Draft Food and Feed Hygiene and Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 General Committees

[Seema Kennedy]

I will address funding and capacity later in my remarks. On fisheries, the charges are set out in detail in retained EU law, and various rates apply to different products. The devolved Administrations have been involved in the preparation of the draft regulations, and we engaged positively with all those Administrations throughout the statutory instrument’s development.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Is the Minister including Northern Ireland?

[Seema Kennedy]

Obviously, because there is no sitting Assembly—

[Neil Coyle]

You said all of them.

[Seema Kennedy]

I will correct the record: consent was sought from the Northern Ireland civil service, and was provided by the permanent secretary of the Department of Health of Northern Ireland.

To address the point made by the hon. Member for Wallasey, as I have said before, in 2018-19 additional funding for the FSA for EU exit was of the order of £14 million, and in 2019-20, £16 million. The FSA also had the extra £2 million in 2018-19 and in the year ending 2020 just to support food safety activity. We are therefore confident that it can meet the novel tasks that it will be expected to perform after EU exit.

Previous staff changes reflected efficiencies that were appropriate at the time. A careful assessment has been made of the additional work that we will now need to carry out when we leave the EU. The FSA has strengthened its capacity and capability for risk assessment and risk management by recruiting more policy and science experts, as well as strengthening processes and procedures that underpin the risk-analysis process. An extra—