Trade Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to several of these amendments, but I shall stick to dealing with Amendment 20—indeed, part of Amendment 20. If it was being redrafted, Defra should be added to the list of bodies in paragraph (a): the Department of Health, the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland. It is not generally appreciated, but in 2010, when there was an attempt to abolish the UK-wide Food Standards Agency, the consensus in government was to remove aspects of its work to the Department of Health—nutrition and one or two other issues—and labelling and country of origin went to Defra. In fact, it was as a direct result of that action that Food Standards Scotland was set up, because the Scottish Government were perfectly satisfied with the way that the UK-wide FSA was operating. That is a minor point, but I want to concentrate on paragraph (b), which deals with the mechanism and the bodies charged with the enforcement of standards of food safety and quality, to make sure that they have the capacity to deal with the extra work.

It is worth pointing out, by the way, that although it is not politically sexy, the definition of food generally encompasses food and feed—feed being food for food production animals. That has not been taken very seriously in the past by the enforcement authorities. They are, generally speaking, local government. In the main, the Department of Health, the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland use local authorities for that role. Some issues they run themselves—the FSA runs the Meat Hygiene Service directly—but local authorities and environmental health officers are the unsung heroes of food safety and standards for the public.

The Government give us bad news in that respect. In the UK, local authority food hygiene interventions include hygiene inspection audits, sampling visits, verification and surveillance, advice and education and intelligence-gathering. It is absolutely crucial, but all of it will be under pressure with extra work from trade deals. Between 2010-11 and 2018-19, the total number of interventions in the UK reduced by 11%. They went down from 431,852 to 383,494. In England, the fall was from 331,000 to 305,000. In Northern Ireland, the fall was from 21,000 down to 14,000—a huge decrease. In Wales, interventions dropped from 31,000 to 25,000, and in Scotland, they went down from 47,000 to 38,000. I appreciate that with more modern risk techniques and technology, there can be reductions in certain checks, but these reductions are so substantial over that period that the position will be serious if extra pressure is put on because of the work from these trade deals.

I shall give just one local authority example to illustrate how serious the situation is in terms of people checking on our food safety. In Uxbridge in London—I just took it at random—there are 263 food business operations. Twenty-one of them, 8%, have not even been inspected. Thirty of them, 11%, have a food hygiene rating score of zero, one or two. Those are the three scores, of course, that are less than satisfactory, so nearly 20% of the food business operations in one local authority area are definitely a cause for concern. So, the issue in sub-paragraph (b), which aims to make sure that

“the Secretary of State is satisfied that … bodies charged with enforcement”

have the resources to do it, is quite serious, and is the one I want to concentrate on, because I do not want to repeat what others have said.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I remind noble Lords to switch off devices while we are in Grand Committee. It is quite disturbing and disruptive.