Food Standards (Hansard, 8 February 1999)

§ Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire)
I am sorry that I must detain the House for a few minutes on the motion. However, I am glad to see the Leader of the House in her place. I dictated a letter to the right hon. Lady this morning, which I shall still be sending. There are important issues relating to the motion that the House needs to pause to consider before it pushes the motion through on the nod. I refer especially to the last line of the motion, which reads: That the Committee shall report by 31st March 1999. The House will be aware that I am the Chairman of the Select Committee on Agriculture, which considered food safety and the Government's proposals and published a report in April 1998. I say at the outset that I am delighted that the Government are engaged in a process of pre-legislative scrutiny on this very important measure. I have no argument about that. In doing so, the Government are following a precedent that was beginning to be established by the previous Government. It is a process that the House should follow much more regularly. However, if pre-legislative scrutiny is to be effective, it must be done well. I doubt whether the time scale that is open to the Committee for consideration of the draft Bill is adequate to enable it to do its job well.
By my calculations, if the Committee were to be convened this week for its first meeting to elect its Chairman, it would be inviting written evidence in, say, weeks two and three, taking its first oral evidence in weeks four or five—no doubt it would go at least to a sixth week—considering its report in week seven and publishing it in week eight. That is a ridiculously truncated timetable for such an important measure—one to which the Government rightly attach considerable importance.
Compare and contrast the timetable for the Bill with the timetable for the consideration by the Select Committee on Social Security of pensions on divorce—pension splitting. That Committee took some 35 weeks to consider its proposals on an admittedly detailed and complex point of law. It had eight sessions of oral evidence, which began on 24 June and ended on 16 September. The Committee eventually published its 85 report on 28 October. It rightly called 33 witnesses from 11 different organisations. It called the Minister responsible and officials from the relevant Departments on two separate occasions. That is the right sort of time to give to pre-legislative scrutiny.
It is interesting to note the Committee's last recommendation, which reads: We recommend that Bills which are to be published in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny by a select committee in the Session before their formal introduction should be published no later than Easter, in order to allow potential witnesses plenty of time to prepare their evidence and the select committee to complete its work before the end of the session. The Select Committee on Social Security made the clear assumption that a Bill should be published in draft in one Session and introduced in the following Session. We know the history of this—there is House of Lords reform—and I will not weary the House with it, but in this instance it is the Government's intention that pre-legislative scrutiny should take place over two months before Easter and that the Bill should be introduced for consideration in Standing Committee after Easter, for consideration to be completed in this parliamentary term.
That does not seem enough time to me. I talked to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), who chairs the Select Committee on Social Security. He told me that one problem was that witnesses came with an initial view on how the proposed legislation would work and then, sometimes after giving evidence to the Committee orally, returned with additional written evidence, on reflection, setting out what they thought the implications of the legislation would be. That seems entirely reasonable. The pre-legislative scrutiny period should be sufficiently flexible to allow that sort of dialogue.
After all, the House is seeking to ensure with pre-legislative scrutiny that Bills are better drafted. That is the point of it. I vividly recall when I was asked for various reasons to speak at considerable length on a one-clause Bill. I spoke for a morning and a half in Standing Committee and found that that legislation was significantly improved. It is right that the House should pay more attention to the way in which legislation is drafted. It is right also that the Government should assume pre-legislative scrutiny, and I welcome that. However, it is not right to confine that scrutiny to two months.
The Government, in their response to the Select Committee on Social Security, congratulated it on the detailed way in which it had considered legislation. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for East Ham (Mr. Timms), who has only recently today spoken from the Dispatch Box, said: We very much welcome the Committee's constructive response. You deserve great credit for your thorough examination of the draft legislation. You have been instrumental in taking forward the proposals of the Modernisation Committee to improve Parliamentary scrutiny of proposed legislation. Noticeably, in their reply to the Select Committee, the Government, for perfectly understandable reasons, ducked any comment on the specific recommendation about the timetable for pre-legislative scrutiny. They said that it was a matter for the Modernisation Committee. I believe that they are right. It is also a matter for the whole House.
We should welcome the Government's intentions with regard to pre-legislative scrutiny, but we should say that, if this process is not to be discredited very early in its 86 parliamentary history, it must be done well. Given the many constraints on Members' time and the need to give witnesses outside this place a decent amount of time to prepare for what they regard as a very important occasion—it concerns their lives as representatives of organisations with an interest in food safety—I do not believe that the timetable provides enough time.
As Chairman of the Select Committee on Agriculture, I can say that we took six or seven months to produce a report on food safety. I still think that, if anything, the report tended to be superficial. I would have liked to examine many issues in greater depth as part of the report. I appreciate that the issue is now more focused because we are dealing with the Bill itself, not the whole gamut of food safety. I still think, however, that a scant eight weeks is not enough. I urge the Government to reconsider whether this is the right way to proceed with the Bill; and whether it will enhance the dignity of the process of pre-legislative scrutiny.

§ The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett)
I shall not take up the time of the House because we are dealing with a procedural motion to appoint a Committee. I understand from the remarks of the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) that he does not oppose the setting up of the Committee. Indeed, he welcomes it. He does not oppose the use of the procedure. He welcomes that, too, and that is very helpful. However, he thinks that we should have provided for more time.
I entirely share the hon. Gentleman's view and that of the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery), who objected to the motion in the first place last week—in the past, the right hon. Gentleman has been a distinguished advocate of modernisation of the sort that we are discussing, so I was a little sorry as well as surprised to see him taking such action—that we should use the procedure of pre-legislative scrutiny more regularly, and the Government would wish that. However, that presumes that everyone wants to use the procedure for the purpose for which it is intended.
I repeat that this is a motion to set up a Committee and to enable some scrutiny. The purpose of the timetable, as the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire may have observed, is to tie up with the deadline for the closure of the public consultation process, which finished on 24 March. That is why the Committee is asked to report on 31 March.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of the need to have a much longer period of scrutiny and to allow for far more witnesses to give evidence, as if there were great concern outside this place. If there were, that would be a matter of great importance. As I understand it, however, no one in the food industry has made any complaint about the timetable that the Government are pursuing. Indeed, as recently as this week, the National Farmers Union and food industry representatives have indicated that they are content with the procedure.

§ Mr. Luff
If I understand the right hon. Lady correctly, she is saying that written evidence to the Government has to be in by the end of March but written evidence to the Select Committee will have to be in by the end of February, or even earlier. There could be considerable 87 inconsistencies between the evidence received by the Select Committee in writing and that which the Government receive in writing at the end of their consultation period.

§ Mrs. Beckett
I find that hard to believe, especially as presumably those whose evidence the hon. Gentleman would most wish to hear are not expressing concern about this issue or about the timetable. That brings me to the main point which I think arises on this use of the pre-legislative scrutiny procedure. It is that the Government might well not have tied time so tightly to the end of the general consultation had it not been for the fact that we are anxious to legislate on this matter this Session, believing it to be very much in the public interest and a matter of public safety. I wonder—the question arises if this issue is to detain us at any length—whether this is a matter of holding up the Bill, which as we all know some Members oppose.

§ Mr. Luff
Will the right hon. Lady give way?

§ Mrs. Beckett
Not for a moment. I shall finish the point that I am making.
The indication given by the right hon. Member for East Devon on a point of order, when he obstructed the motion at the end of last week, was precisely that he opposed the subject matter of the Bill and the accompanying measures.
The Government are anxious that the Bill should not be held up. The question is ultimately whether the House wants the Bill. There will, of course, be ample opportunity to debate the proposals and the Bill when it finally comes before the House. I repeat: the issue now is whether we set up such a Committee, and whether it considers the matter in the way that the motion allows.
The procedure has been welcomed in all parts of the House and we are anxious that it should be used. I suggest that we proceed to use it.