HL Deb 06 December 1984 vol 457 cc1456-63
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead)

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Belstead.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]

Clause 1 [Power to make emergency orders]:

Baroness Birk moved Amendment No. 1: Page 1, line 8, at end insert ("after such consultation as may be practicable with the local authority for the area referred to in subsection 1(b) below").

The noble Baroness said: This amendment is in a way tied up with several other amendments, all dealing with local authorities. It certainly seems from the list of amendments before us that the Bill has a great deal of inter-party interest, and at this stage it certainly does not seem a highly political Bill. We hope that it will continue along that road. The Minister looks rather doubtful. We shall wait to see what he says. So far as we are concerned, we prefer it that way, if it works out.

We feel that local authorities have not been involved in the Bill, certainly not on its face. If this is incorrect, I hope that the Minister will say so, but as I understand it, I do not believe that there was consultation with the local authorities before the Bill was published. I have a copy of a letter sent out to a number of organisations, including local authorities. It is dated 9th November, which is the day on which the Bill was introduced. I think that your Lordships will agree that it is more a statement of information than consultation. The letter says: It may, however, be necessary in an emergency to draw on the resources of local authorities and others who already have responsibility for the safety of food ... These provisions will not replace existing statutory functions".

But that does not cover the point of local authorities being involved and having a part to play in working out the legislation.

My noble friend Lord John-Mackie, on Second Reading (at col. 704 of Hansard) said: The Minister has a duty to answer the point about whether it is necessary for Ministers to have all these powers when local authorities have done the job satisfactorily until now".

In reply, the Minister said (at col. 732): The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, suggested, in talking about Part I of the Bill, that local authorities really ought to be given the powers which are being taken in that Part. I think the difficulty is that, while local authorities do indeed have wide powers concerning the safety of food, they are not emergency procedures. Indeed, they could not be brought into operation nearly as rapidly as would be possible under this Bill. It is really on that point that the decision was taken that it would not be so suitable to go for local authority powers".

I very much hope that the Minister will reconsider the situation. As I say, at this stage, I am not intending to press any of these amendments to a Division.

However, I would point out that county councils are emergency planning authorities and already have the expertise to deal with emergencies. Local authorities employ officers whose professional business it is to deal with contaminated food. They are thus a ready source of assistance and advice, to whom Government departments can turn. Those authorities are responsible to their local communities. Consultation with them would preserve the principle of local accountability, which seems to us to be one of the central points. I think that noble Lords in all parts of the Committee who are involved in local government will agree. Where practicable and possible, it is both right and more economic for local authorities to play their part and to be accountable.

In addition, there is a manpower advantage. The Notes on Clauses say that the change is likely to require about 16 staff in the Ministry of Agriculture and about 18 in the Health and Safety Executive. But in local authorities we have many people already doing a great deal of this type of work.

3.45 p.m.

All that Amendment No. 1 seeks is consultation with local authorities, where practicable. As we are aware, the Bill was put together with a certain amount of haste. It is a great advantage that it came to this House first so that we can go into it thoroughly. It is not clear on what ground this proposal was rejected, since, as I said, local authorities were not consulted. Had there been time and had they been consulted, I am sure that they would have pointed out that they run emergency services such as the police and fire services; and, as I said, county councils are emergency planning authorities. There is already an organised network of local authority officers on the ground. Communications should not prove difficult, having regard to the availability of modern facilities. In fact, communication could be easier within a locality than when dealing with the Government's agents.

Furthermore, information about a situation that requires action is quite likely—and I put it no higher than this, although I think one could—to emanate from a local authority and its officers in the first place, whose daily business it is to deal with such matters of contamination. For example, at the present time a local authority officer has to prove to a justice of the peace that food in the process of sale is unfit for human consumption in order to have it condemned under the provisions of the Food Act 1984; yet under Part I of this Bill, "Contamination of Food", in Clause 4(l)(a)(ii), the investigating officer may act merely on "reasonable grounds" for suspicion that food: may become, unsuitable for human consumption in consequence of a release of substances".

I am a magistrate and I have had a number of such cases brought before me by local authority officers. They bring them forward very rapidly. They are usually dealt with efficiently, and action can be taken by the court. They have that expertise and the experience as well. I hope that the Minister will at least consider this point. I do not think that the object of the exercise is to offend local authorities. But at the moment they have been kept out of the Bill. There is no mention of them at all, apart from the investigating officers. Otherwise, the system will work from the centre. I think that that is quite the wrong approach and, unfortunately, will add to the increasing centralisation to which one hoped the Bill would not contribute. I beg to move.

Lord Stallard

I support my noble friend on Amendment No. 1. I was as surprised as anyone when I read that local authority environmental officers had not been consulted. I was chairman of a public health committee for many years and know about the problems of environmental health officers. The Surveyor of 22nd November 1984 said that the Institution of Environmental Health Officers was surprised that there had been no consultation and had no idea that proposals on food were to be part of the Bill. I was absolutely stunned to read that it was in almost complete ignorance of the subject matter of parts of the Bill. If there are any experts on the subject of the movement of food, and contamination, and so on, they are to be found in the environmental health departments in the town halls. To my knowledge the public health inspectors have been arguing for years for more powers to deal with contaminated food and food that is unfit for consumption. So I should have thought it perfectly reasonable, and should be an acceptable part of the consultative process, to involve the environmental health officers.

In the Second Reading debate of this Bill, the Minister said: I emphasise that we shall see all these exercises, and particularly that relating to pesticides, as part of a continuing dialogue with all the different responsible interests concerned".—[Official Report, 22/11/84; col. 698] I should have thought that that would have included local health authorities, environmental health officers, the police and other authorities who will be involved. So I hope that the Minister will have something constructive to say as to how they can rectify this omission. I suggest that they can do that by accepting the amendment.

Lord Belstead

I entirely understand the reasons which prompt the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, and the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, to put their finger on the importance of local authorities in matters affecting a particular locality. Of course the Government understand that. But I think there are certain features which we come to immediately in Part I, which would make it difficult for the Government to accept this particular amendment. I wonder if I may set them out very briefly.

The first is that it is very important that the emergency procedures under this first part of the Bill should be capable of introduction as soon as possible after an incident—within hours if possible. Given this time constraint, it might not be possible to consult local authorities in the way proposed in this particular amendment. For example, a number of authorities might be involved if there were an incident affecting a large area. Alternatively, there might be some difficulty as to who should be consulted if the incident occurred offshore.

I had not entirely gathered from the speech of the noble Baroness and the intervention of the noble Lord exactly who would be responsible if there were to be an incident of this nature which occurred within British fishery limits, let us say 50 miles off the East Coast—where my own home is. I am not sure that the local authorities would necessarily fall over themselves to claim responsibility in this particular situation. That is another of the reasons why there is difficulty with this particular amendment.

There are also other reasons why I think that consultation with local authorities is not absolutely essential before an emergency is declared. While I yield to no one in my admiration for what local authorities do so far as dealing with incidents of food poisoning in their area is concerned, I suggest that they might not have immediate access to the necessary expertise to judge the implications, not only for food but also for agriculture and for fishing.

The noble Lord and the noble Baroness quite understandably asked, "Well, what about the environmental health officers?" I should just like to take the opportunity to say that the Government envisage that many of the officers who would be needed for investigation and for the enforcement of this part of the Bill would come from the Ministry of Agriculture. Examples are sea fishery officers, ADAS veterinary officers and food scientists. Others would come from other Government departments—for instance, they could be Department of Health and Social Security medical officers—and also from the local authorities, we would hope, the environmental health officers.

If I may just go on for a moment, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, in her opening remarks talked about local accountability. It goes without saying that local authorities are, in practice, certain to be consulted and actively involved in these matters if, which we trust will never happen, Part I is brought into effect.

However the situation at the moment is that at present we have no statutory plan for what would happen if there was a release of harmful substances and people were liable to eat food which was going to poison them. We rely on voluntary co-operation, usually local and, in the admirable way in which the British people always get together when there is trouble, usually it works. But, conceivably, it might not and the emergency might be very serious. If we had not taken some powers, as we are endeavouring to do in Part I, we might wish that we had done so.

The proposals in Part I which are before the Committee are simply a necessary extra measure of insurance, enabling the Government to act quickly and to impose immediate safety requirements. That could reinforce but would take nothing away from what already exists. Local authorities would still be involved in matters unless there were simply not enough time.

There is one last matter to which I must give a straight answer because the noble Baroness asked me a straight question. That is the matter of consultation. It is the case that, because local authorities are not written into Part I, the contents and the purpose of the Bill were made known to them when it was published and only on that occasion. But I do give an assurance that the Government intend to consult the local authorities on any further administrative arrangements which may be needed in association with them if this Bill passes into law.

May I come back to where I started? I do ask the Committee to bear in mind that in Part I of the Bill we are talking about a very narrow but potentially desperately serious situation. The narrowness of the situation is that it has to be an occasion when there has been a release of harmful substances and it is either contaminating or potentially may contaminate food or things which contribute to food which people might eat. It is very serious because, as we all know, if this were to happen, we should blame ourselves if we had not laid the right sort of plans.

These are situations which, as I said at the beginning, could occur outside the jurisdiction of local authorities—for instance, out at sea. It is for that and other reasons which I have attempted to deploy that, although I quite understand the case which has been made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, I do not think the Government can agree to this particular amendment.

Baroness Birk

Since, understandably, the Minister in replying to me has also taken in the arguments for Amendments Nos. 7 and 9, perhaps in reply I may deal with some of those points.

Amendment No. 7: Clause 3, page 4, line 17, at end insert ("appointed for the purpose by a local authority").

Amendment No. 9: Page 5, line 3, leave out subsection (4).

First, on the point of consultation, I would say this. This is a rather odd point: the Government say that because local authorities were not written into Part I, they were not consulted. What I am now saying is that because there is a strong feeling on the part of the local authority associations and individual local authorities that they should have been consulted, I do not think it is too late now to get together with them and see if something can be worked out. Alternatively, the point that the Minister has made should at least be put to the local authority associations and they should then be allowed to come back with their own feelings and argument.

I think the Minister would probably agree that that is only fair. They were not consulted before and, now that this is all arising, they certainly should be. They are of course referred to in the Notes on Clauses, on Clause 3(1), where it is stated: Many of the officers would come from within MAFF (eg. sea-fishery officers, ADAS veterinary officers and food scientists) but others would come from other Government departments (eg. DHSS medical officers) or local authorities (eg. environmental health officers).

4 p.m.

If they are contained in the Notes on Clauses which do not form part of the Bill, the Minister knows as well as I do that whatever we say and is reported in Hansard, it is not part of the legislation and cannot be referred to by the courts. That seems to me to strengthen the argument for having a further look at the matter and perhaps taking the opportunity to hold discussions with the local authority associations between now and Report stage. I am not arguing that the amendments as at present drafted are necessarily the best way of going about it. I am, however, arguing that by some means or another the local authorities should be brought in. Indeed, the first amendment—it is a very mild one—states: after such consultation as may be practicable",

which I think answers the Minister's point that emergency procedures should be as quick as possible. It may well be, in some cases, that the local authority can immediately deal with a situation much faster than it could be dealt with by central Government or by Ministers. The noble Lord said that consultation is not necessary. It may or may not be. If it is not practicable, it cannot take place. If, however, it is practicable, it seems to me that it is necessary to undertake it.

What we are saying here is that the local authorities—this is really going back to the beginning of the whole matter—are not covered in the Bill and they were not consulted, but, please, will the Minister take this point on board, consult the local authorities and see what arises out of the discussion? It still seems to me wrong not to have them in the Bill in some form or other but simply referred to in the Notes on Clauses.

The Minister has referred to what happens at sea. I would ask what happens now. A further amendment that I have put down is to leave out a subsection of the Bill because there are port officers and local officers who would be able to deal with the matter. I shall not be pressing that, but it is the basic principle of the whole subject that we are discussing. I wonder if there is anything that the Minister might like to say.

Lord Belstead

I wonder if I may say the briefest word in reply. It is simply this. It is on two main grounds that I am not as sympathetic as the noble Baroness would wish me to be to the first amendment. Those two main grounds are that we are talking about emergencies where time would be of the essence and that such emergencies could well occur in areas, for instance at sea, which would be outside the jurisdiction of local authorities.

Having said that, there is a third point which, if the noble Baroness will forgive me, I must put to her. The noble Baroness, with her normal skill and persuasive arts, said that this is a very mild and reasonable amendment. Indeed, it is a mild and reasonable amendment as it sounds when it comes from the noble Baroness. She always puts it so well. But the noble Baroness let slip that we would also be talking to Amendments Nos. 7 and 9. And they are of a rather different hue. When we come to Amendment No. 7 we find that what the noble Baroness and her noble friend Lord John-Mackie want to do is to make sure that the appointments of people who are to give advice on whether there should be an emergency will not be Government appointees but local authority appointees. The effect of Amendment No. 9 is very much the same.

For the reasons that I have deployed, I do not think that this would be appropriate. I do not say that casting aspersions of any kind on local authorities. I simply do not think that what is proposed would be appropriate to Part I. However, the noble Baroness has asked me whether the Government would be ready to talk more than they have done with the local authorities. Of course, we would. I stated in my first reply that we intended to consult the local authorities now on administrative arrangements. I am sure that the door of the Ministry of Agriculture would be open to local authority associations if they wished to talk further about this. Indeed, so would my door. I hope, however, that I have made the Government's view clear on the difficulties that we see with this amendment and with the amendments associated with it.

Baroness Birk

I thank the Minister for his reply. He is quite right. It was not as sympathetic as I had hoped. But it was not as bad as I had feared it might be. I introduced the other amendments, perhaps unwisely, because I thought that the Minister was covering the wider field. I said—I shall say it again briefly when we come to them—that I was not too happy at the moment with their drafting because I see the point about the exclusiveness of Amendment No. 7. There are also problems in connection with Amendment No. 9.

The noble Lord has given an undertaking to talk to the local authorities. I would have thought that the last thing the Government wanted was to have irate local authorities feeling out of humour with the Government over the Bill, feeling isolated from it and also not being able to participate, and the Government not making use of the expertise of local authorities. That is what is important. It is not just a matter of status. It is a question of using people.

However, in view of what the Minister has said and hoping that there will be at least some talks and that something constructive will emerge from them, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The Earl of Swinton

I think that this might be a convenient moment to take the Statement. I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House resumed.