§ Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall)I am delighted to have the opportunity to initiate this debate, but I am disappointed that it is necessary. Unusually, not one but two Ministers are on the Treasury Bench this afternoon. I appreciate their attendance and I hope that the debate will help them and the House generally.
I believe that the enforcement procedure under the Food Safety Act 1990 is not working as well as it should. Hon. Members will know that the Government's White Paper on the Food Standards Agency was published in January. Consultation has proceeded since then and legislation will follow in due course. As food spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, I am delighted to support that initiative and look forward to the discussions that will take place in the House. However, at present there is a hiatus, and I believe that the current regime is patently inadequate and lacks equity. It could be argued that we would not be contemplating major legislation if the present situation were wholly satisfactory.
In the interim period, the Food Safety Act 1990 clearly involves a huge amount of red tape. There are unnecessary deaths on the one hand and the closure of flourishing businesses on the other. I am convinced—I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House agree—that we are not finding the right solutions to current problems. To a large extent, it is a question of enforcement rather than the statute itself. It is my belief—I hope that Ministers share it—that it is essential to learn the lessons of the past and the present in order to ensure that the Food Standards Agency focuses on the prevention of public health problems and scares and does not act solely as a firefighter, responding after incidents occur.
I found an extremely useful source of information for this debate, which also gave a general analysis of the inadequacies of bureaucracy. It is a book by Christopher Booker and Dr. Richard North, both of whom have studied issues of this sort for many years, which was published in 1995. I refer right hon. and hon. Members to the book, which is entitled, "The Mad Officials—how the bureaucrats are strangling Britain". It has the added merit, when it comes to bedtime reading, of containing illustrations by the inimitable Willie Rushton, and I strongly recommend it to Ministers. It is a classic and is extremely helpful in identifying some of the problems with which I hope that they are concerned. It certainly identifies the web of red tape with which I have no doubt that their red boxes are filled every night. The book states:
One of the more unpleasant by-products of the Environmental Health Officer's 'hygiene blitz' was how local papers could be drawn into publicising their activities in a way which might do immense damage to particular businesses—often as it turned out, without justification.Today, I shall refer to the case of Duckett's cheese. I have been in close contact with the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), whom I am delighted to see in the Chamber—I hope that he will seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and contribute to the debate—and the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who is not able to be here but who has been most helpful in marshalling the argument. I think that I speak for us all when I stress that we do not seek 339 to minimise the need to protect public health or deal with food poisoning incidents. However, the case of Duckett's cheese shows that the "hygiene police"—as I call them—must be sure that their facts are accurate because their actions result in individual businesses being submerged by the tide of safety procedures and destroyed overnight.
In this case, Duckett's cheese of Somerset was supplied to a processing company called Eastside Cheese Company in Tandridge, Surrey, which is run by Mr. James Aldridge. Mr. Aldridge processes specialist cheese for a limited market and obtains a substantial quantity of cheese from Mr. Christopher Duckett of Wedmore in Somerset, in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency. On 4 and 8 May, supplies of Wedmore and Tornegus cheeses, made by Mr. Duckett, were sent to the Public Health Laboratory Service for sampling. Mr. Aldridge was told that the samples proved to be entirely negative so far as E. coli 0157 was concerned—he has never received any results to the contrary, so he must assume that that result stands. However, when one consumer of the cheese was found by a Bristol hospital to have an illness apparently caused by E. coli 0157 bacteria, the position changed abruptly.
On 8 May, a category A food hazard warning was issued by the Department of Health. Local authorities were required to ensure that all stocks of cheese originating from Duckett were held by wholesalers and retailers and were required to obtain samples of such cheeses in their areas for testing by the PHLS. No results have been supplied on the total number of samples tested or on any positive outcomes. Mr. Aldridge had voluntarily retained his stock at that stage, but he was told unofficially that he should threaten to sell some cheese in order to invoke section 9 of the Food Safety Act 1990. This he did so that he could be compensated.
The original detention order made by Tandridge council on 19 May under section 9 of the Act put a stop to all sales of Duckett's cheese from Mr. Aldridge's premises, where it is sent for smoking and maturing. That occurred despite the fact that samples showed no contamination by E. coli. The environmental health officers sampled only three batches, and it is against the law to ask for cheese to be condemned unless every batch has been sampled. Mr. Aldridge commissioned an independent analysis of his entire stock, which produced 100 per cent. negative results. However, the following day, the Minister for Public Health signed the emergency control order to come into effect on 21 May 1998 under section 13 of the Food Safety Act 1990. That effectively put both Duckett's and Mr. Aldridge out of business. Meanwhile, the one alleged sufferer of E. coli in Somerset has fully recovered.
Lest it be thought that I am somehow contributing to a right-wing plot, I shall quote from the New Statesman, which is the bible of new Labour. On 29 May 1998, it picked up on a crucial point and said:
The Department of Health's 20 May press release makes a cryptic bullet point remark dismissing the milk. 'No screening of raw milk and no HACCP in operation. Hence lack of confidennce…& What? The Duckett's milk is screened by Milk Marque, which has stringent procedures, and the Ducketts were operating under HACCP, a fancy acronym for a hygiene regime. They couldn't have been in business if they weren't. After the recent scare, theirs is probably the cleanest dairy in the land.At a meeting with Mr. Aldridge, his solicitor and Dr. Richard North on 5 June, an official apparently admitted that, when the order was issued under section 13 of the Food Safety Act, there was no public health risk. 340 Under section 4(2) of the Act, the "Minister" who signed the order had to be either the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food or the Secretary of State for Health. No junior Minister can sign that order. The order should have been signed by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), as the Secretary of State for Health, or by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The legality of the order is therefore rightly questioned. This matter may be the subject of a judicial review, so obviously I cannot go any further into the legal position. The Act is quite clear, however, and there are concerns that the Department of Health has acted illegally.
In the meantime, the cost to the taxpayer continues to mount. Mr. Aldridge, together with the wholesalers and retailers whom he supplies, will have to be compensated for loss of business. Mr. Aldridge's business, which was recently valued at £200,000, is now worth nothing. Costs therefore include £100,000 for the cheeses, £200,000 for business, as well as possible claim for compensation by numerous others, and an estimated legal bill of another £200,000 to £500,000 so far.
Effectively, Ministers and their accomplices have reversed the burden of proof. Of course, this is not the only time that that has happened. Cheese makers are being asked the impossible. They cannot prove that food is always fit; they can say only that they have been unable to detect any strain of E. coli.
There is also the question of natural justice. It cannot be right that authorities take away a person's business for no good reason and without compensation. By inserting Duckett's cheese by name as unfit in the emergency control order, the Department of Health was able to remove the company's right to compensation. That is nifty work, but it is not to the credit of Her Majesty's Government.
This and many other cases show that the nanny state did not begin on 2 May 1997. The legislation to which I am referring was passed in 1990. Indeed, it could be said that, if ever there were a nanny Government, they were the Government of Nanny Thatcher, who always knew best. Significantly, the Booker-North book was published after 15 years of Conservative government. Indeed, it contains the very sad but similar saga of a cheese maker in Pembrokeshire in 1993. Fortunately, although the connotations were similar, the consequences were not nearly as financially calamitous.
If we are to have a Food Standards Agency, let us for goodness' sake ensure the necessary expertise and experience behind it so that it can work efficiently and with equity. It must not be dominated by the food faddists at the Department of Health. It must be accountable to an independent Select Committee along the lines of the Public Accounts Committee.
It is remarkable that, so far, so many such incidents have been targeted on small producers. It seems incredible that shortfalls and failures never occur in larger manufacturers or processing plants. In 1997, there were 1,087 cases of E. coli. Fourteen businesses are in jeopardy over the one case to which I am referring. Simple arithmetic tells us that 15,218 businesses a year could be affected. If we are to go down the route of over-zealous, over-bureaucratic inspection by people who lack experience and expertise, there could be a problem of adequate food supply. 341 I have three specific questions for the Minister on this latest bitter experience. First, is she satisfied that the procedure initiated in the Duckett case—for the first time in eight years, as the Government have admitted—is really appropriate? Secondly, given that farmers are compensated for BSE and tuberculosis breakdowns in cattle, how can she justify the unsatisfactory compensation arrangements for food? Is there one law for cows and quite another for their products? Thirdly, how can we ensure that the mistakes of the recent past—inadequately trained, inadequately resourced and inadequately experienced sledgehammers trying to crack small-scale nuts—are not perpetuated in the new Food Standards Agency regime?
I return to the New Statesman, which puts words in Ministers' mouths—but perfectly justifiably. It said:
We are not only destroying a classic English cheese—we are bragging about it.The previous debate concerned endangered species. At the end of it, the Minister referred at some length to a particular succulent endangered species that he sought to protect. I suggest that, in debating local and regional specialist foods, we are on the same subject.
§ Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells)I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) for allowing me to contribute briefly to the debate.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord)Order. I assume that the right hon. Gentleman has the Minister's permission to make his remarks.
§ Mr. Heathcoat-AmoryI have been in contact with the hon. Member for North Cornwall. I apologise for not specifically requesting—
§ The Minister for Public Health (Ms Tessa Jowell)I am content for the right hon. Gentleman to intervene.
§ Mr. Heathcoat-AmoryI am grateful to the Minister, who knows my interest in this subject.
Mr. Duckett is my constituent. I have known him for 15 years. He is a highly respected Somerset farmer and fully responsible for the safety of the food that he produces. He is aware of the dangers of food poisoning and wishes to co-operate with the authorities in every way. He was therefore shocked, as I was, by the unprecedented issuing of the emergency control order; it was the first ever issued under the Food Safety Act 1990. It was issued when Mr. Duckett was already fully complying with the requests and instructions of local environmental health officers.
We are not talking about an epidemic. There was a single reported case of food poisoning connected with the cheese: in a 12-year-old boy, who happily made a full recovery. All the stocks of the cheese were stalled and other sensible measures were already in place. I join the hon. Member for North Cornwall in asking the Minister to justify her Department's use of the emergency order, given that the detention of food notices issued by local authorities were apparently already working with the full co-operation of Mr. Duckett and his customers.
342 I understand that compensation might be payable under local authority orders if batches of the cheese are subsequently found not to be contaminated and could be released to customers. Will Mr. Duckett be eligible for any compensation that may be made payable as a result of the order to which he and his customers are subject?
Lastly, and in a way most importantly, Mr. Duckett has had his livelihood wiped out. He has no income, even though the cows from which he obtains the milk and his premises have been declared safe. Although the contamination was never adequately explained, all possible measures have been taken. Effectively, he has been ruined. When will the emergency order be lifted? Apparently, local environmental health officers are content. When will the Minister's Department be content, so that my constituent can get back to earning his living?
§ The Minister for Public Health (Ms Tessa Jowell)I congratulate the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) on securing the debate. I welcome the opportunity to deal with the questions that have been raised, as an important part of the Government's wider health policy.
Food poisoning causes illness in increasing numbers of people every year. In 1997, there were more than 100,000 notifications, and many more go unreported. That is why food safety controls must be in place at every stage of the food chain—from plough to plate. Food businesses, too, must adopt preventive measures against the contamination of food. Any case of E. coli must be dealt with, with the utmost care.
In response to the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), I would argue that we have not so far seen any further cases of E. coli as a result of the outbreak to which we are referring precisely because of the preventive action that was taken.
The risks of infection have recently been demonstrated all too tragically by the emergence of new strains of the bacterium E. coli. We know that children, elderly people and other vulnerable groups are especially susceptible to that, and that some develop what is known as HUS—a severe kidney problem, now believed to be the commonest cause of acute renal failure in children in the United Kingdom. I am sure that I do not have to remind the House that the 1996 outbreak of E. coli 0157 food poisoning in Lanarkshire claimed the lives of 21 people. This is not a matter that we can treat lightly.
The Government's approach to the implementation of legislation in such circumstances is that sensible, risk-related action is the most effective. That includes a wide range of measures, including education for small businesses that helps them to comply with the law. We are encouraging local authorities to adopt the enforcement concordat, which reflects precisely the principles that I believe to be important for good enforcement—those of openness, consistency and a proportionate approach to problems.
Those principles will also apply to the actions of the Food Standards Agency. Everything that the agency does will be geared to improving food safety and protecting public health by arrangements at both national and local 343 level, and by encouraging individuals, through better public education, to take what responsibility they can for improving their health.
As a result of our wider approach, formal enforcement measures, such as improvement notices or emergency prohibition notices, are used relatively infrequently. In 1996, one third of a million food establishments were visited, but only just over 100 prohibition orders were issued. Local action is the first port of call, but for serious or widespread problems it may need to be complemented by Government action.
That is why I recently signed the order under section 13 of the Food Safety Act 1990, the focus of today's discussion. That section empowers the Secretary of State to make an emergency control order to prohibit commercial operations with respect to food, if he is satisfied that the carrying out of those commercial operations
involves or may involve imminent risk of injury to health".Of course we recognise that an emergency control order issued under section 13 may have a major impact on food businesses affected by it—a matter that we do not regard lightly. That is why the decision to sign such an order is a difficult one. Parliament clearly included that provision in the Food Safety Act for the purpose of protecting public health. The key principle underpinning any such action by the Government is that we must be satisfied that any commercial operation in respect of the food in question
involves or may involve imminent risk of injury to health".A judgment has to be made as to the risks. That is not always easy, but I believe that our response in the case in question was proportionate to those risks. There is no doubt that, whatever decision we take—to act or not to act—will be the subject of scrutiny, debate and controversy, both politically and in the country at large. If we opt to make an emergency control order, those affected by it have, rightly, the right of every citizen to subject that decision to legal test under the process of judicial review.
The hon. Member for North Cornwall will understand that, because the order is now the subject of legal action, my comments must be limited. None the less, it is important to place on the record the sequence of events leading to the making of the order.
A 12-year-old boy developed not a minor tummy upset but renal failure, was put on dialysis and was found to have an E. coli 0157 infection. Investigations showed that he had eaten cheese containing E. coli 0157. Other cheeses from the same producer were also found to be contaminated. Altogether, 10 samples out of 200 were found to contain E. coli 0157. I understand that full details of all the samples taken by the Department were provided to Mr. Aldridge and his advisers at a meeting on 5 June. Cheeses containing the organism had been produced on several different days and were found in several different outlets.
Food hazard warnings were issued advising local authorities of the action that they should take to ensure that none of that cheese reached the public. Despite action at local level, it subsequently became apparent that potentially contaminated cheese was still available at retail outlets. Furthermore, there were also signs that voluntary agreements not to release the cheeses were breaking down.
344 I was therefore satisfied that commercial operations in respect of those cheeses involved, or may have involved, an imminent risk of injury to health, and that the emergency control order was the most appropriate way of dealing with the situation. A widely distributed food had been found to be contaminated with E. coli 0157, an organism likely to cause serious illness or even death.
A further difficulty, as always in dealing with cases of pathogen contamination, was that microbiological testing could not provide a guarantee that any batch was safe, as organisms in food are not uniformly distributed. Infection by E. coli 0157—one of the most dangerous strains of E. coli, and the one implicated in that case—can occur as a result of ingesting a very small number of organisms. Eating those cheeses was thus akin to playing Russian roulette; some of them were contaminated, but it was not clear which.
The order has promoted swift, firm and consistent action across the country, and by complementing local action with a national measure, has aimed to ensure that the necessary controls are effectively implemented. As a result, no one else has been put at risk, and so far we can say that the possibility of an outbreak such as the one in Lanarkshire has been avoided.
§ Ms JowellI should like to make a little more progress; then I will.
I remind the House of the fundamental reason for the provision of the powers in the Food Safety Act—to protect the public and to save lives. Let us not be in any doubt about that priority. We always use those powers proportionately, and not, as those who in many cases irresponsibly parody such action would say, as part of an anti-business crusade.
§ Mr. TylerIf the Minister cannot deal with the question of compensation here and now, will she please consider carefully the way in which the use of that particular procedure and that particular order would seem to have foreclosed the issue and precluded adequate compensation? That is a major issue, as things stand.
§ Ms JowellI can answer that question in the context of the law, which is that the cheese producer in this case accepted that the food was unfit by surrendering it. I should like to make it clear that the producer has co-operated at every stage with the efforts made to contain the risks posed by the outbreak. The provisions of section 9 of the Food Safety Act mean that compensation is an issue only if the owner of the food challenges the basis for action.
We have always aimed to use the powers proportionately. Looking to the future, as the right hon. Member for Wells invited us to do, I make it clear to the House that we are working closely with the Specialist Cheesemakers Association to help to get the cheese producer back into production. I should also like to inform the House that the child who was so ill as a result of the E. coli incident is, we understand, recovering. 345 When we are satisfied that it is safe to do so, we shall lift the section 13 order, and the cheese producer will be able to continue production of his cheese. I am determined that, when we reach that point, we shall lift the order with the same alacrity with which we introduced it. It is easy 346 to dismiss the significance of one case. We have not had an epidemic—but that is because we took the right proportionate action for the sake of public health.
§ It being Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
§ Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.