Elliott Review and Food Crime

Debate between Laura Sandys and George Eustice

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[George Eustice]

I do not accept that. Investigations are continuing at a number of sites across the UK. City of London police is co-ordinating the police forces for all the investigations. Five arrests have been made, and the announcement a couple of weeks ago by the Crown Prosecution Service of two cases being taken to court demonstrates that action is being taken to protect consumers from mislabelling and to tackle food businesses’ failure to ensure the traceability of the products that they supply.

The hon. Member for Ogmore talked about the penalties for committing food fraud crimes. The penalty for food offences can range from giving advice or a formal notice for very trivial breaches, such as if a mistake has been made on labelling, to criminal prosecutions for the most serious offences such as fraud. We should bear in mind that when it comes to fraud, it is possible to implement a prison sentence of 10 years. I think that there are sufficient penalties in our criminal law to tackle the most serious cases.

Several hon. Members have talked about the role of the industry, which is one of the key themes picked up by Professor Elliott. As I said at the outset, the food industry has the most to lose from a decline in confidence in the supply chain, and it has a responsibility to take a leading role. As of today, the industry has submitted more than 45,000 tests of beef products for horsemeat since the horsemeat scandal broke, and no new positives have been reported since the height of the incident. Retailers and processors have taken a thorough approach to testing. The tests are being carried out through the supply chain, not only by retailers but by processors, looking at the ingredients going into products in local convenience stores as well as large national retailers.

Food businesses and trade associations representing the whole food chain are also working with the FSA and Professor Elliott to consider how to make better use of audit and controls. Professor Elliott is keen to develop ways of achieving a more streamlined and effective auditing process.

[Laura Sandys]

I welcome the Minister’s full response. Is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs working, in its strategy section, on early warning systems when commodity prices are going up but food prices are going up only a little bit, totally disproportionately? That must be an important signal that gives Government the sense that something is not quite right.

[George Eustice]

I was going to come on to that point, but I will deal with it now because my hon. Friend has raised it. She highlighted passionately in her speech the fact that there has not been as much of an increase in retail food prices as there has been in commodity prices. That can be normal, because commodity prices tend to cover a small number of products, whereas there is a broader range of products in food stores. There has been a 12% rise in food prices in real terms between 2007 and 2012, with the biggest spike in 2008.

In many debates on food banks and the like—I notice that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) is not here—I am told repeatedly that the price of food in the shops is going up. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet highlighted the frozen cottage pie that cost £1 and did not go up in price again, but food prices at the retail end have gone up by 12%, and the fact that certain individual products have stayed the same price may come down to pricing strategies and promotion, so we cannot read too much into such examples. I recognise her point, however. The FSA has reviewed its emerging risks programme, and it is working with DEFRA to identify and assess the economic drivers of food fraud so that those influencing factors are better understood and acted on.