will contain information provided in notifications as well as further information, such as reports from the advisory committee and the welfare advisory body, enforcement notices and other information relating to precision bred organisms set out in this clause and prescribed in regulations. The register will provide transparency and assure the public that the Government have oversight of plants and animals developed using such techniques. The register will be kept electronically in a free and accessible form on gov.uk.
The hon. Gentleman made a specific point about food, which we have touched on—Professor May’s evidence was good. The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that the FSA has sent further information overnight. The product in the example that he gave would be subject to the FSA’s procedure before the it arrived on the market, so it could be labelled to outline the health benefits for 2.5 billion people across the globe, while alerting constituents such as his, who might wish to steer away from it. On the basis that we are offering transparency, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment, and I commend the clause to the Committee.
Daniel Zeichner
Once again, I hear the Minister’s point, and again, the additional information from the Food Standards Agency, which I suspect we will look at more closely as we proceed, is helpful. It occasionally feels as if I am in a very large room with the lights off, holding a very small torch, and every now and then, I turn it on and can gradually discern part of the structure emerging. I have a feeling that the Minister has had the lights on the whole time. That is the problem: we are beginning, bit by bit, to get a sense of how the measures might work, but if we are trying to persuade the wider world about how the system will work, it would be better to turn the lights on at the beginning.
I still think there is some difficulty. Yes, we welcome the register, but I notice that the Minister did not address commercial confidentiality. I appreciate that that is not simple, but there is a danger that the register ends up being very limited indeed, and that would be disappointing. I would much rather have the opportunity to look at the matter again later as the secondary legislation comes through, because it is too important to go through without further consideration. On that basis, I will divide the Committee on the amendment.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Daniel Zeichner
Amendment 18 is another that seeks to replace the negative procedure with the affirmative procedure. Much has been said about the advisory bodies in the Bill—that is the point we are reaching in the clauses. We understand—because it is outlined in clause 22(1), which contains a reference to the Environmental Protection Act 1990—that ACRE will be the advisory committee that considers whether precision bred organisms are indeed precision bred. We are familiar with ACRE, a senior member of which gave oral evidence.
As I hinted in my previous comments, however, the welfare advisory body that considers the impacts on animal welfare is much less clearly defined. The Bill allows for that body to be an existing committee or a new one. Much of the administrative set up of the Committee, and details on how it will operate, are—guess what?—being left to secondary legislation.
Had the Bill not been drafted in such haste, and had the Government determined those details, we would not have felt the need to table so many new clauses. This is a framework Bill. It is a far-from-satisfactory piece of legislation that, as I have just explained, makes it quite hard to work out how the whole system will function. In the light of the role that the welfare advisory body will play in making important considerations about the welfare, pain and health of animals that we now all agree are sentient beings, the provisions in clause 22 should be laid under the affirmative procedure, not the negative procedure. We have tabled amendment 18 to that effect.
I mentioned that I would come to the definition of “adverse effects”, which are referenced in clause 25 but are not laid out in full. That clause states simply that “regulations may prescribe” what is considered an adverse effect on the health or welfare of an animal. As this matter underpins the Bill, and given the ability of the welfare body to consider applications, I believe that that necessary requirement should be a “must” rather than a “may”. We have tabled amendment 20 to that effect.
Amendment 9 was tabled to give examples of what the Bill should consider when it comes to adverse welfare effects, such as the impact of precision breeding traits on the respiratory system, on the immune system and on the ability to exhibit normal behaviour patterns. There is a fairly familiar pattern in what we are seeking to achieve through our amendments, and I suspect that I know what the Minister’s answer will be.
Jo Churchill
I thank the hon. Gentleman for tabling amendment 18, but he will not be surprised to hear that I do not feel that it is necessary. In the case of the measures in clause 22, the affirmative procedure would be inappropriate. The identity of the welfare body will be of interest to Parliament. The appointment itself is a straightforward administrative matter, and it is therefore appropriate for the regulations to be subject to the negative procedure. I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Daniel Zeichner
Almost inevitably, I disagree. The measures are of considerable significance and public interest, so I will press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fifth sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerTuesday 5th July 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 View all Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 5 July 2022 - (5 Jul 2022)
Jo Churchill
I believe that the hon. Lady has tabled amendments on that subject, and we will come on to discuss them. In my view, this is part of our responsibility, alongside that of the scientists, who are at the forefront of what they do. I would gently temper the hon. Lady’s description: this is not unbounded enthusiasm; it is pragmatism. It is about a deep belief in our science and our ability to do good; that is different from enthusiasm. We are building in transparency, and we need to utilise those skills. On my visits to these great institutes around the country, I have met scientists and researchers from across the world, not only Europe. Although I take the hon. Lady’s point about gravity economics, what we do has a broader benefit to people across the world. There are clear benefits.
We need to safeguard welfare, and that is why we have laid down in the Bill a framework for the regulatory system. It is imperative that we get this right. That is why it is important that we work with expert groups, industry and non-governmental organisations on enabling the right regulations to ensure that the system is effective, safe and workable.
All animals are protected by comprehensive and robust legislation, including the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which makes it an offence to cause any captive animal unnecessary suffering and to not provide for their welfare needs. The Bill’s system to protect animal health and welfare will work with those regulations. The Animal Welfare Act is supplemented by detailed regulations on farmed animal welfare. The Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007 include specific requirements to protect animals that are bred or kept. The regulations prohibit breeding procedures that cause or are likely to cause suffering or injury. They state:
“Animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.”
In addition, animals used in scientific research projects, which would be the first stage of developing a breeding line using precision breeding for animals, are protected by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986—ASPA—which was referred to in the evidence we took from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was glad to see that that is the case. This legislation ensures that animals are only ever used in science where the potential harm to animals is limited, there are no alternatives, and where the number of animals is the minimum needed to achieve a scientific benefits, and that includes a harm-benefit analysis.
The measures we are introducing support the regulations by requiring an animal welfare declaration and independent scrutiny by an expert group before an animal can be marketed. We are ensuring that the health and welfare of the animal and its offspring will not be adversely affected by any trait resulting from precision breeding.
If we want to drive innovation and investment in this area while continuing to be at the forefront of animal welfare, we need to move forward and show how the best regulatory systems can work. The Bill provides a clear signal that the UK is the best place to conduct the research and bring products to market. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Cambridge to withdraw his amendment.
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the Minister for her constructive tone. I suspect that the arguments we will pursue over the next few days are already becoming clear. There is considerable agreement. No one disputes that it would be wonderful to be able to tackle bird flu or PRRS. Of course, if we can find a solution, it would be hugely beneficial not just in a financial sense but in terms of welfare as well. The question is how best to achieve that, and I suspect that that is going to be the key part of the debate.
I shall start by admitting my first procedural failure of the day. Contrary to my original suggestion, I am advised by the Clerks that we cannot yet vote on amendment 28 because it does not relate to this clause. Therefore, with your permission, Mr Davies, I would like to reverse my original suggestion and ask that we vote on amendment 29 but not on amendments 28 and 30. Despite spending many hours sitting on Bill Committees, some of us are still learning some of the procedures. I understand that amendment 28 relates to the long title of the Bill.
To go back to the broader issue, some of the points made by our SNP colleague, the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, will come back in our discussions, I am afraid, because where we sit in relation to other jurisdictions and approaches is a complicated question. There is no two ways about that, and I will say more about it in a few moments’ time.
The cost issue raised by the Minister—the £1.75 billion—was interesting. There are potentially huge benefits here, so it is odd, looking at the impact assessment, to see the relatively modest sums that the existing system puts in place. I wonder whether there is a slight mismatch in seeing the current set-up as such a brake on development; it seems to me that there may be other issues as well, although I might be missing something. We are trying to achieve the right regulatory framework to allow investment to take place; the question is whether this the right way to do it. At the moment, I persist in thinking that the measures before us on protection for animals are not sufficiently developed.
Something I have noticed in other Bill Committees I have been involved in is that we home in on the legislation before us and it is quite hard for Members to understand fully the wider landscape in which that legislation sits. It might be assumed that Members are all-knowing and fully understand the entire set-up, but to me, it sometimes feels more like looking at a lump of marble and trying to discern the sculpture within. We need to be pretty imaginative to see exactly where the Bill fits and what consequences it will have.
I am reassured on some of the points about the wider framework for animal protection, but it is also fair to say that there has been a lot of legislation recently. For this, the Government deserve some credit: it is changing the landscape, but it is not entirely clear how it will all fit together. That gives further weight to our view that, on balance, it would be better not to bring the provisions in this part of the Bill into force until further work has been done.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for the intervention—enthusiasm is welcome. The hon. Lady gets to the nub of the point: it is very difficult to describe in law—which is what we as legislators are trying to do—the complexities of the natural world. I suspect that we will probably go around in circles on this, but my point is that the reliance on the notion of something occurring naturally would make the law difficult to interpret—that is key. That is why it is hard for legislators to pin those things down, and I have some sympathy with who have had to capture them in drafting the Bill.
As I am sure the Committee will remember, I pressed Professor Henderson on that point. He said:
“The Bill is designed not to allow exogenous material”.
That is not explicitly coded in the Bill, however. He also said that this is
“something of a grey area.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 15, Q18.]
He was absolutely right about that. He said that transgenesis can occur naturally, and he drew a distinction between intentional and unintentional transfer, which, again, I can understand.
I appreciate that, as the hon. Member for South Ribble implied, the distinction is complicated and messy, but it is important. Unfortunately, although that is the distinction that the Government have presented in the Bill, not only does it not appear in the Bill, but it is contradictory. As we read it, it seems that transgenesis is possible under the Bill, so long as it could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding processes. I appreciate that it is difficult, but I ask the Minister to explain today how her earlier remarks, and the remarks made by others—that gene editing does not involve introducing DNA from one organism into another—are reflected in the Bill. I do not think they are.
The other related point is the general looseness of the definitions in the Bill. I am sure we all recall the striking evidence from Dr Edenborough QC, a distinguished lawyer, who may well end up advising on how disputes in this area might be resolved. That is an important point: we are setting the law, but others will then interpret it. If it is not clear, we will see trouble ahead.
As Dr Edenborough explained in the evidence session,
“‘could have resulted from’ is staggeringly imprecise. Is that ‘likely’? Is that ‘very possible’? What level of probability is it?”—Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 125, Q199.]
In essence, he raised that many things that would be permissible under the Bill and qualify as precision bred organisms would be unclear. The Government need to clarify what they intend here. Without clarity, there is a real risk of challenge. That goes back to my opening point, and I think it will be a thread running through our debates. With the lack of clarity comes uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes a risk to investment, which is exactly opposite to what the Bill is designed to achieve.
That is why we have tabled the amendments—to try to bring the Bill in line with the distinctions the Government have themselves drawn between genetic editing and genetic modification. The amendments would tighten up the Bill, provide clarity of purpose and bring the Bill in line with the Government’s stated aims.
Amendment 1 explicitly rules out transgenesis by adding a new subsection to clause 1, while amendment 2 amends the definition in the subsection (8) definition of “modern biotechnology” to exclude the introduction of “exogenous genetic material”. Both amendments would bring the Bill into line with the stated objectives of the Government. We will seek a division on amendment 1, although I am happy to withdraw amendment 2. We hope the Government can support us on amendment 1.
Jo Churchill
Amendment 1 would exclude from the definition of a precision bred organism any organism that has contained transgenic material during any step of its development. I thank the hon. Member for the amendment, but do not feel that it follows the best scientific advice and evidence and would undermine the purpose of the Bill.
It is important that we follow scientific advice and regulate based on the nature of genetic changes made to organisms, rather than on techniques used to develop them. The scientific advice is clear: if an organism contains genetic changes that could have occurred naturally or by traditional breeding methods, that does not present a greater risk than a traditionally bred counterpart, irrespective of the techniques used to develop it.
No precision bred organism will contain transgenes. Some of its ancestors may have contained them, but those transgenes must have been removed for the organism to be classified as precision bred. That is laid out in the Bill.
The transgenic intermediate stages are important, as they enable the precise changes to be made to the DNA of organisms. The transgenes themselves are then subsequently removed. For example, CRISPR-Cas9 DNA would need to be taken out of precision bred animals and plants.
During the evidence sessions, we heard from Professor Nigel Halford of Rothamsted Research. He is using that approach to develop low-acrylamide wheat—a wheat that can provide public health benefits, as well as broader benefits.
Jo Churchill
During the evidence sessions, we heard from Professor Halford and Professor John Napier, who is developing camelina crops that are high in healthy oils. In both examples that they cited, transgenic DNA introduced during the gene editing process was removed. Under the amendment, both of those examples would fall outside the scope of the Bill, and the plants would be classed as genetically modified organisms, but they are not, because they do not contain any transgenes that are actually part of the process The hon. Member for Cambridge referred to the fact that we can have these little bits of DNA left over in ourselves from viruses and so forth.
We must make sure that we understand what we are looking at. We heard very clearly from Professors Halford and Napier that the techniques are more targeted and therefore very precise, known changes can be made. Therefore we know what we are looking at, and this is stepwise procedure. Some of the narrative infers that the Bill will be passed, and then, tomorrow, the changes will happen. It is not like that; we are talking about the development of science and ensuring that the regulatory framework that we have been working under from 30 years ago, which has been recognised virtually across the world as inadequate, is changed, so that we can keep up with the science.
If we accepted the amendment, it would make the Bill irrelevant. Countries elsewhere with proportionate regulations would be able to exploit the huge potential of the technology as it develops, whereas we would remain impeded by the current legislation. I urge hon. Member for Cambridge to withdraw the amendment relating to the definition of precision bred organisms, although I think he said that he intended to push it to a vote.
Jo Churchill
Yes.
The hon. Gentleman has said that he will not push amendment 2 to a vote. The amendment focuses on the definition of modern biotechnology. The techniques to which he refers were the subject of the European Court of Justice case in 2018, to which he also referred. That finding set us on today’s path. The Court ruled that all organisms produced by the techniques should be regulated as genetically modified organisms, irrespective of whether the end product could have occurred naturally or by traditional breeding.
As we heard from Sam Brooke of the British Society of Plant Breeders in the first evidence session, that ruling resulted in many companies halting their research on gene editing and other precision breeding techniques. Subsequently, the EU has recognised that that finding is not in line with current scientific knowledge or development, and has committed to reviewing its own legislation. That is why I am keen that we share our knowledge with it to help us all move forward.
Under the Bill as currently drafted, organisms produced by the techniques should only be classed as GMOs if the genetic changes they contain could not have occurred naturally, or been produced by traditional breeding methods. That does not mean that we consider that the exogenous DNA must be excluded from the process of producing such organisms altogether, as stated. The key point is that we should focus on the nature of the genetic changes in organisms, which are actually released or marketed, as per the scientific advice from the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment. The broad guidance it produces is very clear. It means that, in order to produce a precision bred organism, developers have to remove exogenous DNA, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 gene used in gene editing, from the organisms. In effect, they are removing the tool they used to make the changes, leaving behind the new trait.
In order to carve out precision bred organisms from the legislation controlling the use of GMOs with the Bill, we have defined the techniques used to produce them as “modern biotechnology”. We are then separating organisms produced by modern biotechnology into GMOs and precision bred organisms in order to ensure that the two regulatory systems dovetail. That term must remain aligned to the GMO legislation, which means continuing to include techniques that introduce exogenous DNA. I am therefore grateful to the hon. Gentleman for withdrawing amendment 2.
Daniel Zeichner
I apologise to Members for detaining them, but I want to speak to the clause because it is a key part of the Bill. We are at this point establishing a new category of a precision bred organism. My worry is that it is not a clear category, not least because only a few months ago another new category was introduced—the higher qualifying plant. The Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022 were discussed in this very Committee room—I remember the Minister and I discussing them—and have come into force, which was an initial step before this Bill was introduced. At the time, I highlighted the warnings from various learned societies that that was not a category that they recognised, and I am afraid the precision bred organism occupies a similarly ill-defined space.
In the Bill, reference is made to other previous SIs, but not to the most recent one. I notice that the SI from 2002 is referenced in subsection 3, where “modern biotechnologies” are defined, but I cannot see any reference to this year’s SI, so perhaps the Minister will tell us what is happening with that. Paragraph 3.2.2.1 of the impact statement makes it clear that the intention is to revoke the SI and reintroduce the provisions in the Bill, but it certainly is not clear to me where in the Bill that is being done, so I hope the Minister will elucidate. Perhaps it is hidden in the secondary legislation provisions, in which case it is quite opaque, which is part of our general concern about the Bill.
The danger is that we could be in a position where we unintentionally have two pieces of law governing this area and laying out two different definitions at the same time—the qualifying higher plant and the precision bred organism. I want to make this point because it is important, given some of the contributions that have already been made. There is a further problem as the European Union has a different term for what looks like an attempt to define much the same thing—an NGT, or a product of new genetic techniques. I do not want to rile Government Members by suggesting that that might be a better name for what we are doing, but it probably captures more accurately what we have discussed so far, because these are indeed new genetic techniques, and will probably go on being new genetic techniques.
Does that matter? I think it might, and that is the problem. It goes back to the points made earlier by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith. The movement of goods and materials across borders is vexed at the best of times, and pretty fraught at the moment. The trade implications are explored in section 6 of the impact assessment, which makes interesting reading with some quite bold assertions. I will refer to them because, although the view of the Government is that this probably will not be a problem, they do to their credit go into what could occur as a consequence of it becoming a problem. It is pretty alarming. Should there be a dispute, the impact assessment states:
“This would have a relatively significant impact on UK producers…UK crop-related food exporters are heavily dependent on EU consumers’ demand. Approximately 55% of all crop-related food exports from the UK are to the EU…And so, it would be difficult to replace EU demand. Therefore, there is a possibility for a portion of the £8.56 billion worth of crop related exports to the EU to decrease, potentially outweighing the scale of direct benefits to business. Nonetheless”—
This is very reassuring—
“this represents only 2.5% of our annual total value of exported goods and 5.4% of our annual value of exported goods to the EU. And so, even if UK crop-related food exports are maximally impacted, the overall impact on the UK balance of trade is minimal.”
Well, I do not think it will come as a great reassurance to those involved in the sector if that is part of the potential risk.
There are big risks here. Not only do we have that issue, but there is also the wider issue of the Cartagena protocol, which governs the movement of these organisms across borders. I suspect that by introducing the precision bred organism, we are introducing a new category, which again leaves us open to challenge. In all these cases, the argument will always be, “Is it in anybody else’s interest to challenge?” What we know from all these trade negotiations is that if there is any possibility of someone picking a fight, they can always use something like this to pursue it.
In conclusion, we are stepping into some tricky territory. We generally hope that other countries will come with us in similar ways and that any differences can be resolved without recourse to challenge, but we should be aware of those risks and proceed with care. Investors will ask themselves a simple question: is there a risk here, and if so, does the potential benefit outweigh the potential disadvantage? It has been suggested—indeed we heard it in the evidence from the Agricultural Industries Confederation—that there is a concern that people will look at the legislation and think, “This is not very certain or clear. We will wait and see what others do first.” Far from speeding things up, we could end up delaying them. The Government need to show that these questions have been addressed and answered. This is a small clause, but it has occupied quite a lot of time and is hugely significant to how we go forward.
Jo Churchill
The approach we have taken to regulating genetically modified organisms has not kept pace with scientific progress. The hon. Gentleman referenced the UN’s Cartagena protocol on biosafety, in which “modern biotechnology” is a term used. Its definition of modern biotechnology aligns with techniques such as those listed in sub-paragraphs 5(1)(a) and 5(1)(b) of the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) Regulations 2002. We are using the same list of techniques in this clause—see subsection (3)—to ensure that the new regime fits neatly alongside the one that regulates GMOs without leaving gaps or overlaps, which I think is the right course of action to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks, and without bringing any organisms that are not currently regulated as GMOs into the new regime regulating PBOs.
Some 30 years ago, modern biotech was used to transfer DNA between very different organisms. It can now be used to introduce changes that could have occurred naturally and through the use of traditional processes. As we have heard, that makes it much more targeted. The legislation controlling organisms produced by modern biotechnology needs to reflect these developments and our increased knowledge. Most notably, the science is telling us that we should not regulate precision bred organisms differently from their traditionally bred counterparts.
Clause 1 describes precision bred organisms, which we are carving out from legislation on the release and marketing of genetically modified organisms. The definitions have been drafted using the latest scientific advice, and they are designed to ensure that this regulatory system can work. We are taking a critical step towards proportionate, science-led regulation of genetic technologies. As highlighted by Sam Brooke in the evidence sessions, the Bill will encourage greater research, innovation and investment in precision bred technologies. In doing so, it will lead to environmental, health and economic benefits for the UK.
It is vital that we add precision breeding to our toolbox to help us address some of the challenges we know we are facing, not only as a country but globally. The hon. Member for Cambridge referred to the SI. This will be revoked when we introduce secondary legislation after the Bill passes. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Meaning of “plant” and “animal”.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Jo Churchill
Clause 2 defines “plant” and “animal” for the purposes of the Bill. The definitions in subsections (1) and (2) cover multicellular plants and animals; they do not cover micro-organisms. The clause expressly excludes humans from the scope of the Bill. Under current legislation, humans and human embryos cannot be classed as genetically modified organisms, and nor will they be classed as precision bred organisms under the Bill. Subsections (3) to (5) establish the developmental stage at which a plant or animal falls into the scope of the Bill, by defining what is meant by an organism.
Daniel Zeichner
I am sure that everyone will be relieved to know that this is going to be a quicker debate than that on the previous clause. The clause appears to be quite straightforward, defining the terms “plant” and “animal”. I have one question. Subsections (3) and (4) mention gametes. Subsection (3)(a) states that references to plants and animals
“include an embryo and all subsequent developmental stages of an organism”.
For plants, references include
“a seed or a vegetative propagule”
but
“do not include a gamete.”
Could the Minister explain why gametes are not included in the definitions and what purpose their mention in the clause serves?
Jo Churchill
Please bear with me as I go through my copious notes. Will the hon. Gentleman repeat what part of the clause he was referring to?
Daniel Zeichner
Subsections (3) and (4). What is the purpose of those subsections, because it is not entirely clear to me?
Jo Churchill
The gamete contains only half of the genetic code required to reproduce a whole organism. A whole functioning plant or animal cannot be generated from a gamete and is therefore not considered an organism for the purposes of the Bill. I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.
Daniel Zeichner
It is certainly an answer to the question—I am not sure it is an answer I fully appreciate and understand, but I will go away and look at it further. I am grateful to her for that answer.
Jo Churchill
I am very grateful for the question. As he and I both know, I have learned an awful lot about all these particular things going over all the details. If there is anything further, I would be happy to answer.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Restrictions on release of precision bred organism in England
Daniel Zeichner
I beg to move amendment 32, in clause 3, page 3, line 35, at end insert—
“(c) the organism has been developed for or in connection with one or more of the following purposes—
(i) producing food in a way that protects or enhances a healthy, resilient and biodiverse natural environment;
(ii) growing and managing plants or animals in a way that mitigates or adapts to climate change;
(iii) producing food in a way that prevents, reduces or protects from environmental hazards;
(iv) protecting or improving the health or welfare of animals;
(v) conserving native animals or genetic resources relating to any such animal;
(vi) protecting or improving the health of plants;
(vii) reducing the use of pesticides and artificial fertiliser;
(viii) conserving plants grown or used in carrying on an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity, their wild relatives or genetic resources relating to any such plant;
(ix) protecting or improving the quality of soil;
(x) supporting or improving human health and well-being;
(xi) supporting or improving the sustainable use of resources.”.
This amendment would require that a precision bred organism has been developed to provide a public benefit, if it is to be released into the environment.
Jo Churchill
I agree very strongly that we should allow our farmers and fishermen to optimise research, with the appropriate checks and balances, to ensure they can bring to market produce that is trusted by the consumer and safe. That is exactly what our system has been set up to deliver. It is really important that they can use cutting-edge science to help them deliver those benefits. I believe we are on the same trajectory; we are just having a worthwhile discussion about whether things should be on the face of the Bill or should be embedded in our systems.
Daniel Zeichner
Will the Minister comment on the point I made about the development of herbicide-resistant varieties? We know there has been an issue with glyphosate and so on. That is not necessarily something that we would all welcome. Is there anything in the Bill that would allow the Government to express a view on whether that is beneficial?
Jo Churchill
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to carry on speaking, I may well get to his point. The research is there to drive forward the ability to grow sustainably. He referred to the altruistic way in which Bill Angus approaches his work. We also heard from Professor Cathie Martin. She had that enthusiasm, but I am sure that many Members heard her contention that if she could get more of the population eating more fruit and vegetables, she would feel that she had really driven things forward and used these technologies to deliver a public good.
Although I understand the intention behind the proposal, I do not think it is necessary because it applies to release into the environment. That is principally covered in field trials, which are crucial to building our understanding of how genetic changes impact organisms under field conditions. They are an integral part of pure research, as well as breeding programmes.
Once again, I come back to the fact that we are at the start of this journey. We already know that the UK is delivering positive research. Professor Martin from the John Innes Centre spoke about the vitamin D tomatoes that her group is developing. We also heard about her commitment to strive towards improving the food we eat for the benefit of our health. It is important that such research proposals, which are often supplemented by money from the public purse, both in Scotland and in England and Wales, go through these assessments. We did not hear from just one person; we heard from many conducting the research. We should be proud of the research and the regulatory framework, which I believe is in place through ACRE, the varieties listing and the animal welfare declaration, for products brought to market—we will discuss that when we come to the provisions in part 3.
We do not think it is necessary to place restrictions on research using these technologies. We have no evidence to suggest that developers are doing anything that would fall outside the purpose of the Bill. The checks and balances, and the fact that ultimately it can be withdrawn if there is a concern over the technology—that is later in the Bill—give us what we need. We are striving to deliver public good.
As can be seen in the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Environment Act 2021, and in the sustainable farming incentive and environmental land management schemes, we are committed to developing a more sustainable and resilient food system, to ensuring and even enhancing animal health and welfare, and to protecting the environment. Recently, we announced the food strategy, which sets out a plan to make sure that we have a food system fit for the future, with sustainability from farm to fork and from catch to plate. We want to seize the opportunities and ensure everyone has access to nutritious and healthy food.
11 am
We are also committed to funding innovation. We have put over £130 million into joint funding with UK Research and Innovation for food systems research and innovation, £100 million into the UK seafood fund, and £270 million into farming innovation. We have invested £11 million to support new research to drive improvements in understanding the relationship between food and health. In total, that is over half a billion pounds, which should show the level of the Government’s commitment. Through the net zero strategy and the national adaptation programme, the Government have as a top priority mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Our commitment to the environment is demonstrated through the 25-year environment plan. The Bill can help with all of that. We see precision breeding as an enabling tool to help us to achieve objectives across these critical areas. Public good is very much embedded in what we are already doing and aligned with the interests of our researchers in the UK, and the checks and balances are there to ensure it.
I will end by restating the principle of the Bill, which is to regulate these technologies more proportionately to their risk. Placing additional regulatory requirements goes against that principle, and against the science and evidence. I ask the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.
Daniel Zeichner
We have had an interesting and wide-ranging exchange, which touched on a series of the broader principles behind the Bill.
To respond to the interventions from Government Back Benchers, my concern is that when we look at the power relationships in the food system, we see that farmers and producers are not always in the strongest position. Quite often, they are under pressure, and they will be under particular pressure given the price issues that they face at the moment. Frankly, the people who are looking to invest in these new technologies, particularly the big players, will look for proper returns. That is perfectly proper; it is exactly what we would expect them to do. From the point of view of the individual producers, whether of crops or animals, people further up the chain may, in essence, be saying, “We’ve now got this tool and we want you to use it.” It is pretty clear that a lot of farmers pretty much have to do what they are instructed to do by people further up the chain. Consequently, the question whether something is in the “public good” or not becomes a very difficult one for people who may well want to do the right thing.
It also goes back to my question, which I am afraid the Minister did not address, about herbicide-resistant traits. That has been an issue previously, and we know that not all the developers of these technologies are looking to achieve the wider public good. Sometimes, all they are seeking to achieve is market domination and a significant return for themselves. That is not surprising, because that is what some of them are in business to do. What are we as legislators to do to protect wider society and our producers from that kind of pressure? I am not saying that will necessarily happen immediately, but the danger will be that if there is not any protection against that kind of thing, it can happen.
That is why I genuinely do not understand why the Government would not want this amendment to the clause, because everything the Minister said, which I think all of us would agree with in terms of the potential benefits and the good things that people are trying to do, would all be captured within a public benefit test like the one we propose, and only the things that we would not want to see would be discouraged by it. There is nothing to fear. Perhaps we should have spent more time on this during the evidence sessions, but my understanding is that other jurisdictions have introduced some kind of public benefit test for exactly the reasons I am outlining.
The issue goes right back—and I think we will keep going back to it—to where we started: what kind of regulatory framework we are setting up. At this point, I have to say that I think there is an ideological divide between the Government and Labour. Essentially, this is a highly deregulatory Bill—essentially it is saying, “Leave it to the market”. The market will do what the market will do: pursue the best possible return. Whether that always delivers the right societal return in environmental benefits and so on is a moot point. I think there is a genuine difference of opinion between us. The Opposition are clear that we would include such a public benefit test, because we are not convinced that the proposed framework will always work for the public good.
I will not waste the Committee’s time by having endless, pointless votes. I will withdraw amendment 32, but the Opposition would like a vote on amendment 10, because we think that it is significant. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Release of precision bred organism: notification requirements
Amendment proposed: 10, in Clause 4, page 4, line 24, leave out “negative” and insert “affirmative”.—[Daniel Zeichner.]
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Daniel Zeichner
Clause 5 concerns restrictions on marketing precision bred organisms in England. I do not have a lot to say about it, other than to explore with the Minister how it will be determined that a precision bred organism is indeed that; this goes back to the earlier, earlier debate.
My understanding is that the determination will be based on the definition, agreed by the Committee, as something edited using modern biotechnology in a way that could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding processes. Can the Minister say more about how it will be determined that the organism could have been produced in that kind of way? What kind of evidence will be sought and how will the whole process work? It is not entirely clear to me from the Bill as written.
Jo Churchill
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the ACRE process and the guidance from the penultimate evidence giver, Nigel Moore. The ACRE guidance lays out how it will be determined, which is part 1 of the PBO assessment. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the guidance notes because they lay out very specifically and clearly how that will be determined.
Daniel Zeichner
I suppose my concern is that this seems to be a very closed world in which a group of eminent and expert people are involved in making judgments. There is no external input. Given that all those people basically work in the same institutes, is it not a rather closed system?
Jo Churchill
I believe nomination to ACRE works to the Nolan principles. Yes, those people are eminent, but they are also held in high esteem and regard and have to work to those Nolan principles when acting in the capacity of their position on that committee. It is difficult to unpick who the hon. Gentleman would see as the most qualified, if it is not those who are elected by their peers and go through an appropriate system. They must have the expertise because it is important that those who are determining know what they are doing; otherwise, with the greatest of respect to the hon. Gentleman, he and I would be a lot less enabled.
Daniel Zeichner
I return to a point I made when we discussed the statutory instrument. I am in no way trying to question the integrity of those who sit on those committees. However, when we look at their declaration of interests, almost all—perhaps inevitably—are linked to some of the major industries in the field.
I ask the question again. Does the Minister genuinely believe that the system and set-up will fill the public with confidence or will they look at it and worry?
Jo Churchill
I think most people will see it as proportionate and want to have those who are expert in the field making judgments. It is they who will say whether the technology is a PBO and can move forward. The hon. Gentleman’s argument slightly falls down because the issue applies to just about every overarching body, in that they have, by definition, some knowledge of the issue on which they are deciding.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Gareth Johnson.)
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Third sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerThursday 30th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 View all Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 30 June 2022 - (30 Jun 2022)
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor Henderson: There are two sides to my answer, one of which is the scientific side. The scientific body of knowledge is, of course, shared across the world and certainly across the four nations, and there is strong expertise in gene editing and the technologies we are talking about today in the devolved nations, as well as in England—certainly, those strengths are quite considerable in Scotland and Wales. The UK as a whole is very strong in this area, scientifically.
At a governmental level, there have also been significant discussions between Government scientists. I talk to my counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and I have been sharing information with other officials and sometimes with Ministers in the devolved nations as well. I think there is agreement about the science across the four nations, but not always about the policy direction.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
I will not be repeating the questions we went through last time, but go on to some other things. I was particularly struck by the written evidence from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, members of which we will be hearing from later, and I want to put to you a couple of the questions that were raised in their evidence. They talked about something that I do not think we were aware of, which is that the Department is looking at its advisory frameworks in general. In reference to the Bill, obviously the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment looks like it will play a significant part, so could you say a little bit about what discussions have been had as to whether that is really the appropriate body, or whether some new body should be formed to oversee these complicated trade-offs and issues?
Professor Henderson: There are a number of things that that might refer to. There is a periodic review of how we get advice—scientific and otherwise—into DEFRA, and such a review is ongoing at the moment. I think it is entirely safe to say that that will not impinge on ACRE’s activity. It serves a critical function already, and has an expanded role through this Bill to identify when things are precision bred organisms and when they are not. To me, that body seems to be the right place to attend to that type of decision about whether something is a PBO or not. There are also questions about animal welfare, and it may be that other bodies are required to adjudicate in that area, but that is for further down the line.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Dr Campbell: That is a key question. When we talk about whether gene editing will be beneficial or detrimental from an animal welfare point of view, as we have just been discussing, we need the evidence to look at that. I do not feel that the Bill as drafted will provide a mechanism for doing that.
At the moment, the Bill has a mechanism specifically for applications for marketing authorisations to be referred to the animal welfare advisory body. It is somewhat open in Bill as to exactly what that body is, as I understand it; it could be an existing body, or a new one. What will be crucial is that we have a proper mechanism in place to have oversight not only of the marketing and the release of any genetically edited animal organisms, but of the actual processes that are going on with the so-called precision breeding, so the animal welfare advisory body needs to have oversight of those processes as well, and that needs to be an obligatory oversight. It needs to have an obligatory reporting role too.
This needs to be an independent body, with suitable expertise to understand and interrogate both the basic science and the animal welfare science, and to understand and explain the ethics around that. It must be independent of Government and of scientists, and it must be independent of any lobbying—around trade, for example. Then it needs to be able to look both proactively and retrospectively at data about the health and welfare of animals that are produced using so-called precision breeding techniques. It would be an independent oversight body—in my mind’s eye, very analogous to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority—that can take an independent look at the data and then make recommendations for policy changes in light of that data, as the science develops.
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fourth sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerThursday 30th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 View all Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 30 June 2022 - (30 Jun 2022)
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
Penny Hawkins: Indeed. I think some very useful lessons can be learnt from the way in which genetically altered laboratory animals are regulated, but I emphasise that, within a laboratory setting, genetically altered laboratory animals include those in which genes have been inserted from other species. We are very clear that within this Bill we are talking just about gene editing and not about deliberate transgenesis, although there have been some discussions about potential accidental additions of exogenous material.
When genetically altered animals are created under the ASPA, a licence is required for their creation, because, obviously, regulated scientific procedures are required in order to generate these animals—procedures that relate to, for example, administering substances to animals so that they produce large numbers of eggs, or super-ovulation, removing those eggs from animals, preparing other animals to receive the gene edited pregnancies, and so on. All those require licensing, and then, when the line of genetically altered animals has been created, they have to be, as I mentioned, phenotyped. That is a battery of behavioural and biochemical tests to look at what the eventual genetic alteration was and to look at the whole animal that this creates—the phenotype.
There is a system of licensing under which the impact on the animal is categorised as mild, moderate or severe. If a researcher or research team can demonstrate that the gene edit they have done is stable for at least two generations, and if they have phenotyping data and animal welfare assessment data to demonstrate that the animal is not going to suffer as a result of being gene edited—the impact would have to be what is referred to as below threshold; not even mild suffering—then, in those circumstances, they can apply for the breeding of that particular line to be released from the controls of ASPA. That would mean that those animals would still be bred in a laboratory under all the codes of practice that normally apply to laboratory animals, but a licence would not be required in order to breed the animals, because there is no risk to their welfare because of the gene edit.
Those are the safeguards in place for laboratory animals. The issue with farmed animals is that, obviously, if they are released from ASPA and their breeding is then controlled or regulated by this PB legislation, they will not be held in a laboratory setting, with all the controls that that entails; they will join the national herd or flock. That is a very different environment, and it can be far from clear how the genes will express themselves once they are in that environment.
Also, this Bill presumably applies to other animals: companion animals, wild animals and sporting animals. At the moment, for example, projects are under way to look at gene editing grey squirrels to result in fewer females being born or male infertility. Presumably, their breeding will also be covered by the Bill. And when they are released, they really will be released into the wild. Again, that is an extremely different environment. So the safeguards that laboratory animals have will be severely reduced or absent for other types of animal.
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor Hartley: Indeed. That can happen as early as the funding agencies that fund the research all the way through the development and design process.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Professor Hartley: One of the challenges the Bill faces is that it does not address the results from the consultation that DEFRA held. Some important issues came up through that consultation—around transparency, traceability, labelling and engagement—that do not appear to be addressed at the moment. I also think the focus of the Bill on the consultation has been around agriculture, and yet applications in conservation and environmental management are also possible in the Bill. There are a range of stakeholders in those areas who have not been sufficiently engaged, I believe, in the development of the Bill.
Jo Churchill
Q
Ed Barker: To take those one by one, certainly the opportunities are there, and the uptake opportunities would certainly come in. A question we often get asked is: “How soon can the benefits be realised?” That is very difficult, particularly in combinable crops, which obviously have a much longer cycle of research and turnaround to be able to realise the benefits. From our point of view, however, the Bill’s benefit is that it provides long-term flexibility—five, 15 or 20 years—for growers, farmers and agri-supply businesses around the UK. We know the world is moving on quite quickly. We have heard about Canada and Japan, and even the EU is not static on this issue. There is a huge amount of interest. If nothing else, we are preparing ourselves for the inevitable demands on innovation in the future.
For take-up from a farming point of view, one area that we really want to focus on, particularly in the trade, is what we call the fungibility of goods. If you take cereals, for example, a real benefit to growers at the moment is that there are multiple markets available to them. For feed wheat, there are markets in the animal feed sector. It can also be exported or go to biofuel sectors. Having that flexibility is a real benefit to a lot of growers, and it provides a lot of resilience in businesses.
A short-term challenge that we could see is that if a product were considered to be gene edited, of course, at the moment in the EU that would be considered GM. As a result, we would have to go through quite an extensive approvals process to export that product to the European Union. That is a big part of the fungibility and flexibility of the product, so in the short term, we are only really likely to see benefits if it goes into the UK or England as a market.
However, a potential opportunity would be to have within the Bill a parallel process in place whereby authorisations were made for approval in the European Union when a product is approved for release by the Secretary of State. That would make a big difference, because inevitably, no farmer or grower is going to grow a crop that has a very limited market available to it. The next witness will probably be able to talk about that in a lot more detail. That is a real difficulty, and in the trade, if you are trying to buy and sell these products and you have a very limited outlet market in place, you might actually find that the product has less of a market the more of it you have, and there may be a deficit. To take the example of assurance in the supply chain at the moment, if you have unassured wheat, it usually trades at a discount because the market available to it is less. I do not want that to stop the Bill from progressing, but it is a short-term to medium-term challenge that we have to recognise, given the EU’s importance. In the past year, for example, we have exported about 1 million tonnes of cereal grains to the European Union, including the Republic of Ireland, so that flexibility is important.
Labelling has been mentioned. I think overall, labelling would be extremely difficult for the trade, because you need to label something right the way from start to finish. Let us take milling wheat as an example. You have to be able to define whatever the label is—gene edited or non-gene edited, GM or organic—and demonstrate that across the whole supply chain, and the compliance is quite strong. To do that, you have to segregate, and segregating throughout the supply chain is extremely challenging, very expensive and very difficult to do. The reason why it happens, for example, in the organic sector is that there is a market for it; the organic control bodies ensure that, but there is a market for it to ensure the additional costs of segregation are put in place.
With precision breeding—which, according to the Bill documents, can be bred by conventional means; it is just that it is quicker—the market would not see any great benefit from that. There has to be a pull factor for labelling, which would usually come as a result of added value, a health claim or a fortification, and the FSA and other bodies would already be asking for that evidence. If you are providing a claim on allergens or fortification with vitamins, the burden of compliance and providing that information will probably be much higher than anything that you do on precision breeding or gene editing labelling. The traders in the agri-supply business and throughout the supply chain would see no benefits whatsoever from labelling. In the trade, it would probably kill off a lot of the provisions in the Bill completely, because it just would not be economically viable to do.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Ed Barker: It would depend on the approval processes set out by the FSA, in this case. Breeders, companies, developers and the market would look at the process to go through for receiving authorisation as laid out in the Bill, whatever it might be for—an environmental benefit, lower inputs at the crop end, or a fortification or a food benefit at the other end—and if they feel that it is too laborious and too challenging, and too much evidence or time is required to do it, it is very unlikely that those technologies will move ahead, so the implementation of this is really important.
We see it, for example, in the UK for certain minor use crops such as linseed, where a number of businesses have had to seek authorisation for individual farm protection products because they are essential for that particular crop. The problem is that it is often unviable to make that authorisation because the crop in the UK is such a small size. That does not necessarily mean it will always be unviable—far from it. It depends entirely on the role of the FSA and the approval processes that are set in place.
It could well be that UK markets are available for precision bred goods, whatever they might be. We have mentioned animal feed, but other food items and even non-food and feed products could have a genuine market uptake. For example, a retailer may well want to seek to remove or lessen the amount of soy in monogastric diets, and may look to work with a plant breeder to develop a crop that has a high protein source. That could be carried right the way through to the retailer’s end products. In those situations, I can see it as viable in the short term, but it depends on the type of products we are looking at and the type of markets we have in the UK.
Jo Churchill
No, that was perfect. It was an interesting contrast between the field—literally—and to how this can help on a global basis, rather than from a more academic standpoint. It is an interesting juxtaposition to what we heard earlier. Thank you very much.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Paul Temple: Obviously, I am not an expert in these particular areas, but I do not think we have anything to hide, so public registers—registers of seed varieties and what we are growing—are really important. What you put in the public domain, to my mind, has to be measured by what benefit or what risk there actually is. I suppose my frustration with the field scale evaluation trials was that, by making everything public, it just highlighted those who wanted to protest, rather than actually look at the science. So I think is it really important that whatever element goes into this Bill is done from a science perspective and a risk-based perspective. I do not have any problem with being open as to what is happening on my farm. I think it is really important, but there just has to be some kind of sensible balance, so that it does not drag things down to where you cannot do anything.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Ross Houston: Obviously, there are measures to try to stop escapees, but they happen from salmon farms. I think that CRISPR precision breeding technologies are a very promising route, and indeed the subject of much R&D, to ensure that the production animals are sterilised so there would not be any genetic introgression with wild strains. The way we are thinking about it, at least, is that we would be looking to farm sterile Atlantic salmon in the future. That is a desirable thing to do anyway, but in particular if we were to introduce gene editing in the future.
The other part to it would be, I suppose, the impact of issues such as sea lice, which I mentioned before, which could also impact on wild salmon. But, there again, that is within our toolbox, and the R&D is heading in this direction. That is what we would want to use the technology for: to try to tackle these problems in a sustainable, environmentally friendly and animal welfare-friendly way. So I see that these technologies have significant promise for reducing any potential impacts on wild Atlantic salmon.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
First, you will all recall the public confidence issues from 20 or 30 years ago, and that is one of the challenges now. I would like to hear whether you think the Bill has enough in it to reassure the public around some of those issues. Secondly, and in some ways related to that, most of you are plant focused, but this Bill obviously introduces animals, which is a very different set of issues and is, in some ways, perhaps more challenging. Do you think they should have been separated out? Thirdly, what do you think the public register will be used for and what benefit does it bring?
Finally, specifically for Cathie and Wendy, I had a constituent contact me, who has an issue around vitamin D being added to tomatoes. How will that constituent know whether these tomatoes have been modified in that way in future? It touches on Professor Harwood’s final point, and goes back to my initial point, on the question of labelling and reassurance. Where should that balance be struck?
Professor Harwood: Shall I take the last question first? We have talked a lot about labelling. If there was something like a high vitamin D tomato, there would be a nutritional difference, which I imagine would be picked up on labelling. That would make sense.
Professor Martin: You would probably want to advertise it.
Professor Harwood: You probably would, yes. Where there is something that might be appropriate for certain members of public and not others, clearly you would want some sort of labelling.
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Second sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerTuesday 28th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 View all Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 28 June 2022 - (28 Jun 2022)
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
I want to explore something slightly different: the role of advisory bodies. You began to touch on that in your last answer. The Bill at the moment is very thin on what the advisory bodies are there to do. In some of your written evidence, both your organisations suggested that the different bodies should have some kind of remit to look at the wider public good. Could you say a little bit about that? I have been taken by the example of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, or some aspects of the work that it does.
Professor Lovell-Badge: I have been very much involved in the HFEA public engagement exercises. When you are considering a broad area, or potential uses and outcomes, it is really important to have proper public engagement, including democracy, dialogue, or however you want to refer to it, where you really get to understand what the public will think about a topic.
When it comes to assessing technical aspects, it will be challenging. It is fine to have a lay member on a panel, but I do not know whether consulting the public about really detailed, technical issues might be challenging. It depends on what the advisory committee’s role is and whether it is to look more broadly at potential uses and outcomes or to focus on the specific techniques that are being used.
Jo Churchill
Right, okay. I am not sure that I entirely understand why you feel it would be any different with GE, which is a completely different technique—with all due respect—from GM. If I could tease out that animal welfare point, you are predicating your argument on the idea that everything is detrimental on a welfare front. Surely the eradication of avian flu—particularly as we have had the challenge in the last year—would be beneficial to free-range birds as well. I am keen that the rest of the Committee has its chance to contribute, though.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Roger Kerr: From an organic regulatory basis, as Chris has already indicated, GE is still defined as GM. We need to be much clearer about what GE is being defined as, and we still do not have that clarity. As things stand, it is not allowed within the organic regulation, so the risk is where there is a lack of co-existence measures in place, which means that organic crops are contaminated. Organic consumers make these purchasing decisions because they believe they are avoiding GM, and that is a right they should have.
By not having robust co-existence measures in place, we are obviously putting our consumers at risk, because they are purchasing organic products on the basis that they do not believe they are consuming GM. It is a personal choice—I am not saying that you should not—and the organic sector is not saying per se that we should not have genetic editing. What we are saying is that it is incompatible with organic. Organic is out there, and there is a market for it, as Steve has clearly stated. There is a significant opportunity, both domestically and internationally, for the UK organic sector.
We should protect the organic sector, and there should be some visibility in terms of GE—where it is being grown, what is being grown and what the potential risks associated with that are for the organic sector—so we can ensure that the organic sector remains free from GM or GE, as it is at the moment. There is concern that if we are looking to provide consumers with the choice of having GE or not, we will end up with quite a significant cost within the supply chain to ensure co-existence, in terms of space and time, between GM and non-GM. This is not organic per se; it is just GM and non-GM. We will then have to have extra storage, more vehicle movements and a much higher level of testing. There are concerns that, without real clarity about what is going on and where the potential points of contamination arise, a significant cost will be borne by the food sector, which is already under significant pressure.
Joanna Lewis: I understand that you are addressing us as the organic industry and the organic sector, but I just want to reiterate that the Soil Association is a charity of 70 years’ standing that represents all citizens, farmers, growers and scientists who want to see a mainstream transition to agroecological farming and regenerative farming for climate, nature and health.
The response to the consultation on the Bill—85% of people and businesses were opposed—reflects a deeper unease not just about the safety issues and technicalities around the distinction between gene editing and GMOs. That is what I was trying to bring through with reference to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’s public dialogue. It is really important to emphasise the very legitimate public concerns about the fact that breeding as a whole—plant and animal breeding—has been on an unhelpful trajectory that is not up to the challenge of the Government’s goals on sustainable farming transition. We therefore need to ensure that we are not accelerating that trend through carte blanche deregulation.
There is an opportunity to put good governance at the heart of this Bill, set that public interest test, and ensure full supply chain traceability, transparency and labelling for citizens who want and deserve the right to choose whether this is the solution for them. I would not want it narrowed down to saying we are representing an economic sector. This is a broader movement, and it is very much one for mainstream transition.
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor Oldroyd: There are currently very tight restrictions on validating the health and safety of GM products. For products produced by conventional breeding, we also have tests with regards to their performance in the environment, their performance relative to other varieties and their health. We have a robust regulatory framework in place that addresses the safety of the consumer, and it has served us well over many decades. I cannot think of an example where we can say, “Okay, this line has caused genuine risk to human health,” and that is because of the regulatory framework that exists.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
My questions are about public confidence. We know that this has been a vexed debate over many years. There is fantastic science being done in Cambridge, but it often strikes me that the wider public have very little idea about it; that is hardly a unique issue there. Do you think there are sufficient measures in the Bill to secure the public confidence that is needed? If not, what extra could be put in to secure that?
Dr Harrison: The key point is proportionality. In all the preamble to the Bill, it is suggested that there is a proportionate response to how the technology is regulated. What we must never forget about gene editing and the scope of the types of changes that can be introduced is that they are indistinguishable from nature, so fundamentally we are not doing anything that could not happen or arise through natural processes.
The level and proportionality of the regulation of, and the transparency of, those products is important, and it is important that the public are aware, which I suppose is why there are systems in the Bill to register intent to put into the existing system gene edited products, but I do not think we need to stretch much beyond that. We have, as Bill Angus said, very well established regulatory frameworks in which to evaluate the performance of crops. We have the DUS system—distinctiveness, uniformity and stability—and we have the value for cultivatable use system. They have shown over many years that when varieties are put on the market, they are safe. The legislation that exists beyond that gives any country the right, if they find a problem with a variety, to remove that from what is the common catalogue in the EU, or, in our case, from our national list. As long as the proportionality is adhered to, the Bill is appropriate.
Professor Oldroyd: There are a lot of studies that have looked at the general public’s position on biotechnology. There are really only a few at either extreme—who absolutely support it outright or who are very scared of it. Most of the general public are looking to people like me—to scientists—and to the regulatory framework to define what is safe to consume.
Within precision breeding, as is intrinsic to the Bill, is the fact that these are events that could happen by exactly the same natural diversity and so already could be introduced, theoretically, through a conventional breeding process. One of the issues is that some—in particular, those on the previous panel—have taken as a presumption that anything that is biotechnology is inherently dangerous, and that is not correct. It is not correct to say that just because it is being developed by this mechanism there is an inherent danger in that approach. That is the erroneous position to take when comparing with conventional breeding.
We use many varieties that have been generated by mutagenesis breeding, by double haploid production. These are conventional breeding approaches. There is very little about gene editing that is different from that in the end product; it is just how you get to that event.
Jo Churchill
Q
Sam Brooke: As a whole, the BSPB is incredibly supportive of the Bill and what it is trying to achieve. Our main concern would be around clause 3 and a risk assessment around food and feed. All the scientific evidence would show that there is no greater risk in using these technologies than in using what we currently are in conventional or traditional breeding—or whatever we want to call it—so I feel that there is no reason for that extra risk assessment step. We are very concerned that that could act as a blocker to early stage research and development.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
The key issue is getting the balance right between reassuring the public and following the science. However, to many of us, this Bill looks very thin on the “reassuring the public” side—so much so that, despite the FSA and its polling showing that the public would really like more information, as the Bill stands, that is not the way it will be. How convinced are you that the issue of public confidence will be resolved in favour of the science?
Sam Brooke: Having lived and breathed plant breeding for just over 20 years, I think we should have shouted more, and earlier, about how regulated the industry is, both at plant-breeding and seed level. We have a rigorous testing system in the national list process. Each variety undergoes at least two years of testing before it comes to the market. Every variety must be on that UK national list before it can go into sale. All that is underpinned, obviously, by laws on food safety, novel foods, and so on. We have this incredible history of safety of plant breeding in the UK, and of bringing those products into the market in a safe, sensible and secure way.
On top of the registration process, we also have seed marketing legislation, which really protects the user. Naturally, it protects the consumer in that it ensures that all seeds that go out into the market meet a common and prescribed standard. I think that is really important, and it is probably our fault as breeders that we have not shouted in the past about how legislated the process of producing new varieties and seeds actually is. That is what we need to go out and talk about, and tell the consumers. I am a consumer—we are all consumers—and I think, had consumers had more information and knowledge about how regulated varieties and seeds already are, we might already be a step closer to having that absolute trust.
Jo Churchill
Q
Dr Tinch: That is an interesting question. I think all livestock breeding is now very much international, so it is difficult for small companies based in one country to operate successfully. There are a number of large international operators in genetics. In aquaculture in particular, we are not as far down the development of the species as some of the terrestrial species. We have been farming and breeding fish for about 40 to 50 years, so we are domesticating many of the species already. We are working hard to improve things such as disease resistance. There is good evidence, and we have seen very good examples, of genes that can be used to improve health and welfare of fish—particularly with Atlantic salmon, where a Scottish group identified a gene that accounted for over 80% of the variation of disease resistance. That was bred into the salmon populations and is now in most farmed salmon populations, making them resistant to the infectious pancreatic necrosis virus.
I see the implementation of gene editing allowing us to do similar things. Without having to go into the field, if you like, and look for animals that are carrying favourable mutations, we are able to identify genes that affect things like disease resistance, make targeted changes in those genes and make fish resistant as a result. I think that is a very positive way of taking breeding forward. It is not the only tool in the toolbox, but it certainly allows us to do some very interesting and valuable things for the health and welfare of the animals we farm.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Dr Tinch: That is a tough question. The association between improving the ability of animals to perform and changing disease resistance, and the idea that that means we are going to increase stocking density and make welfare worse, is very simplistic, and it is not as simple as that. That is not the way farmers tend to operate, and it is not the way that breeders operate practically. That argument is raised quite often as being a reason not to improve farm animals, but it is not like that.
We should use the technologies that we have to improve animals. We are putting them in a farming environment that is different from the environment they evolved in. We have to adapt them, using genetics, to the farming environment, and that is what we aim to do. We aim to improve health, welfare and the sustainability of the animals from an economic point of view and an ecological point of view, and we use a number of different methods to take that forward. The tool is genetics, and gene editing is the next step forward in our ability to change different things. We should look at how we aim to improve animals in a constructive and welfare-driven way.
On the trade issues, if the legislation put us in a position where we were restricted in the use of the technology, we would be faced with the problem of people farming gene edited animals in other countries, and we would not be as competitive. We are already seeing gene edited animals being farmed in Japan, for example, and there is very permissive legislation in places such as Canada and Australia. I think those countries will be the first to bring in this technology. I see that coming first in some of the economic traits, and we will face competition as a result—maybe not in the species that they are planning and gene editing at the moment, but as it comes through the system in these areas, we will see our industries being uncompetitive in their performance.
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (First sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerTuesday 28th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 View all Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 28 June 2022 - (28 Jun 2022)
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor Henderson: Yes, I would. I think I can reassure the Committee on both those questions. I have been involved since the very early stages of the preparation of this Bill in consulting widely with the scientific community, advising Ministers and officials in my Department and others, and talking to stakeholder groups about the science and its implications. The Bill has taken into account the science and the most expert views of it in a very diverse way. I am personally content that it is fit for purpose and will ensure the continued safety of the environment and food.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Professor Henderson: There is an interesting question about how far deregulation into genetic technologies ought to go in one step. Some groups of scientists would certainly favour a model in which you relax the regulation much more widely and base all the outcomes on the traits that are produced through that technology—the outcome in the product—rather than having any view about the technology or the process by which the product is made. That is certainly a view that some scientists would hold.
The view of Government—this has played out in a number of stakeholder groups— has been that moving more cautiously to deregulate or lower the regulation of some aspects of genetic technologies first is a cautious and stepwise way to move. That takes account of the science, enables us to be aware of the issues as they arise, and most importantly builds the confidence of the public as those technologies are used more widely in food production. That is the justification for moving first into the use of technologies only to mimic breeding processes through precision breeding, as described in the Bill.
There is a difficulty in describing the limits of what is possible with breeding. It is clear that some things that are possible—we know they are possible because we have done them—are very similar to things that have been done, and they are therefore clearly in scope. There are other examples that are clearly not possible through breeding. In between those, there is something of a grey area. There is now detailed advice from an expert group—the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment—that lays out the definition of the circumstances in which something would be considered possible through breeding, and therefore would be considered a precision bred organism, to define the line within that grey area.
You also asked about exogenous material, by which I take it you mean material from another species. That sort of material can occur entirely naturally, and it can occur during breeding processes as well, but in general it does not lead to any functional change or any phenotypic change. The Bill is designed not to allow exogenous material, if it has any functional or phenotypic outcome in the product. In that way, it does mimic the action of traditional breeding. I hope that answers your question.
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor May: There are probably two answers to why this is necessary. Currently, precision bred foods and feeds will be encapsulated within the existing GM framework. If they are moving out of that framework, it is important to be sure that those products are safe. The key difference here with traditional breeding is one of pace. The entire point of this technology is to do things that could have been achieved through traditional breeding, but much faster. It is important that we have safety checks along that pathway.
On your question about balance, I think the key balance to strike here is between supporting innovation and ensuring safety. At the moment, our thinking around this is to have a two-streamed process for regulation, where there is a very light-touch process for anything where there is unlikely to be a substantive change in the food and more scrutiny of anything where the final food product is different. I think that is quite appropriate for this blend of technology.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Professor May: We have undertaken quite a lot of consumer research in this area, as have many others. There are various take-home messages from that. The first is that there has been a perceptible shift in public views over the last 10 or 20 years, and there has been more interest in the potential benefits of this technology. That is mirrored by a really strong view that the public want some level of regulation and safeguards in this and other genetic technologies.
Specifically around labelling, there is a very strong majority of the public that we have polled, and that others have seen, who would like labelling of these products. There is some difference of views about what that labelling should entail, but there is a strong feeling around it. From an FSA perspective, we would in principle support that, because we stand very strongly for transparency. The problem, sitting here as a scientist, is that this is not really achievable for this particular group of foods, because the entire nature of the precision breeding legislation is to consider things that could have been produced traditionally.
Consequently, you may end up in the future with two apples, for instance, and one was produced by precision breeding that involves gene editing and the other was produced by traditional methods. It would be scientifically impossible—at least, at the moment—to tell those two apart.
Then, from my perspective, my view is that a label that is not enforceable and that might be misleading is actually worse than no label at all, because you then start to spread doubt about the validity of other labels in the food system: allergen labels, nutritional labels. While in principle I think labelling would be a good thing, the fact that we cannot enforce it makes me feel that this is not appropriate for this type of food.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Professor May: That is correct, yes.
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor May: There is a range of approaches across the world. It is probably true to say that no two countries have exactly the same approach at the moment. Perhaps I may give some examples.
At one end of the scale, you would have the current approach in the European Union, where all genetic modification, even genome editing that would fall within precision breeding, is regulated as GM and goes through a full risk assessment, often involving toxicology and quite a lot of analytics. At the other end of the scale, you have the US, for example, which has a default setting: if it is similar to something that was traditionally bred, there is no regulation.
Perhaps in between, the Canadian example is an interesting one. In Canada, they regulate the product and not the technology that has created it. They ask—let us go for an apple—“If you have created this apple, is it different from an apple I can buy currently?” If it is not different, it is not a novel food and it is not regulated; if it is different, it is a novel food and it gets assessed, regardless of how you made it. If I made that apple by precision breeding and it is different, it would be regulated; if I made it by crossing two apples in my orchard and creating a new apple tree that was different, it would still be regulated through that process. Scientifically, that is a very valid approach, but it means that you encompass within it all of traditional breeding and all the things that are done but not regulated in that way in this country.
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor Dunwell: I think it is very appropriate. Obviously, it follows on from our removal from the EU. As for the legal case that created this, I suppose, concern, most scientists in the UK and the EU realised that it was a sort of perverse judgment when it comes to traditional so-called mutagenesis, where you apply chemicals or radiation—that is considered a traditional method and has been for 50 years. If you go back to the ’50s, there was a society of atomic gardening. That was when atomic energy was “good”. There was a very popular and interesting character who set up the atomic gardening group. She used to demonstrate her plants at Chelsea; she used to have dinner parties and carry round irradiated peanuts to offer to people. It was considered a good thing, but it was a complete unknown. But there was no evidence of any problems relating to it. We can now make particular small genetic changes in a much more precise way, and I think it is a good time for the UK to take a lead and apply the best scientific principles that we have at our disposal.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Professor Dunwell: I think this comes back to our understanding of genomes. Some of the wording in here comes out of the discussions that we have had within ACRE and the recognition that, probably 20 or 30 years ago, we assumed that one crop had one genome and that was it, but we now know, because you can sequence genomes very easily and quickly, that in fact there is an enormous underlying diversity of genetic material. The number of genes in one variety of maize or corn is different from the number of genes in another. There are also structural rearrangements. You can have great pieces of chromosomes interchanged or moved; it is still a maize plant. These so-called structural variations are an intrinsic part of plant breeding—and also animal breeding. The more we see the diversity of this variation, the more we pick up the fact that many, many plants have DNA that has come from other organisms throughout their evolution; it is the same with animals. Plants have segments of DNA from, say, virus infections hundreds or thousands of years ago perhaps. They have been incorporated into the genome and so, in old-fashioned definitions of GM, those organisms would be considered genetically modified organisms, because they have material from another organism in them. But we accept now that that is the baseline—that many, many organisms have small parts of DNA from many, many organisms. We have nematodes that have plant DNA. We have insects that have plant DNA. These have been moved around during evolution. They do not change the purity of the species. In evolutionary terms, they create the diversity that enables evolution to take place.
That is the background in which the term “natural transformation” has been created. The simple presence of a small fragment or a bit of DNA from another species, which might have been there anyway, is not something that has any impact on hazard or risk.
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Second sitting)
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel Zeichner(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Q
I want to explore something slightly different: the role of advisory bodies. You began to touch on that in your last answer. The Bill at the moment is very thin on what the advisory bodies are there to do. In some of your written evidence, both your organisations suggested that the different bodies should have some kind of remit to look at the wider public good. Could you say a little bit about that? I have been taken by the example of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, or some aspects of the work that it does.
Professor Lovell-Badge: I have been very much involved in the HFEA public engagement exercises. When you are considering a broad area, or potential uses and outcomes, it is really important to have proper public engagement, including democracy, dialogue, or however you want to refer to it, where you really get to understand what the public will think about a topic.
When it comes to assessing technical aspects, it will be challenging. It is fine to have a lay member on a panel, but I do not know whether consulting the public about really detailed, technical issues might be challenging. It depends on what the advisory committee’s role is and whether it is to look more broadly at potential uses and outcomes or to focus on the specific techniques that are being used.
Jo Churchill
Right, okay. I am not sure that I entirely understand why you feel it would be any different with GE, which is a completely different technique—with all due respect—from GM. If I could tease out that animal welfare point, you are predicating your argument on the idea that everything is detrimental on a welfare front. Surely the eradication of avian flu—particularly as we have had the challenge in the last year—would be beneficial to free-range birds as well. I am keen that the rest of the Committee has its chance to contribute, though.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Roger Kerr: From an organic regulatory basis, as Chris has already indicated, GE is still defined as GM. We need to be much clearer about what GE is being defined as, and we still do not have that clarity. As things stand, it is not allowed within the organic regulation, so the risk is where there is a lack of co-existence measures in place, which means that organic crops are contaminated. Organic consumers make these purchasing decisions because they believe they are avoiding GM, and that is a right they should have.
By not having robust co-existence measures in place, we are obviously putting our consumers at risk, because they are purchasing organic products on the basis that they do not believe they are consuming GM. It is a personal choice—I am not saying that you should not—and the organic sector is not saying per se that we should not have genetic editing. What we are saying is that it is incompatible with organic. Organic is out there, and there is a market for it, as Steve has clearly stated. There is a significant opportunity, both domestically and internationally, for the UK organic sector.
We should protect the organic sector, and there should be some visibility in terms of GE—where it is being grown, what is being grown and what the potential risks associated with that are for the organic sector—so we can ensure that the organic sector remains free from GM or GE, as it is at the moment. There is concern that if we are looking to provide consumers with the choice of having GE or not, we will end up with quite a significant cost within the supply chain to ensure co-existence, in terms of space and time, between GM and non-GM. This is not organic per se; it is just GM and non-GM. We will then have to have extra storage, more vehicle movements and a much higher level of testing. There are concerns that, without real clarity about what is going on and where the potential points of contamination arise, a significant cost will be borne by the food sector, which is already under significant pressure.
Joanna Lewis: I understand that you are addressing us as the organic industry and the organic sector, but I just want to reiterate that the Soil Association is a charity of 70 years’ standing that represents all citizens, farmers, growers and scientists who want to see a mainstream transition to agroecological farming and regenerative farming for climate, nature and health.
The response to the consultation on the Bill—85% of people and businesses were opposed—reflects a deeper unease not just about the safety issues and technicalities around the distinction between gene editing and GMOs. That is what I was trying to bring through with reference to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’s public dialogue. It is really important to emphasise the very legitimate public concerns about the fact that breeding as a whole—plant and animal breeding—has been on an unhelpful trajectory that is not up to the challenge of the Government’s goals on sustainable farming transition. We therefore need to ensure that we are not accelerating that trend through carte blanche deregulation.
There is an opportunity to put good governance at the heart of this Bill, set that public interest test, and ensure full supply chain traceability, transparency and labelling for citizens who want and deserve the right to choose whether this is the solution for them. I would not want it narrowed down to saying we are representing an economic sector. This is a broader movement, and it is very much one for mainstream transition.
Jo Churchill
Q
Professor Oldroyd: There are currently very tight restrictions on validating the health and safety of GM products. For products produced by conventional breeding, we also have tests with regards to their performance in the environment, their performance relative to other varieties and their health. We have a robust regulatory framework in place that addresses the safety of the consumer, and it has served us well over many decades. I cannot think of an example where we can say, “Okay, this line has caused genuine risk to human health,” and that is because of the regulatory framework that exists.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
My questions are about public confidence. We know that this has been a vexed debate over many years. There is fantastic science being done in Cambridge, but it often strikes me that the wider public have very little idea about it; that is hardly a unique issue there. Do you think there are sufficient measures in the Bill to secure the public confidence that is needed? If not, what extra could be put in to secure that?
Dr Harrison: The key point is proportionality. In all the preamble to the Bill, it is suggested that there is a proportionate response to how the technology is regulated. What we must never forget about gene editing and the scope of the types of changes that can be introduced is that they are indistinguishable from nature, so fundamentally we are not doing anything that could not happen or arise through natural processes.
The level and proportionality of the regulation of, and the transparency of, those products is important, and it is important that the public are aware, which I suppose is why there are systems in the Bill to register intent to put into the existing system gene edited products, but I do not think we need to stretch much beyond that. We have, as Bill Angus said, very well established regulatory frameworks in which to evaluate the performance of crops. We have the DUS system—distinctiveness, uniformity and stability—and we have the value for cultivatable use system. They have shown over many years that when varieties are put on the market, they are safe. The legislation that exists beyond that gives any country the right, if they find a problem with a variety, to remove that from what is the common catalogue in the EU, or, in our case, from our national list. As long as the proportionality is adhered to, the Bill is appropriate.
Professor Oldroyd: There are a lot of studies that have looked at the general public’s position on biotechnology. There are really only a few at either extreme—who absolutely support it outright or who are very scared of it. Most of the general public are looking to people like me—to scientists—and to the regulatory framework to define what is safe to consume.
Within precision breeding, as is intrinsic to the Bill, is the fact that these are events that could happen by exactly the same natural diversity and so already could be introduced, theoretically, through a conventional breeding process. One of the issues is that some—in particular, those on the previous panel—have taken as a presumption that anything that is biotechnology is inherently dangerous, and that is not correct. It is not correct to say that just because it is being developed by this mechanism there is an inherent danger in that approach. That is the erroneous position to take when comparing with conventional breeding.
We use many varieties that have been generated by mutagenesis breeding, by double haploid production. These are conventional breeding approaches. There is very little about gene editing that is different from that in the end product; it is just how you get to that event.
Jo Churchill
Q
Sam Brooke: As a whole, the BSPB is incredibly supportive of the Bill and what it is trying to achieve. Our main concern would be around clause 3 and a risk assessment around food and feed. All the scientific evidence would show that there is no greater risk in using these technologies than in using what we currently are in conventional or traditional breeding—or whatever we want to call it—so I feel that there is no reason for that extra risk assessment step. We are very concerned that that could act as a blocker to early stage research and development.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
The key issue is getting the balance right between reassuring the public and following the science. However, to many of us, this Bill looks very thin on the “reassuring the public” side—so much so that, despite the FSA and its polling showing that the public would really like more information, as the Bill stands, that is not the way it will be. How convinced are you that the issue of public confidence will be resolved in favour of the science?
Sam Brooke: Having lived and breathed plant breeding for just over 20 years, I think we should have shouted more, and earlier, about how regulated the industry is, both at plant-breeding and seed level. We have a rigorous testing system in the national list process. Each variety undergoes at least two years of testing before it comes to the market. Every variety must be on that UK national list before it can go into sale. All that is underpinned, obviously, by laws on food safety, novel foods, and so on. We have this incredible history of safety of plant breeding in the UK, and of bringing those products into the market in a safe, sensible and secure way.
On top of the registration process, we also have seed marketing legislation, which really protects the user. Naturally, it protects the consumer in that it ensures that all seeds that go out into the market meet a common and prescribed standard. I think that is really important, and it is probably our fault as breeders that we have not shouted in the past about how legislated the process of producing new varieties and seeds actually is. That is what we need to go out and talk about, and tell the consumers. I am a consumer—we are all consumers—and I think, had consumers had more information and knowledge about how regulated varieties and seeds already are, we might already be a step closer to having that absolute trust.
Jo Churchill
Q
Dr Tinch: That is an interesting question. I think all livestock breeding is now very much international, so it is difficult for small companies based in one country to operate successfully. There are a number of large international operators in genetics. In aquaculture in particular, we are not as far down the development of the species as some of the terrestrial species. We have been farming and breeding fish for about 40 to 50 years, so we are domesticating many of the species already. We are working hard to improve things such as disease resistance. There is good evidence, and we have seen very good examples, of genes that can be used to improve health and welfare of fish—particularly with Atlantic salmon, where a Scottish group identified a gene that accounted for over 80% of the variation of disease resistance. That was bred into the salmon populations and is now in most farmed salmon populations, making them resistant to the infectious pancreatic necrosis virus.
I see the implementation of gene editing allowing us to do similar things. Without having to go into the field, if you like, and look for animals that are carrying favourable mutations, we are able to identify genes that affect things like disease resistance, make targeted changes in those genes and make fish resistant as a result. I think that is a very positive way of taking breeding forward. It is not the only tool in the toolbox, but it certainly allows us to do some very interesting and valuable things for the health and welfare of the animals we farm.
Daniel Zeichner
Q
Dr Tinch: That is a tough question. The association between improving the ability of animals to perform and changing disease resistance, and the idea that that means we are going to increase stocking density and make welfare worse, is very simplistic, and it is not as simple as that. That is not the way farmers tend to operate, and it is not the way that breeders operate practically. That argument is raised quite often as being a reason not to improve farm animals, but it is not like that.
We should use the technologies that we have to improve animals. We are putting them in a farming environment that is different from the environment they evolved in. We have to adapt them, using genetics, to the farming environment, and that is what we aim to do. We aim to improve health, welfare and the sustainability of the animals from an economic point of view and an ecological point of view, and we use a number of different methods to take that forward. The tool is genetics, and gene editing is the next step forward in our ability to change different things. We should look at how we aim to improve animals in a constructive and welfare-driven way.
On the trade issues, if the legislation put us in a position where we were restricted in the use of the technology, we would be faced with the problem of people farming gene edited animals in other countries, and we would not be as competitive. We are already seeing gene edited animals being farmed in Japan, for example, and there is very permissive legislation in places such as Canada and Australia. I think those countries will be the first to bring in this technology. I see that coming first in some of the economic traits, and we will face competition as a result—maybe not in the species that they are planning and gene editing at the moment, but as it comes through the system in these areas, we will see our industries being uncompetitive in their performance.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel Zeichner(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Cost, of course, is incredibly important but so is availability. The UK food system is dependent on two factories for CO2, one of which has been shut for months and the other has been operating at relatively low levels. Before Christmas, the Government were slow to intervene and coy about the terms of the agreement. Can the Minister tell the House today what that agreement was, how much it cost and what the plan is to ensure that the UK food system is secure in future?
Jo Churchill
This is a highly complex area which obviously involves CO2 and various other things that are important to industries right across the country. We are keeping a very close eye on this, but I say to our farmers that they should have confidence and make sure they put forward their orders so we have sustainable demand, which will of course improve the supply chain.
Draft Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel Zeichner(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Jo Churchill
I thank my hon. Friend for the vast experience he brings as a former Trade Minister. Having recently been on a trip to the Dubai Expo, where I talked about some of our agri-innovation opportunities and we looked at how different societies around the world can beat some of the challenges of ensuring food security, I could not agree with him more.
I wish to reassure the hon. Member for Cambridge, who took some time to articulate how he was not satisfied with the framework in respect of both guidance and investors. The rest of the GMO framework remains unchanged and will do so until we consult in the future, as I set out.
Let me turn to the scientific criterion for the “higher plant” equivalent to plants that could have been produced by traditional breeding methods. The composition of genetic material in individual plants of the same species is subject to high levels of natural variation and selection, which plant breeders have exploited for centuries. Our understanding of plant genomes and the accompanying advances in technology have increased significantly since the previous legislation and enabled scientists to utilise variation more efficiently by making precise changes to the plant’s DNA. Such changes are equivalent to those that could have been achieved by traditional breeding methods. That is what we mean by the classification of a “higher plant” in the provision.
Daniel Zeichner
I hear what the Minister says, but the submissions from a range of learned organisations suggested that it is rather a difficult distinction to make. That is the nub of the argument, which is why the ACRE guidance is so important. Will she address that?
Jo Churchill
Yes, I will indeed. The guidance will help those who conduct the field trials. ACRE is currently in the process of developing the guidance that will help developers who use genetic technologies such as gene editing to make the plants that they want to grow and test in the field for research purposes.
I can provide a summary of the guidance, if that will help. Developers will need to know whether their plants are exempt from GMO restrictions on the basis that they meet the criteria for qualifying higher plants, as defined in the SI. The guidance makes it clear that notification is required in all cases, so I push back at the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that it is not required. The guidance demonstrates which type of genetic changes can result in higher qualifying plants and highlights examples to illustrate how key criteria on natural processes and traditional methods and selection might be applied. The guidance provides further detail for cases that do not fit into that precise description. We make it clear that developers can always seek a view from DEFRA if they are unsure. As the hon. Gentleman said, if the EU is not currently consulting, it will be shortly, and will move along a similar trajectory.
I think I have covered investment, other than to say that the legislation will unlock private investment because we have some of the greatest scientists and they have been leading some of this work. It is important that we do not hamstring them. Argentina began to regulate GE more proportionately to risk in 2015 and approved 22 new products for research and development purposes—we are only talking about research and development—between 2016 and 2019. We have had only three come forward since 2017. This SI is all about enabling our developers and scientists to move forward.
The hon. Gentleman asked about protection against cross-pollination and the potential impacts on the organic sector. I refer him to the fact that we have 30 years of experience of genetically modified field trials and thus far there has been no evidence that pollen, seed or other plant materials capable of reproduction from GM field trials have affected businesses in the UK organic sector. When researchers notify DEFRA of a field trial, they have to confirm that they will put in place measures to minimise the possibility of reproductive material from the qualifying higher plant that they are to trial affecting commercial crops. The scientists involved are keen to ensure that they are looking only at the results of that trial. Arguably, it is as important to them as to those who surround them that the trial is done in a competent scientific way so that they can rely on the data it gives them.
Daniel Zeichner
I quite accept the point that the Minister is making, but of course the difference is that for the past 30 years people have known where those things have been happening, there have been containment measures and they could make necessary adjustments. The key difference now is that they will not know.
Jo Churchill
There will still have to be a notification of where the trials are ongoing. Arguably, we are talking about looking at traditional breeding methods. We go back to what I know the hon. Gentleman and I will disagree on; however, this is about proportionate risk, and the fact is that we have been doing this for some 30 years. That adds to the bank of knowledge to reassure us that we are safe in the knowledge of moving forward with this very proportionate small step to ensure that we can optimise in the marketplace what we are trying to do, which is to support the plant-breeding sector. As I said, it spends 20% of annual turnover on R&D activities, and it is incumbent on all of us, given the positives that can come out of this, to support it.
In the past three years, we have approved through DEFRA three field trials involving GM or GE crops: camelina plants to produce omega-3 oil; a brassica to lower the level of sulphur-containing compounds, which although beneficial, at higher levels can cause adverse effects in livestock, such as reduced feeding and growth; and a wheat that, when used in food production, results in lower acrylamide, which has been found to be carcinogenic.
Development of GE products can take up to 10 years. In my opening speech, I laid out that we are progressing at a measured and proportionate pace in order to get this right. My intention is to get this right. That is why I can assure the hon. Member for Cambridge that, as we move forward, the consultations into the broader GMO framework will take place. We propose to come forward with primary legislation; that will give him and others the ability to challenge, as we do in this place, to ensure scrutiny.
Moving forward with the broader approach to the regulation of technologies such as gene editing, we recognise the strong public interest to which the hon. Gentleman alluded, but we also recognise that there are gains to be made. He mentioned many of the submissions but he did not mention the one from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, which alluded to the benefits. Many others also highlighted the benefits. We will be taking this step by step. Our approach to regulatory reform will be measured. We want a proportionate, science-based regulation that protects people, animals and the environment.
The UK agriculture sector now faces a situation in which it must do more with less. We must provide nutritionally high-quality food while reducing our use of water and energy, all in the context of a changing climate that makes food production through existing methods more difficult. As I outlined, the changes introduced by the statutory instrument will help researchers and scientists to harness the benefits of genetic technologies with greater ease. I therefore commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022.
Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [ Lords ]
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerThursday 10th February 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 View all Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 10 February 2022 - (10 Feb 2022)
Daniel Zeichner
It is a pleasure to follow my hon Friend, who made an important set of points about this amendment. I would like to move from crocodiles to pigs because, frankly, what is happening across the fields of the country is ghastly. While there may be questions over the size of a crocodile’s brain, I think we all know that pigs are intelligent creatures.
My point in raising that is that, with this amendment, a range of Government Departments would be driven to have to respond in a crisis like this. It has an awful effect on the people having to kill pigs in fields—we think possibly some 35,000 so far. I must also say, there was a dreadful response from DEFRA to a written question from the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton, just on DEFRA’s basic knowledge of the numbers—“We don’t know; we don’t ask”.
A much stronger piece of legislation like this, driving the committee, would have forced Government Departments to have actually acted. I notice that the Minister did not respond to my earlier question about the current situation of sentience. We in the Opposition all know that pigs are sentient, but the hiatus in the legal setup means that it is very hard to hold the Government to account for the awful set of circumstances that are unfolding.
Jo Churchill
I agree that this is an important piece of legislation and, like the hon. Member for Newport West, I hope it will go forward in a timely way. I thank the EFRA Committee for the work that it has done in helping to guide us in ensuring that the Bill is as precise as it is. It is important to understand that there are two duties here.
The hon. Lady argued that the Animal Sentience Committee needs the power to compel Government Departments and public bodies to provide any information that the committee requests. While I would agree that it is key for the committee to have the necessary information to do its job, placing an additional duty on Departments to provide the committee with documents would just create additional grounds for judicial reviews. If a Department or public body was seen not to fully comply with the requests made by the Animal Sentience Committee, there would be grounds for a challenge.
The Bill has been carefully considered and worded to give meaningful effect to the principle of animal sentience without getting tied up in legal challenges. We want the committee to focus on current and future policy. Its aim is to improve transparency in decision making and in the policy-making process. The committee will build on and improve the evidence base, which I have referred to, that informs Government policy.
Jo Churchill
Clause 2 tasks the Animal Sentience Committee with publishing reports that give its opinion on whether, or to what extent, Ministers have had all due regard to the needs of animals as sentient beings when formulating and implementing Government policy. The clause allows the committee to include recommendations on how this might be done in the future development of a policy in question. Lastly, the clause requires that the committee’s reports are published.
These measures sit at the heart of our proposals to create a proportionate and timely accountability mechanism that rests with Parliament, rather than the courts. The committee will have the powers to publish reports—importantly, including critical reports—on the Government policy decision-making process. However, the committee’s powers are well defined so as to ensure that it complements that decision-making process by giving additional evidence. The clause and the wider Bill do not authorise the committee to dictate or advocate a particular policy position, or critique how a Minister might decide to balance competing policy considerations. Ministers will continue to decide the appropriate balance between animal welfare and other important considerations when making decisions.
In the event that a committee report was critical of Government performance, Parliament would be able to consider the report and the Government’s written response that must be laid before Parliament within three months of the report’s publication. After considering them, the decision would rest with hon. Members in this House and noble Lords in the other place on whether to make further inquiries on the subject using the mechanisms available.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Response to reports
Daniel Zeichner
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 3, page 2, line 27, at end insert—
“(4) A Minister of the Crown must make a motion in each House of Parliament in relation to each response to a report from the Animal Sentience Committee laid before Parliament under paragraph (1).”.
This amendment would require the Minister to give an oral response to Animal Sentience Committee reports, creating an opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of report recommendations and the Government’s response.
Clause 3 requires the Secretary of State to lay a response to reports produced by the Animal Sentience Committee before Parliament within three months of a report’s publication, as the Minister has outlined. We absolutely accept that it is right that the Secretary of State should be tasked with that responsibility. The reports will consider, as laid out in clause 2(2),
“whether, or to what extent, the government is having, or has had, all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect”—
despite our attempts—
“on the welfare of animals as sentient beings.”
The committee may, therefore, criticise the Government’s policy-making processes. I noticed that the Minister acknowledged the possibility that the Government could be criticised in some circumstances, and I welcome that possibility. The committee could applaud the Government, or provide recommendations for improvements.
It is right that the Secretary of State responds to the findings. Where shortcomings have been identified, the Government absolutely should explain what went wrong; where there are recommendations, the Government must inform the House of their response. However, those of us who have been here a little while know how the House works. There are many opportunities for things to be made not exactly immediately obvious to the wider world, or even to Members of the House.
I have not been in Parliament that long, but I remember consideration of the Agriculture Bill. There was a lengthy discussion on the food security report. The matter went to the House of Lords. There was an argument about when the report should be produced—every three years, or annually, or every five years, and all the rest of it. Lo and behold, the Government produced that report on the very last day that they were permitted to do so, just before Christmas—as Governments do, of course—when people were rushing to get their planes and trains. It was a massive report of 300 pages, and obviously there was little opportunity just before Christmas for the wider world to consider it properly. What were the opportunities to consider that report? We found that it took a Westminster Hall debate, with a Minister reluctantly responding to criticisms at the end of the debate. The fact that the Secretary of State said one thing on one occasion and the Minister, when challenged, said something else, shows that there was not really any great opportunity for scrutiny.
This is a governance question. We know that, in the real world, a lot of this does not work. Given that some of the responses will be written, we know that there will not be much opportunity for scrutiny. We in the Opposition think that animal welfare and the humane treatment of animals is too important to fall into that trap and we think that, without an opportunity for the House to properly scrutinise and discuss reports, the Committee’s findings will simply not be given the attention they merit.
The amendment would require a Minister to make a motion in both Houses of Parliament, which would provide a genuine opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny. For the committee to have any heft, the Government cannot simply disregard its reports if they are politically or otherwise inconvenient. We think that it is right that “all due regard” be given to a range of factors and that the Government must explain how they have weighed up the competing demands.
We fully acknowledge that there are competing demands. This is not simple stuff. We also absolutely accept that the Bill does not change any existing legislation; it simply specifies that the Government must give “all due regard” to the ways in which policy may impact the welfare of animals. What we have heard from the discussions in the other place, and on Second Reading, is that that is open to a considerable amount of interpretation. It is right that both Houses debate and discuss the extent to which they believe “all due regard” has been met. I would think the Government would welcome the amendment, since it would actually give them further opportunity on their media grid to drip out some good news stories about the wonderful things they are doing. Actually, we think the opposite is the case. We do not think they want genuine scrutiny. The amendment could attract some interesting cross-party support as we goes forward.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. By definition, all Opposition Front-Bench amendments are sensible—I will tell you the ones that are not later. My hon. Friend, too, brings great experience on this, and he makes an important point. Those of us who have gradually begun to understand parliamentary procedure over the process of being here know that he is right; proper consideration of Select Committee reports in the Chamber does make a real difference. That is what we are trying to get at with the amendment.
I hope, despite the nature of this debate, that Ministers will go away and think about this point. We have noticed that there are very real differences of opinion on the Conservative Benches on this issue. I think the amendment would give voice to some of the staunch critics of the Bill. I do not think some of them understand it entirely, but I think it might settle some of their concerns if they knew they had the opportunity to raise them in this way. As the Better Deal for Animals coalition said in their briefing to parliamentarians:
“Criticisms of the Bill during its passage to date appear to have been based on a misunderstanding of the role of the Animal Sentience Committee.”
Members will be surprised to hear that I am on the side of the Minister on this point, because I agree that it should be reiterated that the new Committee will not have the power to amend or bring about new legislation. It cannot compel the Government to take any particular course of action. I understand the points the Minister is making, and I am not sure that everyone who has taken part in this debate has fully appreciated that.
The amendment would provide an opportunity for Members of both Houses to provide input and scrutinise the Government’s success in weighing up competing demands and, crucially, their success in considering the sentience of animals. For the Bill to have any real impact, we believe that Members must have a proper opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s response to the Animal Sentience Committee’s reports. Going back to my opening points, this could so easily be just another committee. Unless it has power, it will not work, and that would mean that sentience had not been carried across in the way that many people believed it to have been.
The amendment would only strengthen and further the claimed aims of the Bill. If the Government oppose it, I have to say that they will reveal their true intent.
Jo Churchill
I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge for raising the matter of responses to the Animal Sentience Committee report with the amendment. I agree that the committee’s report warrants parliamentary attention. That is why Ministers will be required to lay a written response before Parliament within three months of a report’s publication. This is central to the targeted, timely and proportionate mechanism we are seeking to establish. However, the hon. Member will not be surprised to hear that I do not believe it would be proportionate to clog up the parliamentary timetable with an automatic debate on every single report.
Hon. Members and noble Lords in the other place should decide for themselves the extent to which each report needs more discussion. They will have the usual means at their disposal to bring in Ministers to answer questions: parliamentary questions, Select Committee hearings, Westminster Hall debates and business questions. The EFRA Committee, when looking at this particular subject, asked my noble Friend Lord Benyon to come in front of it, in order to probe him more. We should also allow for the possibility that the committee, in some of its reports, may be satisfied that the Department in question has had all due regard to animal welfare and as such makes no recommendations. I am sure that Ministers would be delighted, as the hon. Member for Cambridge slightly alluded to, to have the platform to speak about such success on the Floor of the House, but I gently say that that is not the best use of parliamentary time.
Jo Churchill
The clause sets out the territorial extent and the commencement provisions for the Bill following Royal Assent. Clause 2(6) provides that the Animal Sentience Committee may only issue reports on policy decisions of the UK Government. That means that the committee may issue a report on any policy for which UK Government Ministers are responsible. The committee cannot issue a report on any policy that relates to a legislative provision falling within a devolved competence. Animal welfare policy is devolved. The Bill’s provisions will come into force on such days as the Secretary of State may, by regulations made by statutory instrument, appoint.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 1
Duty to prepare an Animal Sentience Strategy
“(1) The Secretary of State must prepare an Animal Sentience Strategy.
(2) The Strategy under paragraph (1) must set out how Her Majesty’s Government plans to have regard to animal sentience including plans to—
(a) respond to Animal Sentience Committee reports,
(b) require animal welfare impact assessments, and
(c) commission independent research.
(3) The Strategy must set out policies that the Secretary of State may ask the Animal Sentience Committee to review.
(4) The Secretary of State must publish an annual statement on progress on the Animal Sentience Strategy.
(5) An annual statement under subsection (4) must include a summary of changes in policy or implementation that have occurred in response to an Animal Sentience Committee report over the last 12 months.
(6) A Minister of the Crown must make a motion in each House of Parliament in relation to the annual statement.
(7) The Secretary of State must publish a revised Animal Sentience Strategy at the start of each parliament.”—(Daniel Zeichner.)
This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to produce an animal sentience strategy, and to provide an annual update to Parliament on progress against it.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Daniel Zeichner
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause is tabled in my name and those of many of my colleagues. In many ways, I will go back to where I started, by referring to the comments by my colleague in the other place, Baroness Hayman. She explained very lucidly that the Bill in its current form provides
“a weaker set of responsibilities”
than provided for in EU law and
“effectively outsources the bulk of animal sentience responsibility to the committee, which can make recommendations to decision-makers but sits outside the decision-making process.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2021; Vol. 813, c. GC285.]
That is an important point, which we have already referenced, and I believe that it should be heard loud and clear—put up in lights, in fact. The Conservatives have weakened the law on animal sentience. [Interruption.] They may not like it, but it is the truth.
Now, there is a solution—there is salvation, and I am going to offer it. The amendment tabled by Labour in the other place goes some way towards rectifying that problem. Again, as Baroness Hayman explained,
“Article 13 imposed a direct legal obligation on the EU and its member states to pay full regard to animal sentience. It was a direct responsibility on decision-makers, in the form of government Ministers.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2021; Vol. 813, c. GC284.]
I have already described how the Bill is weakened by the requirement for the Secretary of State to provide written responses to Animal Sentience Committee reports rather than oral responses. The Government chose not to take that opportunity.
The Bill places indirect responsibilities on Ministers; they must simply establish and maintain a committee and lay written responses, rather than assuming direct responsibilities on these matters, which is what we would like to see. This is clearly an inadequate replacement for the duties and responsibilities enshrined in article 13 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, and that is what we seek to address through the new clause.
The new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to produce an animal sentience strategy and to provide annual updates to Parliament on progress against it. It would significantly improve the Bill by increasing the heft given to the Animal Sentience Committee and ensuring that its work does not, as I fear it might, end up being merely symbolic.
Jo Churchill
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman, whom I thank for proposing new clause 1, that while I agree that the Bill should be science-led, he will not be surprised that I disagree entirely that we are watering down anything. Given that we are robustly discussing animal sentience, how seriously the issue is taken in this place could not be plainer to the outside word.
I understand why the hon. Gentleman might want to require the Secretary of State to publish an animal sentience strategy and undertake the actions associated with it, but the Bill underpins the action plan for animal welfare published in May last year. Of course the Government want the new committee to perform its role to the best of its ability, and we will work with Members to ensure that it does just that, but the independence of that committee is vital. A strategy in which Ministers set out policies that they want the committee to consider would limit its ability to set its own agenda. It is vital to make sure that the committee is led by science and by experts, and that it has its own ability to define sentience, if it wishes to, and to set its own agenda.
The committee’s reports will be publicly available and will provide a record of policies that it has considered. As is usual, the committee will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the Public Records Act, as laid out in clause 4. Rather than prescribe a list of tasks for the committee, we want to ensure that it can shape its role in an independent manner, and that its influence in highlighting the impact on animal welfare of key policy decisions is maximised and determined by its own evaluation of where it could add value. DEFRA will support the committee in identifying such opportunities, but it is important that experts have that scope.
We do not propose to require Government Departments to produce animal welfare impact assessments, but my Department is committed to working with its counterparts across the Government to develop the right tools to assess the effect of policy decisions on animal welfare so that there is a cohesive look at that matter. Departments will have good reason to engage with the process as that will help to prevent the committee from producing negative reports, as well as aiding learning across the Government. The Bill as drafted, alongside the action plan for animal welfare, will achieve many of the intentions of the new clause while retaining the committee’s flexibility and discretion to focus on the areas that it deems most important.
Daniel Zeichner
I will respond briefly, as you would encourage me to do, Sir Charles.
I listened closely to the Minister’s response, and while I struggled with some of the civil service gobbledegook, I think she said that some of the things that we are looking to achieve will happen, which we welcome. In the end, however, I can come to no conclusion but that this is a weak proposition. I have asked the Minister three times why the Government did not choose to bring across the stronger version of the legislation—goodness me, they brought plenty of other legislation across—but that has not been explained, and there must be a reason. The Minister also has not been able to answer the question of where sentience currently stands, so the only conclusion we can come to is that the Bill needs to be beefed up and made much stronger. I can assure you, Sir Charles, that in a couple of years’ time, it will be.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Online Animal Sales: Regulation
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel Zeichner(3 years ago)
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Jo Churchill
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. Covid has meant that the movement of livestock is recorded much more online, which has shown us ways of traceability.
In addition to the duties to show the age of the animal for sale and a recognised photograph, the commercial third party sale of puppies and kittens has been banned in England since 6 April 2020. That prevents commercial outlets from selling animals in England unless they themselves have bred them. As I said before, licensed breeders are prohibited from showing a puppy to a prospective purchaser unless the biological mum is also present. There is an exemption in limited circumstances when welfare concerns must take precedence. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) pointed out, some unscrupulous breeders rarely think of the consequences for the mother when they are doing this under the line.
Alongside the statutory regulation of commercial pet breeders and pet sellers, we support the self-regulation of online platforms that sell pets. We do this through the close working relationship we have with PAAG, which was created to combat concerns regarding the irresponsible advertising of pets for sale, or for rehoming for exchange.
Daniel Zeichner
I heard the Minister mention self-regulation, but are we not agreed that self-regulation is not going to be enough? Are we going to go further?
Jo Churchill
Will the hon. Gentleman bear with me a little longer?
PAAG has been engaging with the online marketplaces, to help them distinguish appropriate adverts from those that should be removed. PAAG has developed a set of minimum standards for advertising pets for sale. Several of the UK’s largest classifieds websites have already adopted these minimum standards, which the Government support.
DEFRA also runs a public communications campaign called Petfished, which we heard about earlier; it raises the awareness of issues associated with the low welfare and illegal supply of pets, including encouraging prospective buyers to research thoroughly. The current work in that area also includes progressing the pet theft taskforce recommendation, which was made in September, to encourage sales platforms to implement more identity checks. We will approach that work through our existing relationship with PAAG.
The inclusion of advertising requirements within the local authority licensing regime serves an important purpose, ensuring that those with the power to issue, revoke, refuse or vary a licence can act where requirements are not met. That builds on the local authority’s ability to investigate and prosecute animal welfare issues under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. The net result is a rounded approach that lets local authorities investigate local instances of low-welfare breeding and selling, pursue prosecutions where animal welfare standards are breached, and manage the licensing regime. I have heard many hon. Members today saying that there are big gaps, so I will briefly address those comments.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead spoke about mutilations of dogs. The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill includes a power to make regulations about the importation of pet animals into Great Britain, for the purposes of promoting animal welfare. That will enable us to clamp down on the importation of dogs that have been subject to low-welfare practices, such as ear cropping or tail docking.
As I said to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), we have regular contact with our Scottish counterparts, but the LAIA regulations require anyone selling rabbits as pets to obtain that valid licence, as with any other area. On online sales, DEFRA does have a responsibility to improve self-regulation through PAAG and the LAIA regulations, but the other aspects sit with DCMS. I will come on to how we are working, and intend to work more fully, with the Department.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) spoke about how particularly special dogs are to families, and how parents need to be present; I urge people to ensure that they are. We have heard about the Dotties and the Doras, and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead about how sad a home is when we lose a dog.
Online sales outside the UK that result in animals being imported are not captured by the current licensing regime and neither are pets rehomed by rescue centres, but the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill will introduce further restrictions on imports to combat low-welfare movements. We are working towards the licensing of rescue centres.
To conclude, we think a holistic approach is possible, but I am well aware that the key stakeholders—trade associations, PAAG, the Pet Industry Federation, and the Canine and Feline Sector Group—will be integral to collecting evidence to inform DEFRA’s review. In addition, I would welcome any evidence that Justice for Reggie may hold about how we can improve that. Following this debate, I will ask officials to meet representatives of the Justice for Reggie campaign in the coming days so that we can take on board any information and evidence they can provide that can assist our understanding of these issues. There will also be a roundtable with PAAG and some of the online platforms in the new year, which Justice for Reggie would be welcome to attend to make its points in person.
To conclude, the Government are proud of the improved protections that we have introduced and of our ambitious and progressive reform programme, but there is further to go. I hope that those present today have been reassured that we take this issue seriously and will work together, across Government and with those involved, to improve the situation.
Animal (Penalty Notices) Bill
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel ZeichnerWednesday 8th December 2021
(3 years ago)
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Jo Churchill
A comprehensive selection of Bills are going through Parliament, looking at the whole of animal welfare and ensuring that those gaps are plugged. That is why we support today’s Bill. It is about having a proportionate response, and ensuring that where we find a gap we find the right tool to deal with it.
For the most severe crimes of cruelty and abuse, imprisonment will always be the correct response and the most appropriate course of action. We have the necessary powers to deliver that. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021, which was passed in the summer, introduced a welcome longer prison sentence for heinous animal welfare crimes, which I am sure we all agree with. We now need penalties to redirect behaviour, which was the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Romford made. It is about ensuring that, where appropriate, people can be put on to the correct path of behaviour before more troublesome and more abusive crimes are committed, and that we use the most proportionate and effective measure for each of them.
The Bill provides for penalties to redirect behaviour where animal keepers are not doing the right thing. We have an opportunity to improve how we tackle offences relating to animals and animal products. I would like to restate the relevant offences will be determined during collaboration and formal consultation with stakeholders, including those mentioned here, as I reaffirmed yesterday in discussion with the RSPCA.
Clause 1 is essential to establish the relevant offences and the enforcement authorities for those offences. It lists all the legislation to which penalties notices could apply, protecting the health and welfare of companion, farm and zoo animals, biosecurity and animal products. That does not mean, however, that the penalty notices would be considered an appropriate enforcement measure for every offence listed in the legislation.
Through the passage of the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021, another private Member’s Bill, it was good to see the punishment for acts of cruelty being bolstered to a custodial sentence of five years. Once again, I would like to put on record that we have no intention of watering down the severity of offences. However, it remains imperative that all the legislation listed in clause 1 remains as it is. In that way, we can properly consider, in collaboration with stakeholders, which offences are suitable for a penalty notice and which are not.
We will explain further in the guidance under clause 4 that will accompany the new regulations, to ensure penalty notices are used appropriately and consistently without diminishing how they address the most serious offences, particularly that of cruelty. Designating the most appropriate enforcement authority for each offence is important to ensure the right people have the right powers to take action and change the behaviour of those committing less serious offences. Actually, it might be the good breeder who helps make sure that the behaviour is the right one. It does not necessarily always fall to an enforcement officer to issue the behaviour notice in the first place. We want the whole system to be one that engages and directs people’s behaviour. Then, the enforcement officers can either bring the direct commentary to the individual or step it up to a fixed penalty notice or, in the case of a heinous crime, use the court.
Daniel Zeichner
The Minister’s explanation is helpful, but I echo the thoughts of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol: one can discern the Bill, as the Minister explains, but would it not be better to have an overreaching explanation so the wider world could understand the thinking? It takes interrogation of the Bill to understand what the plan is.
Jo Churchill
Most of our laws are made up of a collection of things that direct people’s behaviour in the right direction. The selection of animal welfare regulations from private Members’ experience, although there are gaps, from the Government legislating and from external stakeholders, is the right way to go on to ensure we cover everything effectively.
Enforcers must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before issuing a penalty notice, which goes to the hon. Gentleman’s point. If, for example, a case ends up in court because someone chooses not to pay because they wish to defend themselves in court, there must be a burden of proof. That is how we envisage this Bill working. Enforcers must be able to clearly articulate the evidence and the offence to the offender and be ready to pursue prosecution if an offender chooses not to pay or wishes to clear their name in court.
The clause also includes provision for the enforcing body to rescind a notice at any point. It adds an additional layer of protection for the recipient, such as in the event of an error or where prosecution is later deemed to be more appropriate. The additional tool will provide early redirection to those who are not doing things quite right, helping to prevent more serious offences from being carried out later.
Daniel Zeichner
This is the point I was trying to get to earlier. I think the point that Battersea is making—I have not read every piece of legislation it refers to in the level of detail required to know the answer—is that there are offences in there that do not require the same level of proof, in which case it worries, and I worry, that this could be undermined. Could the Minister tell us how many of those cases are within the legislation, or whether that could be revealed by the grid that is to be drawn up?
Jo Churchill
The grid has been drawn up. It is just going through the process of clearance. I hope to have it with the hon. Gentleman imminently; I was hoping to get it to him before the Committee sat. It is through discussions with Battersea and other stakeholders that we give clarity to the offences we are trying to pursue. Essentially, this comes down to the burden of proof. Tail docking would be unacceptable in some circumstances, but some working dogs have to have their tails docked, so we need to ensure that we have a proportionate approach. We have spoken to stakeholders to ensure that we do not have unintended consequences there.
Clauses 2 to 9 build on the foundation of clause 1 to provide a clear framework for animals, keepers and enforcers alike. Clause 2 is near identical to clause 1, but brings up the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, which is reserved. The purpose of the clause is to extend penalty notices for dangerous dogs offences to Wales, because obviously this legislation applies to England and Wales. Clause 3 is the workhorse of the Bill, setting a maximum fine amount and ensuring that both the enforcement authority and the person offered the fine understand their obligations. Clause 4 ensures that penalty notices cannot be used in a disproportionate way, such as for acts of animal cruelty, once again reaffirming that penalty notices are not for those serious acts but are the yellow card in the toolbox of the enforcer. Clause 4(2) establishes their proper and appropriate use as a means of early redirection. The matters to be taken into account mitigate the risk of penalty notices being used inappropriately without needing to list every specific offence in the Bill.
The matters in clause 4, alongside the guidance that will be laid before Parliament, will ensure that enforcers strike the right balance between advice, guidance, penalty notices and prosecutions, which I am sure we agree is the best way forward to ensure that those committing offences are properly encouraged to fulfil their responsibilities to the animal in their care. This all requires careful consideration, with the appropriate expert input, because it is to the experts that we will look to help us draw up the statutory instruments, at which point, again, there will be a second line of examination to make sure that we are going in the right direction. Laying the guidance before Parliament for specific offences allows time for thorough, crucial engagement with users, stakeholders and enforcers.
Clause 5 states where the proceeds from penalty notices will be paid. It is integral to the sound functioning of the Bill, enabling enforcers to retain costs associated with any enforcement, therefore limiting the financial burden. Clause 6 specifies the reporting requirement, which will ensure transparency and accountability. I share the views of Members from across the Committee—including the hon. Member for Cambridge, who brought this up—that that transparency and accountability through the reporting mechanism and the stakeholder engagement are crucial and will help to ensure that guidance has been followed consistently and that we have more oversight, rather than the numbers being lumped together.
Clause 7 states that secondary legislation will be required before a penalty can be issued for an offence. I am sure the Committee will agree that it is vital that full consideration is given to each offence individually to ensure that only appropriate offences will be included.
Jo Churchill
Should somebody receive more than one penalty notice, that is part of the suite of evidence that shows that they have not been behaving. We cannot just carry on giving fixed penalty notices. We cannot argue for these measures as having the power of redirection to improve behaviour, and then not expect to see behaviour improving. A penalty notice might be the right thing to do for low-level offences—the hon. Lady gave examples of what those might be—but not for committing the same offence repeatedly. People cannot just be given fixed penalty notices repeatedly. We are looking for another tool in the toolbox to redirect and improve behaviour, to ultimately help care for the health and welfare of animals.
I have answered the hon. Member for Rotherham. The Acts are listed. We will speak to the zoos as we will speak to all Members.
I thank the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow for her comments. I hope we will see Scotland follow us in this measure, to ensure that animals right across the UK are looked after, because I know that, across all four nations, we are a true nation of animal lovers.
This is about ensuring the burden of proof. Penalty notices are another tool in the toolbox. I hope we do not focus on the fact that a fixed penalty notice cannot be issued without the proper investigation, because it has to be as robust as it would be if we were pursuing alternative measures. As we work through the finer points with the organisations—I know the hon. Member for Cambridge is in regular contact with them— I hope that we will get to the point where we have reassured him, but, more importantly, reassured those who look after animals that where there are cases, there is extra care for those animals. That is the whole point of introducing the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford said.
Jo Churchill
I feel like I have given way enough. I thank the Committee for its comments and support.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jo Churchill and Daniel Zeichner(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)
We are committed to being transparent about the collection and use of data. We paused the implementation of GP data for planning and research services, and we have had productive discussions with the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Medical Association, health charities and others. We have listened to the concerns and we will respond to them. We will continue to listen and we will take our time. We will show patients and clinicians why they can have full trust and confidence in the programme, where data will only be accessed through a secure environment with the oversight of the Information Commissioner’s Office and the National Data Guardian.