HC Deb 18 May 2000 vol 350 cc473-80 1.17 pm
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Nick Brown)

With permission, Madam Speaker, further to the written answer given yesterday by the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Ms Quin), I should like to make a statement.

I stress at the outset that no threat to public health or the environment has occurred.

The Government were advised on 17 April by Advanta Seeds UK that some of its supplies of conventional rapeseed, sold and sown in 1999 and 2000 in several European Union member states, possibly including the UK, contained a small proportion—about 1 per cent.—of genetically modified rapeseed. At that time the full facts were not known. We immediately sought to establish the details and to check the status of the particular genetic modification involved.

It appears that a non-GM seed crop being produced in Canada in 1998 had come into contact with a GM crop being commercially produced in the area, resulting in a small amount of GM seed in the conventional seed. The company has advised us that production of seed in 1999 was unaffected. In the UK, about 9,000 hectares were sown with affected stocks last year and about 4,700 hectares were sown this spring.

The genetic modification involved—known as RT73—is one that had previously been approved in the UK under our strict regulatory regime for food use and field trials in 1995 and 1997.

The genetic modification in question had previously been examined by the UK's expert committees—the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment in respect of environmental safety and the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes in respect of food safety. Both had cleared it.

We believe that there is no threat to the environment because the GM variety is sterile. It is difficult to see how it could cross-pollinate with other plants. It should be remembered also that oil produced from the crop is indistinguishable from conventional rape oil; no modified DNA will be present. ACRE and the Food Standards Agency have looked at this specific incident and concluded that there is no risk.

It remains the Government's policy that commercial planting of GM crops will not be permitted in the UK until the results of the farm-scale evaluation have been considered. These trials still have two years to run. I regret these developments, but I repeat that there has been no threat to health or the environment. We moved quickly to establish the facts and officials have been in continuous contact with the company.

These events have made it clear that there are gaps in the arrangements relating to seed purity at international level. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State accordingly announced yesterday that we would press for concerted international action to seek new legal standards for seed purity, so that, in particular, the standards take into account the presence of GM material in conventional seed stocks.

Further, My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions has been setting up a system for spot-checking of seed imports for GM material. That system will be in place from 1 June. Work with the industry on a code of practice about production and sowing of conventional seed, including separation distances, and monitoring of GM content continues.

Mr. Tim Yeo (South Suffolk)

I welcome the Minister's assurances about human health and the environment, now that we know that 13,000 hectares of GM-affected oilseed rape have been commercially planted in Britain in the last two years. Nevertheless, I regret that the Minister did not come to Parliament yesterday to make the statement, instead of sneaking out some of the information by way of a written answer.

People will wonder why it has taken the Labour Government a whole month to publish information given to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions on 17 April. Did the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food receive any warning about this before 17 April? Does the Minister recognise that, in the month since 17 April, more of the GM-affected seed may have been planted by farmers who had been storing it?

I welcome the steps that the Minister announced to deal with the grave anxieties about seed purity. These are especially urgent, since the presence of GM-affected crops in Britain came to light only as a result of tests carried out in Germany. What action will the Government now take to monitor the environmental impact of the GM-affected crops being grown commercially? Does the Minister agree that all these crops should now be subject to the same procedures and controls as the current field-scale crop trials? Does he realise that any failure to do that will intensify public pressure for the destruction of those crops?

Will the Minister confirm that the affected seed came from Canada, where cross-contamination of seeds occurred over distances of more than 800 m? Does he agree that this means that distances in Britain by which GM crops are separated from conventional and organic crops must be increased immediately? Will he explain the difference between his unequivocal statement just now that the GM variety is sterile with the Advanta statement yesterday that only "a high proportion" is sterile?

What steps will the Government take to ensure that innocent farmers whose crops may now be worth less because they can no longer be certified as GM-free are properly compensated? Does not the Government's handling, yet again, of the continuing sorry saga of GM crop issues typify Labour's culture of confusion, complacency and cover-up?

Mr. Brown

I completely reject the attack on the Government's handling of the issue, and the attack on the Government's candour. We established the facts and put them in the public domain. The hon. Gentleman asks why we did not seek to make a formal statement yesterday: it was an Opposition day and it is a convention that the Government do not make statements on such occasions. In any event, Madam Speaker, you have said that the use of written answers is a proper way to put information before Parliament. The charge that the Government have acted with less than candour is one that I completely reject. Furthermore, I assure the House that I am more than willing to put in the Library any technical information that Members wish to seek so that everyone can see the advice on the technical points that is available to the Government.

Officials were first informed by the company on 17 April and I am not aware of any earlier information being available to the Department. The hon. Gentleman also asked about testing. As I said in my statement, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions is introducing testing techniques for conventional seeds to test for GM content, and those arrangements will be in place by 1 June.

The hon. Gentleman is on to a good point in inquiring about separation distances, and the regulatory authorities are keeping that matter closely under review. That is also why we are conducting the trials. I am advised by the Government's professional advisers—just as the previous Government were when they were in office—that there is no danger to human health, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for accepting that point. Because of the nature of the GM product, which is present only in small quantities, there is no danger to the environment either.

Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North)

I thank my right hon. Friend for making such a frank statement. In view of what he has just said about making technical information available in the Library, will he be more specific so as to clear up some of the confusion that exists about the RT73 strain of Monsanto seed? Is there only a genetic trace for glyphosate herbicide tolerance? If it is possible that the plants are not sterile and could cross-pollinate and spread GM pollution, will he be prepared to trace where the seed has been used and order the crops to be pulled up?

Mr. Brown

The advice that the Government collectively have received is that it is not necessary to trace and destroy the crops. On the question of the sterility of the GM modification, I am happy to put a technical note in the Library, because that will be helpful to the House. In this whole matter, the Government are proceeding on the basis of professional advice provided to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health on food safety and to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions on the environmental issues.

Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome)

I welcome the statement and the additional information that will be made available. I accept the Minister's assurances that no harm will be caused to the environment, but considerable harm has been done to the reputation of the Ministry for openness, especially because of the partial nature of the information available yesterday. There was a statement from the Home Office yesterday, so the Minister could have made a statement. Will he accept that the matter has destroyed the credibility of the import controls, such as they are; has made a nonsense of the so-called safe separation distances; and has caused potential economic damage to farmers who have planted non-GM seed in good faith?

Will the Minister confirm that on 18 June 1999, in The Times, Dr. Phil Dale of the John Innes centre in Norwich drew attention to the specific problem of a 1 per cent. contamination of seed from north America? Will the Minister account for the dilatory and ineffective way in which the Ministry has treated that information since? Will he accept that it is hard to discern a difference between the way in which Government Departments now work and the way in which they worked when the Conservatives were in charge during the BSE crisis? Will the Minister give an assurance that he will re-examine the safety zones; ensure that the import checks are effective and subject to external audit; and consider compensation for the farmers who have been affected through no fault of their own and may be locked into GM-free contracts that they now cannot complete?

Mr. Brown

The hon. Gentleman is overstating his case. There is no reason why this GM product cannot be used for food purposes, as was agreed under the previous Conservative Government. There is no risk to human health, and no one so far this afternoon has alleged that there is. I am grateful for that, as it does the cause of those opposed to genetic modification in principle no good to exaggerate the problems or to pretend that there are risks where there are none.

Clearly, there is a real problem with seed purity. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions is introducing testing from 1 June for environmental purposes. The aim is to check that field trials are not being affected by inadvertent contamination by commercial seed product. That must be taken forward as a matter of urgency at international level, but it is to do with seed purity, not with environmental contamination or public health.

I completely reject what the hon. Gentleman said about the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. We established the facts and put them in the public domain. In addition, I have given the House an assurance today that the technical information that supports the advice to Ministers will also be placed in the House of Commons Library.

Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford)

I also thank my right hon. Friend for the statement that he has made today. Given what he said about sterility, and what Advanta has said about the cross-pollination which it believes was the cause of the contamination, may I press him on separation distances? Many hon. Members have supported the experiments being carried out on GM crops but, for useful comparisons to be made, proper separation between GM crops and conventionally grown and organic crops is crucial. Will he allow SCIMAC—the supply chain initiative on modified agricultural crops—to make its annual review in the normal way, and will he and his colleagues in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions instruct it to undertake an immediate review of the matter? Most of us who support the experiments and the precautionary principle are worried about what has happened, and believe that the separation distances must be enlarged.

Mr. Brown

My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, who takes the ministerial lead on these matters, tells me that the re-examination sought by my hon. Friend is already under way in his Department. I think that she is on to a strong point.

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)

Genetically modified crops are grown experimentally on three farms in my constituency. Will the Minister acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of rural folk are prepared to adopt a moderate and sensible attitude with regard to this matter? They realise that agriculture is under pressure and they are prepared to have GM crops grown experimentally in their localities. However, I hope that the Minister will accept that there must be no more cock-ups such as the one that has attracted so much bad publicity over the past 24 hours. Otherwise, there will be a real danger that his allies in public opinion will start turning against him and that sensible people in rural areas—not of the rent-a-mob variety—will start getting increasingly worried.

Will the Minister take this opportunity to reassure the public on matters such as cross-pollination, sterility, separation distances and so on? Will he also acknowledge that there is a rather casual attitude towards GM crops in north America? Will he reassure his friends in rural areas that he is taking the matter very seriously?

Mr. Brown

I take very seriously the issues of seed purity, protection of the public, and protection of the environment. That approach is the one adopted right across Government. The hon. Gentleman is right that what happened should not have happened: the question for the Government is what to do about it. I believe that the response that I have announced today, and that was announced yesterday in my right hon. Friend's written answer, is the right one. It will provide reassurance to farmers, just as it provides more general reassurance to the public.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud)

I welcome the statement made by my right hon. Friend, but the incident is clearly disappointing. The Government need take no lessons from the official Opposition, whose only contribution to the debate was to license GM foods in the first place.

The third report from the Select Committee on Agriculture examined the question of the segregation of GM crops, and determined that that segregation was very difficult to achieve. Given the comments from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), should we not tell the north Americans that, until and unless they sign up to the Montreal bio-safety protocol, we will have to consider our own actions in relation to GM crops? That would mirror the unilateral action that they have taken in continuing to evaluate the risk analysis on BSE.

Mr. Brown

I understand that we either have agreement on the protocol or are close to it. My hon. Friend is on to the right point. The United Kingdom Government have taken the lead in trying to get the international agreements on seed purity that are at the heart of this issue. The work of the Agriculture Committee is a useful contribution to those discussions.

Mr. Paul Keetch (Hereford)

Is the Minister aware that Herefordshire reportedly has more organic farms per hectare than any other county in England, and that many organic farmers are concerned that they will lose their business if they lose Soil Association accreditation if they are infected by genetically modified crops? Is the right hon. Gentleman further aware that on 27 March the Minister for the Environment told me in a written answer that there were no GM farms in Herefordshire? However, in another written answer on 15 May, the right hon. Gentleman told me that there was one GM site in Herefordshire, at Preston Wynne, and that the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions had only discovered that fact on 26 April.

Can the Minister assure me that there are no other GM sites in Herefordshire? Can he tell me what compensation organic farmers will receive from the Government if they lose Soil Association accreditation? Can he assure me that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will hold a public meeting in Herefordshire? It has held such meetings in Worcestershire, Warwickshire and other parts of the midlands, but has so far refused to hold one in Herefordshire.

Mr. Brown

Essentially, the question is for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions rather than for me, because it is about accreditation and separation distances. However, all the issues are under review, and no one would want to do anything to damage the prospects for organic farmers. The Government are putting more money into supporting conversion to organic farming. The organic farm movement has won an important place in the retail marketplace. I want to sustain that, not see it undermined.

Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South)

I congratulate the Minister on the work that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has done in promoting organic farming. Will he come back to the House with a statement giving specific details of liability and compensation that relate to GM crop contamination?

Farmers across the country will be discovering that they have inadvertently fallen for the wiles of the food biotech industry. These GM gigolos have been touring the country, and farmers are waking up to the fact that the industry has rogered their fields and run off in the morning without accepting any responsibility for the contamination that follows.

At a time when consumers and supermarkets are queueing up to demand GM-free products, does my right hon. Friend accept that there are widespread implications for farm incomes if farmers can no longer offer that guarantee? Will he consider the arguments in favour not of a Child Support Agency but of a Farm Support Agency that will pursue the seed corporations which have demanded patents and royalties, and remind them that they will have to accept long-term, lifetime responsibility for GM paternity, and environmental responsibility?

Mr. Brown

I hope that my hon. Friend will take it from me that the advice to the Government is that there is no risk to human health in what has happened, and no risk to the environment. Environmental liability is currently under examination in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, with a view to a future parliamentary debate.

Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion)

The Minister will know that Wales has declared itself a GM-free zone, and many people in Wales will be very disappointed at the recent incident. May I ask him—I accept his assurances about public health—whether 1 per cent. contamination would in itself make these crops non-GM-free? There is also a very real threat to organic farming arising from these incidents, as has already been mentioned.

Whether by default or design, the Government seem to have engineered a number of crises of confidence around their GM policies. Will the Minister accept from me that farmers in Wales and Ceredigion want to produce food, whether organic or conventional, that people trust. Incidents such as this do not help. Will the right hon. Gentleman review the procedures and look in particular at the North American Free Trade Area, where it seems that the gene identification process is totally inadequate to stop these things happening?

Mr. Brown

My Department and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions are focusing on the important issue of conventional seed purity. As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions is introducing random checks from 1 June. There is no reason why the particular strain should endanger organic farm production, for example, because of the nature of the product.

Mr. Alan W. Williams (East Carmarthen and Dinefwr)

Can we be certain about the cause of the contamination? Was it a case of inadvertent mixing of GM and non-GM seeds, or was it pollination from a distance of 800 m? If it was such pollination, there are serious questions about what are safe distances. There is a fundamental biological question. If the cause of the contamination was pollination, how could a sterile crop pollinate at 800 m?

Mr. Brown

The issue is slightly more complex than that. We believe that it is pollination in Canada, but three-way pollination. In other words, it is not a question of the product that is present here and sterile having been shown not really to be sterile. I shall put a technical note in the Library that sets out the production process and how three-way cross-pollination occurred in Canada.

Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West)

The Minister, who is a former Government Chief Whip, has not been reading his Whip. Yesterday was not an Opposition day. The Opposition day was on Tuesday. Notwithstanding that, we had a statement. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that while it is a matter of relief that the seeds in this instance will be sterile and do not in his estimate provide a threat to public health, he must give a reassurance on the issue that such a thing could happen? That is the real question.

Mr. Brown

On the hon. Gentleman's second point, that is why we are examining the important question of seed purity. On his first point, he is absolutely right. I read an earlier version of the Whip and I was wrong in what I said to the House. The hon. Gentleman has won one, but I do not resile from the underpinning point, which is that putting the facts into the public domain is the right thing for Ministers to do. The use of a written answer to do that, and putting additional information into the public domain, should be a perfectly acceptable way forward.

Ms Julia Drown (South Swindon)

My constituents will be pleased to hear the Government's assurances that the contamination poses no threat to human health or to the environment. However, it raises real concerns for consumers who want to exercise their choice to avoid GM technology. It seriously undermines confidence in the companies that have been responsible for the contamination. What steps will my right hon. Friend take to talk to the companies and ensure that they take consumer choice seriously, so that our constituents can have assurances that if they want to avoid GM technology, they can?

Mr. Brown

I agree with what my hon. Friend says. The Food Standards Agency is pressing ahead with a labelling regime to ensure that consumers can exercise their choice. Discussions with the company have been going on at official level between my Department and others on an almost daily basis. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State will be seeing representatives of the company very soon.