Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last year, this Government oversaw record levels of illegal sewage discharges into our rivers and waterways after they cut enforcement, and then they let the water bosses reward themselves for that failure with nearly £10 million in bonuses while hiking bills for consumers. Labour believes that the polluter, and not the consumer, should pay. Will the Government adopt Labour’s plan and give the regulator the power it needs to block water bosses’ bonuses if they keep illegally pumping toxic filth into our rivers?

[Rebecca Pow]

I have already said that Labour has not costed its plan, which has no credibility whatsoever. We have already changed regulation and the tools that Ofwat and the EA can use. No dividends or bonuses can be paid out at all if there is any environmental damage, and there are more fines than ever before. There were no fines under the Labour Government; indeed, they were taken to court by the European Commission for polluting water, and they did nothing about it. This Government introduced the monitoring, and that is why we know what is happening and why we have the biggest criminal investigation in the history of water under way.

Combined Sewer Overflows

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State if she will make a statement on combined sewer overflows.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

With the usual courtesies, I welcome the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) to his place.

I restate that I have always been clear that the current volume of sewage discharged by water companies is totally unacceptable, and they must act urgently to improve their performance so that they meet Government and public expectations. I confirm that the Department, the Environment Agency and Ofwat have received the information notices and will, of course, comply with their requests. We do not agree with the Office for Environmental Protection’s assessment of our compliance with the law, and the House should note that the OEP itself has said:

“We recognise that a great deal is already being done to tackle the issue of untreated sewage discharges, and we welcome the intent of Government measures such as the Plan for Water and storm overflow targets, as well as commitments to increase investment.”

The public are rightly disgusted by sewage discharges from storm overflows, and so are the Government, which is why we have taken more action than any other Government on the issue. I remind hon. Members that the European Commission took the Labour Government to court in 2009 for breaches of the law. Subsequently, we have started the construction of the Thames tideway tunnel, which is due to be completed next year. It is taking a decade to construct.

However, a decade ago, the Conservative-led Government took action and started requiring the monitoring of storm overflows. That work will be completed by the end of this year. It is owing to that that the scale of the problem has been unveiled. I note that in Wales, which is run by a Labour Government, discharge occurrences are much higher—38 times a year for outflows versus 23 in England.

The Environment Act 2021 included new powers and responsibilities, which increased understanding. Last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published the storm overflows discharge reduction plan. That led to some of the action that we are taking.

We have been repeatedly clear that water companies’ reliance on overflows is unacceptable. They must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority. We are holding them to account, and that is also true of our regulators. I remind the House that active investigations, including an active criminal investigation, of water companies are under way.

We welcome the opportunity to set out the scale of the action that the Government are taking. No Government in history have done more to tackle the issue. Last year, we launched the storm overflows discharge reduction plan. Our strict targets will lead to the toughest ever crackdown on sewage spills, and we require water companies to deliver the largest ever infrastructure programme in water company history.

I am therefore happy to answer today’s urgent question, but I say, yet again, that the Conservative Government are cleaning up the mess left by a Labour Government, and we will get on with the job.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Nothing more graphically illustrates 13 years of failed Tory government than the tide of raw sewage swilling down our rivers, into our lakes and washing up on our beaches. The Conservatives cut the Environment Agency’s budget in half. That led to drastic cuts in monitoring, enforcement and prosecution, which led to a drastic increase in illegal discharges, trashing nature, damaging tourism and putting kids’ health at risk.

This Government are up to their necks in a sewage crisis of their own making. And now, in an absolutely unprecedented move, the Office for Environmental Protection tells us that the Government may have broken the law themselves in allowing all of this. It identifies possible failures to comply with environmental law by the Secretary of State’s own Department, the Environment Agency and Ofwat.

This Government have broken the entire regulatory system. They enabled this scandal, but did we hear a word of apology just now? No, we did not. There was only complacency. Labour wants severe and automatic fines for every illegal discharge to pay for a tougher regulation and enforcement regime. Why will the Government not do that? We want mandatory monitoring of every outlet so that the public know where the discharges are happening. Why will the Government not agree to that?

Can the Secretary of State tell us which Ministers signed off what the OEP calls

“a misinterpretation of the law”

to allow more frequent sewage discharges without risk of sanction? That is a Government-sanctioned green light to pollute. Was it her? What action will she now take to put an end to this appalling situation, bring the water companies to heel and clean up our waterways? Will she publish the correspondence between the OEP and her Department if she has nothing to hide?

Finally, if the Secretary of State’s Department is found to have broken the law, will she do the right thing and resign? The Prime Minister would not tolerate raw sewage in his private swimming pool, so why is he happy to treat the British countryside as an open sewer?

[Dr Coffey]

The risk for the hon. Gentleman is that he has already soiled his own reputation by failing to acknowledge that the investigation that led to that court case, which is referred to in the information notice, took place under a Labour Government. On Sky last night, I believe it was a former Labour Minister from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who basically said that he knew sewage discharges were happening, and what did the Labour Government do about it? They did not do anything. In 2006, they set out a consultation basically allowing self-monitoring by the water companies. Frankly, the Labour Government did sweet FA and we are cleaning it up now.

Let us have a look at the timescale that has been mentioned for the situation that led to the ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Things have not been done in Wales, where there is a Labour Government, so there is no change in policy there. Meanwhile, the Conservative Government have got on with imposing unlimited penalties on water companies. That is why so many powers were put into the Environment Act 2023, and regulators are now using them. There was hardly any monitoring in 2010, thanks to Labour—the Scottish National party does not have a leg to stand on either—and it was the Conservatives who got the monitoring going. Where Labour has weakened monitoring, we have increased it.

On the assertions that the hon. Gentleman made about budgets, he should be aware that the purpose of the permits, and of the fees that go with the permits, is to pay for those regular inspections. Government funding, which we increased last year, is used when enforcement action needs to be taken, and that includes taking companies to court. That is why there is an active criminal investigation under way now.

Frankly, it was the Conservatives who got the monitoring going and unveiled the scale of this, while the Labour Government looked the other way. I have no confidence in the plans that Labour has put forward. We are already getting on with many of the actions that it talks about, and that is why we will sort out the mess that the Labour Government left behind.

Horsemeat

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

May I start, Mr Amess, by saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship for the first time? It is a particular privilege to introduce the debate, because it is the first time I have had the honour to do so since I was elected to Parliament in a by-election last November. I am delighted that the debate is on such an important matter.

At heart, we are debating whether consumers can feel confident about the meat they are buying and eating. People buying what they thought were beefburgers from supermarkets, including Tesco, Lidl and Iceland, were horrified to discover that they contained horsemeat. Muslims, including many in my constituency, were upset to discover that the beefburgers they were eating contained pork DNA, which is forbidden by their religion.

Aside from the shock of discovering that they were eating a completely different animal, what confidence can we have that the meat we buy is not contaminated or unfit for human consumption if we cannot even be sure what meat is in the product in the first place? Of 27 samples tested by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, 10 tested positive for horse DNA and 23 for pig DNA. One Tesco beefburger, in probably the most celebrated instance, was found to contain 29% horsemeat.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining the debate. Does he agree that there is a difference between a product having traces of something in it, however problematic that may be for people’s religious views, and the adulteration of food with large amounts of material, probably for commercial purposes?

[Steve Reed]

I do agree. The problem is that consumers cannot be sure what is going into the product they are buying for consumption by them and their family. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

First, we have to ask whether the Food Standards Agency is still fit for purpose. Let us not forget that it was the Irish authorities and not our own that exposed the problem of horsemeat in beefburgers. Our system has been fragmented by the Government as part of a drive to deregulate. Labelling, food composition, nutrition and food safety used to be dealt with by a single agency and are now handled by three: the Department of Health, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the FSA. That fragmentation and additional bureaucracy make it much more likely that problems will be missed.

Standards in the British food industry are high, and it is vital that those standards and that reputation are not undermined by the Government’s actions. The FSA’s budget has been cut by £11 million over the past year alone, reducing its capacity to detect contaminated food. At the same time, the swingeing scale of Government cuts to local government has seen funding for local trading standards services plummet by a third from £213 million in 2011-12 to around £140 million this year.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that the Government’s scrapping of the national equine database was sheer folly? We have the risk of bute entering the food chain, but, putting that to one side, any savings that may have been made by scrapping the database have been totally dwarfed by the commercial and financial damage to the food industry.

[Steve Reed]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I will come on to the national equine database and the risks that its scrapping has created for consumers and the industry. I thank him for his welcome intervention.

On local trading standards services, a freedom of information request by the trade union Unison exposed the fact that 743 trading standards jobs have been lost since 2010, resulting in fewer inspections and, consequently, higher risks for the public. Unison has questioned whether councils still have the resources they need to do the job. It is not enough for the Government to blame councils for cutting those services when the Government have cut councils’ funding to such a huge extent in the first place.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s interesting speech on this extremely important subject, which is damaging our meat industry and our farmers. I am not certain about his logic regarding Government cuts to local authorities and elsewhere. He is politicising what should be a non-political discussion, because we all hate the notion of horsemeat in burgers. The issue has nothing to do with Government cuts; it is to do with supermarkets buying cheaper and cheaper burgers from doubtful sources.

[Steve Reed]

There are certainly issues to do with what the supermarkets are sourcing, which is contributing to the problem, but if we do not have a properly resourced system of regulation, consumers cannot be confident that what the supermarkets and other retailers are selling them is what they believe they are buying. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

There are serious questions about the role of the supermarkets in forcing suppliers to cut corners to meet commercial demands. There are reports—we will all have read them—of products being bulked up with protein powders containing trace DNA from other animals, with no way of tracing those products back to their origin. There are further concerns about the processing of meat from different animals through the same production equipment, leaving trace DNA behind despite attempts at deep cleaning, as well as about meat from different sources being commingled without any labelling to warn consumers about what they are buying. The National Farmers Union has raised concerns about that, warning that the drive towards “more for less” risks compromising consumer health, the need for transparency and, ultimately, consumer confidence.

On horses slaughtered in the UK for food, the past four years have seen an 84% increase in the number of animals slaughtered, mostly for export. In 2012, 9,405 horses were slaughtered, but only 1.5% of those animals were tested for phenylbutazone, or bute, as it is more commonly known. That drug is commonly administered to race horses, but it can cause cancer in humans and is banned from the human food chain. Of that small sample, the FSA has confirmed that eight slaughtered horses tested positive, potentially exposing fraud in the system. That risk of fraud was made worse by the Government’s decision to scrap the national equine database last August, which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) alluded to. That has made it more difficult to trace which British horses are being slaughtered for meat and whether the meat is fit for human consumption.

The Government have chosen to rely on the horse passport system alone. Under that system, 75 different organisations are authorised to issue passports, which contain details of the drugs a horse is given during its lifetime. The British Horse Society confirmed this month that

“with no central database…it is now possible for a horse to be issued with two passports: one in which medication is recorded and an apparently clean one to be presented at the time of slaughter—allowing the medicated horse to be passed as fit for consumption.”

The system is clearly wide open to fraud and abuse.

[Mr Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Steve Reed]

I will make progress, if I may. I have taken several interventions already.

Those failures of Government threaten the very high reputation of the UK food industry. The NFU has spoken out clearly for a more robust system, with clearer labelling of ingredients in products, and a new requirement that processed meat products should display the species of meat and meat derivatives alongside the country of origin. On the difficulties in tracking the source of horse DNA in burgers, the NFU has called for a review into how the origin of meat is identified and maintained throughout the trade and between different countries. The Government should adopt that proposal, and I hope the Minister will respond to that in his speech.

My contention is that the Government have underfunded, fragmented and undermined the food safety system. We must reassure consumers that the meat they buy is correctly labelled, legal and safe to eat. The Government’s actions, driven by cuts and an ideological pursuit of deregulation, made the latest food crisis more likely and mean that it could happen again.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

Like many others, I think that the debate is hugely important, and with my background in the livestock industry I know what the concerns are there. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the reason the issue has come to the fore—and we are pleased that it has—is the improved testing in Ireland, which is, essentially, where the problem arose? We should congratulate the Irish Government on raising the bar for testing. It would be encouraging if testing of that standard could happen in as many countries as possible, including ours.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman must be careful to distinguish between prosecution and litigation. Civil litigation may follow—I do not know—if there is prima facie evidence. When I responded in the House to an urgent question, I said that it seemed to me, without being in possession of all the facts in Ireland, that there was a possibility of criminality. That is a matter for the Irish authorities, and it would be absolutely wrong of me to assume any responsibility or to encourage the Irish in one way or another in their prosecution policy. However, they will no doubt consider whether fraud has taken place, and trace the perpetrators, whether they are the supplier in Poland, as it seems if their tracing is correct, or the people in Ireland who took receipt of the meat. That is for the Irish to decide, and I cannot interfere in that process. I can only express a view, which I think is shared by many people, that if criminal activity takes place on something as important as the food that people eat, we should use whatever powers are available.

[Steve Reed]

The Minister referred to cross-contamination being a source of trace DNA found in other food products. Does he accept that other meat derivatives, such as protein powders to bulk up products, could be deliberately included in processed food when their origins are unclear, because there is no secure system for labelling and tracking the source of such additives through the supply chain?

[Mr Heath]

It is not uncommon in inexpensive burgers, for example, to use bulking material such as beef protein, and it is not illegal to do so. The EU labelling regime changes to which the hon. Member for Ogmore referred will require such material to be more specifically labelled in future. I agree that it is a difficulty for those who are trying to enforce compliance because it is obviously much more difficult to identify the speciation of a brown powder than a rump steak. The hon. Member for Croydon North points to a difficulty, and we must be aware of it and consider what we can do about it.

I want to deal with some of the broad points that were raised. First, it is simply not the case that the system has been fragmented and, suddenly over the past two years, no one has known what anyone is doing. There was a change in 2010, but the Food Standards Agency has always been the key player in food safety and analysis, including competition. It has always worked incredibly closely with trading standards departments throughout the country which often do the testing at local level. The Department of Health has always had parliamentary responsibility for answering for the Food Standards Agency in response to questions from hon. Members. None of that has changed.

The only change in 2010 was in labelling policy, which was returned from the FSA to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs because we knew that there would be issues in the EU about country-of-origin labelling and we wanted to have a clear handle on that. Ministers in my Department were inevitably involved in those negotiations. They were going to be advised by civil servants in the FSA or the Department, and it seemed more sensible for them to work with those in the Department. That was the change that was made in 2010, and it does not imply fragmentation of responsibility. There is still a close working relationship between us and the FSA, and I do not think anyone would seriously challenge that or the close working between the FSA and trading standards departments.

Secondly, another charge was that the FSA’s overall budget has been reduced. That is a matter for my colleagues in the Department of Health, but let us be clear that that is not an operational reduction, but a result of the merger with the Meat Hygiene Service, which has produced economies of scale by restructuring support staff and accommodation charges, and enabled us to save money. Saving money is a good thing if it can be done without detriment to the service. We must be clear about that.

Thirdly, there is a feeling that there are vastly fewer trading standards officers around the country and that the service is denuded of capacity. I accept that there are fewer trading standards officers, but the scale of that reduction is nothing like what has been suggested. Local authority returns suggest that on 31 March 2012, 2,709 people were engaged in UK food law enforcement, which is a 2.3% reduction since the previous year, and a 6.1% reduction since 2009-10. I am concerned about that reduction and the priorities that local authorities are choosing to make in what they do because food law enforcement is a key part of their work. I would encourage them to ensure that their priorities are the same as those of residents in their area. However, the reduction in the level of testing is not huge or swingeing.

We sometimes talk about the number of samples taken, but we should distinguish between the number of samples and the number of tests done on them. We are becoming more and more sophisticated in what we can provide. I will give an indication of some of our work in the Department. One policy area is the research that we commission every year into new methods of testing for compliance of foodstuffs. We put £450,000 into that each year.

DNA testing is by no means the only tool available for testing. Stable isotope testing is being developed and is a valuable tool. Proteomics are a key test which is more often used in ELISA—enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay—which gives similar findings of speciation and origin to DNA, but at a lower cost. Metabolomics involves looking at metabolites in food. All those tools are being used to ensure that the service we provide is as effective as possible.

Let us not run away with the idea that we have a supine, inefficient service in this country that never catches anything, and the wonderful Irish can do it, but we cannot. Some of the things that have been found and dealt with over recent years include buffalo milk adulterated with cow’s milk; fruit juice adulterated with sugar and water; maize adulterated with rapeseed oil; the identification of basmati rice from its origin; the speciation of meat and fish, making sure that no offal and blood proteins are in meat products; the origins of beef; traditional breeds—distinguishing between one breed and another—the origin of fish, whether chicken has been previously frozen; and production methods, so whether something is organic, as it says it is on the packet. We test for all those things. We occasionally find non-compliance and we deal with it, so let us get away from the idea that somehow we are either complacent or have ineffective protection in this country.

[Steve Reed]

I hear what the Minister says about the reduced numbers of local authority food safety officers, but will he give us the figure for the reduction in food safety tests carried out? Unfortunately, I do not have the documentation here, but I believe that in the freedom of information request obtained by the trade union, Unison, there was a 30% reduction in tests, which would mean a considerable increase in risk to consumers purchasing burgers or other meat products, not only from supermarkets, but from the many other outlets that operate in that area, and—I will leave it at that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I was going to move on to the issues about phenylbutazone and horse passports, as that was the other factor that has been referred to several times in the debate.

Let us be clear about phenylbutazone: it is a potentially harmful substance—in fact, there is little evidence one way or another, but we cannot say it is safe. That is why it is excluded from the food chain and it is quite right that it should be. It is principally excluded via the horse passport system. If the horse passport system is being properly applied, it will be excluded at the point of the abattoir. It should not enter the food chain and it should be simply disposed of in other ways. It is not the only drug residue that is occasionally tested for and that we need to be aware of. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate checks for a string of residues that we would also wish to exclude from the human food chain. The evidence from sampling suggests that a small quantity of phenylbutazone is making its way through, in some samples. That is concerning and it has to be investigated, which is exactly what we are doing. The Food Standards Agency is now looking at that in detail to see whether it can get a clearer picture.

There is a problem with the fact that it takes a long time for the test results to come through. I am afraid that I cannot explain why that is, but I am advised that it takes about three weeks to get the results back. During that time, it is entirely possible for food to be passed across the English channel to French markets, where it could enter the food chain. As soon as we have a positive confirmation, we advise the French—or whoever it is—authorities in the same way that they advise us. We have a wonderful network of agencies around Europe. They are constantly in communication and advise one another, which is why we knew about the Irish issue and why we would always notify the French—to ensure that that is the case. However, there is a delay, and the hon. Gentleman raises a point that I accept I need to look at further, to see if there is more that we can do.

[Steve Reed]

Does the Minister not agree that it would make much more sense to prevent the transport of such meat to its destination before the results of the tests for bute have come through? For instance, it could be possible to keep it frozen until it is clear that there is no contamination.

[Mr Heath]

That would require all 9,000 horses that are killed for human consumption—the vast majority of which go abroad, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, because there is no appetite for horsemeat in this country, generally—to be kept in cold storage over a period of time while tests are being conducted. That is an option. What we have to do is be proportionate—we are required by law to be proportionate about what we do, because there are costs involved for exporters—and we can only do that if the evidence shows that it is a proportionate action to take. We are collecting that evidence at the moment and I will then take advice. If at any stage, the chief medical officer or the Food Standards Agency advises me that taking any action of that kind is necessary for the protection of human health, I will take it. I have not received that advice at the moment.