Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to spot the importance of food production. It is the largest manufacturing sector in the country, and we would like to see exports expanded into Europe and the BRIC countries, as I have just said.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Opposition were pleased to see the Prime Minister in the USA this week negotiating a trade deal on behalf of the EU to open up that new export market to the British food industry. I was disappointed to note the Secretary of State’s failure to support his Government’s Queen’s Speech in its entirety last night. Does he agree with his Prime Minister and President Obama that the UK is better off in the EU? Yes or no?

[Mr Speaker]

Presumably, that is with reference to the opening up of new markets to British producers?

[Mary Creagh]

indicated assent.

[Mr Paterson]

I entirely agree with the Prime Minister that we would like to increase our exports to the EU and around the world, and that is why he was doing sterling stuff in Russia. I entirely endorse his policy, which is that we should renegotiate and then put the proposed settlement to the British people. The question for the hon. Lady is whether her wishy-washy Wally of a shadow leader will give the British people a choice.

[Mary Creagh]

I am not sure where we stand on those words. I always play the ball, not the man, Mr Speaker. It is interesting to note that the Secretary of State is a little rattled.

At a CBI dinner last night, Roger Carr, its president, said that Britain needed to be in the EU in order to build our export base. Membership of the EU gives us access to a domestic market of 500 million people. Our export trade deals are negotiated through the EU. Nearly three quarters of our food exports go to our European neighbours. Once more, will the Secretary of State explain how Britain’s leaving the UK would help jobs, exports and growth in the British food industry?

Agricultural Wages Board

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) was set up in 1948 to provide a fair wage and skills structure for agricultural workers; recognises that it is used as a benchmark for other employment in the food industry and that it was the only wages council not to be scrapped in the 1980s; further notes that around a quarter of agricultural workers live in tied accommodation and that casual seasonal workers may move around the country; regrets that the Welsh Government’s wish to retain the AWB has been ignored by the Government; condemns the Government for its abolition of the AWB, which took place after just four weeks consultation and will take £260 million out of the rural economy over the next 10 years, lead to a race to the bottom on wages in rural areas, reduce living standards and impoverish rural workers, exacerbating social deprivation and harming social inclusion; further regrets that hon. Members could not debate that issue as part of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill; and calls on the Government to drop its plans to abolish the AWB.

Last week, the House abolished the Agricultural Wages Board without debate and without a vote. The AWB sets the pay and conditions for 152,000 farm workers in England and Wales. That shoddy little manoeuvre was the result of Government desperation to force through the board’s abolition in the teeth of opposition from my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government, workers’ representatives and many farmers. Perhaps it was also the result of a fear of another coalition split or Back-Bench revolt. Today, the Opposition are allowing Back Benchers the chance to debate and vote on that abolition—a vote the Government denied them last week.

Like today’s debate, other debates on the subject have been sparsely attended by Government Back Benchers. Perhaps they flinch from defending an ideological decision that will impoverish hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of their hard-working constituents who work the land. We know that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs traps squirrels on his estate. His Liberal Democrat colleagues should beware the political traps that he enjoys setting for his coalition partners. In opposition, the Minister of State supported a motion that warned that abolishing the AWB would

“impoverish the rural working class”.

Today, he and his colleagues once again act as midwives to Tory dogma that will make thousands of people in their constituencies worse off—1,020 people in the Minister’s constituency and 1,120 people in the Secretary of State’s constituency.

The abolition of the AWB is wrong on three counts. First, it will take money out of workers’ pockets and out of rural high streets at a time when the economy needs it most. The abolition does nothing to reduce the deficit; it could even increase the deficit by adding to the welfare bill, because workers pushed into poverty pay will claim more in-work benefits and lose the incentive to gain new skills. Secondly, the abolition is bad for our food industry. A race to the bottom on pay will not help to attract the new recruits the industry needs. Thirdly, the abolition is bad regulatory reform because, paradoxically, it will increase the burden of employment regulation on small farmers, meaning that many more of them could end up in employment tribunals. Ministers’ incompetence will result in lower pay, higher welfare spending and more regulation, and it will deepen the recession in the rural high streets they represent.

First, let us look at how the measure will take money off low-paid workers. The AWB protects pay and conditions for 152,000 farm workers in England and Wales.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that among those working on the land are people like me and many others in Northamptonshire whose first experience of work, under the age of 16, was picking fruit on the farms in rural Northamptonshire? This will have a particular impact on them because they are not covered by the minimum wage.

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. With the abolition of the AWB, there will be no minimum wage for children under the age of 16 who are picking fruit or driving tractors at weekends and in the summer holidays. When one thinks about the amount of money a tractor is worth, and how such work could become a route into farming for some young people, it will certainly cap their access to that employment.

As well as the 152,000 who are directly covered by the board, a similar number have their wages set against the AWB benchmark, including equestrian workers in the racing and leisure industries, estate workers and gamekeepers. Nearly every constituency in the country has some people who will be affected, including more than 50 people in Wakefield. The board sets fair wages, holiday pay, sick pay and overtime. It has six grades, and the lowest grade is just 2p an hour more than the national minimum wage.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is another pernicious, shoddy little policy by the Government, who are ideologically driven to cut the wages of ordinary working people?

[Mary Creagh]

They are certainly driven by ideology, although the ideology of the Minister of State seems to have changed from when he was a Back Bencher, now that he enjoys the privilege of a Government car. I do not know what has changed for him.

Without the AWB, farm workers will be worse off. As my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) said, there will be no minimum wage for children under 16. Seasonal workers will lose their entitlement to their own bed, which is currently guaranteed by the board. The cap on the amount employers can charge workers for tied accommodation, currently £4.82 a day for a caravan, will be removed. Some 42,000 casual workers will see their pay cut to the minimum wage as soon as they finish their current job. The rest will see their wages eroded over time.

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

What evidence does the hon. Lady have for her statement that all those casual workers will see their pay cut immediately at the end of their contracts? Farmers are desperate to get casual workers, and that is why they are keen for us to continue the schemes to bring them in from eastern Europe. They will not be able to get the staff if, as she suggests, they cut their pay.

[Mary Creagh]

I will be talking in detail about the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that 1,610 people in his constituency will be affected by the reduction in pay. I do not know whether he has read the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs impact assessment that was conducted when he was the Minister; I certainly have. It states that 42,000 casual workers are likely to see their pay default to the national minimum wage when their current employment comes to an end. The cost to the rural economy that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment estimates—there are varying figures—are to do with the direct loss of wages, holiday pay and sick pay out of workers’ pockets.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady identify what is special about agriculture? Is it that farmers want to exploit their workers, or should there be protection for people in retail, catering and other such industries?

[Mary Creagh]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, with 380 workers who will be affected in his constituency, is asking me what is special about agriculture; I believe that he is a farmer, so he might stand up and tell me. Agriculture is different because people are often living in rural isolation; they may have their home provided by their employer, which puts them in a uniquely vulnerable position; and, as the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) said, they are brought in from countries where English is not their first language—perhaps they do not speak English at all—and are not in a position to negotiate. Those are three reasons for starters, but I am happy to come back to that.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend’s speech is hitting exactly the right notes. Has the former Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), not just given the game away? This measure is about getting eastern Europeans into the country to pay them poverty wages far below those that anybody else would possibly want.

[Mary Creagh]

I will look at that in detail later, but we do not want either a race to the bottom on wages or a great increase in the amount that employers charge workers for their tied accommodation—their hot bed in a caravan—which will mean that they end up effectively working for below national minimum wage and undercut British workers out of the market.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. One point covered by the AWB that scares me is workers’ sick pay and terms and conditions. At the moment, sick pay ranges from £150 to £250. Once the AWB has gone, employers will have to pay sick pay at only statutory minimum terms of just more than £85. That is a direct hit on workers, a quarter of whom are over 55 years old.

[Mary Creagh]

That is right, and we all know that as we get older we are more prone to illness. A further reason why farming is different is that people are expected to work antisocial hours and long hours out in what can be very difficult conditions. We saw that with the flooding last year and when farmers and their employees had to dig lambs out of the snow in the very cold winter we have just had.

[Mr Spencer]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

I will give way later, but I would like to make some progress.

The Government’s own figures suggest that up to £280 million could be lost over 10 years in wages and in holiday and sick pay—a quarter of a billion pounds taken out of areas represented mainly by the parties on the Government Benches, where the cost of living is estimated to be approximately £3,000 more than for those living in urban areas. Up to £35 million a year could be lost in wages alone—again, those figures are taken from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment.

I want to know what happens when money is taken from rural families on the breadline. Who will pick up the tab? People with children will have recourse to income-related benefits, such as tax credits, council tax benefit and housing benefit. Reducing rural workers to the poverty line will take money out of workers’ pockets and transfer it directly to their employers. We, the taxpayer, will pick up the in-work welfare bill. That will add to the deficit. As a strategy for rural growth and deficit reduction, this thoughtless abolition will be catastrophic.

My second point is that the abolition will be bad for the food industry; it goes against business needs. Britain’s biggest manufacturing industry, the food production sector, needs more skilled workers. Instead, the Government are encouraging employers to race to the bottom on pay. That will see skilled workers turn their backs on the industry—and become MPs instead!

There are 2.5 million unemployed people in the United Kingdom, 1 million of whom are young people. There are 25 million unemployed people in the European Union, yet the horticulture industry still says that it needs to bring in workers under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme because it cannot find reliable British workers. It simply defies economic logic to suggest that a race to the bottom on pay is the way to attract the skilled new entrants that the industry needs.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady unaware or simply ignoring the fact that the AWB was debated at length during the consideration of the Public Bodies Bill in both Houses of Parliament? Secondly, is she aware of the impact assessment’s conclusion that current wage levels are generally above the minimum, and that, with wage-setting practices and modern working practices in agriculture, wages are unlikely to be eroded, as farmers will need to attract their workers? That was its conclusion.

[Mary Creagh]

I am delighted that the right hon. Lady refers to the AWB and the Public Bodies Bill, the so-called bonfire of the quangos. The Bill certainly brought her a degree of notoriety, as it contained her proposals to sell off the forests and scrap protection for farm workers. She mentions the impact assessment. I am just quoting the Government’s figures: their estimate is as high as £280 million over 10 years, or with a best estimate of £260 million.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

Many times during the passage of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) met the National Farmers Union, employers and all the major people employed in the farming industry, all of whom recognised the valuable contribution of the AWB. Perhaps today we can find out who is the driving force behind its abolition. Employers do not want to get rid of it.

[Mary Creagh]

That is very interesting. I was just reading some of the responses to the consultation. One farmer said:

“I am a farmer with 3 employees. The annual AWB wage award has been an invaluable tool to help determine wage awards...We are overburdened with enthusiastic government departments issuing guidance rules & legislation...The annual guidance for the level of wage awards is one of the few useful tools”.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is quite clear that the proposal to abolish the AWB is not driven by a worry that it holds pay back or conditions down.

[Andrew George]

If the Government are arguing that it is being abolished to enhance pay and conditions, we will hear that from the Front Bench in a moment. Does the hon. Lady agree that we do not want simply to go the lowest common denominator?

[Mary Creagh]

I have been making that point repeatedly. The hon. Gentleman has 1,110 people in his constituency who will be affected. I am afraid that we heard some noises off from the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire; he said, “It is,” so it seems that coalition divisions are once more being exposed, as I thought they would be. I look forward to having a chat with the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) in our Lobby during tonight’s vote.

I want to return to the role of the major supermarkets, which have silently supported the abolition of the AWB. Even the farm manager of the Duchy of Cornwall, which supplies Waitrose, responded to the consultation in support of abolition. The Duchy Originals website talks about food that “is good” and “does good” and says that it raises money for charity, but rural workers should not have to rely on charity to feed their families at the end of the week. Today’s figures on food banks, many of which are springing up in rural areas, give the lie to the fact that there is any overpayment in rural areas.

The supermarkets trumpet their commitment to fair trade, but why is that only for workers in developing countries? Why not here? They trumpet their corporate social responsibility programmes in communities, yet are silent when it comes to reducing pay in their own supply chains. I quote again from the responses to the consultation. A vegetable producer in the north-west said:

“We are unfortunately in an industry where we are seeing increasing pressure from retailers to lower prices of supply of produce,”

and added that

“some of our produce price returns are no higher in 2012 than they were over 10 years ago.”

This has real implications for the sustainability of the food supply chain and the UK’s self-sufficiency, which has already fallen to about 55%, making us much more vulnerable to global shocks. The supermarkets have got to start thinking long term. We supported the Government’s creation of the groceries code adjudicator, although we would have preferred an ombudsman. We want fairness in the supply chain, but that does not stop with the horticultural businesses. It has to feed down to the level of the individual workers as well.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the case she is making. The Conservative party was once seen as the party of the countryside, but does not the Government’s shoddy behaviour demonstrate just who in the countryside it really stands up for?

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. It is not even clear whom they support in the countryside, though. I have quoted some farmers opposed to abolition. It is a bit of a mystery who actually wants it. The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire has left the Chamber, so we will never know.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady’s case, which makes it clear that she disagrees very strongly with the abolition of the AWB. The Opposition likewise made their opposition clear when other wages boards were abolished in the 1990s, none of which was brought back during the 13 years of Labour government. Will she give us an absolute commitment that, if the Labour party forms the next Government, the AWB will be returned forthwith? Will she give us that guarantee?

[Mary Creagh]

If the hon. Gentleman is so keen to retain the AWB—I know that many in his constituency, including the Farmers’ Union of Wales, are against abolition—I hope that that will be reflected in his voting on our side this evening.

I want to deal with the regulatory burdens that could fall on farmers. We have considered the history behind the AWB’s abolition. The board has survived until now thanks to my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government, who listened to their constituents and were totally against getting rid of it. Constitutionally, abolition required consent, and they refused to give it.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The motion notes that it is

“the Welsh Government’s wish to retain the AWB”.

Scotland and Northern Ireland can keep their AWBs, of course. Is the hon. Lady making the case, therefore, for a reserved powers model for the Welsh Government?

[Mary Creagh]

I think the hon. Gentleman has made that case very well himself. We expect an announcement from our colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government, but they have made a commitment to retain the functions of the AWB in Wales. We will see what that delivers over time.

All was quiet until the appointment of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who decided to abolish the AWB by tacking it on to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—a regulatory reform that could therefore bypass the Welsh Government. His Department conducted a pitifully short, four-week consultation. Let us remember that there was a full 12-week consultation on banning ash trees from Europe four months after Ministers were first told that ash dieback disease was here. We can see where this Secretary of State’s priorities lie—apart from the squirrels. He is swift to take money from workers’ pockets and hand it back to their bosses, but slow to defend the natural environment.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that the Secretary of State represents a border constituency? If, as expected, the Labour-controlled Welsh Assembly maintains the AWB at its own expense, members of the farming community in his constituency would have to travel only one or two miles, potentially, to get a better deal. He will have a skills shortage in his own constituency.

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. The Secretary of State has not only 1,120 agricultural workers, but a food bank, in his constituency, so that is an excellent point very well made.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, for being late into the Chamber and further apologise if my point has already been mentioned. I want to highlight to my hon. Friend that not long after the previous Labour Government introduced the national minimum wage, the Conservative party called for the abolition of the AWB, saying that the national minimum wage would cover it, which clearly it would not.

[Mary Creagh]

Clearly, the national minimum wage does not cover it all, which is why it was not abolished under various previous Tory Governments. Various Conservative Prime Ministers understood that if someone’s house was provided by their employer, they were in a uniquely vulnerable position when it came to negotiating their wages.

Many small farmers want to keep the AWB so that they do not have to become employment specialists. They want to get on with running their business. Instead, this change will add to their regulatory burden. The Farmers’ Union of Wales, where 12,000 workers are covered by the AWB, opposes abolition. It has said:

“Many farms in Wales run with relatively few staff, or indeed with family labour. The Agricultural Wages Board is considered an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual members of staff.”

Without the AWB, each farm business owner will have to negotiate terms and conditions annually with its work force. They will make mistakes, as employers sometimes do, and might end up in employment tribunals as a result.

I want to quote again from one of the consultation responses. A farmer in Kings Lynn said:

“I disagree strongly with the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board...the last thing I want to do with my limited management time is to negotiate wages with my 6 full-time and up to 30 part-time workers some of whom have worked for me for 30 to 40 years and have a strong personal relationship with me. I do not want to damage this by having to negotiate wages with them.”

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) asked why farming was different. I think that that answers his question.

We have talked about gangmasters and licensing and, before I conclude, I want to touch briefly on the issue of workers’ accommodation. The Government’s impact assessment indicates that 25,500 farm workers have a house or cottage provided by their employer, and that another 4,700 live in other accommodation, such as caravans. The agricultural wages order defines “other” accommodation and guarantees all farm workers that it is fit for human habitation, safe and secure, and that every worker should have a bed for their sole use and be provided with suitable and sufficient free drinking water and sanitation.

Abolishing the AWB will remove those guarantees on housing for farm workers. The accommodation will no longer have to be fit for human habitation, safe or secure. Workers will not be guaranteed a bed for their sole use, and there will be no requirement to provide drinking water or sanitation. I should like to cite the case of one of the firms that wrote in support of the AWB’s abolition, Suffolk Mushrooms. Last year, the firm was fined £10,000 for failing to have a safety certificate for the boiler in the men’s accommodation, and for various hazardous working practices that put workers’ lives at risk, including leaving high-level safety gates open. After the case was won, the Health and Safety Executive inspector, John Claxton, said:

“Suffolk Mushrooms invested more than £1.5 million refurbishing its factory and mushroom growing equipment, yet failed to spend even a few hundred pounds to keep its employees safe”.

[Mrs Spelman]

Obviously the laws already exist to enable the Health and Safety Executive to fine employers, in every sector of the economy, when they break the law. Does the hon. Lady not accept that she is perpetrating the myth that farmers set out to exploit their workers? The vast majority of farmers listening to the debate today would be affronted by that suggestion.

[Mary Creagh]

That was a good effort from the right hon. Lady. The HSE will clearly continue to exist, but I am citing a case that happened last year, not at some other point in time. I ask her whether she thinks that conditions will get worse or better when the AWB is abolished.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

The Agricultural Wages Board existed when that case came to light, so it clearly did not create the defence that the hon. Lady suggested it might.

[Mary Creagh]

The question for the hon. Gentleman is whether conditions will get worse or better when the provisions are removed. Will they be better or worse for a worker who does not have a bed guaranteed for their sole use? Opposition Members already know of conditions in which people are hot-bedding. Is that what we want to see in our farming industry? I certainly do not, and I am sure that the majority of farmers do not, but there will now be no legal requirement for an individual to have their own bed. I think that that is wrong; does the hon. Gentleman?

The AWB was set up by the Attlee Government in 1948. Even Mrs Thatcher did not abolish it. She understood that if someone’s home comes with their job, they are in a uniquely weak negotiating position with their employer. However, last week’s Bill ended nearly 100 years of protection for farm workers. In the Labour party, we believe that the people who pick the fruit should also be able to buy it in the shops, and not have to rely on food banks to feed themselves and their children. As many farmers themselves have said, in their responses to the consultation, this decision will not secure a stable and prosperous future for the food and farming industry or for those who work in it. The Prime Minister once said that we were all in it together, but time after time, ordinary working people are first in his firing line. If Members want a rural living wage, they should vote with the Labour party this afternoon. If they are happy with poverty pay for their constituents, they should vote with the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who picks up on the earlier question that the shadow Secretary of State singularly failed to answer. On my hon. Friend’s behalf, I pose this question to her: if a Labour Government were to be elected after the next election, would the AWB exist? Will they bring in legislation to re-establish an agricultural wages board?

[Mary Creagh]

The right hon. Gentleman asks me a direct question. We are two years away from the next election, and I am sure he will be looking forward with great eagerness to our manifesto. We will look at all measures that stop the public sector, the taxpayer, subsidising poverty wages, wherever they occur in our economy.

[Mr Paterson]

I think my hon. Friend will take that as a no.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

It might surprise the hon. Lady to learn that I am not a member of the Government and so I am not really in a position to answer that. Of course, I sat through 13 years of Labour disdain for rural Britain, and that question was asked on many occasions. However, I do not want to be reprimanded by the Chair twice in two days for getting off the topic by talking about union sponsorship, so if she will forgive me—

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Gentleman said that the motion is somehow sponsored by unions. It is nothing of the sort. This debate is about a point of principle—[Interruption.] I am sorry that Government Members are laughing. This debate is about whether people who work in remote, isolated areas, in unseasonable conditions and in one of our most dangerous industries deserve to be paid 2p an hour above the national minimum wage and to have some sort of protection against eviction from their homes.

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Lady will forgive me if I note that pretty much all the electronic traffic we have seen on this debate has been generated by her party’s biggest sponsor. Call me a cynic, but I am not going to accept her comments.

I believe that workers in my area are protected by the minimum wage, employment legislation and a raft of accommodation legislation applying to tied cottages and the like. I do not recognise the image projected by the Labour party of farm workers in tied cottages, and have 28 years’ experience in the industry. I agreed with the Secretary of State when he referred to the noble Lord Falconer’s comment that regional and sectoral pay was a thing of the past. I find it odd that we seem to be disagreeing with that now.

The final abolition of the AWB raises two questions, both of which have been raised before, but since neither has been answered I will ask them again. If the abolition of the AWB exposes young workers, foreign workers or people who are vulnerable, either through poverty or in some other way, in the way the shadow Secretary of State has set out—I know all about the unique aspects of agricultural work—why is it that no other sector in the UK from which a wages board has been removed is suffering from those consequences? Perhaps she could explain—we asked this question earlier but did not get an explanation—why those dangers are apparently unique to agriculture. I will ask her a third time, more in hope than in expectation: would Labour reinstate the AWB if it was lucky enough to form a Government in 2015? It is no good her saying that they have a couple years to come clean about their proposals. I think that this is absolutely the right forum and the right time to make clear the policy as it applies to the AWB of a party that might—I hope not—form a future Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I agree that clearer labelling could help, but we are up against a criminal conspiracy and I think the criminals would have got through. I had a constructive meeting with the French, German, Austrian and Finnish Ministers in Brussels last week, and we are asking the European Commission to accelerate its report on the labelling and marking of the country of origin.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

On 22 February Sodexo announced that it had found horsemeat in a beef product and withdrew meat from schools in Gloucestershire, Southampton and Leicestershire and the armed forces. Sodexo has refused publicly to name the product, the level of horse adulteration or the meat company which supplied it, thereby preventing other organisations from knowing whether their supplies are at risk. The Government know the name of that meat supplier. Will the Secretary of State now name that company so that the rest of the public sector can check its supplies?

[Mr Paterson]

I discussed this issue yesterday with the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, who is completely satisfied that the information required from Sodexo has been supplied. The hon. Lady must understand that there is an investigation going on and in some of these cases it might lead to criminal prosecution. [Interruption.] No, the FSA is clear that it must be guarded about what information can be revealed in case the investigations are impinged upon.

[Mary Creagh]

I find that answer extraordinary. The Secretary of State has a duty to tell the public what he knows and in every other case where supermarkets and other suppliers have found adulterated meat products, their suppliers have been named. How is the public sector supposed to check?

I want to move on to a letter from John Young, a former manager at the Meat Hygiene Service, who sent this letter from High Peak Meat Exports to DEFRA in April 2011. It warned the Government that bute-contaminated horsemeat could illegally enter the human food chain because of failures with the horse passport system, which I have raised in the House before. On 17 February the Secretary of State ordered an urgent investigation into those claims. What has that investigation found, and has he discovered why his Government colleagues ignored that warning?

[Mr Paterson]

To clarify the previous answer, Sodexo made it clear to all its customers which products there was a problem with. It has withdrawn them all but in the case of an investigation which might grow criminal, it would not be sensible to reveal names of suppliers. This is a criminal conspiracy which covers 23 different countries, and it does not help the police to arrive at prosecutions if information is revealed.

On horse passports, we are clear that we have fixed the problem of bute getting into the food chain. No carcases will get into the food chain until they have tested negative for bute. That is absolutely clear, and we are clear that the horse passport regime which we inherited from the hon. Lady’s party needs reforming, and we will do that in due course.

Point of Order

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I will take the point of order, and any response if the Minister wishes to respond, but I must emphasise that that will be that. We are not having a whole debate on the issue that arose at the start of the urgent question.

[Mary Creagh]

I would like to set the record straight—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to Members who are shrieking that they should cease doing so. Mr Burley, you are now eagerly consulting your BlackBerry or iPhone, and that may be a more profitable activity for you than shouting from a sedentary position. Let me make it clear that the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) will be heard, and the Minister will be heard, without unnecessary distractions.

[Mary Creagh]

I would like to give the Minister the opportunity to set the record straight. He is right that I received last Friday the names of three UK companies suspected as passing off horse as beef. I immediately e-mailed and wrote to the Secretary of State, on that day, offering to share the information with him. I received a response from him on Monday asking me to hand it over. He was obviously unaware that I had already handed it over to the FSA on Saturday, and that it had reassured me that it was already in possession of those names. Will he now withdraw the disgraceful slur and apologise to me?

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I have here the e-mail exchange between the FSA’s director of operations and the hon. Lady. He repeatedly requests further information and evidence on the comments that she made in the House, and her reply is:

“I am very anxious to protect my source from any repercussions.”

She then seeks to bargain with the FSA for further information before releasing her information. I am happy to put that into the public domain if it would help, but I think my comments were entirely justified.

Horsemeat

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on horsemeat in the UK food chain and joint police and Food Standards Agency action.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

The Secretary of State and I are providing the House with very regular reports on the adulteration of processed beef products with horsemeat. As the House will appreciate, it is not possible to give a running commentary on active investigations. Therefore, for operational reasons, we were unable to inform the House of the Food Standards Agency’s plan to enter the two meat premises in west Wales and west Yorkshire earlier this week. As part of its audit of all horse abattoirs in the UK and the ongoing investigation into the adulteration of meat products, the FSA gathered intelligence that led to it and the police entering the two meat premises and seizing horsemeat. The FSA also seized all paperwork from the two companies and is investigating customer lists. The FSA suspended activities at both plants immediately. The FSA will continue to work closely with the police, and if there is evidence of criminal activity, I will expect the full force of the law to be brought down on anyone involved.

I met retailers and suppliers again yesterday, and they confirmed that they are on course to provide meaningful results from product testing by tomorrow. The Secretary of State has made a written ministerial statement today on the outcome of his successful discussions in Europe yesterday. The co-ordinated control plan proposed by the Commission is a welcome step to help address a pan-European problem.

The FSA’s most recent tests for the presence of bute in horses slaughtered in the UK checked 206 horse carcases, and eight came back positive. Three may have entered the food chain in France, and the remaining five have not gone into the food chain. The FSA is working with the French authorities in an attempt to recall the meat from the food chain. I understand—I am sure that the House will be glad to hear this—that the results of bute testing in the withdrawn Findus products have come back negative. The chief medical officer and the chief executive officer of the FSA will be making a statement on both these matters later this morning.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that statement. I am sure the whole House will welcome Tuesday’s raids by the FSA and the police. May I ask him whether all customers of the meat-processing plant have been contacted about the raid and alerted to a potential risk?

I am glad that the FSA is investigating the concerns about horsemeat entering the food chain that I first raised with Ministers last month. Action must be taken to deal with any criminals whose activities have so badly damaged consumer confidence in the UK food industry. I raised the problem of bute-contaminated horsemeat being released into the human food chain with the Minister at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions last month. What action did he take with the FSA to reassure himself after I raised those concerns? Was he aware of bute contamination before that day? Will he explain why, up until four days ago, all horses were being tested for bute in this country but were still being released for human consumption? I am astonished to hear that a further three could have entered the food chain in France, given that I raised this issue with him last month. That is astonishing. We were in the middle of a horsemeat adulteration scandal; this is just catastrophic complacency from him.

It is totally unacceptable that all UK horses were being tested for bute at slaughter but still being released into the human food chain until four days ago. We know that, with more than 9,000 horses slaughtered in the UK for human consumption abroad last year, we must make sure that horsemeat intended for humans is not contaminated with bute—it really is as simple as that. So why did the Minister not act immediately when I raised this issue three weeks ago in this House? Why did he not order full testing, and order that horses should be released only when clear from bute, the moment I raised this with him? We need to know whether the horsemeat entering the UK in these adulterated products contained bute.

Will the Minister tell the House whether the FSA has conducted its own tests on the Findus products to ensure that action can be taken through the criminal courts? Which other countries are testing their horsemeat lasagnes? Which other countries have received those horsemeat lasagnes? We hear from the media that they went to 16 countries, so why have they been withdrawn in only six countries—Britain, Ireland, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway? What has happened to the products in the other countries? Has the Minister sought or received reassurances from his EU counterparts that the products have been withdrawn in all EU countries?

Yesterday, the Secretary of State travelled to Brussels for a meeting with his EU counterparts. That arch-Eurosceptic had a damascene conversion to EU labelling regulations on the way. He wants more of them, he wants them quickly and he wants the Commission to hurry up with them—so much speed when his Government have spent the past two years blocking Labour MEPs’ attempts to get better country of origin labelling for processed meats and ready meals. [Interruption.] They do not like hearing it, but they are all keen on it now, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

We are all very happy to hear that, but unfortunately the hon. Lady has already exceeded her time. I think a last sentence will suffice.

[Mary Creagh]

Is there not a danger with the EU testing that the most high-risk products will be withdrawn over the next three weeks and quietly disposed of? Yesterday, the Secretary of State said:

“Nobody had a clue that there was adulteration of beef products”,

yet the Government were told by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland that it was testing last November. It seems that he and his colleagues are just totally clueless.

[Mr Heath]

Listening to the hon. Lady, one would fail to understand that probably the biggest investigation into criminal behaviour that has ever been conducted across Europe is going on at the instigation of this Government and as a result of the actions of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. He instigated the meeting of Farming Ministers of the affected countries and the Commission, established Europol in a co-ordinating role, brought forward the labelling of ingredients for products as an emergency item within the EU, exchanged data at a speed that was never done under the Government whom the hon. Lady supported, brought forward an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health to consider probable thresholds, and got the matter on the agenda for Council on 25 February. That is a quite remarkable achievement in a very short time. The Government are committed to proper investigations based on evidence.

Let me finish with one point raised by the hon. Lady—[Interruption.] If she would stop shouting at me, I will give her the answer. She raised the criminal investigations following her assertions in this House about phenylbutazone. She was repeatedly asked by the Food Standards Agency to share the information she purported to have and she refused to do so. I think that every citizen in this country has a duty to provide evidence to the relevant investigating authorities when there is evidence of potential criminal behaviour.

[Mary Creagh]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We cannot have a point of order in the middle of the exchange. The hon. Lady can make a point of order later and I will of course hear it at the appropriate time.

Horsemeat

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I shall try to bear your comments in mind, Mr Speaker.

I beg to move,

That this House notes that up to 100 per cent horsemeat has been found in supermarket and branded processed meat products and that horsemeat has been found at the premises of a UK meat processing plant; notes with concern that seven horses which tested positive for phenylbutazone (bute) contamination have entered the human food chain, including one in England; further notes that meat supplied to UK prisons, labelled Halal, has tested positive for pork DNA; recognises that the Irish government and Northern Irish Executive have called in the police and specialist fraud units to tackle the problem of horsemeat adulteration; further recognises that thousands of jobs depend on consumer confidence in the UK and Irish meat industries; and calls on the Government to ensure that police and fraud specialists investigate the criminal networks involved in horsemeat adulteration, to speed up the Food Standards Agency official tests so that results are back in 14 days and restore consumer confidence in the meat industry by working with the food industry and other EU member states and EU institutions to define new testing, labelling and traceability standards for the meat industry to protect consumers from fraud.

It is four weeks to the day since the Irish authorities told the UK Government that they had discovered horsemeat in burgers, and 10 million suspect burgers were withdrawn. Products from Tesco, Iceland, Co-op, Lidl and Aldi have all tested positive for horsemeat. The burgers came from Silvercrest Foods in Ireland and Dalepak Hambleton in Yorkshire, subsidiaries of the ABP Food Group. A third company—Liffey Meats in County Cavan in Ireland—was also found to be supplying products with horse DNA.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady take this opportunity to correct comments that she made in column 612 of yesterday’s Hansard? She said that 70,000 horses are unaccounted for in Northern Ireland and being sold in the lucrative horsemeat trade. That is not the case; the evidence relates to the Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland. The Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is a responsible organisation and made the claims not about Northern Ireland but about the Republic. Will she join me in a cross-party promotion of Northern Ireland’s red meat sector, which produces among the best, most traced and tastiest food in this country? I would be delighted if she agreed that our border is more secure than a slip of the tongue on the Front Bench.

[Mr Speaker]

We are deeply obliged to the hon. Gentleman, who has now made his speech.

[Mary Creagh]

I am happy for the record to be put straight on that; in the heat of the debate, I made a slip of the tongue. I am the granddaughter of a cattle farmer in Northern Ireland, so it is incumbent on me to recommend the meat of the good cows of Northern Ireland.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my fellow Yorkshire MP for giving way. May I ask her to correct another part of the record? I think she will find that no contamination was found at Dalepak in north Yorkshire.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the motion, but it lacks one thing—whether on purpose or by accident, I do not know. There is absolutely no reference to the British meat trade; its fresh, processed or frozen parts have not been implicated. We do not want any collateral damage to our excellent trade, which meets the highest standards of traceability, welfare and good food.

[Mary Creagh]

I believe that traces of horse DNA were found in products that emanated from the Dalepak plant in Hambleton; if the hon. Lady has information to the contrary, I am sure that she will take the opportunity to put the record straight. The British meat industry is not mentioned in the motion because now is not the time to be talking down the British meat industry, as she says.

Burger King, which sells a million burgers a week, gave “absolute assurances” that its burgers were fine; two weeks later they tested positive. Representatives of TRG, or the Restaurant Group, which runs Frankie and Benny’s, revealed last Monday that they had discovered a batch of meat at Rangeland Foods that tested positive for horse.

Furthermore, last Monday, the Irish authorities discovered a 900 kg block of mostly horsemeat sitting in the cold store of a Northern Ireland burger producer, Freeza Meats. The meat had been impounded during a routine inspection five months ago. I congratulate the inspectors from Newry and Mourne council, who on a routine inspection had concerns about that meat’s packaging and quality and about the absence of labelling on some products. If meat does not have a label, we have absolutely no idea where it has come from.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her leadership on this issue. She and the highly respected Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have said that they would not currently eat processed beef products. Does she share my amazement that Ministers are still encouraging people to do so?

[Mary Creagh]

A range of mixed messages has been coming out of the Government. The Secretary of State said on Friday that he would be happy to eat processed beef products, but said on Sunday that doing so could be injurious to human health—[Interruption.] Well, he said that substances could be found that could be injurious to human health; I remember him saying it on the Iain Dale radio show.

The issue is difficult because yesterday the chief medical officer said that testing had never been done, because nobody wants to test humans to find out who is susceptible to the serious blood disorder aplastic anaemia—of course, it would be completely unethical and impossible to conduct such a test. The Government are in a difficult position. They may be trying to minimise public concern, but there is no safe dose of bute in humans.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that as the responsibility now lies with the retailers to help restore confidence, there should be an aggressive campaign by all of them to assure their customers that all the beef that they buy from now on will be British? What more can be done so that customers have confidence that they really are eating British beef?

[Mary Creagh]

The beef on sale right now in UK supermarkets is probably of a higher quality than ever. Lots of local and independent butchers have seen a spike in trade lately as a result of what has happened.

I said that there was no safe dose of bute for humans. I am not a medical expert, but bute can cause serious adverse side effects so should be consumed only under medical supervision—[Interruption.] Government Front Benchers are chuntering already, Mr Speaker; that is not a good sign.

The positive test on Freeza Meats led the inspectors to the meat trader, Martin McAdam, who admitted to buying the meat from a UK company, Flexi Foods, in Hull last July. A spokesman for Mr McAdam said:

“That shipment was the first one that came to light. Subsequently other tests identified other shipments of meat.”

He has identified the names of other companies involved, and on Friday I received that information. These UK food companies may or may not have supplied suspect meat products to Mr McAdam, but while there is a question mark over them, the food industry has a right to have that information.

On Friday I wrote to the Secretary of State offering to share that information with him. When he replied to me yesterday, he urged me to hand it over to the police and to the Food Standards Agency, as I already had done, and I assume that he now has it. On Saturday, however, after a conversation with one of the food industry representatives, I realised that the Secretary of State had not revealed the names of those firms to the food industry at the meeting. Yesterday, when I asked him why not, he failed to answer. Why did he not tell the food industry where to look? Why has he not released those names to the public so that we can have full transparency on this problem? If the Government want the industry to test on the basis of risk, why did he not share the names of the companies at Saturday’s meeting?

In the FSA advice to the public sector issued at 10 o’clock on Sunday night, the Secretary of State laid the responsibility for food safety squarely on other people’s shoulders. He said:

“We are reminding public bodies (schools, prisons, hospitals, armed forces) of their responsibility for their own food contracts. We expect them to have rigorous procurement procedures in place with reputable suppliers.”

If he knows that there are problems with some UK-based companies, why has he not told head teachers, local authorities and hospital bosses about the companies that are being investigated? I am happy to give way now if he would like to intervene.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

I am very happy to do so. I have been restraining myself, Mr Speaker, because of your injunction to be as brief as possible. The Food Standards Agency, set up by the hon. Lady’s party when in government, has been quite clear in giving advice to all those who supply to public institutions such as prisons, schools and hospitals. As I said yesterday in my statement and will say again in a few minutes, food suppliers have the ultimate responsibility for the quality of what they sell.

[Mary Creagh]

We are none the wiser about whether the Secretary of State knows the names of these companies, which prompts the question of whether the FSA has told him or whether he has asked it. Perhaps he will clarify that.

On Friday the FSA said that the police were involved, and I thought that things were under control. However, on Friday night the Met police said that they had had talks with the FSA but there was no live criminal investigation. Will the Secretary of State tell us what action the FSA has taken against these companies? Has it been into their premises and seized evidence, and why have the police not been called in? If there are no problems with these companies, will he say so clearly now, on the record?

Last Thursday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced its statutory testing regime, with 28 local councils purchasing and testing eight samples each. However, the Secretary of State cannot seriously expect people to wait 10 weeks for the results. Does he think that surveying just 224 products across the country rises to the challenge of this scandal when he has asked the supermarkets to test thousands of their products by Friday? How many of the 10 million withdrawn burgers have been tested? Are there any plans to test them now? If they had been tested when they were withdrawn, Ministers would able to reassure us or tell us the extent of this scandal, but because they were paralysed by fear or incompetence, or both, we are still in the dark. Will the Secretary of State confirm that only a fraction of the supermarket tests will be completed and reported by this Friday?

Will the Secretary of State tell the House how many products the large public sector catering suppliers will test and how many product lines members of the British Meat Processors Association will test? Yesterday I asked him which members of the British Hospitality Association and the British Retail Consortium have withdrawn their products as a precaution and whether any of them have withdrawn products that may have gone to schools and hospitals. Is he prepared to answer those questions today?

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

As a crofter and a producer, I should refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am pleased to say that the butchers in Stornoway have seen an upturn in trade as a result of this problem. It surely beggars belief that it has happened given all the tagging that has been going on in the industry. When I send a couple of beasts—lambs—to my cousin to be slaughtered, the vet has to see them. Surely we should now be pressurising the supermarkets and major retailers to stock from as close to source locally as possible—the best of Scottish lamb, beef, or whatever—to make sure that we do not have a repetition of this situation.

[Mary Creagh]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns for the British meat industry. As he says, we have one of the strongest food traceability systems in the world. The British Retail Consortium’s food traceability system and authorisation of processing plant is recognised to global standards. What I worry about is the very large worldwide web that has led to some Findus products coming in from Romania via Cyprus, the Netherlands and a company in south-west France. It is inexplicable to me why that meat is being transported to all those different areas and what is happening there. Every time it is transported, there are moments of risk when it can be interfered with. That is where the problems arise in the meat trade rather than at the stage that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

For many years, we have been campaigning in Ayrshire to export many of these products to places such as China, because manufacturing in this sector in China is always a bit suspect and people there will not accept these types of manufactured goods. I believe that the situation we now face will affect that trade. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is an important element in resolving this situation?

[Mary Creagh]

I do agree. The British food industry is a £12 billion industry, and hundreds of thousands of UK jobs depend on it. I know from talking to farmers across the country that they are trying to export their animals, including pigs to China, and various products all over the place, and that people are coming here to look at some of our excellent rare breeds of beef that work particularly well in particular types of climate. This is obviously a very worrying time for the UK food industry.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the upsurge in trade in local butchers over the past week. Some 30% of butchers across the whole United Kingdom had an increase in usage over the past weekend. Does she think that the traceability that is currently present within the whole United Kingdom—England, Wales, Scotland and, in particular, Northern Ireland—should be the key factor in our being able to have good products on the butchers’ shelves and in the supermarkets every week?

[Mary Creagh]

I agree that good traceability will be key to solving this crisis. I look forward to the Secretary of State putting in place robust measures with the entire food supply chain to make sure that this type of scandal cannot hit our industry again.

Yesterday the Secretary of State talked about inheriting the Food Standards Agency and our food regulatory system. He is right—he did—but unfortunately his Government broke it up in 2010.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

No, we did not.

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Gentleman was not in the Department at that time.

The FSA website has chapter and verse on what happened. It says that in July 2010

“the food authenticity programme was transferred from the…(FSA) to Defra along with food labelling and composition policy not related to food safety or nutrition. The food authenticity programme supports the enforcement of food labelling and standards legislation through the development of methods that can determine whether foods are correctly labelled. Food authenticity…simply refers to whether the food purchased by the consumer matches its description.”

I would say that consumers who are purchasing beef burgers that later turn out to be horse would fall within that remit. The Government removed the budget and brought the 25 officials responsible for labelling the content of food back into DEFRA. In response to my parliamentary questions, we find that there are now just 12 officials working on food authenticity in DEFRA. The Secretary of State is responsible for the labelling that tells us what is in our food, the Department of Health is responsible for nutritional labelling, and the FSA for allergen labelling. That is why the official food sampling survey is a joint DEFRA-FSA survey, is it not? Will the Secretary of State confirm that this will be the very first survey of product content that his Department has carried out since his Government removed compositional labelling responsibilities from the Food Standards Agency in June 2010?

This ideological Government, who want to deregulate everything, actually created a bureaucratic nightmare for the food industry when they fragmented the FSA’s responsibility for labelling, because now manufacturers have to go to the Department of Health to look at calories, fat, salt and sugar, to the FSA to look at allergens, and to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for what it should say on the tin.

Has the loss of more than 700 trading standards officers in three years made this type of consumer fraud more widespread and less likely to be detected? Is the Secretary of State confident that the FSA’s Meat Hygiene Service, which has just been merged into the FSA, can be cut by £12 million over the four years from 2010 to 2014 without affecting its ability to detect breaches of the law or to tackle a disease outbreak?

On abattoirs, at DEFRA questions nearly three weeks ago, I asked the Minister with responsibility for food, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), whom I am glad to see in his place, about problems with the horse passport system. I was concerned that horses contaminated with bute were being slaughtered in UK abattoirs and entering the human food chain. Of the nine UK horses that tested positive for bute in 2012, one was stopped, five went to France, two to the Netherlands and one to the UK. Has the Minister considered the possibility that horses are going from UK abattoirs into the food chain?

The FSA sampled 156 horses for bute out of the 9,405 horses that were slaughtered in UK abattoirs in 2012. Nine of those horses tested positive, which is a 6% positive rate. If we scale that up to the 9,000 figure, we will see that it suggests that more than 500 horses contaminated with bute may have entered the UK human food chain last year. I raised that point two and a half weeks ago, but received a garbled response from the Minister. I am glad to see that he has stopped burbling now.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very kind. What is her view on placing dye on meats that are not meant to go into the human food chain? That would give a clear visual signal and would probably prevent an awful lot of meats from finding their way into the human food chain, whether they come from the knacker’s yard or any other source.

[Mary Creagh]

I do not know how condemned meat is currently dealt with, but I have heard tales of people bleaching meat. Whatever happens to this meat, when it is condemned it needs to be permanently removed from the food chain. Clearly, something much more significant needs to happen to it, but the treatment of condemned meat is something that I am not fully aware of at the moment. I am sure I will learn a lot more about it in the next 24 hours.

As the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said, there is evidence of an illegal trade in horses from Ireland to the UK and a programme on the subject will be aired tonight. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has also contacted me to say that it has seen horses that have been double microchipped and double passported in order to “clean” the horse. It has also given me examples of horses being microchipped at auction—many horses do not contain a microchip—and given a clean passport. Microchips can be bought for as little as 12p on the internet and it is clearly not an offence to buy one. If a microchip is put into a horse and a passport obtained from one of the 75 societies that can issue horse passports in the UK, the new passport can be linked to the microchip so that the horse looks like it has a clean history.

The increase in the number of horses and the decrease in horse prices mean that putting horses into the food chain is attractive. At the abattoir, Government inspectors check only the microchip with the passport, and if they correspond, the horse is slaughtered and allowed into the food chain. I am glad that, as of yesterday, all horses being slaughtered in UK abattoirs are now being tested for bute, but the Minister should have acted on that two weeks ago, when I first raised the issue in the House. The passport system is clearly not working as it should. The lack of a central database and DEFRA’s decision to stop funding it in 2012 only adds to the lack of visibility of where the horses are and their bute status. Does the Secretary of State regret scrapping the national equine database to save £200,000? [Interruption.] The Minister says no—I think he might regret that. [Interruption.] I look forward to hearing what the Government’s traceability system actually is.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

On working with horse passport agencies and the national equine database, does the hon. Lady agree that NED was actually far more of a competition, progeny and pedigree record, and that it would not have been possible to find out whether a horse on it had bute?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

The national equine database was as the hon. Lady describes it, but the fact that it no longer exists does not help with tracking and tracing where horses have gone. There were, I think, more than 1.2 million horses on it. I will need to check the numbers, because that figure is from memory—[Interruption]—and with noises off. Michael Frayn could not have written this farce any better. My point is that without the national database, which would have eventually had a link to the microchips, the opportunities for fraud are much easier. Another issue is that of bute not being written into animal records. That needs to be looked at again.

Government Members have talked about a ban on EU imports. It has been very convenient to blame the Poles and the Romanians, but so far neither country has found anything. The risk of a Romanian horse being given expensive veterinary medicine such as bute is smaller than it is in countries such as the UK and Ireland.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

The question of whether the animal has been injected with something might be a point for discussion. However, whenever people go into a shop for a beefburger, they are not looking for a horse burger, so it has to be what it says on the packet. In my opinion—I trust that this is also the hon. Lady’s opinion—it is not meat produced in the UK, but meat from outside that causes concern for many consumers. Should not all meat coming into the United Kingdom be quarantined and tested before being released into the food chain?

[Mary Creagh]

We need a proportionate response. The problem with the meat found in the Northern Ireland freezer is that there was no label on it at all. In such cases, how can we say where the meat has come from? That is the problem with that approach. On quarantining and testing meat, we need to make sure that what is coming in is exactly what it says on the label.

During yesterday’s statement, I thought I was going to see unicorns dancing over a blue moon as the hon. Members for Stone (Mr Cash) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who are noted, famous Eurosceptics, called for more EU regulation and asked what the European Commission was doing and whether the Health Commissioner was in control of the situation. It has been an interesting revelation for Members of all parties to see the important role that European Union regulations play.

There is an issue with large quantities of horsemeat coming in from countries such as Canada and Mexico. Kilos and tonnes of the meat come in without any traceability or any guarantee about what the horses have had injected into them.

[Dr McCrea]

One thing we can be sure of is that the meat did not come from Northern Ireland. Our traceability is second to none. It was the alertness of Newry and Mourne council that got it stopped in Newry. The meat was not from Northern Ireland, so it had to come from outside. We need to find out exactly where it came from, who was responsible and who acted in a criminal way, and then bring them to book.

[Mary Creagh]

I could not agree more, which is why I have questioned the Secretary of State so closely on the matter of the UK meat trading companies that have been named. The Secretary of State waited three and a half weeks to meet representatives of the food industry and then brought them in on a Saturday. They have now had two meetings in just four days.

Our regulatory services protect consumers and our food industry. They allow it to export all over the world. Their job has been made much more difficult by the Government’s decision to fragment the responsibilities of the Food Standards Agency. Members on both sides of the House want the British public to have confidence that the food that they buy in the shops and that comes from our producers is correctly labelled, legal and safe. The Secretary of State is responsible for ensuring that it is. It just is not good enough to say, “We don’t know what’s in your food, but whatever it is, we guarantee that it’s safe to eat.” The British people deserve so much better than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we must make absolutely sure that we do not create further regulatory burdens. What we need to do is to make the checks more relevant to the products. I will come to that point in a moment.

[Mary Creagh]

It is great to hear this most Eurosceptic of Secretaries of State doing his bit for European co-operation in this area. Will he press his European colleagues to carry out random testing in their countries like that being carried out by UK supermarkets?

[Mr Paterson]

The shadow Secretary of State is again ahead of the game with respect to what I will say in my speech. I said yesterday in my statement that I have a gut feeling—actually, it is a clear belief—that too much is taken on trust in the current system. Too often, it is taken on trust that when a truck is loaded, the contents of the pallets are marked on the manifest and the certificate. From that point on, nothing is looked at. I agree entirely with the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) that we need to do more testing. I discussed that yesterday and again this morning with Lord Rooker. When this is all over, there will be a process of learning the lessons. I will be keen to establish more systematic testing of products so that we actually look at the material. That answers some of the hon. Lady’s questions about the Freeza plant in Northern Ireland. At the moment, the system is very much paper-based and too much is taken on trust.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and the Opposition on securing such a timely debate on the eve of the discussions that the Secretary of State will have in Europe with his counterparts, and on the back of two meetings with industry. Today, we should be celebrating the food industry for the reasons that the hon. Lady set out and the people it employs. I represent one of the largest meat-producing constituencies. We celebrate Thirsk having the largest fatstock mart in the country, and Malton having a smaller mart. Farm-gate prices are falling and there is currently a crisis in the sheep industry. It is widely recognised that we are worried about the state of the lamb industry in the north of England; we fear that many sheep producers may go out of business.

We perhaps ought to take a lesson from this issue and revise our eating habits as consumers. When I was brought up I remember having a small roast with the family on a Sunday and using leftovers to go into other dishes during the week. Were we to do that and encourage manufacturers from now on to take British-sourced beef into processed and frozen foods, that would be the speediest way to restore confidence in the food industry. Retailers accept their responsibility and have risen to the challenge set by the Secretary of State. My concern is this. I am proud to have the Food and Environment Research Agency headquarters in my constituency at Sand Hutton near York, but it seems perverse that we continue to accept contaminated and suspect meat consignments, testing within a week and with the results by Friday, yet we now may have to re-export some of the suspect meats to Germany and elsewhere for testing. That is a little bit gross and I hope that that will not be the case.

I will dwell for a moment on what I believe the Secretary of State and the Government can do. Before I do so, I assure the hon. Member for Wakefield that insofar as Dalepak is concerned—it will issue a statement to this effect—the trace in its consignment was found to be less than 1%. Under present rules, that is not deemed to be contaminated meat. It would help everybody if we stopped talking about contamination when there is a trace. We need to move the debate on to what is a trace, and at some stage the FSA or the Department will have to say what trace is acceptable. We are never going to get an entire sample free of any trace, for perfectly understandable reasons.

[Mary Creagh]

I take on board what the hon. Lady says. I believe that the tests that are being conducted will look for equine presence up to 1%, not to 0.1%. That relates to the pork found last week in halal products that were supplied to a prison. Is she saying that it is not possible to guarantee to consumers from certain faith groups that we can never get rid of traces of other animals? What does that mean for factories branding themselves as halal? Does that mean that they can no longer deal with pork products?

[Miss McIntosh]

That is a separate debate. We would need to look at the costs of two separate lines, one for beef and one for pork. We need to reconsider what is acceptable as a trace and differentiate that from contamination. This debate is about gross contamination of 60% to 100%, and that is what is so offensive to consumers.

We need an assurance—whether from Romania, France, Poland, Ireland, Sweden or wherever—that exporting countries in the EU are conducting both physical and product labelling checks at the point of export. Until we have that assurance from the Commission, consumers will not have much confidence in the process. It is my firm, personal belief that if product checks had taken place, food contaminated with horsemeat would never have entered the food chain. However, the fact is that it is in the food chain; as far as we know, it is continuing to enter the food chain; and we are continuing to find more contamination in frozen foods.

I practised in the EU many years ago, so my knowledge of EU law is extremely rusty, but the Cassis de Dijon case involved the passing off of an inferior alcoholic product as Cassis to go into such drinks as kir royale and other luxury products. The inferior product clearly did not fit the bill. I understand that the member state concerned was allowed, for a temporary period, to suspend imports of products being passed off as something else until such time as a ruling could be given.

All I am asking is for the Government to stop this chain of events. There are 27 member states, or however many there are now, relying on the Food Safety Act 1990, which is entirely compatible with European food labelling regulations. I would imagine that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will have huge support from all other member states in the European Union, but until we can again inspire confidence in the food industry and allow the retailers to get on with what they are good at—delivering safe, healthy food to our supermarkets—then we ought to recognise what other hon. Members have said today. This is an opportunity to recognise the excellence of British-produced beef, and to try to see to what extent that can be used.

I accept the Secretary of State’s point about a premium product now going for premium prices, but he must accept that the labelling provisions, the traceability and the additional animal welfare conditions that we in this country uniquely impose on our producers have increased costs. Farm-gate prices are going down. Feed costs have gone up. The cost of transporting animals to slaughter has gone up. Slaughterhouses are fewer and further apart. We ought to use this as an opportunity to encourage retailers to look to sourcing locally produced beef for their processed and frozen products. I celebrate the contribution of the beef industry and other meat industries to the UK, not just to locally sourced food. Much that is produced in Thirsk, Malton and Filey will go abroad for breeding purposes, because of the uniqueness and life history of each particular herd.

This debate is timely. Perhaps the FSA has been caught on the back foot. When in November the FSA was told by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland that DNA tests were to be conducted on particular products entering the food chain through our supermarkets, it was a wake-up call to the FSA here to do similar tests. It was of concern to the Select Committee to hear that the original contamination could have been in the food chain for up to one year—who knows, it might have been longer. We need to get to the bottom of this. I accept the assurance that criminal proceedings will follow, but we all know that the wheels of the law move extremely slowly. The Secretary of State has the opportunity tomorrow to take this argument to Europe. It is a Europe-wide problem so we must have a Europe-wide solution. I believe that the answer lies in our food-labelling provisions and European law. I hope that this debate will give him all power to his elbow in tomorrow’s negotiations.

Horsemeat (Food Fraud)

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement. Four weeks ago, the Irish authorities alerted the UK Government that they had discovered horsemeat in burgers stocked by UK supermarkets, including Tesco, Iceland and Lidl. Last Monday, we discovered that meat labelled as halal and served in UK prisons had tested positive for pig DNA. On Thursday, the scandal spread from frozen burgers to frozen ready meals, as we discovered that Findus beef lasagne contained up to 100% horsemeat. On Friday, this incompetent Secretary of State and his food Minister went home—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Everybody wants to make their contribution, and the only way they will is by being a little quieter. People may not like what is being said, but they should at least have the courtesy to listen.

[Mary Creagh]

On Friday, No. 10 told the press that the Secretary of State was working hard at his desk, getting a grip on this crisis. But in fact he had to be called back to London from his long weekend—crisis, what crisis? Until Saturday’s panic summit, he had not actually met the food industry to address this crisis. The food Minister had met with the food industry just once, exactly a week ago.

On Friday, I received information that three British companies were involved, potentially, in importing beef that actually contained horse. I wrote to the Secretary of State, offering to share the information with him. I also handed it to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. On Friday, the FSA said that the police were involved, so I was reassured. However, on Friday night the Met police said that they had had talks with the FSA, but that there was no live criminal investigation. On Saturday, after a conversation with one of the food industry representatives, I realised that the Secretary of State had not revealed the names of those firms to the food industry at the meeting. Why not? If the Government want the food industry to test on the basis of risk, why did the Secretary of State not share the names of those companies at Saturday’s meeting?

On Thursday, DEFRA announced its statutory testing regime, with 28 local councils purchasing and testing eight samples each. Does the Secretary of State seriously expect people to wait 10 weeks for the results? Can he confirm that that will be the first survey of product content that his Department has carried out since his Government removed compositional labelling from the Food Standards Agency in 2010? He talks about the FSA’s operational independence, but it is not responsible for the content of our food—he is. When will he stop hiding behind civil servants and take some responsibility? Does he think that surveying just 224 products from across the country matches the scale of this scandal, when he has asked the supermarkets to test thousands of their products by Friday? Can he confirm today to the House that not all of those thousands of tests will be completed by Friday?

Can the Secretary of State tell the House how many products the large public sector catering suppliers will test and how many lines the members of the British Meat Processors Association will test? In his letter to me last Friday, he stated that some members of the British Hospitality Association and the British Retail Consortium have withdrawn products as a precaution. Can he tell the House which members have withdrawn which products, and whether any of them supplies schools, prisons and hospitals? The supermarkets have acted with speed and a degree of transparency on this that puts him to shame. I am disappointed that the hospitality industry and caterers have not been as candid.

In his letter to me, the Secretary of State said that the FSA is taking up individual suspicious incidents with authorities and the police across Europe. He said in the media this weekend that there is an international criminal conspiracy at work. Does he think that international criminals are present everywhere in Europe apart from in the United Kingdom? The French Government estimate that the Findus fraud alone has netted criminals €300,000. This is clearly big criminal business. Why have the UK police not investigated on the basis of the intelligence supplied? Has he had the full results of the tests carried out by the Irish authorities?

At Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions nearly three weeks ago, I asked the food Minister about horses contaminated with bute slaughtered in the UK and entering the human food chain. It has now been confirmed that of the nine UK horses that tested positive for bute, one was stopped, five went to France, two to the Netherlands and one to the UK. However, when council officials approached the people who had supposedly taken the horse to eat it, they had no knowledge of what had happened to it.

There has been talk of an EU import ban, but has the Secretary of State considered the possibility that horses are going to UK and Irish abattoirs and entering the food chain in the UK? Which horse abattoirs in the UK are on the FSA’s cause for concern list? Have any horses presented for slaughter in the past month been rejected by officials because of concerns over their passports? If so, where and how many?

The Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has clear evidence of illegal trade in unfit horse from Ireland to the UK for meat, with horses being re-passported to meet demand for horsemeat in mainland Europe. It says that there are currently 70,000 horses unaccounted for in Northern Ireland. Unwanted horses are being sold for €10 and sold on for meat for €500—a lucrative trade. It is convenient to blame the Poles and Romanians, but so far neither country has found any problems with its beef abattoirs.

When will the Secretary of State get his story straight on bute? This horse medicine is banned from the food chain for a reason. On Friday, he said:

“I would have no hesitation at all in eating these products.”

Yet on Sunday he said that this food could be injurious to human health. The Health Secretary said it is just a labelling issue. Is this not symptomatic of the Government’s dangerous complacency?

I note the chief medical officer’s advice to people this morning. What levels of bute have to be present in the meat for it to be a human health risk? Will the Secretary of State tell us what the safe limits of bute consumption for human beings are, given that it is banned from the human food chain? The British public must have confidence that the food they buy is correctly labelled, legal and safe. When Ministers came to the Commons to answer my urgent question on 17 January, the food Minister said:

“It is important that neither the hon. Lady nor anyone else in this House talks down the British food industry.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 1027.]

These invisible regulatory services protect our consumers and our food industry, and allow it to export all over the world. [Interruption.] I think Government Members would do well to listen as this issue is of interest to their constituents and the lack of information from their Government has been nothing short of a disgrace.

This weekend consumer confidence in British food was sinking like a stone. Food is a £12 billion industry that supports hundreds of thousands of UK jobs and exports. In common with No. 10, it is rapidly losing faith in this Secretary of State’s ability to lead them through this crisis.

[Mr Paterson]

You would not think that we had inherited Labour’s system would you, Mr Deputy Speaker? You really wouldn’t. I always admire the hon. Lady—she really has a nerve.

This issue is a European competence. As agreed by her Government, the independent Food Standards Agency was set up and we have followed their policy of respecting that independence. Today, I talked to its chairman, Lord Rooker, whom she knows well, and he agreed that we had respected its independence. In the early stages of this history, this was an issue of trace DNA in an Irish abattoir. Once it came to the Findus case, where there was a significant volume of horse material, it took on a whole new dimension. He agreed that it was then appropriate that the Secretary of State should become publicly involved, as I have been in recent days. The hon. Lady is critical of the FSA’s survey—on which I wish it well. I raised it with the noble Lord this afternoon, and he agreed that April was the intended end date for these results, but that he could possibly publish some of them as he works through.

The hon. Lady completely misses the point that the retailers are responsible for the quality and content of their food. That is laid down in European law. Her Government passed a statutory instrument in 2002. [Interruption.] There is no point in the hon. Lady shouting. She must understand that under the current arrangements it is for retailers to decide. She has completely missed the point that they are responsible for testing, they are responsible for the integrity of their food and they are responsible to their customers. They have a massive self-interest in this, because obviously they want their customers to come back. She will be pleased to hear that we had a most satisfactory meeting on Saturday, and they will be bringing forward meaningful results by the end of this week.

The hon. Lady went on a bit about the police. [Interruption.] I agree with my hon. Friends that she went on and on about the police. This is a serious issue, and the FSA has raised it with the Metropolitan police, but the hon. Lady must understand that until there is a criminal action in this country, they cannot take action. However, the FSA has been in touch with Europol, because it does look as though there have been criminal cases on the continent.

The hon. Lady mentioned the Irish test. I have had a conversation this afternoon with Minister Coveney. We have agreed that there will be protocol between our two independent agencies to agree testing equivalents and to work extremely closely together, because our two food industries so often work in co-operation on either side of the Irish sea.

The hon. Lady mentioned horses. Today, Lord Rooker will announce that further to our recent announcement that all horses slaughtered in this country will be tested for bute, no carcase will be released until it has been proven positive.

Finally, the advice on food is very simple. I have been completely consistent. It must have been in an interview and I think she mis-heard the second part of a sentence when I was speaking. I have been absolutely clear. The independent agency that gives professional advice is the Food Standards Agency. I, the hon. Lady, hon. Members and the public should follow its advice. As long as products are free for sale and have not been recommended for withdrawal by the FSA, they are safe for human consumption. I recommend that she follows the advice of the independent agency that her Government set up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

Last week I met Commissioner Borg, the EU Health Commissioner, to agree a way forward for developing a workable cattle vaccine. A provisional timetable has now been agreed, and a copy of the letter outlining this to me has been placed in the Library this morning. It acknowledges the UK’s leading role in pressing forward on a cattle vaccine. and for the first time recognises that we are on course to deploy a vaccine. The legal and scientific process could take up to 10 years. In the meantime, we will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to check the progress of this terrible disease.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered by UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone —or bute—a drug that causes cancer in humans and that is banned from the human food chain. It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain. Is the Minister aware of this?

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

I understand that the Food Standards Agency carries out checks in slaughterhouses to ensure that equine animals presented for slaughter are fit for human consumption, in the same way as it does for cattle, sheep and other animals. In addition, the FSA carries out sampling and testing for phenylbutazone and other veterinary medicines in meat from horses slaughtered in this country. Where positive results for phenylbutazone are found, the FSA investigates and takes follow-up action to trace the meat.

[Mary Creagh]

I am not clear whether that was yes, the Minister knew, or no, he did not. Either way, I am astonished that he has not raised the issue. The public have a right to know. It is a very serious development. What steps will he now take to ensure that illegal and carcinogenic horsemeat stops entering the human food chain? Last week, when I asked about difficulties with horse passports, he dismissed my concerns. Will he now review his short-sighted and reckless decision to scrap the national equine database?

[Mr Heath]

I think that the hon. Lady misunderstands what the national equine database did. The records of horse passports continue to be retained by the passport issuing agencies. There is no difficulty in tracing the use of a horse passport, so to suggest that the national equine database was required to do that is simply erroneous.

Wild Animals in Circuses Bill

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I rise to support the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and to congratulate him on introducing it. He deserves our thanks for securing the debate. I would also like to thank the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) for playing such a pivotal part in the parliamentary journey of the Bill.

There is a kind of “groundhog day” feeling to these proceedings. Stop me if you’ve heard it all before! We kind of have. There is a weary familiarity to the proceedings, except that we are looking forward to a jack-in-a-box presentation from the Minister providing a different ending, perhaps, to this debate.

After two years’ delay, we still do not have a ban on wild animals in circuses. It has been a long and tortuous journey. In April 2011, DEFRA Ministers seemed finally to have caught the public mood. They, or their officials, briefed the Sunday Express that a ban was imminent—joy all round, flags and bunting. Then, however, came the DEFRA treatment—or was it the No. 10 treatment?—and a lot of political backtracking. It was a classic case study—I am sure people are writing it up as we speak and will be teaching it across schools of government across the world—on one of the many examples in DEFRA of a lack of political leadership and incompetent decision making. I must congratulate the Minister, however, on being the sole DEFRA survivor of the first two years, which might say something about his ministerial competence and decision making being different from that of his former colleagues.

It is worth remembering what happened. We consulted on a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses in 2009. More than 10,000 people responded and 94.5% of them backed a ban, and in early 2010 we gave a commitment to introduce one. This ban was strongly supported by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the British Veterinary Association, the Born Free Foundation and Animal Defenders International, all of which agreed that a licensing regime would be unworkable.

Despite saying they were minded to ban wild animals in circuses, however, Ministers delayed taking any action to end this cruel practice of wild animals performing for so-called entertainment in circuses. First, they claimed that a ban might be illegal under the EU services directive, despite there being no evidence for it, as EU Environment Commissioner, Janez Potocnik, made clear in 2011:

“Circuses are specifically excluded from the scope of the Zoos Directive, and are not covered by any other EU legislation. Therefore, the welfare of circus animals remains the responsibility of the Member States.”

EU Commission 1, UK Government nil! Then DEFRA Ministers said that a ban was not possible owing to an ongoing court legal challenge to a ban in the Austrian courts. That created a lot of mystery and disruption, because the then Secretary of State repeated this allegation in her written ministerial statement on 13 May 2011. Sadly, her officials placed a little too much trust in Google. I see that the Minister is unsupported by his officials today, which is probably a wise decision—he is on his own at last, freed from the shackles of the ministerial Box.

The following Tuesday, the then Secretary of State was forced to issue another written ministerial statement to clarify that no such legal challenge existed. The European Court of Justice confirmed that no cases relating to circus animals were being considered at a European level. I quote Christopher Fretwell, from the Court of Justice information service, who e-mailed me on 17 May 2011:

“I have searched our internal databases and, like my colleagues in the Registry, have found no reference to such a case. It is perfectly possible that a case has just arrived at the Court within the last couple of days and is yet to be entered into our databases, but this is always a possibility. Searching the internet I have found a number of references to infringement proceedings initially started by the Commission around 2004-2005, but these never seem to have led to any case being brought before the Court.”

European Court of Justice 1, DEFRA Ministers nil!

Why, however, should that affect UK policy, and how does a ban on wild animals performing in circuses affect our obligations under EU treaties? Finally, DEFRA Ministers said that a ban on wild animals was not possible because—this really was a moment of high comedy—it could infringe the human rights of circus owners. On 19 May 2011, the then Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), told the House that

“bits of the Human Rights Act could be infringed by a ban on wild animals in circuses.”—[Official Report, 19 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 502.]

Yet his Department’s own impact assessment read:

“There are no human rights issues raised by these proposals.”

Left hand, right hand—strangers to each other! Had he not read his Department’s own documents? I am sure today’s Minister has.

There was no reason for Ministers not to ban wild animals from British circuses. All these arguments were exposed and kicked around the metaphorical parliamentary football pitch in that extraordinary Back-Bench business debate on 23 June 2011—long may it live in parliamentary memory—when an extraordinary coalition of cross-party support for a ban defeated the Government Whips’ attempts to force the vote in the direction that they wanted it to go in. We all remember the speech that the hon. Member for The Wrekin made about his phone conversations and the inducements that No. 10 offered him not to press his debate to a vote.

At the heart of this debate is a conflict at the heart of Government between DEFRA Ministers, who supported a ban, and the Prime Minister and No. 10’s ideological opposition to regulation and a pathological aversion to anything that protects animal welfare. DEFRA Ministers’ inability to make a decision and stick to it or, crucially, to get their civil servants to act on their decisions has long been a potent source of comedy for this House. The Government have spent 18 months and £261,000, as well as thousands of staff hours and hours in meetings with charities, preparing for a licensing regime that will not work. With the Minister’s announcement, we will see what a monumental waste of effort that was. Harvey Locke, the president of the British Veterinary Association, has said:

“The welfare needs of non-domesticated, wild animals cannot be met within the environment of a travelling circus; especially in terms of accommodation and the ability to express normal behaviour. A licensing scheme will not address these issues.”

The reasons propagated by the Government for not introducing an outright ban—a lack of parliamentary time, legal difficulties, the European Union, a lack of resources or a desire to avoid red tape—have been found, one after the other, to be utterly without substance. The Government were simply covering themselves for a simple lack of political will. It is time for another DEFRA U-turn. Let us have the ban on wild animals in British circuses. Too much time, too many resources and too much money have been wasted already. The Government need to get on with legislating for a ban to end this era of cruelty. They owe it to Parliament, to the public and to the animals. The Minister said on that day that the Government wanted a ban. The whole House wants a ban. Let us get on with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I will repeat what I said: I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that we firmly intend to publish the draft Bill for parliamentary scrutiny in the current Session. The final timetable for legislation will be for Parliament to decide. It inevitably takes some time to reach a position where we can present a draft Bill that does the intended job and is robust against potential legal challenge.

[Mary Creagh]

Will the Minister provide us with some sort of timetable or calendar? When does he think this will happen—February or March? The Session ends in April. Secondly, will he explain why we need pre-legislative scrutiny, given that there are only three dozen animals in this position left in the country, and that this issue has been debated over and over again ad nauseam by Parliament for the last two years?

[Richard Benyon]

We want to make sure that the legislation is robust, so it survives any challenge from any source. This Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, sits on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which has a good record of pre-legislative scrutiny. I think that a cursory look at what we are proposing will allow the Bill speedy passage and ensure that it then survives and is effective at achieving what we want it to achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I think there is a coalition of the whole House on this legislation, and that the Government and all of us will be able to be proud of it.

There is some justification for saying that there have been plenty of opportunities to introduce this legislation over previous decades and before, so let us look at what we are proposing. All Members will appreciate what it involves when they realise that the legislation will not only be robust, but will be something of which we can all be proud.

[Mary Creagh]

I congratulate the Minister on weaving a silk purse out of a proverbial sow’s ear. Will he confirm that if he introduces a Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny in this Session, it will not actually be scrutinised until the parliamentary Session of 2014 and could then run out of time in the final year of this Parliament?

[Richard Benyon]

No, I think this will become law in the next Session, subject to the vagaries of the House’s opinions on the wording of the Bill—another reason why we want pre-legislative scrutiny. The hon. Lady can be absolutely assured that we want to get this measure on the statute book as early as possible; we do not want the issue continuing into future Parliaments. We want to make sure that it gets Royal Assent as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I will pass his assurance on to officials and ministerial colleagues who have oversight of this issue.

The Government have already introduced new licensing regulations, as was promised in July, and these will come into force on 20 January—this Sunday. From Sunday, it will be an offence to operate a travelling circus with wild animals in England without a valid licence. The regulations will ensure that if a travelling circus continues to use wild animals, it will be subject to regular inspections to check that it is complying with strict welfare standards. The licensing regime is tough, and inspection will be rigorous. It goes without saying that the safeguards of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 against cruelty continue unabated.

I thank the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife for his efforts, but let me repeat that DEFRA is working on a draft Bill to be published and presented for parliamentary scrutiny in the current Session. Let me also repeat that we want to ensure that the Bill is robust, will do what it sets out to do, and will not be vulnerable to successful legal challenge.

The Government fully recognise that—as has been mentioned today—the use of wild animals in travelling circuses generates significant public and parliamentary interest. In 2009, when DEFRA consulted on the question of a ban, 94.5% of the 10,000 respondents supported it. Since the start of the current Parliament, DEFRA has handled more than 120 parliamentary questions and 16,500 items of correspondence on the subject of wild animals in travelling circuses. There have been five debates in Parliament—including two on the licensing regulations in October 2012—supplemented by five early-day motions with a total of 223 signatures. Many Members have called for a ban, and during the Backbench Business Committee debate on 23 June 2011, which was mentioned earlier, the House agreed on a motion directing the Government to introduce a ban on the use of wild animals in travelling circuses.

It should be borne in mind, however, that a ban introduced solely on welfare grounds might be vulnerable to successful legal challenge. The Radford report on the welfare of wild animals in travelling circuses, which was commissioned, accepted and published by the last Government in 2007, concluded that there was insufficient evidence to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses on welfare grounds. In particular, Radford concluded that there was little evidence to demonstrate that the welfare of animals in circuses was any better or worse than in any other captive environment. We respect that piece of research and the people who carried it out, but I think that Parliament has expressed a clear opinion that reflects opinions in the country at large, and that is what is guiding our actions now.

I hate to use cheap clichés such as the one about the elephant in the room, but it must be said that the recent high-profile court case focusing on allegations of cruelty to Anne, a circus elephant, has rekindled legitimate public interest and concern about the treatment of wild animals in travelling circuses. However, the outcome of that case is not in itself an indicator of endemic or systematic failure to promote welfare in travelling circuses. It would simply not be responsible to proceed with a ban without being confident that we would be safe from legal challenge. I think we are now approaching a point at which we know how to deal with the issue. In any case, the new licensing regulations will ensure that good welfare standards are in place for any circus that wants to use wild animals in the short term before the ban comes into force.

The publicly available Radford report summarised the position by pointing out that the scientific evidence that welfare is being compromised is not compelling; that section 12 of the Animal Welfare Act permits only legislation to “promote animal welfare”; that banning on welfare grounds would be disproportionate in the absence of evidence that welfare was compromised; and that an outright ban might be beyond the powers in section 12 anyway, even if the welfare case were made out. Radford wrote that

“it is submitted that to introduce a ban on the use of any type of non-domesticated animal presently in use by circuses in the United Kingdom…by way of a Regulation made under the authority of section 12 of the Animal Welfare Act would be vulnerable to legal challenge.”

[Mary Creagh]

When he was agriculture Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) said that he would introduce a ban on moral grounds. Will the Minister enlighten us on how far that has got?

[Richard Benyon]

I hope I am giving the clear message that this Government are determined to ban the use of animals in circuses, and I do not want to dance on the head of a pin in trying to tease out the different strands of opinion in the House on how to achieve that end. Societies’ attitudes change over time, not least on animal welfare issues, and this is one such issue.

I take my family to see Giffords circus, which travels around my part of the country. It does not have wild animals, but it does have horses and dogs, and—

Horsemeat (Supermarket Products)

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister if he will give a response to the finding of horsemeat in supermarket meat products.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

This is a very important and extremely serious issue. Consumers should have full confidence that food is exactly what it says on the label. There are strict rules requiring products to be labelled accurately.

The Food Standards Agency is urgently investigating how a number of beef products on sale in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were found to contain horse and pig meat. Twenty-seven beefburger products were analysed, with 10 of the 27 products, or 37%, testing positive for horse DNA and 23, or 85%, testing positive for pig DNA. In nine of the 10 beefburger samples, horse DNA was found at very low levels. In one sample from Tesco, the level of horse DNA indicated that horsemeat was present and accounted for approximately 29% of the total meat content of the burger.

Yesterday the agency met representatives from the food industry from all parts of the UK. Industry representatives confirmed the existing processes that they follow to ensure that the products that reach consumers are of the highest standard. These include quality controls in place at all stages of the food chain. They also set out the actions that they have already taken in response to this incident.

The FSA has now set out a four-point plan for its investigation, which it will implement in conjunction with Government Departments, local authorities and the food industry. The first point is to continue the urgent review of the traceability of the food products identified in the Food Safety Authority of Ireland survey. The retailers and the UK processor named in the survey have been asked to provide comprehensive information on the findings by the end of Friday 18 January.

The second point is to explore further, in conjunction with the FSAI, the methodology used for the survey, to understand more clearly the factors that may have led to the low-level cases of cross-contamination. The third is to consider, with relevant local authorities and the FSAI, whether any legal action will be appropriate following the investigation. The fourth is to work with my Department, the devolved rural affairs Departments and local authorities on a UK-wide study of food authenticity in processed meat products.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but perhaps he could have made a statement to the House yesterday, rather than have to respond to an urgent question today.

There is understandable public anger that supermarkets have been selling beefburgers and other products containing horsemeat and pig DNA. Consumers who avoid pork for religious reasons will be upset that they may have unwittingly eaten it, and eating horse is a strong cultural taboo in the United Kingdom. It is not illegal to sell horsemeat, but it is illegal not to label it correctly. Customers must have the confidence that the food they buy is correctly labelled, legal and safe.

The UK is part of a global food supply chain. The food industry lobbies vigorously for a light-touch regulatory system from Government. Testing, tracking and tracing ingredients is expensive, but not testing them will cost retailers, processors, British farmers and consumers much more.

This is not just about the supermarkets. The adulteration scandal raises serious questions for the Government to answer about how we as a nation regulate our food. First, the adulteration was detected in Ireland, not the United Kingdom. Why was it not picked up here? Will the Minister consider introducing DNA testing of meat, as happens in Ireland, to reassure consumers that they are actually getting what they pay for?

In 2010, the Minister’s Government split the responsibility for food labelling between three Government Departments: the Department of Health is responsible for dietary and nutritional labelling, and the Food Standards Agency is responsible for allergen labelling, but the 25 staff and the budget responsible for the compositional labelling has been transferred to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Is that not an absurd situation, and will the Minister now review the system that he has created for food labelling in this country? How many of those 25 staff are still employed by DEFRA on those issues, and why was no national system put in place at that time to audit labelling and composition to protect consumers from this type of fraud?

The FSA inquiry will test the robustness of supermarket audit chains. How confident is the Minister that they will meet Government standards? Has the loss of 700 trading standards officers in three years made this type of consumer fraud more widespread and less likely to be detected? Is the Minister confident that the FSA’s Meat Hygiene Service can be cut by £12 million over the comprehensive spending review period without its ability to detect breaches of the law or tackle a disease outbreak being affected? These invisible regulatory services protect our consumers and our food industry and allow the industry to export all over the world.

Horses are killed for meat in this country, but there are dozens of different types of horse passport and the system is a mess. Will the Minister look at the system for horse passports?

The coalition agreement stated:

“We will introduce honesty in food labelling so that consumers can be confident about where their food comes from and its environmental impact.”

On the evidence of the past few days, the Minister still has quite a way to go.

[Mr Heath]

Let us be clear: the hon. Lady is right to say that consumers have a right to expect that the food they eat is what it says on the label. The cases that were picked up in Ireland are a serious breach of that principle. That is why we are taking the measures that we are taking.

The hon. Lady was completely wrong, however, in what she said about responsibility for labelling. Let us be absolutely clear: the responsibility for policy on labelling lies with the most appropriate Department, but the responsibility for checking the content of food lies with the Food Standards Agency—which, of course, is the responsibility of the Department of Health—and only the Food Standards Agency. It is the body charged with that responsibility.