§ 4.2 p.m.
§ Mrs. Joyce Butler (Wood Green)In 1970, 8,088 people were officially recorded as having suffered from food poisoning, but since the majority of people who have food poisoning do not perhaps contact their doctors the figure must be much higher.
Food poisoning is an extremely uncomfortable complaint which can be serious and even fatal. There are many sources of food poisoning, but at least a number of the recorded cases can be traced to dirty cafes and restaurants where the responsibility rests.
Since all food poisoning is caused by disregard of the fundamental rules of hygiene, it could virtually be eliminated if greater care were taken in the handling of food, particularly in public establishments. This is where the public health inspectors come in, because it is their responsibility to ensure that the food hygiene regulations are observed.
Concerning cafes and restaurants, if there is a contravention of the regulations the public health inspectors take great care to draw the attention of the proprietors concerned to that contravention and in most cases he will speedily comply with the requirements. With some kinds of contravention—for example, where the kitchen sink is being used for all forms of washing without a separate wash basin with hot and cold water being provided—time is allowed for matters to be put right. However, the public health inspectors soon get to know the cafes which continue to have an extremely lax system of control and are consistently dirty.
In the worst of these, cockroaches and mice droppings have been found where food is prepared. Recently the Sunday Times Insight Consumer Unit reported a cafe where the filth on the floor was so deep that the inspector cut out one-inch squares of this dirt to produce as evidence when the case came before the court. However, in most of these premises which are dirty the trouble is a general accumulation of dirt and scruffiness and an overall poor standard of hygiene. Proprietors of such establishments, when they are fined, pay up quite cheerfully and often carry on just as they did before 1915 because they can well afford to meet the fine which is imposed upon them.
In one case a few years ago in the Borough of Haringey the public health inspector described a whole cafe as being in this scruffy state, with piles of dirty crockery in the sink, on the kitchen tables and in a glass food cabinet, and this dirty crockery had been left lying about for weeks. It is easy to visualise the attraction which such conditions provide to flies and other pests, particularly in warm weather, when a real risk can be caused to health.
In the case in question there was no improvement over many months, despite repeated warnings. In the end the local authority sent a final warning letter and then issued a summons on 17 different counts. That was in January, 1967. The point is, however, that it was not until July, 1967, that the case came before the court, and when it came before the court the magistrate made a disqualification order on the proprietor of the restaurant, and the restaurant was closed. During the six months from January to July the cafe continued to serve food to the public, and part of the period was during the summer months when the risk to health was at its greatest. It is this lapse of time between the initiation of legal proceedings and court appearance which is so unsatisfactory. It can be anything up to a year and is never less than several months.
There could conceivably be two cafes in the same street, one of which is perfectly satisfactory in every way and the other of which is subject to proceedings by the local authority to have it closed, but the public have no means of knowing that the one cafe is so dirty that it is to be closed down. There is no sign "Unclean" on the door or anything of that kind and the cafe continues to trade for the whole period before the case goes to court. One may ask why people go to a cafe which is obviously dirty, but it is not always obviously dirty. If it has a trendy decor or something of that kind, the scruffiness may be well concealed. Clearly the public should be protected against such a situation. Equally clearly the food hygiene regulations, which were made to protect the public, were never intended to operate with such a defect in them.
1916 Another weakness in the regulations is that even if the proprietor of a dirty cafe is prevented by an order from carrying on business in that category, any relative or friend can take over from him and continue to run the cafe under new management. Indeed the cafe proprietor himself can go elsewhere and immediately open another cafe. There is no restriction at all, because we have no sort of licensing or registration system.
It was because of this unsatisfactory situation that, as the Minister will know, the Manchester Corporation introduced Section 34 into the Manchester Corporation (General Powers) Act, 1971, to enable the quick closure of restaurants which seriously contravened the food hygiene regulations. Coventry and Derby are, I understand, now considering something similar. The particular point of my initiating this debate today, however, is that a considerable body of public health inspectors in the London area have recently launched a campaign for legislation on these lines because they have found a great deal of difficulty concerning the lapse of time before a restaurant can be closed, and they cite in evidence the fact that there were a 1,000 cases of food poisoning in the inner London area alone in 1970.
The Minister may say in reply that Manchester has not, as I understand it, so far used its new powers; but the law was enacted only comparatively recently and undoubtedly the fact that the power now exists has had a salutary effect on food firms, which know that this reserve power can be used if they do not comply. Eating out is now so popular that we can anticipate the opening of an ever-increasing number of cafes and restaurants all over the country, and regulations which were quite adequate in different circumstances in the past clearly need updating from time to time. I believe that this is the case today.
Now that the inspectors themselves who are responsible for ensuring that the premises where we eat out are clean and hygienic are asking for this power to do their job properly, we must consider their views seriously. If they ask us, we should give them a satisfactory reply. I was therefore very disappointed that, in answer to my Question on 1st February asking for these powers to be considered, 1917 the Under-Secretary was not very forthcoming. He did not think that this was necessary.
The inspectors cannot be the effective public watchdogs that they should be if their hands are tied by legal delays. Can the Minister be more encouraging on this point? If he cannot today say anything more encouraging, can he at least ask his advisers to look at this problem and to make their own recommendations for resolving it?
This is a real problem which is of great importance in safeguarding members of the public who are entitled to believe, rightly, that when they go into a cafe or restaurant, it conforms in every way with the food hygiene regulations and is safe for them and their families to use.
§ 4.11 p.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison)We all want the places where we eat and any places where we buy our food to be clean and run on good hygienic lines. It is only fair to the trade—both the management and the staff—to emphasise that this is what we get in the vast majority of cases.
Every customer is entitled by law to eat in clean surroundings. The plates and dishes, the knives, forks and spoons and other articles of equipment used with food should obviously be clean. The food should be prepared in clean kitchens by staff who are clean in their habits and who keep themselves, the equipment and the food clean. What applies to the kitchen staff applies to those who serve the food. We must not forget that even when everything and everybody are clean and neat to the eye, it is still necessary to guard against invisible danger by following good hygienic practices. The danger, of course, is food poisoning.
Food poisoning is a wide term that in this country is usually associated with the salmonella, staphylococcal and clostridia groups of organisms. Normally the patient quickly recovers from the explosive symptoms. Young babies, the old and those who are already ill from other causes are much more vulnerable than the rest of us; but babies and sick patients do not normally take their meals in restaurants.
1918 Food poisoning is a notifiable disease and the figures published in the Annual Reports of my Department's Chief Medical Officer show that the number of people notified or otherwise ascertained as suffering from food poisoning annually has dropped from 20,000 in 1955—which was the year the food hygiene regulations were first introduced—to between 8,000 and 9,000 in 1970. The number of deaths directly attributable to food poisoning or to which food poisoning is a contributory cause or to which food poisoning was coincidental but not a contributory cause totals about 40 a year in England and Wales.
The Food Hygiene (General) Regulations, 1970, are our main legal safeguard in protecting the customer in cafes and restaurants from food poisoning risks. These regulations, like their predecessors of 1960 and 1955, have been designed to ensure that food is kept and handled under hygienic conditions and that the premises, equipment and facilities for keeping clean are satisfactory. As the House knows, the task of enforcing the regulations within a local district falls on the local authority.
I do not propose to take up time in reciting the different requirements of the regulations, of which many, if not all, have a bearing on what we have been discussing today. I would, however, like to draw particular attention to Regulation 6 under which it is an offence to carry on a food business at any insanitary premises or place, or at any premises or place the condition, situation or construction of which is such that food is exposed to the risk of contamination. Under Regulation 9 a food handler must:
take all such steps as may be reasonably necessary to protect the food from risk of contamination".These two provisions in themselves are demanding—and rightly so—and give the enforcing authorities powerful weapons to use against the proprietor of any dirty food premises.The regulations lay down a penalty of up to £100 for each offence and, in addition, the courts may send an offender to prison for up to three months on each count. A fine of £5 may also be imposed for each day that an offence continues after conviction. Where conditions are bad, there will inevitably be a number of breaches of the regulations with which to 1919 charge the trader, and total fines of the order of £1,500 are not unknown. The courts have also imposed suspended prison sentences. This is a clear indication that where any food trader conducts his business badly, he does so at his considerable peril.
Vigorous enforcement of the food hygiene regulations, coupled with prosecution and the application for and imposition of daily penalties, where the need arises, should either make the bad trader change his ways or drive him out of business, if only because of the threat to his pocket. I have yet to hear of a food trader suffering fines of £1,500 more than once. It may well be that the most damaging and effective penalty of all is the bady publicity which a prosecution brings.
Since the war we have seen marked changes in our national eating habits. We now live much farther from the places where we work and more and more of us no longer go home for a midday meal. Our wives go to work and our children eat school dinners. Every day millions of midday meals are served in factory and office canteens, in schools, in restaurants and other eating places. The hon. Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Joyce Butler) referred to the number of cases that had arisen in central London but it is reasonable to point out that more meals are served in greater London between eleven o'clock in the morning and three o'clock in the afternoon than in the whole of Scandinavia for one day. This scale of the operation puts the matter in perspective. It illustrates the pressure on food workers and on the facilities of the businesses during these periods.
It is against this background that we need to view the effect of the food hygiene regulations as reflected in the food poisoning figures. None of us can afford to be complacent, however. No matter how comprehensive the law is, how well a food business is run and how efficiently the public health inspectors carry out their inspection, all the good work can be undone by a single careless act of one food handler. This is as much an educational problem as anything else in which the employer, local and national authorities and other interested organisations each have their part to play. Efforts in this direction are more likely to be fruitful 1920 if they reinforce lessons already learned at home and at school.
The caterer, in addition to his obligations under the food hygiene regulations, is also subject to the provisions of Section 14 of the Food and Drugs Act. This Section empowers local authorities to ask the courts to disqualify caterers who are convicted of a breach of the food hygiene regulations. The courts take into account the gravity of the offence, the unsatisfactory nature of the premises or previous convictions against the caterer for food hygiene offences.
It is, of course, possible to keep the business open by transferring ownership even though a court order to disqualify the original owner has been made. But the new owner would run the risk of prosecution and of himself becoming disqualified if he did not first put the matters right. Disqualification orders are very rarely applied for and, as far as I am aware, no local authority has ever applied for a second disqualification order when a business has been transferred. When the Act is reviewed, we shall of course consider whether the provisions of Section 14 should be strengthened. I give the hon. Lady that undertaking.
The hon. Lady complained—and this in some ways is the gravamen of her charge about the present circumstances—about very long delays. Some delay before the courts can deal with prosecutions or applications for disqualification may be unavoidable at times—indeed, delay in some measure is inherent in any court proceedings, however brief it may be. But the speed with which a prosecution or other court action is taken after the inspection of the premises will depend a great deal on how quickly the council's officers and procedures can operate.
Having said that, I hasten to add that I have no evidence to suggest that in practice the interval between the inspection of premises and a successful prosecution for a food hygience offence puts the consumer at risk. The cafe or restaurant proprietor could expect to receive further visits from the council's public health inspectors following up the earlier inspections, and he could look forward to further prosecutions and the prospect of heavier penalties if he failed to put things right as soon as he practicably could.
1921 The hon. Lady referred to the special powers of Manchester. In Section 34 of the Manchester Corporation (General Powers) Act, 1971, the corporation adopted powers to close insanitary food premises and stores. The purpose was to enable action to be taken speedily in the case of emergency where there was danger to health. A typical example could be the flooding of a food cellar from a fractured sewer. There is provision for a single magistrate to grant an interim order on the application of the medical officer of health or the chief public health inspector without a formal hearing of the complaint. But the complaint must in due course be heard by the court, and if the court decides that the interim order was not justified the corporation may have to pay compensation to the owner of the premises. An order made under this Section would remain in force until the court rescinded it after the appropriate officer had provided a certificate of fitness. There is a right of appeal to the courts if the medical officer of health or the chief public health inspector refuses or fails to give a certificate.
My Department co-operated closely with Manchester Corportion in the framing of that provision and we are watching its use and value locally with a view to its possible adoption nationally when the Food and Drugs Act comes under re 1922 view. It is, as I have said, a measure intended for emergencies and not as a substitute for action under the food hygiene regulations. As yet, Manchester public health officers have not had to apply for any closing order.
I am glad that the hon. Lady has taken the opportunity on the Adjournment to raise this subject, which, as she rightly says, deals with the possibility of deaths, however few, and with incidents of food poisoning, on a slightly bigger scale, which give rise to public disquiet. We have had a worthwhile debate on a subject in which all of us can fairly claim a close and personal interest. We should acknowledge the progress in food hygiene which we in this country have made over the last 20 years. At the same time, however, I would be the last to say that there is nothing to complain about. We still have progress to make, and much will depend on the continuing efforts of all those concerned in providing education, advice and guidance to food traders and their staffs. Nevertheless, it is as well to remember in difficult cases that our legislation gives the local authorities teeth to bite, and to bite hard, if they use it with vigour and determination.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Four o'clock.