Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

What I am therefore asking here, as with my Amendment 30 on the trade and co-operation agreement, is for the Government to confirm to us that, whatever happens as a result of the retained EU law Bill, they will not undermine the provisions of the Food Safety Act 1990. I look forward to the Minister confirming that she will not do anything that contradicts the obligations of this Government under the trade and co-operation agreement and the Food Safety Act 1990.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I agree with every point he has made; I want to be complementary, not repetitive.

Amendment 38 gives a short list of main points; at the time I tabled it, I was probably too busy to go through all the reference numbers. I am therefore pleased to support Amendments 30 and 39, which I have signed.

Unlike many of the amendments to the Bill that we have already discussed and will discuss, this group concerns products—products that we create in the UK, import into the UK and export from the UK. I can say with some confidence that, if we deviate from what has been put into UK retained EU law over which the UK has total control, we can forget my third point as we will not be exporting in the future. It is as simple as that.

I have no interests to declare, but I had two years at MAFF from 1997 and four years at the Food Standards Agency—well after the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. As I said at Second Reading, I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

It is not easy to keep up with all the paperwork on this, but I looked at the European Commission notice to stakeholders on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from EU food law. The version I looked at was from 13 March 2020; I could not find a later one. That was of course just after—about a month—the UK became a third country. We are out; it is a simple as that. We have continued since then with our version of retained EU law. The subject areas are enormous—there are dozens of them, some of which we have touched on today: food labelling and information; identification marks; ingredients; composition; contaminants; residue limits; food contact materials, such as packaging, which is absolutely crucial; food production rules; food of animal origin, as opposed to of non-animal origin, for which there are quite separate rules; and irradiated food. More than a dozen other aspects are covered.

I will not go into detail because, to be honest, I am assuming that the Ministers have come with good will. I do not make any allegations against them today, but I shall want to know what they say about this before we look to what we do on Report. The Bill will be slightly different at the end of Report to what it is today.

UK deviation from our current UK-controlled law has to be out of the question if we are to maintain the competency and safety of food, and the multinational manufacture of food, because there is a lot of food still manufactured partly in this country, partly in Europe and partly back into this country. It has still got to be done. The export of food to the EU and non-EU nations is a very complex process. It is our largest manufacturing sector, so why would we be so stupid as to damage it? It needs constant checking, scrutiny and proportionate regulation and, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, touched upon, we need to keep organised crime out of the loop.

Our record in recent years has been good, but it was not always so. We gave the world BSE, and therefore the new variant CJD. Some 220 people died worldwide; 178 of those were in the UK and 28 in France. The last case in cattle was in 2021, and before that, in 2018. I remember I was at MAFF when we inherited this. The scientists told us the tail of BSE would be very, very long, and we have got a case here in 2021. New variant CJD is a terrible condition, and all patients die. The post-mortem instruments cannot be used again because they cannot be sterilised. That is what we were dealing with, and it is what we are still checking on today, to make sure the food is safe. It is crucial that the TSE regulation 999/2001 continues to operate because these are the BSE checks. Our meat exports were banned for more than a decade. Billions of pounds were lost in trade. I remember the day the ban was lifted because I had the privilege of helping to serve Northern Ireland beef to traders in Brussels—Northern Ireland got in quicker than the others and got the beef over there and cooked for traders.

Food safety is not a given.

“In the UK, five people every minute are made sick from eating contaminated food. There are more than 2.4 million foodborne disease related cases per year of which 15,500 receive hospital treatment and an estimated 160 deaths”,


which is equivalent to three a week. That is a quote from page 7 of Food You Can Trust: FSA Strategy 2022-2027, published last year. Last year was the first year that the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland published a large annual review of food standards across the UK, which was really a bonus. The reference documents, which are well worth reading, are HC229 or SG/2022/34, called Our Food 2021. Time permits only a couple of mentions of the key findings from both food standard agencies:

“The evidence set out in this report suggests that overall food safety standards have largely been maintained during 2021. However, this is a cautious conclusion. The pandemic disrupted regular inspections, sampling and audits across the food system … both organisations recognise there are significant risks ahead. The report highlights two particular areas of concern. Firstly there has been a fall in the level of local authority inspections”


of the more than half a million food businesses. Furthermore,

“progress is being constrained by resource and the availability of qualified professionals”

such as environmental health practitioners. In the Times on Monday, Jenni Russell mentioned that

“Local authorities had cut their sampling for food … by more than half”.


The second concern from the joint FSA-FSS report is

“in relation to the import of food from the EU. To enhance levels of assurance on higher-risk EU food like meat, dairy and eggs, and food and feed that has come to the UK via the EU, it is essential that improved controls are put in place to the timescale that the UK Government has set out (end 2023).”

We are not checking anything; we were supposed to be checking it to the end of last year, and the Government moved the deadline. We took the view, “Well, the EU has got really good systems; we don’t need to check what comes from them, so we can save money at the ports.” How arrogant can you be? It is a pity the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is not here, because this is the kind of thing I level at people that did the sort of job he did.

The report continues:

“The longer the UK operates without assurance from the exporting country that products meet the UK’s high food and feed safety standards, the less confident we”—


the two food standards agencies—

“can be that we can effectively identify … safety incidents.”

These two concerns need answers from Ministers about cutting the regulations.

I have two final points on this important report. Somewhere there is an amendment, although I cannot remember where, calling for this joint report, which is voluntary, to be put on a statutory basis. Regarding the impact of our EU exit on policy-making, the report said that because of the retained EU law policy

“in Great Britain, there have … been few immediate regulatory changes affecting food standards.”

Here is the key sentence:

“The focus across all four nations has been on maintaining continuity and providing clarity for businesses and consumers on processes and expectations.”


Clarity for businesses and consumers is what we need to maintain; if we do not, we are sunk.

It is reassuring that so far, the two bodies have seen

“no evidence of significant exploitation by criminals.”

But in 2021:

“There were 100 successful ‘disruptions’ of criminal activity within the food chain reported by the UK’s two food crime units”,


one covering the Food Standards Agency, and the other covering Food Standards Scotland. One hundred successful disruptions of criminal activity.

The status quo is not perfect, and any change has to be controlled and not be a surprise, but given the cuts to those that protect the system, we are vulnerable. The status quo is a bit of a worry. According to the document The UK’s Enforcement Gap, produced by Unchecked UK for the decade 2009-19, meat hygiene inspectors were cut by 53%, local authority food standards staff were cut by 60%, inspection of eggs was cut by 23%, UK food laboratories were cut from 17 to 9, and local authority food sampling was cut by 59%. We have an enforcement gap recognised by the National Audit Office, which in June 2019 said that local authorities were failing to meet their legal responsibilities to ensure that food business operators complied with the law.

Compared to the 1980s and the early 1990s, we have a large and sustained increase in confidence in food; there is no question about that. There were real problems in the 1980s and 1990s, and I experienced them: I was completely unprepared to be sent to MAFF in 1997. There was a serious problem regarding how to restore confidence in food, and gradually, over the years, through the Food Standards Agency—there is a separate one for Scotland, which it is quite entitled to have—there has been a big increase in confidence in food. Ministers have kept their sticky fingers away from the food safety levers of power, but according to this they are about to put them all over these regulations. That is clearly the implication.

So, we have had a big increase in confidence in food, and it is our biggest manufacturing industry. Why put that at risk by not accepting these amendments to remove food-related regulations from the Bill? It is simple, really. That is quite easy for Ministers to say. The Minister who is going to reply is probably more experienced than most. Having been a senior official in MAFF in the 1990s, she is fully aware of what I have said about BSE and the difficulties—oh, the noble Baroness is shaking her head; another Minister will reply. Well, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who replied to the previous group, is fully experienced in the situation with BSE. One half of MAFF was arguing with the other half. One half was protecting consumers; the other was pushing for producers. That was the dilemma, which is why today we have independent bodies such as the Food Standards Agency to deal with those two groups across the UK. It does not make sense for the Government to give the impression—because they have not said anything—that they are going to tear up and remove some of these protections or cut corners in the interests of production.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

That is a question for Defra; I cannot confirm or deny any particular regulations that will be looked at. As the noble Baroness will understand, these things are a matter for Defra.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Defra is the producer’s department; who is looking after the consumers? That was part of the problem: Defra will look after the producers and will be lobbied by the producers; where is the role for the consumers? Section 1 of the Food Standards Act 1999 says that the Food Standards Agency’s role is to put consumers’ interests above all else in relation to the consumption of food. So what is the role of the FSA? I declare an interest—because I do not trust Ministers—that I have had no discussions with the FSA about this Bill; everything I have used is public, open-source information. I want to know what the FSA’s role is, because Defra is for the producers; who is going to look after the consumers?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Lord, as a prior chairman of the FSA, will know that the FSA is a part of Defra and represents food standards.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I beg your pardon. If the Minister is not aware, the FSA is a non-ministerial department, which answers to Parliament through the Department of Health, not through Defra. That is the whole point: to keep the producer away from the consumer’s interests.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My apologies to the whole Committee for making that obvious mistake. There has been a write-round to all departments on this Bill. The repeal of EU law is being considered by each department in the write-round, and our commitment to not reducing consumer protection remains in place.