Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Andrea Leadsom(8 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Andrea Leadsom)
Clear food labelling is vital to show consumers exactly what they are buying. We want to promote the Great British food brand as strongly as possible. One of my top priorities is to look at what more can be done to make it easier for consumers to identify our high-quality home-grown food.
Kerry McCarthy
The Prime Minister recently said that, with Brexit looming, we will be able to choose our own methods of food labelling, but is there not a lot more that we could do on country of origin and method of production labelling? While we are still in the European Union, we ought to emulate some of our EU partners.
Andrea Leadsom
I certainly welcome the hon. Lady’s interest in this matter. As she will know, country of origin labelling is already mandatory for unprocessed beef, pork, sheep and goat meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables, olive oil, fish, shellfish, wine and honey. There are many additional voluntary schemes, which we are keen to support. As she points out, there will be further opportunities, as we leave the EU, to look at what more consumers would like to see from labelling.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Andrea Leadsom
Andrea Leadsom
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position. He is right. We want investor certainty. Our priority for the Department is to keep the bills down, to keep energy security and to decarbonise. In order to do that, we recognise that significant private sector investment is needed. We want to give certainty as soon as possible, and that is what we will be doing.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.