Food Hygiene Rating Scheme

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring myself as president of the Royal Society for Public Health, which is relevant to this debate. I welcome the debate. I congratulate my noble friend on it and on the excellence of his leadership of the FSA between 2009 and 2013. With the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I had the privilege of taking a Bill through your Lordships’ House which created the FSA as a non-ministerial department, answering to the Department of Health. Noble Lords will recall that the reason this was done was because the BSE outbreak and the way it was handled had led to a loss of confidence in a Minister-led government department being able to give objective advice on food safety. The FSA has done a great job since it was established. It has restored public confidence in official pronouncements in relation to food safety and it must be congratulated on the success of the scheme to which my noble friend referred.

This is an important issue: food hygiene is not a marginal nicety. We know that as a result of food poisoning and so on, many people have a poor time of it. We also know that this is an area which puts unmeasured pressure on our National Health Service, in both primary and secondary care. It is therefore important that we do everything we can to make sure that in these outlets hygiene is of the highest quality.

It is remarkable that, on a voluntary basis, this scheme has been adopted by virtually every local authority in the country except Rutland. I have no doubt the noble Baroness will be able to inform the Committee of what is going on in Rutland, or is her advice that it definitely is not safe to eat there? We should be told. I assume that my noble friend ate in each of the 20 restaurants. He looks pretty good on it.

As the noble Baroness knows, we are debating the Deregulation Bill, which is proving to be of great interest. Mandation in this case would be warranted—as my noble friend said, it would cost virtually nothing—and would be of real advantage to the consumer. It is a pity that, given this wonderful scheme, not all food outlets put out information for the public to see.

Does the noble Baroness agree that the voluntary scheme—and, it is to be hoped, the mandation of it and of public display—is but one aspect of the strategy to improve food hygiene? For example, the Royal Society for Public Health does invaluable work issuing certificates in food hygiene. These are aimed at first-line workers in the food industry. This year, in 11 months, 37,000 qualifications have been issued in food hygiene and food safety in retail and in the catering sector more generally, of which 30,000 were at level 2, essentially to front-line staff.

I hope the noble Baroness accepts that, alongside my noble friend’s helpful suggestion, the work of the Royal Society for Public Health and other organisations in seeking to improve hygiene is an element in the required overall strategy. It will be good to hear from the noble Baroness about the Government’s overall approach to food hygiene alongside her response to my noble friend.