Members’ Paid Directorships and Consultancies

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mark Spencer

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

On a related point, as the hon. Gentleman talks about farming interests, does he share my concern that Members in receipt of common agricultural payments do not have to declare that in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, even when they are Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers receiving quite substantial amounts?

[Mr Spencer]

That is a very good point. I am a partner of an agricultural company that receives subsidies from the EU. I am an unremunerated partner in that company, but how does one extract oneself when one’s immediate family are benefiting? I live in a house at the centre of that farm. There is only one electricity meter for that property, so the farming business pays the electricity bill, in effect paying the electricity bill for the house that I live in. I cannot extract myself from that unless I move house. I have never lived anywhere else. I was born in that house and have lived there for ever, but the rules that the Opposition are trying to create will stop people becoming Members of Parliament. It would be impossible for me to be a Member of Parliament under the rules they are trying to set up. I do not think that that is what they are trying to achieve; I think they are trying to stop influence. Everybody in the House wants to ensure that Opposition Members are not being influenced, and I am sure that that is what they are trying to achieve. The rules they are proposing, however, do not do what they want to achieve. That is a great shame. It brings shame on this House and brings the role of being a Member of Parliament into disrepute.

Horsemeat

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mark Spencer

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Exactly. I raised that very issue with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs yesterday, and I have to say from his response that it looked as if it was the first he had heard of it; he simply said that we rely on scientific advice, which I think is scandalous.

I am just halfway through my description of the process involved in producing pink slime. The recovered beef material is then processed, heated and treated with gaseous ammonia or citric acid to kill bacteria. It is then finely ground, compressed into pellets, flash frozen and shipped for use as an additive. There was a public outcry over this issue a while ago, and we saw Jamie Oliver appearing on American TV decrying its use. There was a real backlash, and companies such as McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell announced that they would discontinue its use. There was also an outcry about it appearing in meals in the public sector, and promises were made that that would no longer happen. Once consumers knew that there was pink slime in their food, they did not want it and wanted the meat industry to stop producing it.

There is also a substance that has become colloquially known as “white slime” in meat products. It is officially known as “mechanically separated meat” or “mechanically recovered meat”. This is the product most likely to be used in highly processed meat products such as burgers or pies. It is a paste-like product produced by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken under high pressure through a sieve to get every last little scrap of meat off the bone. Questions have been raised about its safety and some have argued there should be limits on how much of it should be used in a food product—for example, no more than 20% is allowed in hot dogs. The fact is, however, that consumers do not realise that this is in their hot dogs. Finally, there is advanced meat recovery, which separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving or pressing the meat from the bone—again, typically used in hot dogs.

Let me quote what John Harris said in an excellent article in yesterday’s The Guardian—it may sound a bit of a cliché to keep quoting this newspaper, but it is not particularly fond of vegetarians generally. He said that EU regulations insist that if a product is to be called “meat”, it has to be

“skeletal muscle with naturally included or adherent fat and connective tissue”.

He said that our Food Standards Agency insists that economy beefburgers must contain at least 40% of this product, which must come from cows. That is not very reassuring; I think people expect their beefburgers to have beef in them, not cartilage, fat and connective tissue.

In talking about the relentless search for profits from cheap food, John Harris cited a Financial Times article saying that Findus products came from a factory in Luxembourg, which was supplied with meat by a company in south-west France, which had acquired frozen meat from a Cypriot trader that had subcontracted the order to a trader in the Netherlands—who was then supplied from an abattoir and butcher located in Romania. As John Harris says, how messed up has our food system become? All this is a far cry from the sort of meat that many Members praised during yesterday’s statement on horsemeat. The advisability of buying local meat from a local farm sold by a local butcher was highlighted, where the path from the pasture to the plate is a matter of public record. Indeed, I have heard people saying that they take local sourcing so far that they even know the name of the cow they are consuming.

It is very easy to say that, and in ideal world, people would be looking to buy organically reared locally produced products, but that is very expensive. Yes, it can be said that people should try to cook their own food and source it locally instead of buying ready-made meals, but I am sure many MPs grab a ready meal from Tesco or Marks and Spencer on their way home after a vote. We should not be too judgmental about people who turn to value ranges and ready-made meals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said. If someone has only a couple of pounds left in their purse and there is a £1 lasagne ready meal or an eight-pack of Tesco economy burgers left in the shop, they will buy one of those rather than buying the mince, the sheets of pasta, the flour, the butter, the tomatoes, the herbs and the cheese that they would need to make lasagne from scratch. Many people do not even have the necessary cooking facilities in any case. I have seen single men in my constituency living in bedsits with just a microwave for cooking.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

This should not seem like rocket science to the hon. Lady. If I told her that I could flog her a cheap telly, she would think to herself, “There must be something wrong with that TV.” It does not strike me as much of an extension of that argument to suggest that if those processed meat products are so much cheaper than other products, their quality will not be the same.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Sometimes people simply do not have a choice between buying the slightly dodgy knock-off cheap telly that has probably come off the back of a lorry and going to one of the high street shops and buying a top-of-a-range brand. That is the point that I am trying to make. People may well know that what they are eating is not as good as the organic produce that is sold in, for instance, The Better Food Company, an organic supermarket in Bristol, but they do not have the option of going there. As I have said, even if people had enough money to buy more than one day’s food and could plan ahead and try to cook their own meals, they would still not be buying premium “best of British” mince. They would be buying the sort of mince that was mentioned just now by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), and about which I asked the Secretary of State yesterday. If the Government manage to find their way around European Union regulations, that mince could be up to 50% fat and collagen, and other substances that are not meat, without the consumer’s being any the wiser.

We need to get the message across to Government Members. We are living in a world in which people’s cost of living is being squeezed from all sides. Their incomes and benefits are being cut, their rents are going up, and fuel prices, fares and food prices are rising. Obviously they will buy the packet of eight Tesco value burgers for £1, because they have no other option. According to statistics released last week by Mintel, the market research company, some 30% of consumers now buy budget ranges, as opposed to just one in five back in 2008. We cannot insist that everyone should buy the premium, locally sourced, top-of-the-range products, because some people simply cannot afford to do that. The important point, surely, is that all food should be of a decent quality, and all consumers should know what is in their food.