Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what guarantees they have given to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) that (1) the FSA will have the resources to audit the performance of local authority enforcements officers, and (2) local authorities will have the resources to adequately inspect private commercial third party assurance providers on food safety, as proposed in the FSA report, Regulating our Future.

The United Kingdom Government has not given any guarantees regarding the resources of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) beyond the settlement for the current spending period. Within that settlement and for future budgets it is incumbent upon the FSA to decide how to allocate its resources to ensure that it has effective oversight of local authority performance.

Under the FSA’s Regulating Our Future plans, local authorities will not be required to inspect private third party commercial assurance providers, instead the FSA will set the standards that all regulated private assurance providers will have to meet, not just third party assurance providers. The food industry will be required to demonstrate to the FSA that the assurance meets these standards and in addition the FSA will be putting robust arrangements in place to verify that the sources of assurance meet the standards on an ongoing basis.